79. Bringing Senior Living into the Future with Joe Velderman

In this episode, Matt Reiners talks with Joe Velderman, VP of Innovation at Cypress Living, about how technology is reshaping senior living. Joe shares how his team uses tech to streamline operations, improve resident experiences, and meet the expectations of a more tech-savvy generation. From AI tools to voice assistants, they’re finding ways to modernize while keeping care personal. Joe also offers advice for communities on staying competitive through strategic planning and innovation. 

Find us online:
Website
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn

Transcript

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] Welcome back. My name is Matt Reiners and I'm excited for today's episode sitting down with Joe Velderman of Cypress Living. Cypress Living sits between two not for profit operating partners, Cypress Cove and Cypress at Home, to centrally support finance and HR, Marketing technology and clinical excellence.

Joe Velderman is the VP of [00:01:00] innovation and leads digital transformation across all three organizations. Joe has become the like savant for everything technology within senior living. I've seen him speak on multiple panels. He's spoken on panels. I've been a part of. And I just love his approach.

I think it's a really realistic approach and I think he's doing awesome things when it comes to technology and innovation and it within senior living. And I think one of the few people that's actually doing it right. So kudos to you on that, Joe, and you're just an awesome guy. And I appreciate our blossoming friendship here and I'm excited to have you on today.

So thanks for joining. 

Joe Velderman: Matt, I'm super excited to be here with you today and dive into as much as we can in 45 minutes about tech and aging services. 

Matt Reiners: Love it. So Joe, the first place I always like to start with our guest is, can you just share your story and how you ended up in senior living?

Sure. 

Joe Velderman: I think so many people who work in aging services, we didn't grow up, as kids [00:02:00] and teenagers thinking that we were going to go work in aging services. I think that, aging services is just a really special industry, a really special place to work. And I think that aging services has a way of finding people that it wants to have be a part of this really.

Special unique compassionate industry that we're in and that's my story to after college, I was working for a really large human resources technology consulting firm supporting caterpillar and about 70, 000 cat retirees and, an old friend approached me and said, hey, we've got this little business in senior living and we think you might be a good fit for our team.

Would you be interested in coming to explore it? It just followed that opportunity and didn't know anything about, you Aging services or senior living or anything like that, but quickly fell in love with the work that happens in this industry and the immense opportunity that exists for people who want to [00:03:00] flex their technology skills and their technology passion in this space.

There's just a lot of opportunity for that. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I would agree. And I love how you described it. Yeah. Cause I find like people either, you know, they grew up in this industry, right. and they had like parents that worked in it, or we kind of just like stumble across it. And you know, I think we, you know, don't want us to put words in your mouth, but fall in love with it.

And like terms of the impact, what you can do and how you can help people. And, it just feels good at the end of the day. 

Joe Velderman: I never want to do anything else. Like I never go work in any other aspect of healthcare. I just. I love the work that happens here and the relationships that we get to build with residents.

It's really special. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I would agree. And coming into this industry, I've only been in it nine years now, but definitely feel like I've found my people and uh, grateful for that. And now, Joe I'm wondering if you can just provide an overview of how you think about innovation and digital transformation and like specifically just thinking about how do you manage that interplay between governance, infrastructure, enterprise applications, [00:04:00] and data.

Joe Velderman: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there, Matt. I think about technology and I call it my 4 building blocks of technology. Governance for me as the foundational building block. How do we as an organization? And I think this applies even to organizations outside of healthcare and aging services.

How do we as an organization think about technology, which are what's our posture for technology adoption and digital transformation? How do we budget for that? How do we staff for that? How do we think about where we are in the technology adoption? Bell curve? What's our policies and procedures?

What's our decision making around technology? So that all plays into governance. And, Here in Cypress, at least I really view that as like my primary role. My primary focus for our organization is taking on that governance responsibility when it comes to technology and innovation and digital transformation.

And then for me, the building block that sits right on top of that governance layer is what I call infrastructure and. Infrastructure, I think, is what a lot of [00:05:00] people think about when they think about technology, right? It's computers and servers and switches and routers and firewalls and Wi Fi and all that kind of stuff.

And that's like table stakes for any business, really, in 2024, almost 2025 here, right? You have to be good at that infrastructure layer. It's become. Synonymous with a utility service, right? You walk up to a light switch, you flip the light switch, you expect the lights to come on, or you walk up to a drinking fountain, you press a button, you expect water to come out.

The same thing is true for many employees across all industries, really, when they walk up to a computer or a printer, they just expect it to work. They don't care how, but they expect it to work. And we need to be good at infrastructure. We need to be, there has to be a reliable layer for us, right?

And then the building block for me that sits on top of infrastructure is what I call enterprise applications. So these are the software programs that nearly all of our end users use on a daily basis to drive workflows and collect information in [00:06:00] aging services. It happens to be a lot of different applications that have a 3 letter acronym.

So it might be like CRM or customer relationship management software, or our EHR electronic health record. Or our POS or our point of sale platform, but, in aging services, we have a number of different enterprise applications that we use to drive workflows, drive process and collect information on a regular basis.

And again, I think we're at a point in aging services where, the dust is settled on who the dominant players in this space are. And I think, it's really important that we have really reliable, robust methods of collecting information and driving healthy, productive workflows using those software applications.

So We're really resolute on that here at Cypress as well. And then, for me, this next frontier as we get into artificial intelligence and machine learning and automation is, what are we doing with all the data that we are collecting in these different enterprise applications?

I [00:07:00] say, I've said before that aging services and specifically senior living, I think, is very unique in the broader U. S. healthcare ecosystem. In the sense that we get a chance to see our I'm going to use air quotes here patients. I know we don't call them patients. We call them residents, but we get a chance to see our residents or patients every single day.

And we know their habits, we know what their preferences, we know a lot about them that a typical health care setting that's very episodic isn't going to know about a patient. I just think we have tremendous opportunities to do more with the data that we have. And then if you think about those four building blocks, there's sort of ways to like, we've that word innovation through all of that.

Right? So how at its core innovation really means change. And hopefully change for the better. But how can we be innovative when it comes to our governance efforts? How can we be innovative when it comes to our infrastructure, our enterprise applications, and certainly our data, right? There's lots of opportunity there from an innovation perspective, but there's [00:08:00] other things that sort of weave through those building blocks through Cyber security is a great topic.

When we talk about cyber security, that's something that really weaves through all of those different building blocks, right? Digital transformation is another 1 kind of along the same vein as innovation, but it really weaves through all 4 of those different building blocks. If you think about it, it's like building blocks or maybe a pyramid or something like that, but with this string or these series of strings that sort of weave through each of the different layers.

That's how I frame up the different elements of what we do here at Cypress from a technology and innovation perspective. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that way of thinking about it because I think to your point about infrastructure, right? When people think about technology and I. T. That's the first thought.

I. T. Is great until it's not working. And I think there's that level of frustration that comes out with that. Really it's this all encompassing view to make sure that we're attacking it in the right way. And I think too many times I'm seeing senior living providers, right? They don't have a Joe Velderman, so they're struggling to put that together and just assume everything and anything is going to work.

And I'm curious, Joe. [00:09:00] Granted, I haven't been to your community, but I know you guys have won many awards. I've interacted with you a bunch. You know, It seems like you guys are on the cutting edge. And I'm wondering, like, how you've been intentional of creating a culture around innovation. 

Joe Velderman: I think there's a lot that goes into that, right?

It starts with leadership. When I was brought on here at Cypress the organization just welcomed the 2nd CEO of the organization ever. And, pretty young guy named Troy Churchill that came from the post acute care space really. But Troy, really had a vision for ways that we could leverage technology and just, transform our business, utilizing technology to create efficiency, to create better resident experiences to create more trust with families and stakeholders and I think for Cypress, at least it starts with leadership.

You need to have leadership really bought into this idea that. We're going to be bullish about trying new technologies, and we're going to be bullish about trying ways that we can [00:10:00] digitally transform our business. And that pretty quickly, I think relates and matriculates into the overall residents experience.

And what we're seeing now is resident expectation. When you think about people, like my mom and dad, or your mom and dad, Matt. Technology is a part of their lives, right? And so many of the residents that we serve today, maybe didn't grow up with the technology that we use today, but certainly the residents of the future are.

Akin to and tuned into the technology that we use today. I was at a conference within the last year. I can't remember exactly when it was, but somebody related this idea that the iPhone came out in 2008. and I was like, yeah, it was 2008. I forgot about that. But when you think about that was 16 years ago, and when you think about somebody who's turning the age 80, in 2024.

 16 years [00:11:00] ago. They were 64 years old. They were probably still working Absolutely, they're familiar with smartphones, right? They've had them for 10 plus years at this point And if you've got a smartphone, you've got apps on that phone you engage with your favorite retailers and businesses whether it be your bank or your Favorite coffee shop or what have you, because, everybody's got an app these days.

And we have to start thinking about, what does it mean for aging services providers, senior living communities to really position technology in a way that's going to meet consumer expectations. And I'm. I'm a little bit worried that we're not thinking enough about that. We're all focused on, COVID post pandemic recovery efforts and building up our censuses and everything like that.

And we're still focused on, what we can do to combat staffing challenges as an industry. But I hear very few people talking about technology expectations of this boomer generation. That's going to start knocking on our door here pretty soon. I think it's, I think it's really important that we think about that strategically as businesses and I'm glad that Troy had [00:12:00] that foresight, 5 years ago to really position our business to be on the forefront of thinking about how we can meet those consumer expectations.

Matt Reiners: Yeah it's, we're an industry that lags behind when it comes to technology. I think as if you look at the average, just across the entire spectrum and, speaking to those expectations, a recent story I heard from one of our clients three years ago, they gave a resident survey, 15 percent of people, one, five filled it out digitally, whether through a website or something like that. They just issued the same resident survey and now that number's up to 50%, five, zero. So it's just kind of interesting. Granted, it's a small thing, right? Just like, the resident satisfaction survey, it's inevitable it's coming. And I think those organizations that are going to focus on it, embrace it, invest in it, adopt it are be going to be the ones that are going to set themselves up for success, especially with, Hey, labor shortages is a real thing.

And I think one of the ways to circumvent that is through technology. And I know we're get that a little bit later down the road here, but I'm wondering, if there's [00:13:00] been any key lessons Cypress living has learned through its innovative efforts, or if there's been any, unexpected challenges or opportunities that have have emerged.

Joe Velderman: Yeah. In many ways, I think of Cypress as being a little bit of a trailblazer when it comes to technology and innovation. Specifically, I know that there's a lot of other organizations that are doing some really innovative things. I have tremendous respect for them, but One of the things that I've learned again, putting my governance hat on is that, this work it takes a lot of effort.

It's it's not easy. There's certainly tons of opportunity that's out there. I'm sure, like many people in my role, my LinkedIn. Inbox gets, tagged just about every week. It seems like with some person that's trying to sell the latest and greatest software or widget or something like that.

And, in order for us as an organization to really. Truly embrace some of these new technologies and take advantage of them the way that many of these you know vendors and [00:14:00] many of these partners are positioning them It takes a significant amount of effort because we've got you know 25 years of being wound a certain way And doing things a certain way and we have to almost unwind that and figure out like what's the new way of doing it Now that we have this new technology, right?

And so You know, I was super excited when I came on board 5 years ago and I thought, this is going to be great. We're going to implement robots and we're going to implement smart home. We're going to implement all these great new technologies. What you don't realize is that, there's a significant amount of change management that has to happen with staff with processes and certainly with residents and their family members in order to really be effective at that change management.

And so we've. We've taken out a governance framework here that we're really not going to do more than like what we call, six innovative projects a year because it's just too much change management, right? It was too disruptive to do [00:15:00] more than five or six. Really big digital transformation or innovation projects a year.

And we've had to really temper our pace a little bit just because change management is hard, and some days I feel like a salesperson internally going around, working with residents, working with staff members, working with family members, talking to them, reiterating, the incredible benefits of the new technology and, there's resistance naturally.

Nobody likes change, right? There's resistance to why are we doing it differently? What's the outcome? What's the benefit? And we have to be really intentional when we introduced new technologies about how we approach change management. And there's probably even opportunities here at Cypress for us to really think about change management.

From a governance perspective, and how we can do that in the most healthy way, because that is the push pull of innovation and senior living. I think that's probably the push pull for many operators. There's a financial element of that too. But but I think, many operators are just really hesitant to take on.

that change [00:16:00] management piece of it, because it is really difficult. When you start getting into the weeds nobody likes change, like I said before, and it is really difficult to work through that change management piece of it. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it's one of those things that I think I underestimated in my own technology journey, whether it was working with senior living communities or even own organizations that I was uh, was an, is a leader.

And I always like to tell people that there's three definites in life, right? Death taxes and change. And I think embracing the change incorporating it and understanding that it's inevitable and really seeing Um, I found myself having to be that salesperson to kind of even sell it internally as well.

And it's almost like that with them, right? What's in it for me, how's it going to make my life easier or better, and just making sure to position it that way for people. I think in an industry that. There's people who've been doing this job 30, 40 years. And the mentality of I've been doing it this way the entire time.

Why, Why change? Right? So change management, I think is definitely I think too many times, obviously you can address that the importance of it, but these other operators don't really see the significance of that [00:17:00] and how that can impact one's business. Now, one of the things I want to touch on with you, which I feel like is like the hottest buzzword in the industry right now uh, is AI, which we, there's so many different ways we can take this, but I'm curious, like how you're seeing artificial intelligence currently being used in aging services.

And really if there's any specific use cases or pilot programs that you're excited about. 

Joe Velderman: well, first of all, it is a big topic, right? We could probably even do a part 2 at some point if I like this but when we talk about AI, and in 2024 2025, I think a lot of people are resonating with this idea that, there's this new flavor of AI this generative AI, chat GPT and Gemini and copilot and stuff like that.

But, it's important for me, I think, to remind. All of our listeners that, there's been a lot of different flavors of AI. It's been a progression over the last really 50 years. We can look back at significant [00:18:00] milestones over the last 25, 30 years, even of, AI progressing.

You can go back to the, I think it was the early nineties when a computer beat the world's best chess player at chess, or the late nineties, I think IBM Watson ran the board on jeopardy. And, um, and those are that's AI, right? When at its core, artificial intelligence is just computers that are doing thinking.

And so, you know, there has been around for a while. It's just, there's been a lot of accelerated growth in AI. And we have new flavors of AI now. Things like our Roomba robotic vacuums at our house are doing artificial intelligence and our voice assistance that we all have, right?

Whether it be Alexa or Google or Siri. They're doing ai. But now we have this new flavor generative AI and computer vision, ai and we're finding, lots of new use cases for those, right? So I don't know if I could sit here and tell you, Matt, that we have a really robust AI strategy here at [00:19:00] Cypress.

I don't know if anybody really does because this is like brand new for us, right? It's like graduating from riding a bicycle to getting the first car. There's a lot of things that we're going to learn over the next 5 or 10 years, probably about ways that we can apply artificial intelligence. But. We have found successes in utilizing AI already here at Cypress with voice assistance.

We've been using voice assistance for our independent living residents on the campus at Cypress Cove for almost two and a half years now, coming up on three years. And, it keeps getting better and better, right? We can do more things with voice. Just this week. We learned that now residents can put in work orders using their voice.

So they can say things like. Alexa, my dishwasher is broken and the. The Siri devices are the Alexa devices in their home. Asking them a series of questions. What's going on? What room are you in? What room of the house is this happening? And then we'll summarize [00:20:00] it and say, is this okay for me to submit as a work order?

And it's continuing to evolve and it's fun, to see that happening. I think for us, the voice AI assistants really serve as a great concierge companion for our residents. We've seen some efficiencies with, those voice assistants being able to take some of the burden off of our staff.

When residents can ask whether or not the mail has been delivered or not to their voice assistant instead of having to call the front desk. We're giving time back to our front desk people, right? Or activities or culinary. Same thing when you can ask questions about what's on the menu or what activities are happening.

You're saving phone calls, you're saving that, that time for those people to really focus on the most important thing. And so there's uh, some incremental benefits that we've already experienced with those voice AI assistance. What I'm excited about is the convergence of these AI technologies coming together right now.

So we've got these large language models that are. Super natural speaking language assistance, right? I don't know if you've had like [00:21:00] voice conversations with chat GPT or not, but it's like 10x better than having a conversation with Alexa, right? So I anticipate that, companies like Alexa and Siri and Google, some of these voice AI assistants that are out there are going to start to.

Have these large language models applied to them and in the conversations that we're going to be able to have with these devices in the home are going to be incredible. Right? And the things that they're going to be able to do, they're going to be able to like. Dynamically create API connections to software applications that we use.

And you'll be able to, I think you'll be able to say something like, Alexa, I need a ride to my doctor's appointment next week, Tuesday, and it's going to ask you a series of follow up questions and put an appointment on your calendar and, Schedule an Uber and, just do all the things that you need to do in order to make that appointment happen.

And we're not quite there yet, but I think that's coming very quickly. With some of the generative AI that we're seeing out there and then, The generative AI, I think, has like limitless use cases for how we [00:22:00] can apply that in aging services too, right? We've been tinkering a little bit with that.

We're using some of the generative AI capabilities of copilot here at Cypress in conjunction with retrieval augmented generative AI. To train chat bots on, commonly asked questions. We have a chat bot internally here called Hugo and Hugo is a clinical decision making support chat bot that our clinicians can use with reference to a vast library of.

Clinical documents that we've compiled on how we take care of people with specific chronic health care conditions, right? If we're working with a resident here at Cypress Cove that maybe has CHF diabetes or something like that. We can ask Hugo specific questions about how we do certain things and it will reference those documents which are 15 20 page long documents provide a summarized answer on what to do in specific situations on how to provide the Cypress standard of support for [00:23:00] people with those chronic health care conditions.

We just in the last quarter here, we launched a new chat bot called Dex, very similar to Hugo, but Dex references like a 3 inch thick 3 ring binder of information on everything a person would need to know as a weekend manager on duty here. What to do in certain situations, hey, the roof is leaking, or, what do I have to do to, complete my rounds as a weekend manager on duty or whatever. Dex knows the answer to every question that you could possibly ask it from that 3 ring binder. It's just way more efficient to ask a chat bot than it is to flip through a 3 ring binder of information to find a piece of information.

It's fun, building out some of these different tools that we're finding, to be beneficial. The goal for me here at Cypress is to take all this data that we have as an organization, it's specifically information that we know about our residents and we know a lot, right?

We know from our smart home. We know what time they wake up in the morning. We know what time they go for breakfast. We know [00:24:00] what they eat for breakfast. We know what the nutritional content of that breakfast is. We know a lot about their activities throughout the day. We know the social dimensions or the wellness dimensions that those activities have associated with them.

We know lot about their healthcare, their physical healthcare. We know vital statistics. We know all of that kind of stuff. And so what if we could put that all into a central repository and be able to ask a chat bot information about our residents comprehensively know them better without having to have 17 chrome tabs open and look in all these different enterprise applications that we have.

I think that's really powerful, but I also think that I has the ability to synthesize data way better than I can or, the average human can. And so I think if we can put all of that information into a central repository, is going to have a 360 perspective of those residents.

It's going to be able to answer questions for us that we didn't even think to ask. It's going to be able to provide insights on those residents. And that, to me, is very exciting because we're going to be able to [00:25:00] really start to shift. The way that we provide care and services to our residents from being reactive to being much more proactive in the approach that we have.

And so I think that's a significant benefit for our residents here, right? If we're able to say, hey, we're not like the provider down the street or the provider across the state. We have this incredible data tool that we can actually help provide more proactive, predictive healthcare for you. And it's going to increase the quality of your life and the quality of your experience here.

I think it's a major differentiator for our organization. And so that's my longterm vision. That's under the hood of what we're calling our AI strategy right now. Again, I expect that we're going to learn a lot more about ways that we can apply and I hope that others will help us join in on that conversation because I think we're stronger together.

We learn better together. But but I think the opportunity is tremendous for the entire industry and the way that we provide care and services to the incredible residents that we get to support. [00:26:00] 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that. And to follow up on your first comment, we could probably have a whole episode about AI but it's so cool to hear how you, you guys are using it.

And I, I think it was you that said on a panel recently at the CFI conference, there was like, you'd mentioned AI has been around for 50 years, but right now it's still very much in its infancy, right? And like, it's only going to get better. And to your point of what you even learned this past week and the voice stuff, like I know from my own personal workflows, like I've got mine set up now using something called motion where I can tell Siri a certain task I need by a certain day and it'll automatically schedule it on my calendar when I have a free time.

So it's I don't even have to like, Think about that anymore. And I find I forgot what it was like to work before having access to all these tools, which has been really cool to see. A theme of this conversation has been data and data collection and all that sort of stuff, and especially with getting in that's the repository AI could start looking at that, which I'm super excited about.

I think a lot of providers talk about data, but they're not really sure what to do with it. I think. [00:27:00] One of the elephants in the room is sometimes at least from I've seen from the resident side, it can feel invasive, right? Like in terms of tracking all this stuff, granted, the people that are coming to live with you probably know that's part of the plan.

You'll probably get someone that's a little bit more open to that. But I'm wondering, like, how do you and Cypress Living ensure transparency and really gain resident trust and how their data is used? 

Joe Velderman: It's a great question, and we've certainly faced some resistance in that front here as we've been working on our data efforts and our AI efforts here.

Um, again, I think it boils down to understanding and transparency is probably the right word for it. You have to remember a lot of these residents that we're serving today just didn't grow up with technology. And so many of the concepts that we talk about. Are very foreign to them, and so we have to really distill it and break it down to a level that they understand.

But I think what's important for us is to convey our [00:28:00] intent of the use of the data. And so if we say, yes, you're exchanging a little bit of information with us so that we can get to know you better as a human being. And as a resident of Cypress Cove, not so that we can try to sell you more services, not so that we can, move you to another level of care, not so that we can mitigate our expenses.

It's really so that we can provide the best lifestyle here at Cypress for you as the individual. It's a win for the residents at that point. And that truly is our intent. It's not to try to move people through the effect. We talk all the time here at Cypress about trying to keep people independent as long as possible.

That's our goal. And so I think that we can do that more effectively with data and predictive care, but but our goal is not to try to sell people more services. It's not to try to. Benefit from the data that we have. It's really to turn that information around and benefit them.

So it's a [00:29:00] little bit different, I think, than the Google model, right? You can use our free search engine, but in exchange, we're going to collect all this information about you and target ads towards you. Right? That's not our model. And so we just have to be really intentional about conveying our intent and the benefit to our residents.

And I think. Okay. Once people understand that it's very much so like a light bulb moment for them. They're like I already have indicated that I trust you as my provider because I've paid you all this money to come and live here. And I'm entrusting you with basically the rest of my life as a provider here.

And so if I've already indicated that I trust you, and now you're telling me that you're wanting to do the best thing for me with this little bit of data, what objection can I possibly have to sharing this information with you? And so I anticipate, that the challenges that we face around collecting and utilizing data and the resistance that we face around that.

It's probably a temporary [00:30:00] problem. Once we can prove out that what we're going to do with this data is actually meaningful and beneficial to the residents. Everybody's going to want to do it right? Because it's going to benefit them. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, makes sense. I think transparency is the key, right?

And I think people get so. Up in arms and they hear like their data is being collected. But it's like, what data are you actually collecting? It's not like we're taking your social security number and then putting it into the dark web. It's we're trying to find patterns and stuff.

And ultimately to your point, help you live as independent as long as possible. And there's no hidden agenda there. It's like trying to help them. And I'm wondering if you've got any specific stories, whether it's residents or staff who were once skeptics, whether about technology or data, but but now might be believers.

Joe Velderman: One of my favorite stories. So in, in March 2022, we rolled out a new resident engagement platform. The platform that we use is K4 Connect.

It's really. Intended to be a digital means for our consumers to connect with the, the place that they live. We had this big launch event [00:31:00] trying to build a lot of excitement about it. Between the launch event and the afternoon reception, we held like a genius bar in the community to help people download the app and get logged in and everything like that.

Really intentional about, rolling this out with a lot of engagement, a lot of excitement and everything like that. And there was one particular resident who came to the launch event, 10 o'clock in the morning, and you could just see on her face. She was not having it right. She was just adverse to whatever we were doing from a technology perspective.

She sat in her chair with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. And so we go through this like 45 minute presentation about, launching K4 and the app and everything that we had intended to do with K4 and are doing with K4. And you could slowly see things break down with her.

She relaxed her posture and the scowl kind of went away from her face. And she started to understand hey, this is really cool. Actually, [00:32:00] there's a great digitally connected experience here. And then the event was over and we didn't see her at the genius bar, which I didn't really expect to see her at the genius bar.

And then we had an afternoon, like reception to celebrate the launch and she was at the reception and she came up to me and she said I'm sorry, I didn't make it to the genius bar. I ran out to Costco to buy an iPad so that I could download the K4 app and get on board with this. Again, I think it's just breaking down some of those barriers that people may naturally have towards, change and change management technology adoption and helping people understand that this is actually a very usable thing. It's a very beneficial and it was just really heartwarming to me to hear that. This 80 plus year old resident that was, clearly adverse to what we were doing completely changed her perception to the point that she went out, spent a few hundred dollars on a new iPad at Costco and came back to, to be able to utilize K4, [00:33:00] by the end of the day.

One of my favorite stories to tell. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that. And then what I find too and I think you guys did it with your launch event, like education's the first step to building trust, right? And it seems like you guys took that to let her know. And I definitely know that face and that scowl.

And I've seen that many a times when I visited communities sometimes see it from my wife too, believe it or not, but uh, no, I just get but it's that's awesome. It's really happy to hear that. And one of the other questions, I'm curious of your take, Joe, and I think this is the other, elephant in the room, especially in our industry, right?

Technology, I think we all agree is transformative, right? But the human element, right? That's so critical in aging services and our industry. And how do you balance Thanks. Digital innovation with maintaining that personal human centered approach, 

Joe Velderman: For me, when I look at the legacy of aging services over the last 25, 50, 100 years.

Maybe I know there's, some really remarkable providers that have a rich history of providing care for older [00:34:00] adults for a century. You can look at that. You can distill it down very simply to say that aging services has been an industry of people who care for people.

And. And that's maybe oversimplifying it but I think that's at the core of what we do in aging services. And for me personally, at least, I hope that never changes. I hope that we are always going to be a person centered industry where we have people on the front line of taking care of people.

And so I hope that never changes. But, as an as I've gotten an opportunity over the last five years to really get embedded within a provider and see, what happens under the hood. I like to call it. There's just a lot of busy work that happens that is not actually people taking care of people.

It's. People filling out forms or it's people doing, very not meaningful work. And my goal is to really transform some of those things that happen behind the [00:35:00] curtain and try to make that as efficient as possible so that we can be a better industry of people taking care of people.

And I, I don't want to be a community where we have humanoid robots who are helping people take a shower or something like that. I don't think that's something that anyone would ever appreciate. The reality is, though, we have staffing challenges in aging services.

We have changing consumer demands in aging services. And there's a lot of opportunity for aging services providers to explore ways to creatively adopt technology and digitally transform their businesses without sacrificing the human element of people taking care of people. And I think that there's even room in that process to think about ways that we can allow people to have more time to take care of people and increase the overall level of engagement and, the experience that we provide for our residents.[00:36:00] 

Personally speaking, I talked about it before but I just have just such a profound level of respect for the residents that we get to take care of. I think they're some of the smartest people. I love listening to their life stories. I love the unsolicited advice that I get from, people that have lived longer than I have.

And I think that we owe it to them to provide, the best quality care and service that we can to those people because of the incredible life that they've lived. And I hope that, again we don't pursue technologies that are going to change that, but we've pursued technologies that are going to ultimately enhance that experience for those people.

Matt Reiners: Yeah. We've a very similar view of this. And I think anyone I talked to that's like scared of technology, They kind of picture that humanoid robot taking care of people. But I try to explain them like, there's so many just mundane administrative tasks that pop up that if we can use technology to automate or just make it smarter.

Reduce the amount of time it takes there so we can maximize [00:37:00] the time being spent with residents, right? I just look at that as a huge opportunity of where I see the technology use case going. Like, you know, Life enrichment is very special to me. I love my life enrichment people. And I look at them, whenever they're on a computer trying to find content or create plans, like there's so much generative AI that can take out so much of that time so they can maximize being spent with residents, right?

Which I know. Yeah. Which is why they want to be doing that job in the first place. And I'm curious here, Joe we've kind of hit on some of this stuff. We've got a couple of questions here. I know we're at time, but this has been such an awesome conversation. Time flies when you're having fun.

But like, where do you see the biggest opportunities for technology to further transform aging services in the next five to 10 years? I know we've kind of hit on that a little bit, but you could also take it in another way, if you just want to give any. Other organizations advice as they're embarking on their digital transformation journey.

You can pick which question of those you want to answer. Or you can answer both, whatever. 

Joe Velderman: Okay. Well, I think the, I think in my opinion there's two really significant opportunities, right? The first [00:38:00] one we touched on a little bit already this whole idea of changing resident experience, resident expectations.

And again, you and I probably both have people in our lives that are approaching the age of being potential consumers for a place like Cypress Cove, right? At least in my life, those people have smart home already. They have smart thermostats. They have voice assistance.

They have my parents just got a smart refrigerator at their house. And I think that, and they're used to, using technology, they have apps for their favorite. Retailers and their favorite businesses, and they do a lot of things online already. And so I think we have tremendous opportunities in that space to meet and hopefully exceed consumer expectations.

And I think that's going to happen very quickly. And then we talked about a little bit about staffing challenges to, that is a problem that doesn't seem to be going away. I don't think. Economical [00:39:00] corrections are going to fix that. That is a very sophisticated problem. I look at that problem as needing a recipe with a lot of different ingredients in it to solve it.

Some of those ingredients may include things like immigration reform or regulatory reform or, process reform internally here, it may include recruiting from other industries that are going through significant disruption, whether that be like retail or transportation or what have you. But I also think that technology is a key ingredient in that recipe and we have to really carefully consider, opportunities that.

That technology will afford us to become more efficient as a business and depend less on people. Bob Kramer describes the 2020s as being an innovative decade for aging services, and I 100 percent agree with him.

He says that, the covid pandemic really thrust us all into this sort of innovative age. That's probably going to last [00:40:00] for 5 or 10 years where we have an opportunity to really think about how we're going to. Reposition our businesses for the next 30 years as we cater to the boomer generation, right?

And so You know the boomer generation I think is a lot different than the generation of people that we serve today We've got a finite amount of time to figure this out both from a consumer expectation and also a staffing perspective and so I think if you know my advice to providers is If you're sitting back, operating like you were in 2019 and content with that this is probably not, something that you should be comfortable with right now, because, we need to be looking at ways that we can.

Implement technologies to meet consumer expectations and combat some of these staffing challenges that we have. And I think, in order to do that, as a provider, you really need to take on a lab mentality, right? You need to figure out what technology solutions are going to work for your organization and work for your consumers to ultimately provide [00:41:00] benefit.

And. It's probably a series of trial and error. It's putting on that innovative mindset and saying, we're going to take on 5 or 6 or 10 projects a year, and we're going to try different things. And if something works, we're going to pursue it. If something doesn't work, we're going to abandon it.

But we have to figure out ways to learn as an organization, how we can transform our businesses, utilizing technology because of the pressures that we're feeling both from a consumer demand perspective and from a staffing perspective. So I answered on both. 

Matt Reiners: I like that. I was going to give you a microphone to drop, but I feel like after this entire episode, Joe, you got to throw it as far as you can at the wall.

That was awesome. Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. I learned a lot. I think we're in awesome hands with people like you really setting the tone, I think, for innovation for the industry. So thank you for all that you do and speaking so openly and sharing your guys of what you're doing.

So, uh, You know, I know our industry is better because of people like you. So thank you. 

Joe Velderman: I appreciate it, Matt. And I would say the same thing about the work that you guys do. And you specifically do too. We are all stronger together. We all [00:42:00] make really significant, positive contributions and it's all with the right intent.