Senior Care Academy
Senior Care Academy is a podcast dedicated to providing valuable information and expert advice on navigating the world of senior care for both senior care providers, and families with aging parents. Hosted by industry professionals, each episode covers a wide range of topics including healthcare options, legal considerations, financial planning, and emotional support for caregivers. If you are a healthcare provider, have aging parents, or are a senior adult, this podcast is for you! Tune in to gain valuable insights and resources to help you make informed decisions and provide the best care for your loved ones.
Senior Care Academy
Transforming Senior Lives Through Virtual Travel: Jason Wei's Vision with Discover Live
Unlock the secrets of how virtual travel can transform the lives of seniors with Jason Wei, the trailblazing CEO of Discover Live. Jason's heartfelt journey, inspired by his grandfather's unfulfilled travel dreams and later-life isolation, led him to create a groundbreaking company that offers real-time, personalized virtual travel experiences for older adults. Discover how Discover Live keeps seniors mentally active and engaged, providing not just virtual tours but also brain exercises and reminiscence therapy to enhance overall well-being.
Explore the nuances of running a small business and harnessing inclusive technology in our discussion with Jason. Gain invaluable insights into the challenges of implementing immersive technologies like VR goggles and how effective communication between different business functions can build a robust company. Jason's personal experiences from founding Discover Lila to navigating the complexities of a tech-driven market are packed with lessons on finding the right partners and leveraging diverse skill sets to achieve success.
Lastly, understand the tremendous impact of travel on connecting cultures and generations. Jason shares touching stories from his travels in Brazil, illustrating the power of genuine interactions in dispelling media-driven misconceptions. Learn about the innovative future of travel technology, from live stream travel to AI tools for personalized experiences, and how these advancements can combat the significant issue of loneliness among seniors. Tune in to discover the importance of lifelong learning and giving back to our elders, fostering a more connected and compassionate society.
Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in. Welcome to the Senior Care Academy, the podcast for anyone in the aging adult industry who wants to make a bigger impact on their clients. I'm your host, alex Aldridge. In today's episode, we chat with Jason Wei. Jason Wei is a professional and visionary leader, an entrepreneur and a CEO with over 20 years of diverse leadership experience across multiple industries. Right now, he's currently the CEO at Discover Live and the founder of it, a company that specializes in creating virtual world travel experiences that bring people closer together through personalized, real-time engagement from various global destinations. In today's episode, we're going to cover Discover Live, its facets, how it works as a business, and we're going to talk about the things that we can do to serve seniors and how our business and our expertise can help them. Without further ado, let's get into the episode. Jason, welcome, so excited to have you on today. Thank you for having me here, alex. Yeah, of course, I guess. To start, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, your start in the senior care space? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I was born and raised in China and I didn't come to this country in the US until I was 20 years old and went into college. Yeah, that was many, many years ago. So I'm a mechanical engineer by training, but then I got my MBA in marketing and international management. I'm just, like you know, having a lot of like a curiosity towards a lot of different kind of things and I think, fortunately, the work that I did many years ago opened towards a lot of different kind of things and I think, fortunately, the work that I did many years ago opened up a lot of opportunities for me to travel, and that's kind of like one of the reasons why I'm running a travel company.
Speaker 2:How did I get into the senior space is actually a very interesting story. My grandparents actually, specifically my grandfather, actually played a leading role in inspiring me into the space. So he was an adventurer at heart, so he had been traveling to all over the place. When he was younger and growing up, he always come back to me and tell me all those different stories from different parts of the world. It just makes me very interested to see the world. But when he started getting old he just couldn't physically travel that much anymore and with that, the more and more he's getting isolated, you know, with deteriorated physical health and eventually getting to the mental health as well. So one day I was at that time I was just traveling quite a bit for work. So one day I was actually walking along the Thames river in London and I decided to give him a call because I know my mom was with him and at that time Skype came up. So I gave him a call and I showed him. I said hey, you know, grandpa, I'm in London. I just want to show you very quickly about where I'm at. It's just like I like, like magic boxes, just open up a lot of things. He started talking, kind of like told me hey, you know what are some of the faster ales that you need to drink in in London, like you know why you, why you need to try the best Indian food in London and show me around. I'll tell you, like some of other things that I did when I was there.
Speaker 2:I had never had that close of, I felt I had that close of a relationship with him. And then later on I called my mom and my mom said you didn't know how uplifted he was. He started to talk to other people about this Skype call and so at that time I felt that the world is opening up to him again and he started to feel the finally kind of like he regained his passion and purpose. So at that time I was thinking the word travel doesn't necessarily have to have a travel piece. The most important thing is the word exploration. So with Skype at that time anything can be possible. So that's kind of like a really one of the originator getting into that and I started to. At that time I started thinking like there's so many seniors they cannot travel. Right, they love to travel, they cannot travel. They probably still have a long bucket list they need to track off because they feel good about it. And that's how, when I decided to get into the senior space to provide the service, Wow, what a powerful story.
Speaker 1:I could picture it in my mind. I could feel it. That's a very uplifting story to share. Thank you for sharing that. That put a big smile on my face. That was wonderful. Can you talk a little bit more about how Discover Live works? Can you talk about how it specifically caters to the needs of older adults? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So Discover Live. You know a lot of people when I talk to them about live virtual world travel. A lot of people they probably don't understand what that means. So, in a layman's term, we have tour guides specially trained tour guides all over the world. At this moment we have more than 200 different destinations and we use Zoom or something similar to Zoom, very easy to use live streaming platform to take people on real-time on-location travel experiences. And we have different types of products serving the different types of customers.
Speaker 2:A senior and a senior living is a big portion of our business. It's almost like 50 portion of our business. It's almost like a 50% of our business and it's specifically for the seniors and we actually not only training the tour guides to make sure that the content, the speed, the pace and are more towards the seniors. So I'll tell you a little bit more about this later. We purposely built in the brain exercise techniques into our travel experiences because the brain exercise is so important for the seniors. Right, you want their brains to activate all the time, not only just from the curiosity and looking forward to the new things standpoint, but also as a memory reminiscence therapy for them to remember the past. So, depending on the different types of customers. Like in the senior world, we service seniors from the very active seniors, like they're living independently at home or they live in independent living communities, all the way to that memory care unit residence.
Speaker 2:So our program for the different types of seniors are also adjusted a little bit differently. For example, if we would be serving a group of independent living seniors, we would take them to many, many, many different places. You know, some places can be quite noisy. Some places can be very quiet and peaceful. There's not a lot of limitations and our normal program is usually 60 minutes. But if we would be serving the memory care residents or somebody have, like you know, the early stage dementia for example, we wanted to keep the environment as quiet as possible. So it's much more soothing, much more peaceful type of environment and we also talk slower and our session is usually no more than 40 minutes as a result of that, just because of the attention span is not that long for the memory care residents and some of the other things that we do is also just to give an example for the independent living seniors, we would take them to the bucket list places and also the hidden gem locations.
Speaker 2:But for the memory care residents we only take them to the bucket place or more famous locations because that's going to bring back their memories. If it's a totally new hidden gem type of location, it's just too new. You know, for a lot of people. It doesn't really help them from the reminiscence therapy standpoint. And we also incorporate some of those like old movies, old musics into. You know those type of programs as well that's really cool.
Speaker 1:I guess one of my questions would be if, like like an independent living, do they ever express like the desire to visit the places themselves? Because if I were watching a video, a live stream with a tour guide of someone like I would personally want to go. I'd appreciate seeing it, but I'd feel reminisced to like miss out on being there myself. Does discover live offer to seniors like who desire to go places. Can they go places or is it just more like for them to see both?
Speaker 2:because all of our tour guides. They're trained from and selected from a group of what we call it traditional tour guides. So they do, they have been doing, they're still doing the in-person tour guiding, but we give them the special training to do the virtual tour guiding. So if somebody took our tour and they're really interested in going to a place and they feel good about the tour guide who gave them the tour virtually, they usually just reach out to us and say you know, I'm actually planning a tour to Lisbon, in Portugal, next month. Can your tour guide be my tour guide? So in that case, yeah, we just like a schedule them in.
Speaker 1:And it's so cool. So you guys offer the service to people who want to see places, who maybe can't because of their health, and then you also offer the ability to be like, hey, we can help you explore these places for yourself if you're in good shape.
Speaker 2:That is correct as a matter of fact, one of the best selling products in our private tour category is actually what we call it a pre-tour consultation. So when the families regular families, right they want to go to a place they haven't really made up their mind to where to go yet, we put them on the streets for like one hour in the different places and then help them to finalize their decision when exactly do they want to go for vacation for this year, for example?
Speaker 1:I'm sure Discover Life has faced a plethora of unique challenges with technology and with innovations in live streaming platforms. I'm sure things have changed a lot, especially in the last recent years. What were some of the problems you guys faced at the beginning? That's?
Speaker 2:such a good question, alex. Our company, when we first started seven years ago, was actually a 100% VR company. A year later, we just scratched all of our business plans and all the development that we have done, because when we started doing the Skype, I know it was good, but I also know that as an engineer, I'm always involved in the advanced technologies. I'm always interested in that. So that's one of the times that I think I made a biggest mistake in my business career was follow what I think is the most important thing, that what the market thinks is the most important thing. So when we were developing the program and we actually did some just like some preliminary testing, and some of the issues were just immediately surfaced A lot of times, you know, the VR goggles just by themselves is not that accessible.
Speaker 2:It's super expensive at that time and many people don't know how to use those.
Speaker 2:And if for the people, though, like the residents, actually the activity directors figured out how to use those and put them onto the residents At that time, you know, I don't know if now the technology changed so much better, but at that time people get dizzy so easily.
Speaker 2:As a company, we just couldn't take that responsibility or liabilities. And another thing is because most of our tourists are live on the streets and the bandwidth over the air to get into the goggle, to get into a live experience, it's even impossible. Even as of right now it's impossible. In the indoor environment it is possible, but once you get into outdoor, just rely on even the 5g internet it's it's not possible yet. So but you know, as an engineer, as a company, we're closely monitoring. We actually have some technology partners, so we're closely monitoring this technology. At some point we do want to have that experience to be available because it is very immersive. But we just want to make sure that the technology is as easy to use as Zoom today for most of the people and the goggle is not as expensive and as easy to access.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. What characteristics have you seen in yourself develop as a result of founding? Discover Lila.
Speaker 2:Interesting question, actually Very good question, Because running a smaller company compared to running a larger size company is very different. I think in the smaller business setting, the ability to roll up the sleeves and do things and figure out things is more important, and then also obviously, finding the right partners, Because you know, by one person you can never do anything big. You need other people to help you and you need other complementary skills to help you. When you're working in larger companies, I feel like the team that you have, that hopefully, that everybody in your team is smarter than you, right, so you always lead from behind. But in the smaller business setting, you just have to. You know, you have to be in the front and you have to be at the back you know as a leader.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about your past experiences, maybe a standout experience or a job that you had previously that really impacted where you're at today?
Speaker 2:It may not be a specific experience or anything. I believe things happens was as a result of many, many things happened in the previous time. So, me being somebody who is always curious about a lot of things, I started studying mechanical engineering, not only because mechanical engineering is something that I was very interested in, but also because at that time I just came into the US and my English was really bad, so a lot of reading and writing is just impossible for me to do that. It's just super hard for me. But after I graduated, when I started to work for companies, I would say the broader business aspects started to hit me. So I remember when I was an engineer at the time I was a design engineer I was in the meetings, right and I see the design engineer, the manufacturing engineer, the industrial engineer, the marketing and the designing constantly fighting with each other. So that makes me think why. I'm sure people are doing this for the best of the company from their own perspective, right. So that's when I decided to actually get into my master's.
Speaker 2:I wanted to get into marketing.
Speaker 2:I wanted to get into some of the management fields from the operations standpoint as well, so that I can see a bigger or broader picture and really understand when someone is arguing with each other, what is their point of view, and that actually helped me to develop a career path which I'm fortunate enough because I have had so many good mentors and good bosses has been supporting me all the way.
Speaker 2:So I started as an engineer and then I moved into the operations, managing the factories and then managing the supply chain and then getting into the marketing and then getting into innovation and then getting into sales. So before I started this company, I was actually running a business that have a pretty diverse responsibility, running a business that have a pretty diverse responsibilities which I think a lot of things that I learned before actually helped me to make what I think is the best position for the business, just because I have the broader view at that time compared to just individual departments, and that also helped me to actually start this business, just because at that stage I felt that I'm ready, right. You know, I felt like I had enough of a confidence that you know, if I get into the business, I think I will be successful or have a high chance of success, because I know a lot of startups a majority of the big percentage of them are failing at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:So I think everything kind of like adds up to where I am at today.
Speaker 1:I love that visual that you created, where you know you take one step at a time and you learn and you build a good foundation and then, at a certain point, like you said, you're ready to take on bigger and broader challenges. I loved what you said about mitigating arguments and about mitigating communication between different aspects of your company. Communication between different aspects of your company. In the position that you have today, do you have good synergy between marketing, between sales, between development, between research? How do you balance all your teams today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, now working in a smaller environment, the partner is very important. I'm fortunate to have really good partners Me being working in different parts of the business. I have a good understanding, but I'm not an expert compared to somebody who has been working in the field for 20, 30 years, 10 years, for example. So when I started this company, I know there's no way I can be successful if it's just myself. So I started to look for the different types of partners who can supplement my skill sets.
Speaker 2:And my co-founder her name is Tricia Norton and she is an expert in marketing and new business development and my director of operations she's an expert in operations. So many times, you know, when we talk to about the different aspects of the business, you know you always want to hear the experts tell you about what their opinions first, right, but then, from my perspective, you know I'm looking at. Okay, now I hear what everybody's opinion is. All I need to do is really just check against thinking about the business as a broader organization or entity, whether, whatever the decision that is made in this field, whether it has any effect or effect into some other parts of the business. If not, basically that person has all the authorities to do whatever she wants to do. So how we work together is kind of like a very synchronized, but at the same time it's very independent in a way, as well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:At the company I work with, help Really, we focus on in-person non-medical care, and then we also have a software that allows seniors to attend online classes for free, and we're also able to partner with different agencies so they can sponsor these classes, and it's interesting to keep in mind the different aspects of the company that are required for business. You have your marketers, you have your sales guys, you have the CEOs, you have the COOs, operations, people and having good communication really allows business to grow. I think the idea of communicating and allowing everybody to express what's on their mind about a certain topic creates this synergy where a really good idea can be formed. I don't know too much about the legal side of discovery care, but are there any ethical considerations you keep in mind when developing products for the elderly or things that you consider legal? What does that side of your business look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably three things that we will be paying attention to. One is privacy is a big issue. Obviously, all of our tours are live and people could show their faces Our audiences could be showing their faces. And the second thing is the protection of the children, like during the tour and all of the copyrights materials. During the tour we could be pulling into the different establishments and how do we make sure that the children's face is not shown in our video or any of the private copyright protected materials, right?
Speaker 2:The third thing is really inclusion, because, if I think about what is the mission as a company, we want to make the life of world exploration experience as accessible to as many people as possible. Currently, there's only between 2% to 6%, depending on which report that you're reading, of the people that are able to enjoy a world exploration experience, and when we are doing the tours, we want to make sure everybody is included. So, for example, like an example yesterday, this month is the Jewish American Heritage Month, so yesterday we had a tour in Jerusalem, in Israel. So during that tour, although we put a place 30 to 40% of the content in talking about the Jewish heritage, the Jewish culture and everything, we actually purposely stopped at the Muslim quarter, armenian quarter, christian quarter, so that our audience, they all feel that they're being included in this tour, you know, because, hey, they are participating in the Jewish American Heritage Month, right, but they're all from different, diverse backgrounds as well. So we purposely built into our tour to be like that.
Speaker 2:I think this is especially important for the seniors because our population is changing and if I remember the census that I remember in the 1970s, I think more than 80% of the population were white and non-Hispanic. 2010, it's 67% and fast forward into 2040, the projection was a little bit more, over 53%. So our population is changing right. And from the senior standpoint, that's when you start to see the baby boomers, you know, getting into the senior space, getting aged into that space, and you want everybody in the community to have appreciation of the differences, but most importantly, it's for them to see the common attitudes right. So you want the people moving to a different place, you know, because they're different, but you want them to feel that they're comfortable, to feel that they belong there, and then you want them to feel that they're included in there. So the people that are taking our tours, not only from the senior living residents or the individual senior standpoint, but also from the staffing standpoint, to give them this broader, much broader world view, to make that environment much more inclusive.
Speaker 1:I love your guys' focus on community. I spoke to Steve Gurney. He runs a magazine or like he runs like an informational company for seniors where he provides information and resources for them in the mid-Atlantic. He mentioned how a lot of seniors don't want to live with other seniors their age. They want to be surrounded by people who are younger or older and they want to have a more holistic sense of community. I personally grew up around a lot of seniors and a lot of people who are in their 50s and their 60s and a couple people who are in their 30s and 20s, just from my community and going to different events within my community, and it really benefited me. I was able to garner a lot from their experience, which is wonderful. I love your focus on community and inclusion. I do.
Speaker 1:I kind of want to maybe backtrack a little bit. I know you mentioned that you got your degree in marketing and international international management. Okay, I knew I kind of forgot the word for a second there. It's a long one. Can you talk about maybe strategies that you've utilized from your degree that have proven effective in international management of healthcare products like Discover, live or maybe others? Can you talk about how your work internationally is done?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the international working experience that I had actually shaped a lot of who I am today, because it gives me many chances to not only venture into some environment that is totally new, but also to really appreciate and respect the differences. And you know, just to give an example of I know, when I was working in Brazil at the time, that I didn't really speak Portuguese and so I had to hire a translator to be with me all the time. And before I went there, you know I was like our company policy is always like you have to take the bulletproof cards and you have to take the helicopter. From the time and before I went there, our company policy is always like you have to take the bulletproof cars and you have to take the helicopter from the airport directly into our facility, our company, in the middle. There's a helicopter port in there and because people are concerned about safety because at that time the economy of Brazil it was not that good and the crime rate was higher relatively but I developed such a good relationship with my translator and after work we just took his little car and just getting to his apartment and play soccer with. You know all the people in that neighborhood and you know he got to introduce me to his girlfriend and his family.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of the perceptions people have, you know, because of through the media is just, I think it doesn't necessarily tell the whole stories and just to witness everything, immerse yourself into that environment yourself, ask your questions to the locals and get their honest opinions, many times it's just uh, you know, it just opens people's minds, and so that's like one of the reasons why I like travel so much and I really like to make this experience accessible to as many people as possible, just because I see a lot of the disconnect in our society and you're talking about from the different types of groups, right, even just from the senior standpoint, the intergenerational gap's huge out there. If many of our private tours that we offer to the families, three or four generations are all traveling together, in reality it's just not possible, right, it's just. In reality it's just not possible. Like you know, we do a lot of heritage tours when people say like hey, you know, this is where my great-grandparents used to live and where they're coming from, in the smaller cities, the smaller villages in somewhere in the world.
Speaker 2:Four generations all traveling together, and that kind of bonding in the reality and in the real travel world it's just not possible, right? So you hear like four different generations all looking at the same thing, telling their different stories, telling their interests, and I feel like naturally it just bound people much more closer, just like what I experienced, you know, when I was in london with my grandpa. So I never, like you know before, like my grandpa, never tell me about drinking. You know, like now he's telling you about the different kind of ale you know, you have to try, yeah, yeah all of a sudden he felt like I'm growing up.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm actually. The age gap is much smaller and we can talk a little bit more in the, in the level of you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean just go back to you, know your question. I think the international experience that I had just makes me realize the world is big, world. World is diverse. The world is so interesting many times that interest can bond people together, no matter what they look like, no matter what kind of age they are. So that's kind of like how I see how that related to what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need to put that on a wall. Interests can bind people together no matter who they are, how old they are, what they are. That was a wonderful quote.
Speaker 2:This is like one of those things that I feel. There are tours, for example. We are also categorized those in different interest groups, right. So we have bucket list tours, we have hidden gem tours, we have nature tours, we have foodie tours, we have beach tours, we have wonders of the world tours and then we have special events tours.
Speaker 2:If somebody is like interested in the carnival in venice, when that happens, the people who are interested, they can take those tours. But for us, especially in the senior side, it's a good tool for them to start conversation, because when people are bonded through the same interest or even not like, for example, we have seen the seniors, especially aging in place, older adults they start to talk to their caregivers about or the helpers about the tours that they took and just trying to, like you know, start the conversation and build a bond with the people who are not even their family. Most of the time people go into their house and they just go start doing the dishes, start doing the cleaning, all those things. Now they actually have something that they can talk about, right.
Speaker 1:Wow, definitely. I'm wondering what do you guys do to get someone new on a tour, Like how do you reach out to older generations or maybe younger generations to utilize your service? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we work with a lot of partners, no matter if it's the platforms that we list our service or the organizations larger organizations that they actually have their own customers or their audiences to take the tours with us. And we also do quite a few of the Facebook ads and the Google ads, mainly starting targeting the older adults, but the caregivers like their children, for example, so that they know.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's really, really cool. You guys do a lot of innovation, I'm imagining. What are you hoping for next in terms of technology advancements, what's something you have your eyes on, what's an area of technology that you're really looking to get first dibs on when something changes?
Speaker 2:So, how I see the innovation. You know technology is a part of it, but it also, you know, the innovation also can come through in different ways. So, for example, if we focus on our mission, which is to make the live world exploration experience accessible to as many people as possible, we actually look into the reason why people don't travel. So we already talk about aging, we talk about mobility, we talk about the money Not everybody has a lot of money to travel right, especially internationally. We talk about not many people have time and also a lot of people. They're just fearful. It's a totally new environment. They don't know the language, they don't know the culture. They just naturally be afraid of going somewhere and, quite honestly, sometimes it's because there's no other people to travel along with them. So those are all those language barriers as well. So those are all those reasons why people don't travel. So over the years we have been trying to tackle those one after another. So from the basic form of the live stream travel, so we at least took out the barrier of the money, because it's not as expensive as people would have to travel physically. We took the barrier out of the time that the planning and the fear of going to a new place. Last year we actually developed a technology that we allow people to verbally interact with our tour guide in any language they speak, so now they can like all get into tour. Somebody speak Chinese, somebody speak Portuguese, somebody speak Spanish All they can like all enjoy the tour together. And then this year we just launched a line of products specifically developed for the blind and the low vision community, so the people they cannot see now they can travel with us and experience the world. So we have been focusing on the different senses of the experience. So right now we're very close in developing an AI tool to facilitate, to make our travel experience even more personalized.
Speaker 2:And eventually, when the technology is there, I still want to get back into the VR side, or MR side, of the travel experience and if I really think about the future, I think a lot of things are going to change. When we're talking about the cast of cars now right, the full SD mode I honestly think that the wheelchair at some point I'm sure there are companies already working on those of the self-driving wheelchair right, you're just putting wherever you want to go and climb up the stairs and avoid all those different obstacles and take you to where you want to be. So the travel for the seniors in the future could be much easier. And also, from the Neuralink standpoint that Elon Musk and some of the other leading companies are doing, I believe that can create or simulate senses For us. There's an R&D project we're working on that is to bring a normal sense all the way from a different faraway location to the people who is taking a tour with us right now.
Speaker 2:But it's still very early stage. But I think, using the Neuralink, it can create or simulate the different senses that is not existing for the remote traveler like what we do as of today. I think it's going to come at some point and then the future virtual travel experience is going to be much more immersed, much more essential. So that's kind of like how I see you know how the virtual and the travel from our space. How is that going to evolve?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wonderful space. How's that going to evolve? Yeah, that's wonderful Wrapping up here. I'd love to know what advice would you give to small business owners who are maybe a little bit behind where you are in terms of advancement for their business. What would you tell them to do? What would you encourage them to do? What would you remind them to do?
Speaker 2:you encourage them to do? What would you remind them to do? I would say keep learning, because that's going to open up a lot of opportunities and give the businesses a first-name advantage that others may be still catching up and for the small business, the first-name advantage and the value of time is just so important. So keep learning. I think that's the only way to open up many more opportunities.
Speaker 1:And then my last question is if you had a magic wand and you could wave away a problem, whether it be personal or in the industry, or with seniors in general, what problem would you wave?
Speaker 2:away. I think loneliness For the seniors, I mean, when they get to a certain stage, the loneliness will come in just because of the limitations, right, and I feel like in our society there's not enough effort to make that go away. I feel like loneliness is almost like it's toxic. You know that is going to very fast deteriorate somebody's mental health. When the mental health to get deteriorated, the physical health, it's going to deteriorate as next, very faster than normal and I feel like you know if that is the problem you know I want to wipe away because when I get to the age that I'm, you know I'm at the age that I cannot do a lot of things. I hope loneliness is not one of those to be with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how I would wave away loneliness as well. I've seen loneliness affect a lot of seniors and I've seen their minds change. And because their mind changed, you're right their physical attributes change and they look different, they sound different and you can just tell. You can tell that they yearn, yearn for company, yearn for attention, and that's a wonderful thing. To want to wave away, to be able to say like, hey, loneliness is a big problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's actually I like to put those two guys really really to helpfully connect or helpfully in person. I think that's what you guys are trying to address as well. Really, just to get people. I remember reading the personal story of your CEO saying that his grandparents are surrounded by all those support in the communities and the family. It's a big family. It's just unfortunately not many people. Even in my neighborhood, for example, we see the people just stay alone. Not everybody can go to or want to go to or be able to afford to go to the senior living communities. So when somebody is living alone because of their spouse, for example, passed away, I just don't know If they don't have a lot of support from the community, from the friends and from other family members. It's going to be a long journey they have to go through and that's something I really hope that this magic wand is going to wipe away.
Speaker 1:We can hope really hard that a magic wand appears and goes away. No-transcript You're so right.
Speaker 2:I mean, my experience with seniors and older adults is they have so much experience that they're so wise right, there's so much we can learn from them. I don't remember. Like you know, every time I hear somebody, especially younger generation, and say you know, yeah, those you know, the older people, they don't know anything about technology. I always go back to them and say you know, just let you know if, if they're not there, the computer, the tablets, the phone that you're using is never going to be even existing.
Speaker 2:Those people, invented those you know and that's the thing that you know, they have to keep in mind, they have to understand. And I have a lot of respect. You know I remember when I was little, right, when I was younger, and my parents always saved up the money and, you know, take our families to travel and allowed me to see you know a lot of different kinds of things. And you know, now it's really I feel like it's my turn, it's our turn right To take our parents, our grandparents, to travel and I don't enjoy their life right Because they sacrifice so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a wonderful place to kind of wrap up is. It's our turn to give back Everybody. This has been the Senior Care Academy podcast with Jason Wei. Jason wonderful episode. Jason's the founder and CEO of Discover Live. Please go check him out on LinkedIn and all of his other socials and please go check out Discover Live and please refer your family members to go travel and to go see their bucket list items. That'd be wonderful. Jason, thank you so so much for being on today's show. Thank you so much for having me here again.