26. Age Tech Atlanta- Changing the Definition & Experience of Aging

In this episode of Raising Tech, our host, Amber Bardon, has a great conversation with Age Tech Atlanta’s Founder, Jeff Gray, about how Age Tech Atlanta’s community are changing the definition and experience of aging.

Discover more about how Age Tech Atlanta’s startup founders, educators, researchers and influencers in the fields of age tech, elder care, and longevity are reimagining how we age.

Raising Tech is powered by Parasol Alliance, The Strategic Planning & Full-Service IT Partner exclusively serving Senior Living Communities.

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Amber Bardon:
0:06

Welcome to Raising Tech. I’m your host, Amber Bardon, and today our guest is Jeff Gray. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Gray:
0:13

Thank you.

Amber Bardon:
0:14

So Jeff, you are with Age Tech Atlanta. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what exactly is Age Tech Atlanta?

Jeff Gray:
0:22

Well, maybe I’ll tell you a little bit about my journey in tech. So, my first business and my first successful exit was a company called ValueCheck, and we were the precursor. If you’ve ever gone onto Zillow and used the Zestimate. We were the early version of that. We were the first company in the country to automate appraisals, and we sold that to RealEstate.com, which was here in Atlanta. So I relocated from LA to Atlanta and experienced all the culture shock you can imagine from that move anyway, but, you know, got involved in tech before ValueCheck and it stayed with it ever since, and I got into Age Tech, which is, you know, really just technology that somehow designed to positively impact the world of aging, elder care, longevity as a result of my experience with Alzheimer’s and my mom diagnosed, went through the caregiver journey, moved to memory care and all of that stuff got me thinking about, you know, trying to innovate and make things better.

Amber Bardon:
1:22

It’s interesting how so many founders in this industry have that personal experience with a family member or someone else in their life that leads them to a leadership position or creating a company in the space. So tell me a little bit more, what exactly is Age Tech. How was it founded? What’s its mission? What’s its purpose? What are some of the key initiatives?

Jeff Gray:
1:43

Well, start with kind of the larger mission. I’ll tell you a little bit about how we founded it. You know, Age Tech Atlanta, you know, we are a community of innovators and entrepreneurs, educators, researchers, and leaders in Atlanta that are like reimagining what it means to grow old, what it’s like to age, and while we’re at it, we’ve expanded our mission. You know, we are dead set to make Atlanta the number one city to grow old in America. Feel like we can’t do one without doing the second one. Right? That would be crazy. So it’s a community, no barriers to entry. Anybody can join a very tight-knit, we exist to help each other learn and grow and scale and succeed.

Amber Bardon:
2:23

Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the things that you’re working on?

Jeff Gray:
2:27

Age Tech Atlanta does six in-person meetups a year. So that keeps us really busy. That’s where we get together and have speakers that present, you know, whether it’s, you know, our last speakers we’re from Bells Skye who services the needs of states and counties and cities and, Age Tech startup in the, you know, health and wellness space, and then another startup in the longevity space and, and sort of age management space. So we learn from each other six times a year in person right here in Atlanta. We endeavor to produce and or host a couple of large events a year. The next of those is coming up in March. So we’ll be hosting the Age Tech Challenge Innovation Showcase at the On Aging Conference right here in Atlanta in March, and then we’ll likely host a symposium or or summit. So those are kind of the day-to-day things that we’re working on. But as a team, we’re really focused on that second initiative, which is what does it take to make this the best place to grow old? And you know, we see that as a shared endeavor. So we’re networking with people all over the globe all the time. It’s not really competitive about making Atlanta number one, but sharing the things that we can do here and succeed at that other people can replicate. We’re learning from things that other people have done in terms of impacting the community of folks that are aging, and even really just defining what that means, you know, who, what is an aging person you could talk about. You mean that’s a confusing, that’s a confusing conversation all in itself.

Amber Bardon:
3:59

I know, I kind of want to go down that road, but I kind of don’t<laugh> cause

Jeff Gray:
4:03

No. So have you guys noticed that there’s this new phrase that now you’ve gotta use, which is older adults? Have you seen the older adults phrase?

Amber Bardon:
4:11

I feel like since I’ve been in this industry, I’ve seen so many evolutions of what the correct terms are, and that’s just, that’s,

Jeff Gray:
4:18

So now we’re on that one, but I don’t get it. I don’t understand what an older adult is. I don’t know. When did, when would you become older? Who would you be older than and how would one older adult be similar to another and in a way that would be productive to make their lives better? It’s totally baffling to me. So,

Amber Bardon:
4:39

Yeah, I personally like the elder term, which was really out of favor for a long time, but it’s starting to come back a little bit. I think it just has kind of a retro feel to it.

Jeff Gray:
4:49

Yeah, well, I don’t know that people who are 80 or 75 or know that they care. I feel, I don’t know if we talked about this when we had our first chat, but I think it’s interesting that people that are what we would categorize as older, stereotypically older in our, in our culture, are the only group of people. Like we, I belong to different groups of people. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a bald man, I’m a divorced bald man, you know, whatever. But we’ve done, sometimes we kind of identify as certain things like a person might identify them as LGBTQ or African American or Asian American or anything doesn’t really matter. But every other group of people describes themselves except older people, and then the rest of us describe them, and so now we’re saying, oh, well now we’re gonna call you older Americans. I think it’s just kind of funny. I don’t think anybody really cares, but I do think it underscores the problems of succeeding, which is really our mission at Age Tech Atlanta is to help everybody succeed in their mission. If you don’t understand the complexity, complexities and differences within the community, you serve older adults, you’re gonna have a hard time having a successful business. You’re gonna have a hard time fulfilling your mission if your mission is to help people or to, you know, be disruptive or to change the world in, in some way, shape or form. So it’s a small, funny little thing, but it’s kind of important.

Amber Bardon:
6:16

Jeff, as part of Age Tech, I believe you’re staying up-to-date on some of the trends, some of the common things that you’re seeing, some of the gaps. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you see is happening today in aging services from your perspective?

Jeff Gray:
6:31

Well, I’ll give you some, we’ll kind of just tackle a couple. I think the first thing I would bring into this conversation around, and to the extent that I’m able to and frequently do interact with founders of Age Tech companies. One of my grounding principles is, and I learned this lesson the hard way, is that your story is not your business model, and so this is actually a big topic because so many founders burn off a lot of time and often a lot of money learning that lesson. So, I think more in this space than any place you said it when we started the conversation, almost everybody we talked to has begun this journey with a pretty profound life experience, right? And that’s put them into the space, but it’s very important that we understand that a story and a business model are two different things. And so that’s a huge weeding out process as companies figure out what, what their business model is and how they can be successful a part of that journey. Then it kind of goes to your question, which is what are the gaps? What are the opportunities, what’s going on? And I, you know, we talked about senior care and I’m not a senior care senior living specialist, nor am I really an insider, but many of our companies service the needs of that community, and I would say that, like if you look at the process around what, what adoption is looking like in that industry today, I think most people that are leaders in that industry would categorize their industry as lagging in technology adoption to some degree, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with not being first in adoption that carries its own risks. But I do see some gaps. I think the biggest one in senior care, Senior Living, I think really is, is mobile. There has not been as much use of mobile and certainly almost no use of branded mobile apps. It is incredibly rare to see a provider with a branded mobile experience, which I find fascinating because if you talk to those same operators, they’ll tell you how important family satisfaction is, right? How happy is the family that’s not living there with the experience that their loved one has as a resident and also getting favorable reviews. And there’s no single tool that helps you do better in those two areas than a branded app, branded experience that puts, you know, your brand and the place where your one loved one lives, you know, right in your family member’s pocket. So I see that as a big gap, and I think, I think we’re gonna see adoption there take hold soon. I think you’ll see a handful of maybe larger operators do it, and I think a lot of people will follow suit very quickly, and I think, you know, there’ll be some growing pains, but I think it’ll be a win across the board.

Amber Bardon:
9:32

Yeah, I think that this is a really exciting time. I think in the next 10 years we’re really gonna start to see a big shift where we’re going to start seeing older adults move into communities or want to have services from communities that are going to expect them to look and feel and be different than they are today, and I think it’s gonna be a challenge for a lot of communities to navigate that. Starting with, you know, what you mentioned earlier is just how do you do that marketing and how do you tell that story but also have, you know, some of these processes in place and how do you prepare and, and how do you manage the financial impact? Because a lot of the technology out there specifically is gonna rely really heavily on Wi-Fi, and that’s a huge cost for pretty much every community that I interact with, and it’s an insurmountable cost in a lot of cases. So I’m curious to see how, you know, as an industry we’re going to approach, um, some new and native innovative things, but also have the infrastructure to maintain and manage those effectively.

Jeff Gray:
10:37

I would agree with you there for sure. I mean, you know, it’s, these are not small projects and so if you are looking to deploy technologies that rely on, you know, great bandwidth and in every single room, whether it’s a resident room or a public space, you know, that can be a challenge, and it’s not, it’s not a trivial cost to bring that infrastructure in for sure. You know, I do think when you look at the builders of technologies, and these could be everything from a startup to ventures that start to scale, but it definitely at the earlier stage where the major innovation tends to be taking place. I think in our, in our space, we see for some reason, and I don’t know why, but I think we see a lot less co-creation. Real, you know, real true blue, creating the value, you know, creating the application, whatever that is with your end user, especially when that end user is a senior, right? So that is somebody who’s gonna use the technology and being smart about it. You know, there is a difference between, let me give you an example. We’ve all seen charts on, you know, mobile adoption. So depending on the last one you looked at, we’re gonna probably agree that adoption for people over 65, so mobile smartphone. Let’s call it smartphone adoption. That’s gonna be like 65%, 70%, and I mean, that’s close, right? But so here’s the miss, don’t interpret that as proficiency. Don’t interpret that as willingness to install and use a mobile app. So those, those behaviors are discreet, they’re separate from just the possession of the phone. But these mistakes happen all the time. We’re like, well 65% of people have have a smartphone so we can have an app and they’ll all use it. This is definitely not the case, and so that lack of granular, nitty-gritty approach definitely causes people a lot of pain and suffering for sure. You know?

Amber Bardon:
12:45

Yeah, that makes sense. I haven’t thought about it too much from that perspective, but as you were saying it, I was like, obviously<laugh>. So, what would you say are some ways that organizations can make inroads on this? How can they, are there some characteristics that can help operators help their clients leverage technology more effectively? Really both on the business side and on the resident side?

Jeff Gray:
13:11

That’s a lot to talk about. I mean, I definitely think, you know, look, staffing is a problem for everybody today, but I do, you know, I do senior living operators across the whole spectrum, they have unique problems, right? They are operating three types of business in one, in one property, or one structure or one enterprise, right? So food services and resident being, you know, residential services. So, a restaurant and a hotel and a hospital. As you hear many people say there’s, you know, there’s lots of budgetary pressures, and so adding more staff, another staff position is not a trivial thing. So all that as context, I think you’re going to, you’ll see the, the smart operators looking to have people on their technology teams that have experience in data science, in data analytics, real data scientists, or maybe even hire those positions because if there’s one thing we know, whether you’re capturing it or not, as a senior living operator, there is a lot of data within the walls of your property or across the enterprise. And you are probably, today, I hazard to guess, you’re not capturing that data and you’re not analyzing it and you’re not gaining insights from the data on how to make decisions. And those decisions could be around care, they could be around activities, all kinds of things. But I talked to somebody on the phone the other day that said they had recently hired a data scientist and I was stunned, but I mean excited, but I think those things are gonna be needed. If you look at enterprises rare now to not have competency in that area, if you don’t have that competency, I think it becomes very challenging to look and to see if you’re getting the ROI, you want to see if you’re getting the impact. If you’re looking for outcomes now, those things can be challenging. If you don’t have that competency, I think you’ll see that start to come along.

Amber Bardon:
14:56

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. This is something that’s been on my radar for a long time because I think it starts with just process efficiency because there’s a lot of communities using systems that don’t even have a good way to capture the data, and then those that do have, you know, more robust systems aren’t using them effectively, and so it’s, it’s a multi-pronged issue from both, you know, are we capturing the data, do we have the ability, and then how are we actually using that data? And it’s something I’m starting to hear a lot more need for when I go onsite and I do interviews, which I’m doing all the time, is this need to wanna be able to make data-driven decisions and to have that information, and I feel the industry as a whole is just, is pretty behind other industries from that perspective, but I am starting to see that become more and more of a need and an ask for most communities.

Jeff Gray:
15:47

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look the schedules that everybody’s, you know, the demands on the workload demands in this environment are very high. So, you know, finding people to, to do pilots and to then I think if you are an innovator a nd from an Age Tech perspective, you feel where you can help change things, where you can change the world is in an environment, right? Senior Living, independent living, skilled, that whole area. If that’s your realm, you would be wise to invest in finding ways to give your operator clients and your pilot, your operators that p ilot your p roperty, give them data and give them analytics and give them insights that they’re probably not, they may not be capable of getting on their own. You m ight need to bridge that gap for them because it’s not obvious that they w ould be doing it on their own. And, you know, so having that kind of competency and under and being able to, you know, they say what some of the most successful SaaS models, some productivity software will tell you every time you use it’ll, it’s calculating how much time you’ve saved, right? At every iteration, you know, how much money you’ve saved, how much time you’ve saved, essentially. It’s almost like a Fitbit model, how many steps have I walked? So being able to constantly give that information to somebody who’s using your product for, so you’ve got either better adoption or better retention. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I think you’ll see that.

Amber Bardon:
17:08

Yeah, Yeah. No, yeah, I agree, and I know there’s technology out there to do that today. So that leads me into my last question for you. If we were imagining five, 10 years in the future, what technology is gonna look like? What the impact is gonna be on the day-to-day? Again, both on the operational and on the resident side, tell me, tell me, what’s your vision? What do you see in your, in your magic mirror for the future?

Jeff Gray:
17:30

Oh, the magic mirror. Well, I’ll tell you what I do think this might is maybe not incredibly precise, but I had an opportunity a long time ago when I was creating a product to sit with one of the lead engineers at Snapchat, and he explained their philosophy around minimizing all of the touch required to use their app anytime they could get rid of any touch. How can I minimize that? And so you see that apps that are used heavily, especially by younger people in a social media environment, they can navigate these apps very quickly. And I think what you’re going to see are more and more technology that’s used by caregivers, by managers, by executive directors. I think you’re gonna see more technology and more mobile technology that’s just that fast where we’re not navigating menus and putting in data, but we’re swiping, we’re learning from the social apps around just how to navigate, how to have an experience that accomplishes goals very quickly, you know, in seconds versus minutes. And there are things today that are taking 10 and 15 and 20 minutes at a crack that are relatively small tasks. I want to provide some feedback to a resident’s family member in the form of a photo that reinforces a reminder I was given that sort of says,”Hey, we’re, we’re following guidance here,” and all of that takes quite a bit of time. And time is really in short supply. So technologies that allow people to just, you know, essentially be a staff multiplier, I think are the things that we’re really, really gonna see, and I think some of those, we can’t even think what they’re going to be right now. And then I also think you’re really starting to see people coming in and bringing data together and so that people can start to have one uniform dashboard that they can look at and navigate without having to log in and out and in and out. So I think this is a problem in every enterprise for sure. But if you look at the demands and workload in Senior Living, senior care, those gains, in time, can be really huge because we’re not, we don’t have robots yet and we don’t have clone, so we can’t replicate human beings and we don’t have sensory robots that could take over. So the main thing we’ve got to do with technology right now is expand caregiver capacity, and the second thing, and this is really a third rail, is where possible eliminate the need for the caregiver, and you can get why that’s scary because we don’t want the end result to be that people don’t get cared for but making sure that a caregiver’s not needed, whether they’re not needed, that’s just going to be really critical. Well, it already is.

Amber Bardon:
20:09

Yeah. I agree with you. I’m nodding my head along with what you’re saying because these are all the things I hear day-to-day at the sites that I work with, and I was working with one of our clients based out in California. So they have, I think about 35 communities. They’re all pretty small, but they have about 3,000 people in their Senior Living division, and I met with their head of HR who told me that he’s come to the realization that 10% of open positions he will never be able to fill and what are the alternatives? And so we had a conversation about robots and where that’s at and some of these automation tools that you’re talking about. But I also get a lot of pushback when I bring this up that, you know, from what you just mentioned is t hat sort of this fear of, you know, providing person-centered care and this, this in-person, you know, hospitality and caregiving model that’s been around forever a nd, and t he, a lot of fear of change that’s gonna g o along with that, and then I think there’s the whole regulatory side too. So is the regulation going to keep up with the technology changes that are coming?

Jeff Gray:
21:10

Yeah, you know, at Age Tech Atlanta, we see innovators in the workforce space, you know, companies that are, you know, helping to find more, more people who, you know, what is a company here, ProsperCare that’s really done profound in innovation around the demands of filling those positions in Chattr in Tampa. Then you see innovations in CRM for Senior Living and, you know, and in onboarding, credentialing and visitation, you know, so companies that are large like Accushield and Welcome Home and then folks that are in activities. So I would, it’s amazing how many, so Age Tech Atlanta is not about Senior Living. It’s not about senior that, you know, it’s not about that specifically, but it’s amazing how much innovation is happening there, and by the way, I will tell you this is, here’s a common pathway that you see started a company, maybe raised some pre-seed capital, got my product out there, it tested really well with one-on-one failed at B2C. And then what’s the big idea that we come up with? So version one product a nice MVP or better test, well, everybody likes it. Go to market, B2C fails. Now what are we gonna do? We’re gonna sell to Senior Living. So somebody has that idea, you know, every minute of every day. And, and it’s just not always feasible. You know, you can’t just say, well, we’re gonna walk that in because what does the, what does the non-experienced entrepreneur know? Well, we’ve heard what prices are and it’s obviously expensive, so they must have a lot of money to spend. They must buy a lot of technology. They’re a great buyer, we’ll go sell them. And so this pathway is very common. What we just, that we just laid out and fraught with peril. And you do see a lot of people who, I will say this is common, everything, but I think you see people who innovate and they have great ideas and so forth, but they are trying to address a market that they know absolutely nothing about. This is nothing. And so that is really challenging.

Amber Bardon:
23:05

Yeah, and the biggest pitfall I see there, again, going back to the Wi-Fi issue, is that they’ve built technology that’s, you know, completely dependent on having wall-to-wall Wi-Fi and they try to implement it at communities or even in people’s homes, and that’s just not there, and then it’s a failed experience all around. So that’s, you know, I think there’s, I’ve definitely seen that lack of understanding from what you’re describing.

Jeff Gray:
23:28

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think there’s a, a tendency to try for one size fits all, or silver bullet. So this one thing is gonna do all of this. Fall detection’s a great example of that. Everybody wants to have some one thing, it’s gonna detect every fall, everywhere, all the time, time, no matter where it is. That’s just not possible. It’s not possible today. It’s not going to be possible soon. I mean, you could deploy a solution that would work, it would be a massive deployment. So rather than saying, Hey, we have goals to predict, prevent, and detect falls, and we think our greatest risk for falls that we need to detect are in public spaces that are poorly attended or low traffic, someone falls in the kitchen or the dining room. We’re gonna probably know that we probably don’t need to worry about a fault, a radar fall detector in the dining room. And really being smart about that and thinking, where do these things go and how can, how can we move the needle, right? How can we really, really improve versus how can I detect all falls all the time throughout the property? And those are, those are just really different exercises.

Amber Bardon:
24:32

Yeah, I, uh, I feel like we could talk about that topic for a long time as well. But Jeff, we are running short on time, so I wanna thank you for coming on the show today. It’s been an amazing conversation. Is there any last words of wisdom you want to leave our listeners with?

Jeff Gray:
24:46

Last words of wisdom? So that’s a, you threw a curve ball at me.

Amber Bardon:
24:52

That sounds very ominous, actually.<laugh>.

Jeff Gray:
24:54

Yeah. So there’s some words of wisdom my dad gave me in a letter when I started my first job out of college, and it basically said, when you’re having a terrible day and nothing’s working, go get your shoes shined. It’ll do great things for your attitude, and I think, so the advice is we’re all gonna have really bad days. Sometimes you’re gonna have a lot of them in a row, especially if you’re trying to sell in a Senior Living and you’re getting a lot of noes and nobody is piloting your product. So if you have a really bad day, do something nice for yourself, go get your shoes shined. It’ll do great things for your attitude.

Amber Bardon:
25:25

All right. Love it, love it. Love the ending words! Well, can you let me know where can our listeners find you?

Jeff Gray:
25:30

The easiest way to find me, I mean, you know, on LinkedIn, Jeffrey Gray, my main product is The Memory Kit. So Jeff@TheMemoryKit.com, But anybody that’s looking to get involved in Age Tech Atlanta, www.AgeTechAtlanta.com or.org, you can find us there. All the information you need about events that are coming up, how to get involved, how to participate, and you’re welcome to join our community wherever on the planet you call home.

Amber Bardon:
25:55

Thanks Jeff for joining us today.

Jeff Gray:
25:57

Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun!

Amber Bardon:
25:59

And listeners, if you have a topic you’d like to submit or you have feedback on this episode, you can find us online at www.ParasolAlliance.com, and as always, thank you for listening!