Raising Tech

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] So Amber, I know you just wrote a piece that was in McKnight, senior Living guest blogs titled The Importance of Leadership Driven Technology Culture in Senior Living. In your article you emphasize that quote, “creating a strong tech culture starts with leadership, setting the tone from the top and ensuring that technology is a priority” end quote.

And I’m wondering if you could just give some. Specific [00:01:00] strategies, specific or initiatives that you’ve seen implemented to foster this culture within senior living communities?

Amber Bardon: Matt. I absolutely love this topic. I’m really glad that this is the first question you asked me. I think technology is one of those things that. People don’t think about until it doesn’t work. And to me it’s really interesting that is the way that technology is thought of because it is a large expense, it’s a lot of time.

It’s something that resources have to be dedicated to. And it’s interesting to me that I think a lot of leadership positions don’t really want to think about it unless they absolutely have to. And I wonder why that is and I think because technology is something that’s very complicated, it’s difficult to understand.

I think the depth and breadth of what’s needed to support technology and to make it work, it’s just not well understood. And it’s not something that people find generally interesting enough to want to spend a lot of time talking and thinking about it. I think that leadership can sometimes think about [00:02:00] the shiny, innovative components of technology without wanting to dive into the base layers of infrastructure that are needed to support the fancy, shiny things.

And so that’s why I think it’s really important to start with this question of how does leadership feel about technology and what is the technology culture of the leadership team? I think that it’s important to have this on the radar to have an open conversation about it. And to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Matt Reiners: It’s a, it’s a great point I think to your, uh, what you said there about like, you know, sometimes people can see that shiny innovation, right? And they think from, they go from A to Z, right? And they just kind of end up at whatever that end is. And you know, a lot of times when we’re talking to these tech vendors, like they’re kind of positioning it as Z and not really going through all the steps.

 And I know also in the article you mentioned that quote “technology should be a priority, not an afterthought” end quote. And I’m wondering like, to that point, like how should communities balance that integration of new technologies [00:03:00] with the existing workflows and routines of their staff to ensure a smooth transition and adoption?

Amber Bardon: Well, I think you know, kind of going back to my point earlier, I think technology is something that if it’s not a priority, it can get out of control very easily. And you know, we have at Parasol Alliance, we’ve completed over 120 strategic assessments at close to 80 communities. And I will say the number one issue I’ve seen at every place I’ve been is business systems sprawl and business systems may not fall under what you think of as this traditional technology bucket, but in fact it actually is. And the amount of pain that this can cause day-to-day to staff when these systems aren’t managed or planned or thought of from a strategic perspective is it really can become a huge burden.

So people can spend a lot of time doing manual workarounds, doing processes manually when there’s systems for them having to remember a lot of different passwords. There’s one organization I did a strategic plan for who said that it took [00:04:00] six months for their staff to learn their IT systems and then they would leave.

And so it was having an actual true impact on the workforce and the ability of these communities to provide services effectively.

Matt Reiners: I think that’s what I’ve noticed as well, right? Like these business systems, who owns it, who’s optimizing it, who’s learning it? How are you just getting better at that?

Because I think as an industry, you know, we’ve got a lot of people who really are great at care and hospitality, but there’s this like gap in terms of this like technology lead. I know some groups have that kind of focus, but the majority do not. And it’s kind of interesting to see how that can impact the community as they continue to move forward as we, you know, technology becomes no longer a, a nice to have, but more so a need to have. Um, and I wanna bring it back to like this idea of technology culture. You know, I know you’ve got quite the experience working at communities, helping all these communities with that.

Are there any common challenges that you see these communities face when trying to [00:05:00] cultivate a technology driven culture? And how can leadership effectively address these obstacles?

Amber Bardon: Well, I think the first challenge is that this isn’t something that’s even on the radar of a lot of leadership teams. And no one expects to be spending less money on technology. The expected spend on technology and the amount of time spent on technology is only going to increase, and technology is here to stay.

I think that’s an obvious statement, but I wanna reiterate that again because it just underscores the importance of paying attention to this. So I see that it can come across in multiple different ways, both from a staff and a resident perspective. So on the resident side, I meet with residents when I’m doing these strategic assessments and they’re interested in technology as well.

So there’s a wide range of interests, but I hear repeatedly that residents really want to have education on technology. They want to know how technology can help enable them for the things that they want to do, and they’re starting to be interested in as well in how technology can help provide healthier aging

and increase longevity. And then on the [00:06:00] staffing side, staff just want ways to do their jobs easier, more effectively, and more automated. And in all the interviews I’ve done, which is probably thousands and thousands of interviews at this point, I hear that theme over and over, is that staff just want to be able to do their job effectively without duplication and to be able to have the data to make data-driven decisions for their business.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I think the tech appetite for a lot of these residents coming in is, you know, I, I would be surprised if anybody disagreed that it’s on the rise. I know with one of our partners, even just a small example, but they issued a survey and

the people that filled it out digitally is about 15%, three years later, that number’s up to 45 in terms of people are really starting to embrace that and use that. And, you know, I’m wondering, last question here for you, Amber. Can you provide just an example of how a leadership driven technology culture has positively impacted resident care in operational efficiency in senior living communities?

Amber Bardon: Well, I think the best example is the podcast that we just did with Tiffany Village and Kristen Parsons. And I know I [00:07:00] talk about this all the time, but to me that is the most outstanding example I’ve ever seen of leadership taking what tech can do for care for residents and showing outcomes to the best possible level.

So I would definitely check out that podcast if you’re interested in learning more, but I would say that in general, this is not something that we’re seeing a lot of movement on yet, and that’s why I encourage leadership to start thinking about it now, because to implement technology throughout your organization effectively, both at a staff and a resident level, is not a quick process.

It’s going to be a multi-year plan. You have to be intentional and you have to have a lot of change management when you’re rolling out these changes. And so that’s why I really encourage leadership to start thinking about this now, to understand where you are on a technology culture spectrum and where do you want to go.

Matt Reiners: Awesome. Well, Amber, thank you for sharing this with the industry. I think my eyes have been made wide open since joining here at Parasol all of this technology and what it can do and really implement. So, uh, [00:08:00] thank you.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, thank you, Matt.

Amber Bardon: Welcome to Raising Tech podcast. I’m your host, Amber Bardon, and today our guest is Raphael Rubens, who is the founder and CEO of MemoMate. MemoMate is an AI powered platform that helps senior living communities improve resident satisfaction, staff satisfaction, streamline administrative tasks, and capture life stories of residents.

Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, Amber. Thank you for having me. So I’d love to start off with you giving us some background on [00:01:00] your story and how you came to enter the senior living industry. Of course. So let me maybe first introduce my myself so you know who I am and where I’m from. You maybe heard from my accent that I’m not from the United States.

Raphael Rubens: So my name is Raphael. I’m I’m originally from the Netherlands, from Amsterdam. But since a few years, I’m based in Israel in Tel Aviv. The founder of MemoMate. And Mermaid started with a personal story just like you, just like all the other startups that are entering this space. Both of my grandparents were in an assisted living community.

And after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother understood that she, it was really important for her to document her life story and shared this with her children, with her grandchildren. So she went to the life enrichment department and asked, Hey, can someone help me write my life story?

Probably sounds familiar. There were all, there was a huge labor shortage that didn’t have time. There weren’t any volunteers available, so they couldn’t help my grandmother. So my grandmother approached me and she asked me if I could help her write her life story. And I told her, grandma, I’m not a, I’m not a good [00:02:00] writer, but I know something about technology.

Let’s maybe see if I can get like a technological solution for this. So that’s how MemoMate was started. So we developed an AI interviewer that interviewed my grandmother about her life. At that time it was still web-based so on iPad. And my grandmother was just chatting with this AI autobiography.

And after a few weeks I visited her again and I just looked at the whole chat conversations she had with this bio biographer, and then I just said, Hey, convert this conversation into a 10,000 word autobiography. And like this, I had a biography of the life of my grandmother. I thought, oh, this is pretty interesting.

Maybe there’s a business out here. And someone recommended me to have a look. At the senior living community in the United States. There’s a lot of opportunities there. And that’s that’s how I basically got into this industry. After we we built this product for my grandmother, we did a few mini pilots with people that we knew in like adult day centers here in Israel.

We got really positive feedback and with this positive feedback, we’re also able to raise some money and and with that, we were able to make the jump to the United States. [00:03:00]

Amber Bardon: So you actually lived in a senior living community for a period of time. So tell me a little bit about that experience and how did it influence your development of MemoMate?

Raphael Rubens: Sure. So it was quite an experience, both like from an anthropologic point of view. I learned a lot about people. I also learned a lot about myself, but also from my company. It was really good. The reason why I got to the senior living community in the United States was because.

After we’re doing a few POCs here in Israel locally users were saying that having frequent interaction with the AI biographer quote unquote jogged their memory. And I thought this was a pretty interesting statement. And at that point when I said, okay, I need to go to the United States to.

To sell this to senior living communities. I thought to myself, I need to take a step back. And first of all, before I’m gonna try to sell them stuff, I need to understand what’s going on on the ground there on a day-to-day basis. I knew people that owned this senior living chain called Wingate Living.

I spoke to the owner and I said, I have this idea. And it’s like a radical idea. I want to test this out. Can I stay in your community for two months? And he said, yeah, [00:04:00] sure, no problem. You have your own private room, you have your own you’ll eat, you can eat here. You can make use of the gym, everything.

So I packed my bags. I moved into the senior living community in Boston and we did a fascinating research study there. So fir in the first week I was just observing, trying to see what was going on. And after one week I gave a lecture to the residents. And this lecture I was speaking about what is ai?

How they could leverage AI technology to write down their life stories. And after this presentation, I, first of all, I was extremely surprised by the amounts of questions that I got. These were really complicated questions, complex questions. Some questions were even harder than than I even got from investors.

And after this lecture had a group of 50 residents that wanted to try Memo made out on a, like a, on a daily basis and with them and they use it every day. We, when we and we’ve seen that residents. That used our Meade every day reported a significant reduction in feelings of loneliness. It improved their wellbeing and it also improved their memory and cognition.

And we compare [00:05:00] these results to a controlled group of residents that didn’t wanna try this out. And we’ve seen like great improvements. We wrote a case study about this, and with this case study, we were able to raise additional funds and that’s how we got moving to also different use cases. I travel all around the country doing strategic assessments, and I always stay at our clients’ sites and their guest suite.

Amber Bardon: And I started meeting with residents. The last couple of assessments I’ve done, and they are really interested in this topic, and I think that a lot of times we don’t give them enough credit for how tech savvy they can be and how interested they are.

Raphael Rubens: Exactly. A lot of them have an iPad, they have wearables. They go to YouTube, they know how technology works. But I. The what we did in the beginning.

So ate at that time when we were focusing on autobiographies it was completely web-based, so they had to log onto our website and they had to press some buttons. And we’ve seen that this caused a lot of problems because people forgot their passwords and buttons were too small, their browser wasn’t updated.

And at some point I was seeing that that. Like 70% [00:06:00] of the users were churning because they weren’t able to go past the login page. And then I thought to myself, Hey, I see that most of the residents, they have phones. They know, like they don’t have any problems with picking up a phone and hang up a phone.

Why don’t I just call them, at least not me, but the AI. And that was like a pivotal moment because then there, like every like every form of noise was just eliminated. And we’ve seen that residents spoke for hours with the AI on the phone and they know that they were speaking to an ai. But they were saying, yeah, it’s just fun to speak to Mermaid because Meade doesn’t get angry at me when I tell the same story a few times in a row.

And me mate is way more patient than my own caregiver. So it’s actually fun to speak to MemoMate. That’s how we really were shifting from like a web-based biography platform to an AI agent over the phone. And at that time we started to understand some other use cases because while I was there, staff members approached me and they said it’s so nice that that residents are having this interaction with this AI biographer.

I wish that I would have more time to have these meaningful conversations with [00:07:00] my residents, but I’m just stuck with admin all the day. I just have to fill in reports and I need to fill in checklists. And then I started to think, Hey, how can we actually leverage our technology to reduce the administrative workload of our payers, which are not the residents, but which are the senior living communities?

 We identified that one of the key for Wingate, but also for other customers of ours, one of a very time consuming task was the annual or semi-annual resident satisfaction surveys. Why? They would either do this by mail. So they would send out a survey by mail and they would complain, Hey, nobody’s responding.

I said, yeah surprise. Who’s going to fill in a survey and goes to the post office and send it back? I. Or they would have the activity director print, I know, 300 pieces of paper with a survey, and then they would have to distribute it. They have to collect it. Then the executive director had to have to like alone, analyze a pile of paper of 300 pages, or they would type it over on an Excel sheet.

The problem was that, again, very time consuming. They have a huge staff [00:08:00] shortage, and the insights that they were getting out of it weren’t really helpful because if you see that the satisfaction with the food is three out of five, what does that mean? Does it mean that the food is cold? Does it mean that the menu isn’t varied enough?

Does it mean that the staff is slow? So ideally you’re having. Qualitative research you having, you’re asking open questions to the residents, but again, this is taking a lot of time. So some communities, they work with companies like Holleran or or Pinnacle or now it’s acquired the Home Care polls and they have call centers, right?

And they call people on their phones to conduct the surveys. Problem. What we’ve seen is that they charge a lot of money for it. Something like $50, $40 per phone call. And on these phone calls, they’re also conducting quantitative research. Hey John, on a scale for one to five, what do you think about the food?

So it wasn’t really helpful. I. And once I heard about this, that they’re using call centers to conduct the satisfaction surveys, I thought, Hey, we are already calling residents on their phones to interview them about their life story. We can also just call them on their phones to interview them about their satisfaction.

And we asked open questions. Residents gave a lot of information, and based on [00:09:00] what the residents are saying, our AI assigns a score to it and we provide very interesting. Insights to the communities both on individual level saying, Hey, John Smith doesn’t like the food and here are the main reasons why.

But also on a community level, 70% of your residents don’t like the food and here are the main reasons why. And also on a portfolio level that we can really see how I. Living communities can allocate their resources based on performance of each specific location. And right now we’re also taking it a step further by, we are a we build our own neural network that’s able to understand which residents are most likely to churn or most likely to move out based on the service that they’re doing.

So these are some of the things.

Amber Bardon: If a community is interested in working with you, what would you want them to know in advance as far as lessons learned tips for successful implementation? How do you engage the residents and get them to accept use of this technology? ’cause we know we just talked about how some residents are a little bit more tech savvy, but there also is the the other end of the spectrum where they don’t want to [00:10:00] have anything to do with technology.

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. Very good question. So first of all. Transparency. What we do the communities that we work with that have the best response rates and the best data is that they communicate this ahead of time with their residents.

They put it on digital signatures on the lobby saying, Hey from Monday to between 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM you can expect a phone call with the annual satisfaction survey. This is going to be an automated phone call. And don’t worry, it’s not a scam. And what we are, what they’re also doing is they’re putting notes in every room of the resident informing them that they can expect a phone call.

So this has proven to be very effective. And another great thing about our product is that. We don’t need any involvement from staff. The only thing we need is literally an Excel list of the names and phone numbers of the residents and we take care of the rest. So we see that these two elements are are very beneficial.

And we see in communities that have low response rates, we really see that the residents weren’t informed beforehand or maybe too long before the actual phone call, so they forgot about it already. [00:11:00]

Amber Bardon: Are you able to also do the staff survey or is it just the resident side?

Raphael Rubens: Both we’re doing residents, we’re doing family members and also staff.

And for, of course for staff, it can even be more interesting ’cause if we’re able to, like turnaround from staff is much higher than from residents. So if we’re able to predict which staff members are most likely to leave and we can give them very tailored mitigation strategies, so what they can do in order to incentivize their staff members, it can be huge.

Amber Bardon: I’m curious, do you have any numbers on your average response rate on staff surveys? Because I did a presentation on workplace culture at multiple leading ages, and one of the biggest pieces of feedback I got was low participation in staff surveys. And so I’m just curious if by using the processes you are using and different types of technology, if you’re seeing an increase on response rates?

Raphael Rubens: Yeah, because we see, like the, I can give you an average, but however, it really varies per community. But on average we see for both residents and staff that we at least have a 70% response rate. And a great thing about the [00:12:00] staff surveys is that most of the staff members are not, that we’re surveying, are not from the us I.

And our ai it speaks multiple languages. So it can do the set satisfaction survey in Spanish, in Russian, in Haitian. It doesn’t matter. And this is like a big reason why people are not filling any surveys is because often these questions are a bit complicated and maybe it’s hard to read very small letters.

And for what else is just like having a phone call and you’re being interviewed and and yeah. So we don’t really see any low participation there.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, 70% is pretty high. A lot of times the average response rate is, three, five, 10%. At, on these staff surveys

Raphael Rubens: we’re doing a bit better there.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, so of course one of the buzzwords out here. There’s two that I wanna talk about. So integration is a big one. And, we’re, there’s so much new technology coming into senior living that I think one of the challenges we’re dealing with is all these silos now. So everyone has a new system.

But how do those systems all talk to each other so we’re not creating more work for the staff, where now they have, 25 passwords they have to remember and log into and none of the [00:13:00] systems are integrated. So tell me a little bit about how you handled data flow and systems integration, and then I’ll ask my second question after that.

Raphael Rubens: Sure. So right now the complete honest answer is we’re not, we don’t, we’re not directly integrated yet with any systems such as point click care or resident engagement softwares. It is on the, it is on the pipeline. That being said, for some, most of the communities, they only want to do like an annual satisfaction survey or by satisfaction survey.

So it’s not really needed for them to be fully integrated into their. Into their systems because they’re just looking at it once a year or twice a year. So we didn’t have that challenge yet. However, we’re seeing now more and more that now that we were gonna work with a bit more advanced senior living communities, that it becomes a requirement because they want all of, they want our data to flow into their into their e, Mars, et cetera.

So this, it’s something that’s on our, in our, on our roadmap. We’re speaking to some players. So yeah, so this is something that we have to work on still.

Amber Bardon: Okay we’ll look forward to that coming out in the future. The other question I wanna ask you about is just the term ai, because it’s [00:14:00] almost a joke at this point where how many times people are dropping the word AI or asking about ai.

I almost feel like it’s the way, the word cloud was, a while ago. Mm-hmm. So can you give us a little bit more specific information on how you’re using ai? What does that actually mean for Memo A?

Raphael Rubens: It means everything for me. It means everything for MemoMate. So I know the official term of an AI is basically a computer program that can think and act like humans.

That’s the very basic definition here. And what we are basically doing is that we are able to conduct qualitative research in terms of the service. So asking open questions on a huge, on a mass, on a massive skill for a very low price. And this is not possible with a, this, it is possible when you’re doing this with humans.

However, it’s, it will be very time consuming and very costly, and with, in our case, we can do this on mass for a very low price. That’s what AI means for us from the survey element and from the biography element, the exact same. Like ideally, you’re getting interviewed about your life story by an actual biographer.

However, hiring a real biographer. For is often very [00:15:00] costly, also at least $7,000, $8,000. And how do we use ai? We tell our AI to act as a very empathetic autobiography that just has conversations with residents. And that’s what we are doing. And these things, we’re not able, we’re not possible before the ai before the AI age.

Amber Bardon: So as a follow up to that, where do you see the future of this technology going? How do you see it continue to advance specifically for mem Mate, but just if you have any comments on the industry in general.

Raphael Rubens: Good question. I ask myself this question a lot and when to every conference I go I leave with it, with different thoughts.

And I also think that the use case of AI will also differ per type of facility. I think in memory care the use case for AI are going to be different than for independent living. But what I’m seeing is that, at the one end, you’re seeing that since covid digitization in senior living has accelerated a lot and you’re, they’re not really ready for it.

If you look at the average office of an ed, it’s just paperwork. [00:16:00] I. So the way that I’m seeing is that you have this rapid digitization at the one hand, and also the other hand that some that Medicare, Medicaid are requesting more and more data from residents or patients in order to in order for the communities to be reimbursed.

And many of these communities, they don’t have that data on hand. So the way that I’m seeing it is that AI in senior living, but also in healthcare, is going to allow them to capture all of these different type of data points from different type of systems. It will help them to meet compliance compliance standards.

And I also believe that, I know that this is for, what these engagement platforms are really looking for is to come up with this Happy aging score. So they have all of these different variables. They know how often a resident participates in activities. They know how often a family comes, they know what they’re eating.

So you know, all of these variables. How can you make sense of these variables to make sure that somebody is aging in a healthy way and also in a fun way. Because yeah, longevity is there, but you also want people to age in a in a dignified way, right?

So I think that AI is gonna play a role in compliance. It’s gonna help [00:17:00] play a role in making people age healthier.

Amber Bardon: I think the longevity concept is something we’re just starting to hear as a buzzword, and I think we’re gonna start to hear more and more about that as the technology is gonna shift towards that.

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. What do you think that the, that, that it’s heading

Amber Bardon: for AI in general?

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. AI and senior living.

Amber Bardon: I think that. We have a lot of barriers to overcome until it can be really effective. As we were chatting a little bit before we started recording, I think that, right now, a lot of the ways people wanna use AI is dependent on having data in the systems. We have a lot of process related issues that I think. We need to solve for technology and for AI to be really effective.

I, I think there’s definitely a use case for these individual applications, like what you’re doing with MemoMate. We’ve had some others on the podcast, like you mentioned, the Happiness Indicator built into some of the engagement platforms. But I think to really see this comprehensive improvements in technology that we have to solve some more basic [00:18:00] issues.

You know, Right now they’re generative ai. Tools that can sit on top of your data systems and give you information, but that depends on getting the information in there in the first place, which is a huge time burden that clinical staff don’t have time to manually enter all of this data that’s required to get the data out.

So I think we have to solve some of those issues with automating how data gets into our systems and how it talks to each other. And I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about that side of the problem yet.

Raphael Rubens: I like it a lot what you said because in the beginning I, I didn’t even realize it’s that AI can only be effective if the basic stuff such as wifi is working and I’ve in plenty of communities where I wasn’t able to connect to the wifi.

Or at least it didn’t really work well. So I agree with you. Some of the basic stuff has to be arranged for, has to be fixed first before we can speak about big AI applications. But I believe that’s where your company comes in.

Amber Bardon: Yeah and I think, it’s really exciting to jump into some of this new innovation.

Falls prevention. That’s definitely a hot topic we’re hearing a lot about, but I [00:19:00] think you really have to understand the use case and the requirements of what you’re trying to do and what are the goals you have to make the appropriate technology selection to make sure it really is gonna have a positive impact.

And it’s not just another app that you’re adding.

Raphael Rubens: Absolutely. And also with fall prevention, what I’m hearing is that there’s also like a whole compliance element here. So what happens if the nurse in the middle of the night receives a notification that a resident fell, and let’s say the nurse fell asleep or it’s at the bathroom and and it misses the notification and a resident passes away the senior living communities think, okay, I’m gonna get a few million dollar lawsuit.

May, maybe I should not have this technology because I don’t wanna be liable. So these are also like completely different. Yeah. Like elements that you don’t even think about when trying to offer that software, which has very good purposes, like it can actually save lives.

But on the other hand it adds a lot to liability. ’cause who’s gonna be responsible?

Amber Bardon: Yeah, that definitely comes up when I talk to clients about monitoring solutions it’s great to have all these sensors and monitors going off, but like you said, if [00:20:00] who’s checking that and who’s making sure we’re being responsive to that, otherwise you could have a bigger issue than not checking it at all.

But there’s definitely ways to implement this technology in a way that is beneficial to everyone. It’s just you have to be intentional and make sure you’re thinking through all your different scenarios and the operational process side of it at the same time.

Raphael Rubens: Yeah I’ve heard similar stories.

It’s a bit off topic, but for instance social robots for elderly. And what I’ve seen is that some elderly, they really love to speak to to interact with these robots. But then a big reason why these robots are not always as successful is because the family members, let’s say the children of the residents are blocking this because they’re thinking.

Oh my God, my my mom feels lonely and now she has to speak to a robot. No. Forget about it. I’ll just try to visit her more often in the end. I know, I’m not sure if they actually end up visiting them more often, but these are also like elements that play a role. Yep.

Amber Bardon: Is there anything we haven’t talked about Memo Mate that you want our listeners to know about?

Raphael Rubens: I really enjoyed this conversation and I really see that when, in [00:21:00] conversation that I’m having with senior living committees, that satisfaction  is becoming more and more important also from a competitive point of view.

So like people tend to people tend to. Move out relatively easy from senior living communities because they’re not happy with the amenities that are being offered. And we’re able to provide insights to these communities that weren’t really, that they weren’t really aware of, and something we didn’t touch upon, which I believe is also pretty interesting is that we’re able to.

From the surveys that people are doing, they’re, we also asking for instance, NPS questions. And right now we’re working on and we got some nice traction on this, is that we basically take testimonials from the survey and automatic from the surveys that we do over the phone and automatically convert them into Google reviews or Yelp reviews.

And this is something that can really help senior living community with online visibility. Because what I’ve seen with some of my customers is that residents actually like. Actually love that place. They say that staff is great, food is great, they love to be there. But when I look at their online reviews, I see like maybe seven reviews or something.

And we are interviewing [00:22:00] 500 people. And if we’re able to get hundred testimonials and convert ’em into online reviews, they will be super helpful for them. Because besides location, online reviews is one of the key decision factor for people to pick a senior living community. So there’s a lot of work to be done there as well.

Amber Bardon: I think that’s a really good point actually. A lot of communities are doing surveys for staff and residents because they have to, because it’s a requirement. But I think we’re definitely seeing a shift where there is more emphasis and actual care and thought being put into the types of environments people are working and living in and truly wanting to improve the happiness level.

 I do a lot of, speaking presentations, and we always submit different topics for proposals. And in 2024, the number one topic I was asked to speak about at leading age conferences with workplace culture, which has nothing to do with what our company does. We just have an amazing culture, and I thought it was really great to see that shift in that level of interest.

So I think that we are gonna see. People look at trying to use a tool like Memo [00:23:00] Mate to really, truly try to make positive differences in the day-to-day life of staff and residents.

Raphael Rubens: I don’t have to convince you anymore

Amber Bardon: All right. Where can our listeners find out more about MemoMate If they’re interested? Yes, so they can first of all look at our website, www.memomate.App, app, like an application. And they can send me an email on raphael@memomate.App or they can find us on LinkedIn.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Raphael Rubens: Thanks for having me.

You can find us online@raisingtechpodcast.com where you can see all of our episodes and contact us to provide feedback or submit an episode idea. We are on social media everywhere at Raising Tech podcast. If you enjoy Raising tech, please leave us a review and share with a friend. Music is an original production by Tim Resig, one of our very own Parasol Alliance employees.

As always, thank you for [00:24:00] listening.

Hey everyone. My name is James Peck, and I’m the resident support manager here at Parasol Alliance. And thank you for joining me today, and we’re gonna learn about battery technology and charging. Can your laptop survive an hour without being plugged into the wall? Is your phone’s battery life shorter than it used to be?

Do you know somebody who complains about their phone always being slow or unresponsive, and maybe you are that person and that’s okay. These are all signs that your device, battery, life and health may be deteriorating. Understanding battery life and health is the key to getting the most outta your device.

And we’re gonna take a closer look at why this happens and how you can take control of your device’s performance [00:01:00] and longevity.

Learning about how modern batteries work can drastically improve your experience with technology by increasing your device’s useful lifespan through some simple habits. And in the long run, this can save you hundreds of dollars in device replacements. A lot of people don’t even know that their old phone can run just like new with a battery replacement.

Lithium based batteries are standard in cell phones, tablets. Laptops and electric vehicles. We’ll be focusing on this type of battery throughout the presentation.

However, you may have heard of some other batteries, like nickel-based or NiMh. These are used in the battery systems of hybrid electric vehicles, low power tools and landline headsets, just to name a few. These are typically cylindrical in shape and are seen as a pretty good alternative for disposable batteries like AA or AAA.

Another type is lead acid. These are your typical car batteries very large and heavy, and they’re also used in battery [00:02:00] backups or generator systems. These are very power dense and can be used for long periods of time. An emerging technology is solid state batteries, and these are compact and very efficient, but they are very expensive at the time of recording.

Currently these are used in small quantities in devices like pacemakers, so why don’t we use one type of battery for everything? Chemists have been working tirelessly on this for decades, but it usually comes down to cost. Expensive. Technology is compact, but it’s used in small quantities, while cheaper technology is typically used in large quantities in order to balance the cost of the end product.

Most portable electronics like your phones, tablets and laptops use lithium ion batteries. These are small gel pouches and they can be made to fit any shape or size as devices get thinner and smaller [00:03:00] year over year, batteries are made to be thinner and wider to fit inside. They store and release energy through a reversible chemical reaction, which we’re gonna take a look at.

Now, brace yourself if you’re a science person. So how does all this work? The batteries contain two electrodes on opposing sides of the battery and are filled with a liquid gel that helps lithium move between the electrodes, lithium ions, store energy and chemical bonds, which can be converted into electricity.

To power your device as each lithium ion discharges its energy, it returns to a natural state at the opposite electrode waiting to be recharged. Battery manufacturers typically guarantee 300 to 500 full charge cycles before the lithium ion battery begins to degrade. Now, this is a very conservative estimate and most smartphones especially can survive many more charge cycles than [00:04:00] 300 to 500 without any noticeable issues.

So why do batteries degrade? There’s a couple of reasons, but the big one is regular aging and usage. All batteries will degrade over time, even the unused ones. And typically batteries will have a shelf life of about two to five years. Another thing that can contribute to this is the charging cycles.

A battery wears out after a certain number of charges, and this is tracked by devices to regulate usage. Another common killer of batteries is heat exposure. This will speed up the degradation of a battery significantly, and in general, you can start to see signs of battery degradation within one to three years of regular usage of your device.

This is most commonly seen first in smartphones.

Smartphones are smart and they know when your battery health is poor. As a result of this, they will purposefully [00:05:00] run slower in order to reduce the effects of battery degradation. And as a user, this can be frustrating to see that device that you have slow down due to an aging battery. This is a controversial practice by manufacturers and famously Apple was sued for this because of a new update pushed to their iPhones, which slowed down battery performance on older models.

To some, this was seen as a push for companies to get you to buy the newest phone, and for others they see this technological reason to keep the batteries on for a longer period of time as the phone ages. Despite all of this, you can slow down the rate of your battery degrading through some simple habits, which we’ll discuss later.

So let’s assess your battery. So how do we check your battery health? So thankfully battery health is measurable on iPhones. You can open the Settings app, navigate to Battery. Battery [00:06:00] Health on Android devices for Samsung users. You can open the device care app or you may need to install a third party app from the app store in order to read this information.

Battery health is shown as a percentage relative to the devices capacity as new. For example, if your laptop lasts 10 hours with 100% battery health at 90% battery health, your same laptop will only run for nine hours on a full charge. Has anybody ever checked this before? This is how you can do it.

And

speaking of laptops, the easiest way to gauge how long your laptop,

and speaking of laptops, you can check battery health on them as well. Now most people will go by how long their laptop can stay unplugged before the battery is low and needs to be charged again. But there’s also a technical way to do this, and if you’re a bit savvy, you can follow the [00:07:00] instructions below.

So on a Windows laptop, you’ll need to open up Command Prompt, and you can type in the following command as written there on MacBook, you can open up the system report and go to the power menu. In this, you’ll be looking for some information. It might be called cycle count. There might be a percentage of battery health that’s shown, but this varies wildly from manufacturer to manufacturer.

And if you are curious about this, tech at home can help you.

When do you need to replace a battery? Typically in the industry, a battery is considered worn out when its capacity drops below 80%. If a laptop lasts less than two hours on a full charge, the battery is significantly degraded and you should consider a replacement battery. Replacement costs for phone batteries is around 50 to a hundred dollars and laptop batteries can cost anywhere from [00:08:00] 20 to 50, but again, very wildly based on the brand and the replaceability of the battery.

Let’s go through some tips on repairing and recycling batteries. The first and most important thing is never open a lithium ion battery. This is very dangerous and can result in lots of heat or fire. Some internal batteries can be replaced, but it depends on how easily your device can be opened up. Most of the time.

I would recommend you never open a device yourself and take it to a repair shop or a professional to do this. Many laptop batteries can also be replaced, but they require a very specific battery that can typically be purchased Online. Tech at home can help you research this and get assistance. Next.

Don’t throw batteries in the trash. You need to recycle them properly. Lithium batteries, like I said before, can cause fires in garbage trucks and in [00:09:00] landfills especially if they’re exposed to any physical abuse through the waste management system. If you need to recycle these, there are many stores that you can do this at most commonly, best Buy Staples and some cities even offer local battery recycling programs at minimal or no cost to you.

So you should take advantage of those.

Let’s go through some common battery myths. One that I hear frequently is that you need to drain your battery all the way to 0% before charging, and this is not necessary just to reiterate. We do recommend though that you allow your battery to drain to approximately 20 to 30% before charging it, and this way you can minimize the amount of full charge cycles that your device is exposed to and it will make your battery last a lot longer, and we’ll talk more about that later.

Another myth that I hear is that overnight charging can ruin a battery, and this one is completely false, especially with the [00:10:00] latest devices. Modern devices will stop charging at or before 100% capacity. And again, this is just a smart protection that they have to increase the longevity of your battery. Another common battery myth that I see is that cheap chargers are fine to use. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. I always recommend that you use the charger that came with your device or you get a suitable replacement that is made specifically for your phone. Although using nonofficial Chargers most of the time is fine.

And lastly, a myth that I see is that people think that fast chargers ruin batteries. Now this is mostly false. Recharge speed doesn’t necessarily affect how quickly your battery will degrade, but faster charging can increase the temperature of your phone relative to slower charging, which can have some implications on your battery health.

So under what conditions should you charge your [00:11:00] phone? I can tell you what to avoid and you definitely wanna stay away from extreme heat or cold. High temperatures will degrade batteries faster while in use. If your phone ever feels hot to the touch, you need to turn off the screen and let the device cool down.

Next. Don’t use a swollen battery. Now if you’re not looking at the inside of your phone, you might not be able to tell when a battery is swollen. However, on the pictures here, you can see some signs that a swollen battery is physically separating a phone. So there on the right you can see the screen is starting to bulge away from the frame of the phone.

That is not normal and that’s not water damage. If you see a phone like that, you definitely need to stop using it and look at getting a replacement immediately.

And lastly, recycle your batteries properly. Take these to recycling centers like we stated before.

So what can you do now to get the most out of your phone’s battery? [00:12:00] First, you’ll wanna dim your screen to the lowest setting that’s visible to you. The dimmer that your screen is, the longer your battery will last, and thus the less wear you’re putting on it.

Now this can be difficult, and for some people this isn’t an option. But if your phone has an automatic dimming feature your phone will control the brightness based on the ambient light. So in light conditions like out in the sun, it’ll run at max brightness, so you’re able to see the screen, and later at night when the ambient lighting is lower, it will dim your phone screen accordingly, and your eyes should be able to adjust and see the screen without issue.

I highly recommend you do this because your phone will run at lower dimming settings without you having to even change a slider manually, and this has very good battery implications. Next, you wanna avoid your using your phone for long periods of time while it’s charging, to put it simply, if you’re sitting down on the couch or on [00:13:00] a chair.

And you’re using your phone while it’s plugged in. Just unplug the phone and use it like normal and allow it to get down to that 20 to 30% range before you plug it back in and let it charge. Next. Piggybacking off of that, let your battery drain significantly low before recharging it. I typically recommend the 20 to 30% range and.

By doing this, you’ll reduce the total amount of charge cycles on your battery, which will greatly improve your health and make your battery last potentially an extra year or more. Don’t expose your phone to extreme heat or cold while it’s charging or being used. Now, you might think this is silly. How often is your phone in an extreme cold or heat situation? But let me pose you with this. Phones exposed to sunlight can get very hot quickly because not only is the sun beating down on a dark device, but that device itself is also generating heat.[00:14:00]

So one common thing that I see that I encourage people don’t do is be mindful of where your phone is charging. For example, if it’s on a window sill and there’s direct sunlight through the window on it, or if your phone is charging in a vehicle, these are all common circumstances that you might not think of as extreme heat, but to the phone itself, these are very hot conditions and they will drastically depreciate your battery.

So be mindful of those. And lastly, avoid using wireless chargers especially in cars. But with this, wireless chargers are an alternative to plugging your phone in with a regular cable. If your phone is able to be charged through a regular cord, you need to do that because wireless chargers will put extra heat.

Goodness. It’s the end of the day brain fog. I think that’s what it is.

And lastly, you’ll wanna avoid [00:15:00] wireless chargers. So the difference between a. Corded charger and a wireless charger is that one will plug into the charge cord and the other one doesn’t. Wireless chargers use a lot of extra energy and subject your phone to a lot of unnecessary heat, which is bad for the battery in the long run.

And if you can use your phone with a regular charge cord, always wanna choose that route because it will stay cooler while it’s charging.

As a cool anecdote my mom and I actually both owned Motorola phones and we had the identical make and model, and I practiced very good charging habits. She unfortunately did not her phone ended up lasting her around three years with the regular battery before it started showing very bad signs of wear.

And I actually got to use my phone for upwards of five years and just through regular battery maintenance habits. I was able to get an extra two [00:16:00] years out of the exact same device under very similar circumstances.

Some other questions that I get are, should I always charge my phone to a hundred percent? And there’s nothing really wrong with doing this especially since modern phones, they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you at making sure that your phone isn’t overcharging itself. So this isn’t always necessary, but if you wanna charge your phone up to, 80, 90% and take it off the charger.

That’s probably ideal and you can make your phone battery last longer by doing that. Another question I get is how long should a battery last? For phones it’s typically two to three years, and laptops it can be four to five, but it depends on how often you use those devices and how much heat or cold they’re exposed to.

And lastly, can I use my laptop plugged in all the time? And yes you can, and mostly this [00:17:00] is fine, but it’s good to unplug it and let the battery drain like normal occasionally, whether it be once a week, couple times a month. It’s always good just to have that regular battery drain on the laptop.

As we come to a conclusion here, thank you all for joining me today. If you learn something, please like the video and share it with somebody that you know and consider subscribing to our YouTube channel to get notified on new resident exclusive videos. Thank you.

[00:00:00] 

Amber Bardon: Welcome to Raising Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Amber Bardon. And today, our guest is Danielle Lyons. Danielle is the program director at the AmeriCorps Seniors Foster Grandparent Program, which is sponsored by one of our clients, Lutheran Life Villages in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Welcome to the show, Danielle.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I learned about this program when I was visiting Lutheran Life Villages and I thought this was such a unique, [00:01:00] cool thing that you’re doing and I thought it’d be really great for our listeners to hear about this and learn more in case it’s something that they’re interested in getting involved with.

Foster grandparents are volunteers who are 55 and older who serve as role models, mentors, and friends to young, low income children at risk of falling behind in school. Tell us a little bit more about the program. 

Danielle Lyons: Okay we are a program that have seniors all throughout the community. We invite them to come in and apply.

They have to be 55 years and older. We want them to be able to come in and want to work with children We work with up to about fifth grade and they have to have a passion of working with children. We want them to love children. We have volunteers that work with infants, they might go in and rock babies.

They might help feed the babies. There’s no diapering. They don’t have to worry about that part. They seem to like that part not having to do but Then we have some that work with third up to fifth graders who might need some support [00:02:00] in reading. But our seniors come in and they want to volunteer.

They go out into the community. We are all over Fort Wayne. We are at every end of Fort Wayne. We work in child care centers, schools after school programs, we are everywhere and our volunteers usually spend between 15 to 20 hours a week. But we do have some that are so dedicated. They volunteer up to 40 hours a week.

It just depends on what their comfort level is. We are a program that started in 1965. I’m very proud of that. We are 1 of. The first pilot programs across the country. AmeriCorps seniors is a program that is all over the United States. They have 3 programs under the AmeriCorps umbrella. 

So we have been here. For a long time Lutheran Life Villages has been our sponsor for over 20 years. And we are very proud to have been here since [00:03:00] 1965. 

Amber Bardon: I think programs like this are so important. And 1 of the reasons I wanted to highlight this on our podcast is, I think ageism is a major issue, and we don’t hear a lot of people talk about that.

But when you think about moving into a community like, Lutheran life villages, there can be a lot of fear that it’s for old people or just a lot of no, just negative thoughts about what it looks like to be around older adults. And that’s why I love these types of programs because it helps expose people to what older adults the experience of having them in your life is like, and that it can be really positive.

And then I think it’s also just. That to build that community and that sharing of information and knowledge. So can you tell me a little bit more about how you see those benefits playing out through this? Yeah, 

Danielle Lyons: our seniors. I tell you, I learned something new last year and I, I almost thought, wow, why didn’t I think of that before?

When I was going to the sites and talking [00:04:00] to the principals and asking, what is your need, and I always think, our seniors, of course, they go in and they volunteer and they read with the kids, they do that one on one, they might work in a group with children and, they develop that friendship.

But what I learned last year, and it was so powerful we had children who lost parents. and grandparents to COVID. And they needed that grandmother figure and that grandfather figure in their life. And it didn’t even, I didn’t even think about that piece. It just really, I was like, wow, I didn’t think about that.

And kids tend to gravitate to grandma and grandpa. That’s an important role. And for a lot of our young children, they don’t have that anymore, whether it be that they did lose them to COVID COVID. COVID. Or that grandma and grandpa may not live close to them anymore. They may live in a different state [00:05:00] and they need that special grandma, grandfather figure.

They tend to want to cuddle with them and read the books with them. They feel more comfortable sharing those stories that maybe they’re not comfortable sharing with that younger teacher. That’s new to them. Children change teachers a lot, and they just feel more comfortable sharing those stories with grandma and grandpa.

So I think it’s important for the kids, but also for the grandparents, because you have grandparents who might live in a senior community that don’t get to see those kids anymore, that don’t get to share that special relationship with young Children that they want so much. Some of our grandparents They don’t have grandchildren.

They may not have had children in their life. And so having that special relationship, they look forward to going in and spending that little bit of time that they can with those young children. It’s a powerful [00:06:00] relationship. especially even in the summertime, when summer, when school’s out and it’s the summertime, they don’t get to see those kids for a long time. But when they see those kids out in public. Oh, my gosh, those kids run right to him and the parents are like, who is this person?

The kids love their grandparents and they look at them just as though they are their real grandparents. So that intergenerational connection, huge very big in their life and in their relationships. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, I really love that. And as someone who I didn’t have grandparents growing up, and my kids also don’t have the benefit of having grandparents either that are still living or live near them, I could definitely see a benefit to that.

That’s such a great program. And can you give a little more insight into how the program originally started? What was their thought process behind it? 

Danielle Lyons: Yeah. Originally it started with. The older generation who were very poor the plan was to get them out there to help with the kids who needed more help.

[00:07:00] And it was more towards the children who were disabled. They needed help with those kids, and we had women who were willing to go and help work with those children, and they were going to pay them a small amount of money to help them. And they did. And of course. The program expanded, it got bigger and bigger, and we had women who were able to go out and do this and were excited to get that stipend, that tax free money.

Since then, it has grown, and we still have women that are willing to go out and, do this and receive that stipend. It’s not a lot. Our seniors only get about maybe 250, 300 a month. it is a little bit extra that can help pay some of those bills that they may have, depending on their income.

And it’s worth it. It’s giving them an opportunity to get out of the house. It’s giving them an opportunity to socialize with other people. We can go on and on [00:08:00] about talking about the loneliness and the depression that our seniors experience by staying home all day and not having that companionship and that, that idea of going out and spending time with other people.

So this is a win for them, no matter what. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, absolutely. I was just at 2 client sites in the last 2 weeks and this very topic of isolation and engagement came up. So this is definitely an issue and that’s again why I wanted to talk about this program on the podcast is this is such a unique way to address that.

 If a senior living community is interested in getting involved in this type of program, how would they go about that? 

Danielle Lyons: There’s a couple of things. AmeriCorps seniors has a website on their website. It’s called pathfinder. If you went to pathfinder on AmeriCorps seniors website, it will give you you’ll be able to type in what state or what city you live in and it will tell you what programs are available in that city or in that state.

State and then you can [00:09:00] look for yours and then they’ll tell you what’s available. And then you can reach out to that director and find out what’s out there. As far as for Fort Wayne where I am we’ve got our own website. We’ve got F. G. P. F. W. dot org. You can also see us on Facebook and I try to upload all of our special events. I’m going to be putting some new pictures up today. As a matter of fact, because we just had our winter celebration yesterday and that’s at the foster grandparent, Fort Wayne on Facebook.

And then, of course, you can always email me at dlyond@lutheranlifevillages.Org. And I can give you all the information that you need. I always tell people that apply for our program. Of course, 55 and older is always the 1st thing I ask you. We have to do background checks because you’re working with children.

That’s always important. You have to pass those 1st you gotta love kids because. That’s what they want. They want that love. They want that [00:10:00] attention. They want that companionship. Those are the most important things. The rest is super easy. You don’t need a college degree. You don’t have to have, all these smarts.

We just want you to be able to want to spend time with children and give them the attention that they need. It’s not rocket science at all. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, absolutely. Are there any specific stories you can think of that you can share with us?   

Danielle Lyons: This past year, we did a lot of things.

We’ve been on TV. We’ve been in magazines. We’ve been in newspapers. We’ve done a lot of stuff to get our program out there. I think probably our biggest thing that we’re excited about right now is, our 60th anniversary is coming up in May. We are really doing it this year. We’re going to have our anniversary gala.

So it’s going to be huge. And we’re hoping to invite our mayor and get some, constituents out there. Hopefully they will come. We want to get some people from AmeriCorps to [00:11:00] come. We just want to really make it an exciting event because I’m sure you understand when it comes to our seniors, they’re very proud, but at the same time, they sometimes don’t realize how much they really do.

And so when I tell the grandparents. You help this child learn how to read and how important it is. Sometimes they just don’t realize how big of a deal that is. And so I want to make sure that when we have this celebration this year, we let them know you did a big thing. These last 60 years are huge.

And so that’s going to be our big celebration. 

Amber Bardon: That’s great. That’s exciting. Congratulations on 60 years. 

Danielle Lyons: Thank you. Very proud. Very proud. 

Amber Bardon: Danielle, this has been a great conversation.

I’ve really enjoyed learning more about the program. I didn’t know a lot about it. I just knew that it existed. So I really appreciate your time and joining us. Is there anything we didn’t talk about that you want people to know about this program? 

Danielle Lyons: I just really wish I really want people to spread the word [00:12:00] of the importance of this because.

We are volunteers who really help a lot of Children, and it’s a free way of helping teachers and Children. I don’t think people realize how much work we really do. We’re like the quiet ones in the corner that no one really notices, but in our seniors totally enjoy it.

To see them be able to still be active in the community and do something that they love and to keep them out of that loneliness and that depression and make new friends. It’s a wonderful feeling to see all of that happening. So I think if we can just get more people to see who we are, that’s a great thing.

Amber Bardon: And I can tell you. Really are passionate about what you do and you enjoy it. 

Danielle Lyons: Oh, I love it. I love it. I wouldn’t I used to do early childhood I was a teacher and I love the children and I always had a foster grandparent in my classroom. I love it. And so when I became the director of this program, [00:13:00] oh, my gosh, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I love my grandparents. They’re awesome. They’re awesome. 

Amber Bardon: That’s wonderful. And I know you did mention where people can learn more about the program, but do you mind just saying all of that again at the end of our episode? We like to include that. 

Danielle Lyons: Oh, sure. Yeah. So there’s AmeriCorps Seniors Pathfinder and that’s on the AmeriCorps Seniors website.

We also have our Facebook page, which is Foster Grandparent Fort Wayne. And then my email address is dlyons@lutheranlifevillages.Org. And you can also give me a call if you need to, and that’s 260 426 2273. And I can answer all of your questions. And then we also have our own website, which is fgpfw.

org. 

Amber Bardon: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate. Oh, 

Danielle Lyons: thank you for having me. I’m so happy. Thank you so much. [00:14:00] 

Amber: [00:00:00] Welcome to Raising Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Amber Bardon. And today our guest is Kristen Parsons, who is the executive director at Tiffany Village in Canada. Welcome to the show, Kristen. Thank you for having me. I wanted to give our listeners a little bit of background on how we came to have a Canadian community on the podcast.

So you and I met at the ARCO conference in London last year, you did a really interesting presentation, which actually I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what you talked about and actually even Telling other vendors and other clients about some of the really innovative things that you’re doing.

And I know you have a strong partnership with AMBA, which we also did a podcast with them. So I am so excited for our listeners to hear more about your story, about Tiffany village’s story, and to really talk about how you have become one of the most tech enabled communities that I’ve ever heard of. So let’s dig into it.

Give us a little background on yourself and tell us about Tiffany village, because there’s a really unique story there.

Kristen: So my name is Kristen. As you [00:01:00] said earlier, I’m the executive director for Tiffany Village and Kenny’s pond. My background is a registered nurse. I started in acute care in Alberta, actually born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, but went to Alberta shortly after finishing my undergrad and was very you know, exposed early on to technology, which on the east coast of Canada.

We were a little bit behind at that time, and then my career, you know, progressed into long term care and assisted living, which brought me back home after, you know, 15 plus years, which was great. And when I had the opportunity to come in and be the executive director for Tiffany village and Kenny’s pond, we had quite a few seniors that had been aging in place, but we were seeing them.

Often leave our homes to go either to long term care or be, you know, as they age in place and there was a fall or a change in their behavior, they were going out to the emergency room departments spending, [00:02:00] you know, X amount of hours there and then often not returning because they were either a not safe to do.

So, or B, we did not have the capabilities within our staffing model to support. So my goal coming in was, once you come and live at a place like Tiffany Village, which is 183 suites, or a place like Kenny’s Pond, which has 114, you can live with us regardless of where you are in the aging process, that we can complement your needs to your individual care plan and that we evolve and change as you evolve and change.

And that came in line as we brought technology such as AMBA into place. And then we built our entire staffing model and our operational and strategic plan around that technology, which really enhanced the care delivery and made us, you know, one of the leaders of assisted living and independent living in in the province.

Amber: Can you talk a little bit more about the care model that you have and share a little bit about how you [00:03:00] were able to get funding and support for that care model that you have? And I think, you know, I know you shared at the ARCO conference a little bit about the geographic pieces that come into play with why you had to develop that model.

So I’d love to hear you talk more about

Kristen: that. Absolutely. So when I came back home, which is Newfoundland, you know, predominantly the focus has been on our baby boomers. They’re, they’re aging, they’re coming back after retirement, they’re living in a province. And our province is so this is an area that’s quite geographically spread where a lot of our seniors are living in very small outport fishing communities where hospitals are not always open 24 7 emergency room departments are closing because of short staffing and a lot of individuals within our province that are not baby boomers or older or of a younger generation are more attracted to acute care settings if they’re coming from from a health care background.

And we were finding a lot of individuals were. Missing their homes, but having to leave their [00:04:00] homes and come to Tiffany Village and to Kenny’s pond. So we wanted to create a very holistic view on how you can provide care that even if you’re leaving your home in outport, Newfoundland, you’re coming to live at Tiffany Village and your wife has memory care, but you do not.

And you’re living quite independently. You can live together. We can support the services and care model within your home and bring the care to you. So we created what you would consider a home care model within the confines of a large style community like Tiffany Village and Kenny’s Pond. We have all the registered nursing, licensed practical nursing, physician services, recreation, wellness, dining, if you choose, or if you want to cook for yourself and you’re safe to do so.

And then we have a great program that gets you back to your home through recreation and wellness, whether that’s bus outings, or going back to fishing villages, or even bringing some of the memories of living in outport Newfoundland, which is. [00:05:00] Putting your clothes out on the line, putting fish out to be dried you know, making fish and brews and, and for those people from our, from our culture, that’s very accustomed to them and brings them back to their way of life, even for people who retire and want to live in Newfoundland from Florida or from other countries, what drew them to Newfoundland was the culture and the holistic view and I feel we do that very well.

It’s not just segmented into individualized departments. Everything we do is about the lifestyle of the person and getting to know them and creating a unique setting for them. And it’s tricky, as I said, in the AMBA conferences or in the ARCO conferences, how do you do that? When we’re all strapped right now for for labor.

This is not the most attractive place for people to come to work in in the setting of what long term care and what our mindset is and trying to ensure you have the right people and by bringing in technology, we soon realize that we don’t need to be in their suite or in their home. 24 [00:06:00] hours a day, seven days a week for all residents.

Some of you do, but this allowed us to be anywhere in the confines of Tiffany Village and Kenny’s pond and know when someone has fallen or that someone needs help or that someone’s breathing pattern or change or their heart rate. You know, increased, you know, they’re going to the bathroom more often than they usually did.

So maybe they have an infection. Maybe they have a, so we were able to manage our resources and be more pronounced and proactive versus reactive while at the same time, giving people their dignity and their independence to still have their own space and not feel like they’re in a care environment. And I think the story.

Of Tiffany Village and Kenny’s Pond is really segmented in that, you know, this business was built on the back of a man who, you know, was born and raised in Newfoundland. He’s seen a need in the senior community. He didn’t want to be like everyone else, where everything has to be isolated, you know, your long term care.

So you anything above a level 4 needs to go to it, you know, to a more [00:07:00] institutional style of home or. You know, you’re less than level 2, so you need to go to a personal care home. Like, he believed that seniors had a place, that they should age in place, and that their journey and their story should be shared.

And I feel that we have really done a great job in making sure everyone feels individualized. Everyone feels like this is my home, no different than living in a community. And we’ve taken pressure off an acute care system and a long term care system that is overtaxed right now by by bringing technology into practice.

Amber: I know you just mentioned in the information you just share that 1 of the big drivers to move to technology was staffing shortages. Workforce is a big issue here in the US as well. It’s a big buzzword. Can you talk a little bit about the other drivers that pushed you to more of a technology driven solution, both from a care perspective?

And then if you can just speak a little bit more to. to some of the labor challenges and then also I’m curious about how did that interface with [00:08:00] regulation?

Kristen: Absolutely. I mean, you see it on every evening news hour about our shortages and, and that was pronounced even more post pandemic. A lot of people, you know, were challenged to continue to do care.

There was a lot around caregiver burnout. I truly seen from, from my lens that. We weren’t always working smarter and more efficient. It was a lot of guesswork into care, and I still think there there is. I don’t think it’s isolated to 1 particular division of care. I think it’s all over every country right now.

So, when I came into the role, 2 and a half years ago, I found that our staffing model was a very 1 size fits all. It was very much. Not so much government regulated. We didn’t have a lot of red tape where we were, but we did try to stay aligned with what other homes were doing. I come up with ratios that were very much, you know, the historical practice.

You need to have so many people on this floor because you have so many residents [00:09:00] not really looking at level of care, not really looking at day and night routines, or even understanding what the day and night routine was. And by bringing in early on, we brought in door sensors and sensors within the suite and sleep mats.

We couldn’t hear what they said. We couldn’t see what they were doing. We just knew there was activity and what the disruptions of activity were from day and night, and we actually changed our staffing ratios within the 1st 6 months of the deployment because We seen our nighttime activity was far less than daytime activity.

We were able to determine that some people having nighttime activity either had sleep disruptions because of medication management wasn’t appropriate, or these individuals had memory care challenges and were more appropriately to be assigned to memory care. care, or we’ve seen individuals had, you know, chronic pain or had a UTI, and we were able to medically manage it or support it so that everyone had a more appropriate sleep wake [00:10:00] cycle or had an appropriate care plan for their needs.

And then we were able to shift the resources to reduce some of our ratios and increase where we most needed it based on the data that we were receiving it. And then we were able to validate it by speaking to families and care staff by the information we were getting from the technology. So that allowed us to stretch our resources, be more efficient with them and more effective and reduce some of the burnout.

I mean, when you’re in a building like ours, that, you know, has. You know, eight plus floors and you’re, you know, you’re moving your resources along. It’s nice to be able to actually look from a lens down and say, this is exactly where I need to be. And here is managing well. And before that, it truly was guesswork, which I think a lot of organizations are doing, which costs the resident money, it costs the taxpayer money and the organization money.

So labor was important. But most importantly for me and what keeps us in business is, you know, we can, we can sell you a beautiful lifestyle, a beautiful suite and all [00:11:00] the amenities and services. But what keeps people here is really good care. And for me, I found, you know, polypharmacy, you know, right now seniors are on far too many medications and half the time we don’t, we’re giving a medication to support another medication so that it reduces the side effects and really it comes down to good nutrition, you know, good hydration, good sleep cycle, making sure that they’re well engaged because loneliness is one of the leading, you know, causes of death I find in our seniors.

And AMBA was able to help us do that. By knowing people’s activity and knowing what their day routines are without being with them, allowed us to put in engagements, put in different types of services you know, put in exercise programs where maybe people were getting, you know, sleepy or people were wanting to take a nap because they weren’t engaged, or they were going to medication for pain when they could have needed more rehabilitation.

So I feel like it just provided a full continuum of care that before we were, we were missing. [00:12:00]

Amber: I know you’ve touched on in this conversation so far a couple of you’ve mentioned a couple different ways of you’re using technology and a couple types of technology you’re using. Do you mind, can you walk us through what does technology look like from a day to day perspective, both from a staff perspective and from a resident perspective and give us a little bit more insight into the technology you’re actually utilizing and have deployed.

Kristen: So right now we’ve been really focused on, you know, the utilization of AMBA into practice. I would say when we first implemented it, and this would be for any organization, whether you’re unionized or not, change, people usually are resistant to it. And it’s really hard when historically you’ve done something the same way, and now someone else is coming in and saying, let’s have this complement what you do.

Because right away, people are going to think that technology is going to replace them. Yeah. And in some ways you can change up your ratios. You can change your model of care, but we really want to echo the importance of it [00:13:00] being complimentary to you. So you can work smarter. You can work more efficiently, give more time back to the resident and give more time back to yourself to be able to perform the skills and the duties that you’re required to do.

So from a care perspective, we’ve utilized it around you know, sleep activity, recreation and wellness you know, allocation of resources medication oversight, like we are deploying right now, something called a med carry, which we’re so excited that will give independence back to the resident to either manage their medication themselves because they’re having, you know, medication occurrences or you know, issues right now doing themselves.

Or we are bringing it into an assistant living community with the support of a staff member that may not be licensed and registered, but know the resident, you know, better than that individual is going to be providing the medication at the time that’s most appropriate with oversight from, from a registered professional.

So we’re excited around that independence and [00:14:00] autonomy. That’s going to come back full circle. So from a care perspective in the beginning, absolutely. People were resistant. Once you take them on the path and they see how much time they get back and how much more they can give to the resident from an engagement versus, I’m sorry, I can’t do this right now.

I have to go see someone else is important because if you went into this type of profession, you did it because you want to be resident focused. And now we can’t be from a resident perspective. You got to remember my generations are, you know, 75 80 plus for individuals and, you know, the late 80s to 90s.

Technology is unheard of. They’re still, you know, some of them are struggling still with the ATM. So talking to them about, you know, the benefits and the supports of bringing a technology to practice is, you know, it’s walking them through day to day what we were able to do for you. Because of this, and I’ll give an example, you know, we had an individual that, you know, was concerned about, you know, their [00:15:00] wife they felt that, you know, they would have to go to another home because they couldn’t age in place because, you know, we were seeing memory issues and because of AMBA, we determined that, you know, this was an early onset of dementia.

This individual is up toiling through the night. This individual had a UTI that A, they could not, you know, either cognitively or verbally report. There was, you know, reference point for the staff when they went in. They were reporting everything was fine. There was no sign of, of, you know, temperature or fever.

But we noticed frequent urination, which ended up being a UTI, which, as you know, can lead to cognitive changes because there’s an underlying infection. And right away, you know, that husband needed to be able to see that because of technology, we were proactive. He did not need to leave his home. They could stay together.

And we didn’t have to worry at this point in time that these changes were, you know, an early onset of something. It truly was an infectious process. Again, would have been the same. I don’t know if, if it would, if we didn’t [00:16:00] have that technology, I think she would have been out in an emergency room department, you know, 14, 15 hours waiting to be seen.

And, you know, that increases your risk for further infections or falls. So they need to see those benefits and we need to communicate them. And more of those stories that we share, the more people become believers, and the more they believe, the more they just embrace it, and then they don’t even know it exists.

It just feels like every part of your day to day life is no different than picking up your iPhone. So I think that has been really important for our growth and development.

Amber: I imagine with all the monitoring technology that you have deployed a big advantage, you have you didn’t have before you did that would be access to a lot of different types of data.

So I’m curious to hear from you because I think one of the challenges we see with deploying. This different type of technology, at least here in the U. S. And I’m curious if you found a solution is that a lot of this technology doesn’t talk to each other where you have a lot of different disparate data sources and integration issues.

So, can you talk a little bit about how did you solve [00:17:00] that? And what are the benefits and what have you been able to do with the data that you’ve been able to get out of all of your systems and how integrated and cohesive is that?

Kristen: I totally align with what that was one of our biggest risk factors when we when we spoke about deploying technologies.

I did not want to have a platform for sleep and then a platform for, you know, mobility or fall risk and then a platform for medication and then a platform for heart rate and respiratory rate. You know, that that was something that when we did our research, we were really concerned that I wanted something that a would, you know, All sink into 1 platform that we could document under that we could pull reports for.

And that’s why I think when we went down the road of looking for options, Amba became such an important part because although they had a foundation and somewhat of a baseline model, I was able to build a Cadillac out of it. So I started with a sleep mat and then I went to, you know, sleep. And then I [00:18:00] went to Medicare.

And now I’m even thinking about bringing in a detector to test like how far the water levels are and people sinks or in their bathrooms so that we don’t have any risk for floods as people start to age in place and forget to turn off the tap. And I liked that part of insight that I could reach out to them and say I have this idea.

This is what I want. Now make it happen with within the same platform. So right now today, I could come in. I could see all you know. You know, 375 plus residents know exactly, you know, who’s at a high alert, who’s at a low risk, who’s already triggered onto the platform that, you know, our staff are being deployed to, I can look over a 7 day window, you know, who’s at the highest risk for falls, who’s at a, you know, an occurrence happen.

I can pull that same report then for our physician, and we can monitor if we changed up the treatment plan, if anything improved or didn’t improve. And then I can speak to any family member anywhere across the world and say, Look, this is what’s [00:19:00] happening with mom and dad. And this is why we made the changes we made.

And now the data don’t lie to us, you know, before. It’s always about human factor. How good did they document? How good did they assess? Did they monitor the situation? Did they evaluate? Did they follow up? You’re only as good as the person who documented that information. If you didn’t document it, it didn’t happen.

Now we’re tested to say you have the data. You have the documentation. What did you do about it? Did it improve? Did it not improve? So I do think it creates a very cohesive integrated team. It challenges us. Because it challenges us in a way to say, you know, are these care plans effective? You know, should we be doing something different?

But now we’re actually able to measure it, which before, you know, your measurement comes on a 88 year old individual that possibly could have memory issues and is telling you everything is 88 And you’re documenting, everything is fine, the vital signs are great. Then you look at the report and say, they haven’t slept in the last nine nights for 12 hours, everything isn’t fine.

So I love [00:20:00] the report generation. I love the ability to be able to connect with different disciplines. I love the ability to show families no matter where they are, what’s happening with mom and dad and how we’ve improved that situation. I also like the fact that. I can now know if people truly are independent or if they need support and putting that support in as quick as we can so that they can stay as independent as long as they can versus declining to the point that they can’t.

And I like the fact that I can go in and interface this all into 1 system without having to open up 6 different applications for 6 different devices. Do I think we’re just in infancy? I do. I think we’re going to grow and expand into different pieces of of technology that will still interface under this one platform, which is exciting for us.

Amber: Have you ever had a resident refuse to take part in the technology? Is that an option for them? And if so, how do you handle that?

Kristen: Yeah, so in the early days, like when we first started this, you know, [00:21:00] you got to be very careful in this type of business because in a setting that is not private, like we’re a private entity.

And yes, over the last couple of years, we did go to the government and we did request subsidy for care. Which was quite unheard of in our type of work. And we did go to, you know, different levels of government and acknowledge the work that we’re doing the longevity and retention of our clientele and the fact that we are keeping people out of hospital.

We’re keeping them out of acute care beds. And so it’s saving people money at the end of the day, and it’s supporting individuals that need those beds to be there. right place, right time, right treatment and plan. So that really helped us grow. And when residents came to us, you know, Early on, we did give them the choice.

We said, you know, we have this new piece of technology. You know, we’re still in our pilot phase. You’re going to be part of the journey. We’re going to give you the data. So, we had some people right up front that was resistant because of privacy and [00:22:00] confidentiality. They were very concerned that that information would leak out or that we were spying on them and then other people, you know, Especially family members embraced it because they weren’t there.

So once we finished the pilot and we were able to show all of the areas where there were benefits and all the areas that we learned that we put corrective action plans in the individuals that were resistant up front did come aboard and say, you know, I want to stay in my suite as long as I can. I don’t want to go to long term care.

Nothing against that, but this is where I came. This is where I want to age. I don’t want to be in an emergency room. I don’t want to have a medicare and say, you know, creates challenges for me down the road. I don’t want to be separated from my wife or from my husband. So taking people along that journey every month, we were giving, you know, tips and good news stories that people embraced.

Then when we got to a point where we felt very confident. In the technology, which was truly six to nine months in where we were seeing really [00:23:00] quality outcomes. We went to all the clients and said, it’s now a requirement when you’re living here, because we want to ensure we are protecting your best interests, that there are absolutely no liabilities.

And that if you do want to live independently, then at the end of the day, the technology is not going to show anything that we need to, to change in your suite. But if it does. It allows you to live independently because we can insert those different resources there. So since doing that, we have not had any resistance.

And from a privacy perspective, we were able to show them that the information is stored, it’s secure, it’s no different than, you know, a chart, and that any point in time it can be deleted. That the information, once you’re discharged Kenny’s Pond, is not collected unless you want to use it for research purposes, and that it’s yours.

So they could see it at any time if they chose to. So that was very helpful for us.

Amber: Yeah, I think it sounds like it’s really critical to have buy in at 100 percent for this to work, because it would [00:24:00] be a lot of trouble and potential risk for you to have to go back to manual processes if someone’s not on board with the technology.

Kristen: You know, I’ve had a lot of homes reach out to me since, you know, talking about this, because a lot of people have said, well, did you go all in at once? Did you deploy it slowly? And I always say every home and every layout looks a little different. And if I was to tell anyone You know, should I do it in in one home or one floor versus the other?

My strong encouragement is at the end of the day, this technology is going to help you regardless if you’re assisted living. If you’re independent living, you’re living in your own home. I mean, we’ve had people, our staff. Who were nonbelievers have it in their own home and recognize right away. They have sleep apnea and they had disruptions in their sleep, but they didn’t have a partner to tell him that.

So that’s why they were fatigued. That’s why they were showing up, you know, late for work or maybe they had a healthy element that they needed to find out, but they didn’t have a family doctor. So this allowed them to speed up that process. I’m a believer. But if people [00:25:00] are not a believer and they want to pilot it, I would always recommend pick a floor, pick a subgroup, pick your high risk that you want to be able to monitor that you don’t have good insight.

Do it over the course of three months. You won’t be long seeing that you’ll be progressing it throughout the other floors or the other units or departments of your homes or

Amber: facilities. That was going to be 1 of my questions. If you have what would be your top piece of advice to any community that’s looking to implement this technology.

So you just shared 1 other other tips that you can offer or lessons learned things you wish you would have known.

Kristen: You know, the 1 thing I would say to everyone now is technology is not going away. We’re only at the, you know, the break of what’s to come. And what I’m talking about today, you know, a year from now, there will be something new and exciting.

And it’s important to work with a company or a group of companies that believes in the vision that they’re not just selling you a product. Like, they’re really trying to improve the lives of the clientele you’re working with and improve the lives of your staff. [00:26:00] You can’t do this in isolation. It can’t just be for one party.

It has to be you know, I think it’s important for us to be for all parties. You know, Yes, I see care outcomes, but I also see financial gain from this. I also see an efficient workforce from this. I see less caregiver workout for burnout from this. So you need to look at your quality factors. Your KP eyes.

What’s your top goals and see where technology fits into compliment that, but don’t be scared to take the risk because doing things the same way is not going to work. Forever. And you have to be open minded to change just as people age and they’re changing every day. If we stay in the past and we don’t change with them, then obviously we’re going to miss out on great opportunities, potentially impacting your business, you know, your, your own careers, your own opportunities.

So I would open your mind up to it and really listen to what’s out there and to build a database of goals for yourself and see where that’s going. And I think that this piece of technology could really help you and no doubt the more that you embrace and become less [00:27:00] resistant to it. I do think the more that you’ll grow as, as a, you know, a person and as a, as a company,

Amber: sorry, I lost my train of thought. You mentioned a couple minutes ago in part of the earlier conversation that you feel that. What you’re doing is still in its infancy and that there’s still a lot more you can do. So tell me, what do you imagine the technology environment and care environment looking like in five to 10 years from now?

Good one.

Kristen: I truly believe that we need to get away from this one size fits all model. I can only speak for, you know, my province and the country in which I live in right now, but I’ve had the luxury in my career to work in four different provinces. And the one thing that has always opened my eyes is, and I’ll speak for long term care, because obviously my career was there prior to coming into this setting, is that long term care has a stigma.

Attached to it. Very institutionalized. People feel they have no [00:28:00] choices anymore, and I hear that even in my own parents who are aging. And I just feel now with technology, you could have dementia. And could still walk around a pond. You can have dementia and still go to a grocery store. You can have dementia and not require a lockdown unit for everything.

But I feel like there’s still this association that when you get to a certain stage, you’re locked down, you know, you’re, you’re institutionalized. Your choices are gone away. And I just think with technology now with things around safe exploration, we’re starting to use words Safe exploration versus wandering.

You know, looking at opportunities to get out and to live a life and attend recreation. I spoke a lot in my presentation about neighborhood programs and having the opportunity to, you know, go to neighborhood programs and go to swimming and, you know, go skating and, and go out for tea or for coffee with, with your loved one or with other like minded individuals.

I think technology is going to [00:29:00] be allow us to do that. There’s different tracking devices. I think there’s gonna be technology. Now that’s going to be able to assess people’s moods and behaviors before they sundown. I’m not saying that’s not out there. I’m just saying, I think that’s where it’s gonna go.

I think there’s gonna be opportunities right now to assess people’s pain threshold, be able to check changes with their bowel patterns and urinary patterns. And, you know, if there’s anyone gonna be listening to this, who wants to explore that with me, I would love that. But I just think there’s gonna be opportunities for sure.

Individuals to have more choice. regardless of their condition. So maybe it doesn’t need to be a long term care. Maybe it’s in your own home with home care. And you know, I think there’s gonna be opportunities to really assess treatment plans with different types of medications and the effects that it has on people’s behavior or, you know, clinical changes.

That’s where I see it. I feel that we are going to change the trajectory of care. I think we’re going to be able to look at people’s level of care and determine the [00:30:00] right staffing complement and the right staffing skill set. And I think, you know, this one, it has to be all registered or licensed staff.

I think it’s going to change. I think we’re going to see people more towards like the personal care side of things and giving. I think it’s important that we give back autonomy to the resident to be able to take on a little bit more choice. And I honestly got to be truthful with the aging population.

I don’t think we have any other way of thinking. There’s never going to be enough people to care for everyone. So we have to start thinking long term on how can technology help them do the things that they do well and can do well as the age. And where do we need to supplement that with a care that, you know, right now is not in their life.

I think it’s going to make us more efficient with our resources. I think it’s going to save, you know, taxpayers and the government money at the end of the day, if they’re smart enough and open minded to use it. And again, that’s where I go back to history. You can’t just keep doing things the same way.

It’s, it’s not going to work. I do think we’re going to have to embrace it, even in our own [00:31:00] lives, regardless if we’re seniors or not.

Amber: Yeah, I mean, this is a topic that we talk about all the time on this podcast. And then I talk about in my presentations. I do is exactly what you’re saying is that this is going to be something that you’re going to have no choice to have to move forward with and have to adopt and it is going to become a differentiator.

And, you know, it’s absolutely necessary from a workforce perspective and a care perspective. Two questions I have for you on possible challenges. So have you, do you have any regulatory issues in terms of not being able to reduce staffing levels in place of technology and how, you know, how did you deal with that?

And then the 2nd question is, did you have any infrastructure challenges from a technology perspective with deploying this technology and getting to getting it to work effectively?

Kristen: Yeah, so for the with relation to staffing, we’re very fortunate. Yes, we have a staffing model. So I’ll speak for previous.

So, previous to us having subsidized care you know, we really have the freedom to work with [00:32:00] ratios, adjust ratios and make, make those, make those changes as we need it. So, for instance, if I had an assistant living floor and they were all level 3 and then due to residents passing away, the. Residents that we brought in were level 2.

I had the freedom to change up my staffing ratios based on acuity. And then when subsidy came in to play to pay for people’s care they did give a standardized hour per resident. They were expecting a personal care attendant who does the personal care or nursing who does the medication to provide.

And what I loved about that is that for some of them, they actually put them at a higher level of care, which is a higher pay bracket. And for some individuals, we were able to acknowledge because of the technology cause they were assessing it based on a survey or based on a questionnaire, you know, they don’t require overnight care.

They require, you know, morning care and evening care and wellness checks, which I can do on AMBA. I don’t physically have to go wake them [00:33:00] up with a flashlight. I can physically go in and say they’re sleeping. Their heart rate, you know, is 65. And I don’t have to disrupt their sleep. So we were actually able to go back and say, you know, they’re not a level 3, they’re a level 2, which is great.

Which I think is great for any person out there that, you know, is, is living in long term care or living or, you know, subsidized by the public entity that it can be more cost effective with the use of technology, which is great. With regards to our staffing levels, as long as I have efficient and effective data.

It’s really hard to fight against it. I can make that change, and I can explain it to any unionized environment where I need the resources, which before I couldn’t so as long as the data is there and you have a generated business case, you’re quite able to have the freedom and the luxury of changing that.

What was your second question? You had asked me regarding, it was

Amber: about technology infrastructure. So I know one of the big challenges we have here is wifi, for example.

Kristen: Yes. So we did a Wi Fi upgrade when we did the deployment, not in the [00:34:00] early stages, because you just don’t know if you’re going to like it, if you’re going to do this through every suite and through every building.

So at Tiffany Village our building is such that there are concrete structures. So, Between each suite. It’s really great from a like a fire control perspective, but it can make it really difficult from a connectivity perspective. So you have to be very mindful of where the hot spots are and where you could have connectivity issues or poor connectivity.

So we did do a we did a full deployment of a Wi Fi upgrade. We changed out where our sensors were so that we could have good signals at all times and be able to recognize what’s happening in each suite, regardless of some of those barriers. So that was one of the things that we had done. The other thing we had done is we want to make sure that all of our care workers have appropriate technology to read the platform wherever they went.

So we invested in iPad smartphones to make sure that As they were setting up each individual care plan for the resident, if someone was at Risper Falls and say they were downstairs and on level 2, and [00:35:00] this person was up on level 4 or 5, and they seen that the person was at a bed longer than 5 minutes, and they knew that was a trigger, they would get an alert.

They could deploy a care worker from that floor and say, you know, go check on this person.

Amber: Well, Kristen, this has been absolutely fascinating. I know it’s only January, but I’m going to go ahead and call it and say this is going to be one of our top podcasts of 2025. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Where can our listeners learn more about you and about Tiffany village and Kenny’s pond?

Kristen: Well, we have a website at tbkp. ca. So tb for Tiffany Village, kp for Kenny’s Pond. I’m also on indeed, kristin. parsons at tiffanyvillage. com. People can reach out to me any time. We’re very well networked on Facebook as well.

So if you search Tiffany Village or Kenny’s Pond, you’ll we have a really great opportunity here. We would love to hear from other people. I find the best learning you do is from sharing so we’re not isolated to know that there may be someone out there doing something really great. But at the end of the day, I will [00:36:00] say what separates us from a lot of people is that everything we do.

Every decision we make is really centered on the, on the resident experience. I want this for my parents. I want this for myself. I’m sure you want it for all of you. So we have to do better for our generations to come. So we create the very best life that we can for them. So I’m very excited. Anyone can reach out anytime.

I would love to hear from them.

Amber: Thank

Kristen: you so

Amber: much for joining us today.

Christie: We’re going to be going ahead and getting started. I want to officially introduce myself.

I’m Christie Freeze. I am your host for today’s conversation. And I’m so excited to invite you all to, or welcome you all to the Senior Living Sizzle. These are expert led discussions on the industry’s hottest topics. And if you are new to these conversations, welcome. We’re glad you’re here. The sizzle is super powered by heart legacy, which is home to sales mail, senior living’s number one video tool.[00:01:00]

And today we are diving into one of the hottest topics as of lately, one that we’re likely going to be discussing for the foreseeable future, not just for January. And that is AI. This is also an extra special episode because we are donating five dollars to the Alzheimer’s Association every time AI is said.

So Abby, I hope you’re keeping tabs. All right. So we’re going to be talking today about how we best prepare to integrate AI into our lives and the foundation and mindset that’s needed in order to do so effectively. We’re also going to be talking about what practical applications we can start exploring.

And then our intention is to equip you with three easy practical ways that you can start leveraging AI and senior living. We’re joined today by our guest, Amber Bardon and Matt Reiners from Parasol Alliance. Thank you both so much for being here. If you’re not familiar with these two, let’s go ahead and have them introduce themselves.

So Amber, let’s go ahead and start with you.

Amber: Hey everybody. I see a couple of our clients in the attendee list. Um, so happy to see you guys here. Thanks for attending. I am Amber Bardon. I am [00:02:00] the founder and CEO of Paris Alliance. I’ve been in senior living for 18 years. Um, started parisel nine years ago and excited to be here.

Christie: Awesome. All right. Matt, what about you?

Matt: So, I mean, since we’re giving $5 away, I gotta start this off the right way, right. Ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai. So there’s a quick 50 bucks right there. Um, yeah, so I totally lost track of the question because I was just prepping for that. But, uh, Chief Growth Officer at Parasol Alliance here.

Uh, just really excited to dive deeper into this where I’m using AI in my own personal life. Uh, and how I’m starting to see the senior living, uh, really starting to transform by using it as well. And, uh, yeah.

Christie: All right. Well, let’s go ahead and dive in. Amber, I’ve got a question for you. So we’ll go ahead and start with you.

Um, just as it relates to foundations and doing the due diligence needed to really make sure that before launching an AI system or solution out into the ethers, [00:03:00] what is kind of needed or what steps should people be thinking through before they do that?

Amber: So I love this question because everything we do here at Parasol Alliance is all about building a foundation and understanding the use case.

And I know that there’s a lot of veterans who’ve been in this industry for a long time on the call. And so we’ve all seen these new latest and greatest things come out. So in the past it was EMR and is what’s an EMR versus an EHR and what’s the cloud. And I think AI is the latest word that we’re hearing.

I mean, we all know that we’ve been to a conference and, you know, we make jokes about how many times, um, until we hear the, hear, hear the word AI mentioned, or how many times it’s coming up. And I think the, the challenge here with this technology is, is that, And EMR is self explanatory. Like we, we know what that means.

And I think AI is so new that, you know, the entire world is finding out together what the capabilities are. And I just want to cautious client, caution clients, because I have, I have, we’ve had some clients come to us and say, well, we want to use AI and it’s like, well, what is that, what does that actually mean?

Like, do you even, do you, do you know what you’re [00:04:00] asking for? What’s your use case? Or do you just want to say it’s something that you have? So I think it’s really important to understand. Um, you know, what do you mean by AI? What are the actual problems you want to solve? Because we want to make sure that we’re actually implementing effective systems that can produce positive results and affect actual change and transformation rather than just getting something because it sounds like the latest buzzword or because you met a vendor somewhere and they convinced you this was a great idea.

So I think it’s important to look at what are we, what problems are we trying to solve? Um, you know, again, when we, when we talk about AI, there’s such a huge application and we wrote a white paper about this. It’s built on our website for free. If anybody wants to read it. And we interviewed a lot of the major vendors in the space because it could be built into a software that you already have.

So a lot of the resident engagement apps have AI built into them. It could be something like note taking tools, which my coworker here, Matt Reiner’s loves to use as AI note taking tools. Um, you know, it could be as advanced as some of these copilot tools that can sit on top of your, your systems like point click care, your financial systems and pull actual [00:05:00] generative AI database information for you, um, which sounds really cool and exciting.

But I think we have to remember that we can’t get data out unless we have data in our system. So if all your, your information is still in spreadsheets. That type of AI is not gonna be useful for you. Same with like A-A-K-P-I type system. So I think it’s really important to just always take a step back, understand what are we trying to solve for, and then let’s figure out how to solve this problem with AI being one of those options and not just something we’re jumping to without fully understanding.

Christie: Beautifully said. I think it’s super important to remember also that this is a tool. Right. And there’s something that you shared when we were preparing for this conversation that I thought was super important, super profound is that this is a marathon, not a sprint. And that by treating it as a sprint, we could potentially make things worse, right?

And we want to use this to enhance, optimize, to use Matt’s word of the quarter, and to make things better and to make what we do better. So I love that. [00:06:00] Um, and one more quick follow up question on that, because I know that this is what you guys do at Parasol Alliance, is helping to shift that culture and the mindset around tech.

Tech as a whole, right? Yes, AI is a piece of that. But what are some things that you guys are doing or tips that you might have for people wanting to shift that culture?

Amber: So I think it really falls in line with the comments I made earlier. So we talk a lot about technology culture, and we talk with our clients about technology culture.

And I think the first thing to understand with that is that your leadership team needs to be aligned with what you want your technology culture to be both for staff and residents. And, you know, do you want to be on the cutting edge, the bleeding edge, the leading edge, the, there’s probably other edges I’m missing the bot behind edges, um, in the middle, you know, where do you want to be?

And I think you need to be in agreement because, you know, I mean, so many times being in this industry for so long, and I’m sure everybody on this call can relate that, you know, 1 department decides to go out and buy 1, Type of [00:07:00] technology. Um, it’s not fully vetted or the foundations aren’t there, and you’re paying for something that never gets fully implemented.

Um, maybe you’ve told residents about it, and then they’re frustrated that it never worked out. You didn’t have the infrastructure to support it. So I think that it’s really important to identify what are your technology priorities all around and where does AI and innovation fall amongst the other things that also need to get done from a process perspective, a business systems perspective and infrastructure perspective.

for having me. Um, and I think by having that transparency in place with, um, open conversations about where do you want to go? And again, going back to what problems are we solving, I think is how you can start to build that culture of, um, embracing it because the last thing you want to do is just go out and buy the greatest thing without a good implementation plan.

And then everyone’s frustrated. Like, oh, we always go out and buy the stuff and then we don’t use it. Or we just talk about doing it. We never follow through or it’s sort of half implemented.

Christie: Awesome. Matt, anything you want to add to that? It’s okay. It’s not

Matt: about, I [00:08:00] mean, just what was the original question?

I mean, it’s just about

Christie: foundations, tech culture, just shifting the culture. I think, yeah, so I,

Matt: you know, I think from what I’ve seen coming over here, so I come from like the resident tech side and now kind of overseeing like all the technology, you know, it’s definitely a top down culture. And I think as we’re looking at the staffing shortages and some of the other things that this industry is facing, technology is one of those things that I think could be helpful.

Help connect a lot of those dots. And I think just embracing that and understanding it, but also acknowledging, right? Like, I think a lot of people are scared about AI and becoming a humanoid, uh, robot that’s, you know, going around and taking over the nurse, but like, I look at it as more of a tool that’s kind of been said already.

And like, how do we optimize that? Um, to really enhance what we’re doing in day to day and maximizing that human connection.

Christie: Beautiful. I love that. And even kind of on that nurse example, like it makes me think about I’ve worked in senior living communities for most of my career, and I know that the clinical team is busy, right?

Well, everyone’s [00:09:00] busy, but they’re busy. And if some of that charting or some of that more admin type stuff could be done, they get to spend even more time with their residents, right? Doing the human to human connection and care that is required. Yeah. Okay. Um, my next question is around kind of striking a balance.

And we’re kind of talking about that right now as far as A. I. Versus humans and maintaining that separation and understanding that we’re not being replaced. We are given a tool to enhance what we do as humans. So is there anything that, you know, any tips or any thoughts you have on striking a balance between those 2?

Matt: Yeah, so I’ll give you the, uh, I think the phrase of this whole, uh, this whole webinar, which is quote, automate the mundane and elevate the meaningful end quote. So really when I think about that, right, like using this as a tool to take over some of those tedious work, right? Like the, the data [00:10:00] entry, answering some of those FAQs that are always happening.

To really elevate what we’re doing, right? If we’ve got 40 hours in the week, I imagine a lot of us are working more than that, but if you can save 10 hours a week, what are you going to be sitting that extra 10 hours on, right? It’s going to be more of that meaningful stuff. Maybe that human connection stuff to really push the business forward or really optimize what you’re doing.

Um, and I know we’ve been talking about like the three ways to use, uh, AI and senior living. I just want to highlight one of those. So I recently interviewed Joe Velderman, uh, VP of innovation for Cypress living, uh, podcast raising tech. Definitely check it out. I think it just came out a couple of weeks ago.

And one of the really cool things that they’re using for that is, you know, they had a lot of internal questions popping up, right? Someone’s on weekend staff, uh, a situation pops up. They’re not sure what to do. Um, before they started implementing AI, they had this 200, 300 page binder. And what they did is basically uploaded that to Microsoft pure view, connected it with, [00:11:00] uh, you know, a learning language management platform, like chat GPT, so someone can basically ask a question like, Hey, I’m dealing with X.

What is our standard operating procedure for that? Right. So it’s like an internal jackpot that they were able to create with some of their standard operating procedures. To really help minimize the amount of time it would take for someone to ask a question, get back to them. And now they’ve got this built internally.

So just one of the three ways that I’ve seen people do it and with sales and marketing. Yeah. And I’ve seen even, even seen people do that on the sales and marketing side, right? They take their SOPs, put it into a similar platform like that. So anywhere, anybody, you know, they might be dealing with discovery or deeper in the funnel, right.

And they’re able to ask what’s best practices, um, specific to our company and our organization to help maximize that, uh, opportunity to either, you know, move that resident in or move them down further down the pipeline.

Amber: Yeah, and Christie, if I can jump in here, I think what Matt is saying is really important because, you know, I started off answering my first question [00:12:00] about all this new technology that we’ve seen in the last, you know, 20 years in this industry.

And I think what we don’t talk enough about is the additional burden of time that these systems have placed on our staff, especially care staff. I mean, the amount of time people have to spend answering emails, the amount of time people have to spend documenting in the EMR. And I think that’s the burden that is not necessarily acknowledged or planned for in a lot of cases, especially when we have staff that aren’t as tech savvy, and this is where I think the true power of AI can come in where we can try to automate this so that we can get our data in much more efficiently and time effectively, that’s a word, time efficiently, and then be able to then have that output where we can get our data out for data driven decisions.

Christie: I love that. And we’re going to be giving you guys way more than three ways to use AI. So thank you, Matt, for kicking us off with that. Um, okay. So I do think that it is a good time for us to start shifting into some more practical use cases. And we’ve talked a lot about how Matt’s personally using it, maybe how I’m [00:13:00] personally using it.

So, Matt, I would love if you could kind of take us through maybe like when you very, very first. Got introduced to chat GPT or whatever system you’re using and kind of like, I know I don’t have a ton of time, but maybe walk us through what that looked like when you were first getting started and kind of how it translates now to how you’re using it.

Matt: For sure. So I remember the day that I was first introduced to chat GPT, uh, and as is. As is, uh, I think natural getting introduced to it. My first prompt to it was to write my wife, uh, a love poem. And I, you know, it, it spit something out very quick. I then read it to my wife. She had no idea that anything written it, wrote it besides myself.

I read it to her and she cried and, uh, I felt so bad. That, uh, that like this chat bot created that. So it definitely, uh, I did tell her afterwards for the record, but, you know, I think how that’s kind of evolved over time, right. Is, uh, you know, the way that I’ve started using AI, [00:14:00] so definitely chat GPT consistently, I think, you know, the way that I think about it.

I still have to have the ideas. It just helps me to put the framework together of like what that can look like and what I’ve done with my own. So I’ve created my own GPT, just have the premium version of chat GPT. So I call it Matt GPT. So whenever someone on my team asked for something, I say, Matt, GPT helped.

I’m not lying to them. Amber knows that I say that quite frequently. Um, but I basically exported all, I was able to export all my LinkedIn messages. I got 14, 000 lines of my voice. into it to find my tonality, my level of professionalism and stuff like that, to really just teach this the way that I speak so I can put things into my own words, into my own writing.

Um, and that’s just chat GPT. A couple of other things I’ve started using motion AI, which is something that’s, uh, basically speech. Creates my calendar for me. I just have to put the projects that I’m working on in there. And then I’ll just fill it in based on level of priority and due dates. So with my ADHD, it’s super helpful that, you know, I come in, in the morning, my calendar is already created [00:15:00] for me.

And it’s set up that if someone does book time with me, they can schedule over it. It just adjusts my calendar from there. Um, you know, if you’re familiar with me, I run a podcast, probably 140 episodes. Now use a platform called Riverside. That’s taken my editing down by like 95%. You used to spend, you know, three hours pumping everything out.

I’ve got it down now to 20 minutes, 25 minutes. So. Um, also like read AI, plot AI to like record meetings, love taking the transcripts, putting it in the chat, GPT, uh, getting summaries, getting to do’s out of that. And then, uh, you know, I think it’s really just, I forgot what it was like to work without it, unfortunately, which I think is a blessing and a curse.

And, uh, you know, it’s really helped to transform even my own productivity where I can pump out more and it’s actually at a higher quality than it was before.

Christie: I have learned so much from you. So I love that you just share a little bit more of how you’re using this. I personally am still a little new. I know I shared something on LinkedIn [00:16:00] earlier in just promoting this that it’s still somewhat new for me. I’m still in the like writing love poems phase. Matt, um, no, but you know, there are folks on our team that have taught me about creating a meal plan, creating a grocery list, like anything that you would potentially use a use brain space for that you don’t need to.

I will say that I have found personally, I think I have more creative freedom. Like when I very first kind of started dabbling in it. Right. And you all met Tucker on our team. He’s taught me a lot as well, but it’s not replacing my ideas. It’s helping me refine some of my ideas and make them, you know, Be more concise and valuable.

And so I think that that’s really, you know, for me, been super, super impactful.

Matt: Yeah. And to your point about, cause I think, you know, if people want to get their feet, you know, put their toes into AI and using it, I think you may get a good call of like using it in your personal life. So I’ve started using this, like even just this last weekend, um, I had to create recipes for me, pick the recipes I wanted, had to create the, [00:17:00] uh, the, the shopping list for that based on the aisle.

And then I basically just went ordered all online schedule to pick up. So my, you know, I’ve got all my meals ready for the week that I need, we’ll need to cook all, we’ll take less than 30 minutes, but that’s probably saved me two to three hours from, you know, I think over the week and like now, what am I going to do at that time?

Right. I can be a better dad, a better partner. Um, and take, again, taking out some of that, uh, I’m going to go back to that quote from before, but automate the mundane and elevate the meaningful and taking out some of those things that I need to get done. Right. But like just trying to figure out of what that can look like.

Christie: That quote is going to live on for decades to come. I can feel it in my bones. I love that. All right. Let’s we’re we don’t have 10 minutes left friends. So let’s talk actually about specific senior living use cases. I know Matt shared one already. Um, are there any specific, you know, use cases for senior [00:18:00] living sales and marketing teams that you can see be really effective or helpful, especially if they’re still just getting started in it.

Either of you can go.

Matt: Uh, yeah. So I see a huge opportunity, especially for the marketing teams, just in terms of content creation, right? So like what anybody on this call can go do take all the copy on your website, right? Any external facing copy your brochures, your blog posts, put that into a GPT.

Identify your tonality, right? And the way that you’re talking about things to kind of teach it that, and then what I would do is lean into AI to identify like, what are some of the top 10 issues that baby boomers are facing? Adult children are facing today. And you know, that’s pulling from different resources.

I’ve seen things that will pull it out of like Reddit and different things like that. Like. What are the main issues that these people are facing and then going and creating content around that? Um, and I think with something like that, right? Like it’s, I would not copy and paste it directly out of that.

A key way to tell if someone’s using [00:19:00] a generative platform like that in their writing, if they’ve got the dash, right. If you see like the long dash, I don’t even know where to use the dash myself. Uh, if it’s a colon or semi colon, This is why I have a premium version of Grammarly to help me with those things.

But what I would say is like, it does 80 percent of the work for you. Right. And then able to take that repurpose that content, I think is a great way to do that. You know? So in terms of like blog writing or email campaigns or social media posts, you know, and then there’s platforms, like I know Canva has got an AI, um, opportunity within it, like creating images and stuff around that.

Like I do think. You can create content at scale now and do it with a smaller team and really help to, uh, prioritize what that could look like. Um, so I would say that would be a, another one of the three. I’ve got one more unless Amber’s got one.

Amber: No, why don’t you, why don’t you keep going? I’ll comment when you’re done.

Matt: Sounds good. And then the other one, I think there’s a huge opportunity. So I think it’s salespeople, right? Like [00:20:00] There’s been a transformation, granted, depending on who you ask may have always been the most important thing, but the key in discovery, right? Like understanding who are you selling to and like, what are their pain points and what are those things are?

And like, I don’t know how people are using it today, but like, if I’ve seen CRMs that will record calls and stuff. So like, whereas there’s a huge opportunity, I think in one of two ways with this, right? So one, if you’re doing the discovery, if it’s being, um, stored somewhere automatically, right? Or maybe you’re doing it manually, but maybe you learn someone, you know, was it played baseball in their previous life?

Uh, you know, we’re in the Navy and some of the other things, and just putting that into a chat GPT to get some thoughts for just like, how can I personalize some thoughts or just. You know, I wouldn’t, it’s still being a level of, uh, authentic with it. Right. Like you still, you don’t want to start saying, you know, asking questions about the Navy, making it seem like you’re in the Navy.

Right. Cause that’s just going to be fake. But I think there’s a level of personalization that we can do to really craft tailored, you know, follow up messages [00:21:00] and really the best engagement strategy. Um, and I think a huge opportunity for sales teams to like, let’s say if those calls are being recorded in some capacity, if you’re getting the transcript, Put that into, you know, chat, GPT, other platforms that you’re using, basically say to it, be like, Hey, I want you to act as a sales coach and, uh, and look through this, um, and give me any points that are where I could have asked a better question or any indicators that you saw, like, and there’s even components where with chat, GPT, I was doing this this morning where, um, you know, you can set up like the feature where you’re live speaking and you can tell it like, I want you to be an adult child.

These are your problems. And you can role play. At whenever you want, and I’m about to turn my GPT and my, uh, my therapist coach, I think, um, I’ve got nothing too crazy to hide, so I can put it into the, the world, but I would say with, you know, AI, uh, just be nice to it in case it does ever take over. So if it’s, you know, in your, uh, digital file that you use your manners.

So just make sure that I’ve had to teach my wife. Cause she’s very nice. [00:22:00] You gotta be nice. My wife has been known to yell at, uh, I won’t say her name cause she’s right over here, but uh, not my wife, but Alexa, um, the, so just like keeping that hyper focus. And I think, you know, it can play so many different roles.

And again, you have to have the ideas. And I think being creative is like the key to using it. Right. And then continuing to push the boundaries with that. Um, And then the only, the other thing I would ask too, I think from a learning perspective, I had this aha moment the other day in the shower when I was reading this 250 page book that could have been probably summarized in 10 pages.

What I’m doing now. Did you just say

Amber: you were reading a book in the shower?

Matt: No, no, no, no. I was going to revisit that. From reading a book. Okay. But like I’m reading a 250 page book about around hook points, right? Like if you’re in marketing, you’re familiar with that is, you know, there’s so much fluff in this thing.

So now what I’m trying to do is basically take, find that PDF, take that PDF or take best practices, get the summary for me. So I understand the concepts that I can kind of pull on that information, [00:23:00] uploading that into my GPT and basically. Having that be my brain to memorize and remember everything. And then I can just pull on that information as needed.

Um, so

just trying to clone myself and make way better and my, my AI version of me as hair for the record. So yes,

Christie: we can’t wait to see a photo of him.

Matt: Thank you. Yeah.

Amber: Yeah. So Christine, a couple minutes we have left, I can just add my perspective. So if anybody in the call is, um, you know, taking a little bit, I just got a weird echo.

I do not use AI on a regular basis. So if anybody in this call is feeling like you’re in the camp where you’re a little bit unsure on how to use it, I just want to say that I am not a user so I rely on Matt GPT to do a lot of that. On my behalf, so I haven’t jumped into personally using it yet so I can understand if there’s like hesitation or concerns about it.

But I think Matt’s everything Matt said is a great starting point for you to for you to use. And I can’t really speak too much of the sales and marketing side of AI [00:24:00] that’s a lot more in Matt’s world. Um, but if you, we also have a podcast called Raising Tech and we’ve had a lot of vendors in there talking about how they’re using AI.

We did an AI webinar. So if anybody in this call is interested in learning about AI applications and more clinical or resident engagement or false prevention type settings, I would say that’s a great free resource. To check out is raising tech podcast. Um, you know, and I think I mentioned a couple of use cases earlier with just being able to do data and data driven decisions.

And I think that that is something that I personally find really exciting, uh, to be able to ask, um, ask your systems as if you’re asking your phone for information that it can search and give you generative AI answers. So I think that that’s pretty cool.

Matt: Yeah. And the one, and I just want to shout out, uh, our host and their platforms.

I think they’re using AI in a great use case, right? And it’s, it, to me, it seems simple. You know, I’m a sales mail user, big fan of it. And, uh, one of the things they do now, cause before, you know, I would have to basically title every [00:25:00] video and they would, I would never title them and I would lose them all the time.

But now there’s an AI function where it basically, I would imagine, takes my transcripts, comes up with a short. Catchy title automatically puts it in there to just make my organization that much easier and like That’s a great example and use case of AI to, again, and I have to keep, I keep forgetting it, automate the mundane and elevate the meaningful.

Right. So taking those, those, you know, maybe a 30 seconds each time. Right. But that adds up if you’re sending out all of these all day and like, that’s just a great example of how I think AI can be used in the short run.

Christie: Thank you so much, Matt, for that beautiful shout out. It has. Certainly enhanced and elevated my more meaningful conversation and definitely automated the mundane.

So love this quote, love our AI functionality within sales mail. And yeah, I think that just enhancing what we’re doing right. Versus completely replacing what we’re doing. So I just want to, as we’re wrapping up here, I want to open it up, see if there are any [00:26:00] questions. I don’t see any in the Q and a section.

So Abby, if you do see any holler at me. Um, But in the meantime, we are here. So we will hang on just for a couple more minutes if you do have questions, but I do see some of you hopping off. So thank you all so much for being here today to our guests. Thank you so much for bringing your experience, your expertise, spending time with us, uh, to our audience.

We appreciate you spending 30 minutes of your time and attention with us. We know that that is, you know, a big ask. So stay tuned. We were going to announce how many times AI was said during today’s senior living sizzle and how much money we’ll be donating to the Alzheimer’s association. If you’ve got any questions for us, of course, drop them in.

Oh, total donation, 3. 15.

Matt: Awesome. And RC, I would call that caffeinated passion. But yeah, I’ve added like four iced coffees, straight black today, and I haven’t ate yet. So, uh, that’s probably it. He’s always

Christie: like this. I do feel like this is your consistent state of [00:27:00] energy.

Matt: All right, friends.

Christie: Uh, someone does say they would love a list of AI tools that you mentioned, Matt, and their use cases.

I would encourage you to follow Matt on LinkedIn if you’re not already. He does do an incredible job of sharing prompts with us, sharing the tools that he’s using, sharing practical applications. What type of programs or campaigns do you recommend automating for prospects? That was one of the questions that came in.

I don’t know if either of you have any thoughts on that. Uh, we’ve got

Matt: I could take that And here I I did post this gosh, this was seven months ago I don’t know if I can put it in the real chat. Um, because it looks like I can only do hosting panelists. So I don’t know if someone can put that in there, but that was basically just highlighting all the, uh, ones that I use today.

And it pretty much lines up. I didn’t say all those, um, Thank you, Abby. Uh, question, what types of programs or campaigns do you recommend automating for prospects? So I think when I think of [00:28:00] prospects and like the automation, right. I think the lead list is super important, right? Like, how are you reaching out to these people?

How, where parts are they in the funnel, right? Like there’s simple things and you know, I’m always hesitant to like hyper automate any sales related things. Cause I think there’s a level of personalization and authenticity that needs to come through in order to do that. But like, let’s say if you’ve got.

You know, a database of a thousand leads and they’re all just kind of getting the same marketing emails right now. Like they’re all in different parts of the buying journey. They’re probably one might be wanting to move in. They might be looking for their family members. So like what resources are we giving them?

Right. So like if it’s a adult child, I might be giving them a resource of like how to have this conversation with mom or dad, you know, if it is a someone that might be moving in and looking for themselves, like. You know, all the benefits of the socialization and sharing the events that are coming up. So like, I would look at it more of like those along, along those lines, um, to basically create the content specific to the end [00:29:00] user.

Um, and what are some of their pain points? Right. And like, there’s ways you can do that based on data labeling to really hyper focus the right things to the right people at the right time.

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