The Power of Longevity Tech: Improving Lives and Redefining Aging

Michael Hughes 00:07
Hello and welcome to The Art of Aging which is part of the Abundant Aging podcast series from the United Church Homes. On this show, we look at what it means to age in America and in other places around the world. With positive and empowering conversations that challenge, encourage, and inspire everyone everywhere to age with abundance. Our guest today was super excited to have Abby Levy on the show. And this is part of our aging and innovation series where we like to talk to funders in the age check them all devotees tech space. And you cannot cover this space without talking to Abby. Abby is the managing partner and co-founder of primetime partners, which is one of the world’s premier investment firms in what we call longevity tech. So we’re going to be unpacking later. And before primetime, Abby was a senior executive at SoulCycle, where she oversaw business development and new digital products. She is also an entrepreneur herself, teaming up with Ariana Huffington as the founding president of Thrive global, a behavior change technology company focused on employee productivity and wellness. She began her career at McKinsey, and then product development for one of my favorite games of all time, because we are human centered design freaks United Church homes. And that’s Oxo International. Abby, welcome.

Abby Levy 01:16
Thank you, Mike, we have been talking about getting together like this for a long time now. And I am happy that it is spraying and that we can do this together. Thank you.

Michael Hughes 01:26
as well, thank you so much for making the time. Listen, we got a lot to unpack. But I want to start with a question that just asks a lot of people on this podcast. I mean, given the history that you’ve had in getting your experience with so many terrific brands, and entrepreneurs, you could be putting your talents into a lot of areas, right? You could be discovering, I don’t know, it could be in the sports drink industry, or it could be this or that. But you’re here, you’re in the longevity space, you’re in the aging space. Tribes, you’re passionate about that.

Abby Levy 01:57
Mike, it’s a question that we asked our entrepreneurs that we invest in as well. And the universal theme across all the entrepreneurs that I’ve come across in this space, as well as myself as an entrepreneur building a venture fund in this space, is that it’s deeply personal. It’s deeply personal, typically deeply personal for founders trying to fix health care. They had a poor experience with a loved one in the healthcare system. Dealing with the decline of aging, and my way into aging is a different narrative, which is really around purpose and meaning for my father, who was prematurely retired in his early 60s. And throughout his 60s, 70s and 80s. I wanted to understand what someone does in this country. How do we think about and plan for and experience the back nine this year in the second half of life, and I was pretty dismayed with what I saw from my own father and for millions of other people that as a society, we don’t really value older adults, and and not valuing them and what they can contribute. It means that there isn’t an accommodating workforce and systems and societal and media consumers and all of the things that we need to really address this dramatic demographic shift. I mean, these listeners may or may not understand, but in the US in 19, in 2060, for the first time in US history, there’ll be more people over the age of 65, than under the age of 18. This is happening in an accelerated manner in certain Asian countries. And this demographic shift has huge implications for every element of society. And so I thought it’s interesting to invest in and build a venture fund focused on Aging and Longevity, because I was trying to see what exists today. And I was pretty dissatisfied with the answer. And I think entrepreneurs have a wonderful opportunity to build on this whitespace.

Michael Hughes 03:53
Yeah, yeah. And it just opened up a number of things, you know, in my brain here, and really the first one being your motivation. I mean, we talk about age 10. And we talk about longevity tech, and we talk about, we talk about the aging of our society, and not only are we going to have more years, but more healthy years. Yeah. So it’s interesting that you’re really particularizing on that, because a lot of the founders that I talk to, and a lot of the venture folks, they talk to really do focus on condition of that moment of crisis, something that happens, you know, the surprise of long term care costs that sort of befall on families, and really working on those problems and fixing those problems. Those are still important to your fund, I know. But your angle really does also extend into this world of longevity, and how would you define how you would separate longevity tech from H tech? And

Abby Levy 04:43
I don’t think you’re gonna like my answer, because I don’t like the term h tech. And I’ve even shared it with my friends at AARP. I don’t like that term. But I don’t like that term. Because I think aging starts at birth and ends Yes. And so just to say that there’s a group, there’s a type of technology or group of founders who are only designing for the older adult population really limits the opportunity that technology can play in this whole space. And so, I would prefer to talk about longevity tech. And what I mean by that is not what people hear about longevity, they usually think about the life sciences side of the house, the pharma, biotech, med devices, all of those things that are important innovations that are meant to help increase healthspan and push lifespan. At prime time, when we think about longevity tech, it’s not the life sciences piece, they’re gonna do their job and people live to be 100. Our question is what happens when people do live to be 100? What we need as a society to support a centenarian population across the board. And that means we need to use technology to scale our limited resources around healthcare, limited resources, and housing, limited resources and financial products, savings and services, limited resources in terms of jobs available, that shift in longevity. Ultimately, strains are existing societal infrastructure, and how can entrepreneurs leverage technology? Ai, I have to bring that you had to say it somewhere.

Michael Hughes 06:23
So I’m gonna keep a tick mark here every time.

Abby Levy 06:27
Actually, it’s like a drinking game. But how do we think about the ways that technology can help us make room for the longevity that is coming? And that is why I call it longevity tech, not age tech, because age is a number. Longevity is the experience.

Michael Hughes 06:47
I love that definition. Because you know, when we’re talking about when we’re talking about experience, you know, we’re thinking of what goes through my mind is agency, it’s going to be a personalization, generally allowing people to live the way they want to live. You know it responsibly for as long as they wish, right. So I think that when you think about the investment thesis of primetime, you know, what’s in scope in terms of an investable product, if you’re under that sort of umbrella of longevity technology, what sorts of projects,

Abby Levy 07:18
there’s some that are easy, and some that are hard to define. If I take a look at our fun one portfolio, we invested 36 businesses out of a $50 million seed to series a fun one. Two thirds of our investments were insurance, tech, and Health Tech, we define as tech enabled services, digital health, and healthcare data in it. And when people ask me, you know, what does Health Tech mean? Does that mean just geriatricians you know, Alzheimer’s and dementia and health care that really only applies to conditions related to aging? What I often say is that with the exception of Pediatrics, fertility, maternity, and oncology, two thirds of health care in this country is consumed by older adults. And the majority of healthcare globally is consumed by older adults. So anything in health care for us is somewhat fair game. And so our goal is to increase health spans and invest in businesses that increase health spans, but also recognize that we are a venture fund that is looking to return a profit to our investors. And the fastest growing companies are ones that solve the biggest pain point we have in our country around health care, which is the cost of health care. And so the challenge with your question to me is aspirationally. I’m focused on health spans, but the business model that is gaining traction and growing our companies that reduce the cost of health care in this country. Medicare is almost a trillion dollar expense growing at 8.4% a year, most businesses growing at 8.4% a year we’d say hallelujah, when it’s coming out of the federal budget, a federal budget that by 2060 50% of spending is going to be on health care. It is on a train with no conductor. And we absolutely need to fix that. So the types of businesses we invested in fun one, are businesses around telemedicine, social determinants of health, benefits, navigation, dementia care management, a lot of businesses that improve the experience of aging, but at the end of the day, have a business model that relies on reducing the cost. That’s one of our biggest areas of investing. Our second area of investing is in the financial services or FinTech space. And here we’re very interested in financial longevity. 50% of Americans if they don’t add income to the next week, don’t know where they’re gonna get their next meal. authentic older Americans, it is a real problem. We have a trillion dollar retirement savings gap between what Americans need to live on, and what they’re actually saved for, like our healthcare system, this is pretty unique to the US. Because you asked, has a largely privatized health care system up until you’re 65? Or if you’re low income, unlike other countries, where it’s nationalized, and the US has also decentralized retirement into 401k plans away from pensions, and most other countries have pension plans. So you know, we have a bit of a different system, but there are pieces of it that aren’t working well for older adults. And that’s what we’re interested in. Yeah,

Michael Hughes 10:43
yeah. And it just seems to me that, you know, it’s really a sick care system, not a health care system. It’s a sick care system. And I can understand, I think this is where we start is because I don’t know of any way to really unpack or unwind the underlying structure of the system right now, other than, and so your thought just to go after just the toss, you know, is, you know, seems right to me, just because we’re living with this. And I fear that we’re just not going to, you know, fix the system. Until we’re just at a breaking point. You know, some of the things I’ve heard, you know, that you have 5% of US patients over people that have multiple chronic conditions and functional limitations, driving almost 25% of all healthcare costs, because they go to the hospital, which is the most expensive site of care. So we see solutions out there to reduce hospitalization and to reduce readmissions kind of being put to the top, because that’s where you can do the I think, with the smallest change to kind of make the biggest impact. And then you look at administrative costs, right, I think we spent four and a half billion dollars, no, sorry, not billion trillion dollars. I think the US spent four and a half trillion dollars on health care last year, 30% of that cost is administrative cost. Yeah, with about a trillion dollars or cleaning dollars of potential cost reduction out there that should attract the investor. And I get it. But what I just don’t understand is, you know, we have and I wouldn’t have to get into this now. But I remember listening to a talk by Atul Gawande late last night, he was saying that, you know, you look at a country like Thailand, and Thailand has a longer lifespan than the United States. Yet these fenders cost $300 per person health care per year. And it’s all community health worker stuff. So it seems like those answers are out there. And it’s just I just don’t know how we don’t think we’re going to be able to unwind our US healthcare system anytime soon, and put it in a directional link. Well,

Abby Levy 12:43
I think the big piece you’re missing is individual behavior. And so I think one of the areas I was actually asked about in a meeting recently, which is, you know, a lot of the investing seems reactive, you know, what’s the proactive, you know, version of primetime partners, and kind of longevity tech. And I think it is around preventative measures like retirement savings and health care, and individual, you know, health care choices. But the challenge with human behavior is telling someone to save today for a future tomorrow, or eat differently today for a different health, you know, for a different health outcome tomorrow. There’s no incentive, and we don’t have a history or habit of doing so. Americans are the least healthy population in the world. Think about that. How’s that possible? While it’s only possible, is it not because of the hospitals not having administrative burden? It’s because individuals were making different choices. So how can we in the longevity tech sector, raise awareness around the preventative steps you need to take that’s why there’s been such a huge following. For doctors like, you know, David Sinclair, and Peter Atea, and Richard Huber. And all of these doctors are riding around longevity from what you can do as an individual to influence your longevity. There have been plenty of studies, you know, people would always say, oh, it’s your genetics. Well, there have been studies that study twins that were raised in different environments, to show its genetics accounts for 20% of longevity, the other 80% is going to be your behavior and your community around you. And so in all the social determinants of health around you, I’m very happy to say that I think our healthcare system is getting wiser as the social determinants of health matter, and that we need to continue to support individuals throughout their lifetime in this space. So we’re very interested in some of these preventative care businesses and actually we go into a tech lens. That’s where the diagnostic businesses have really come in handy. And what I mean by that is all the blood biomarkers and personalized medicine and data of self. You know, it’s not just an aura ring or a whoop or Apple Watch, that’s getting people to understand how to walk more and do all that. But we’re gonna get to a point where, you know, in a very futuristic Steven Spielberg way where people of every age are going to be able to test their blood daily and understand the action they’re taking the impact is having on their biology. That is longevity tech.

Michael Hughes 15:30
And thank you for picking Spielberg, not one of the dystopian directors that puts out stuff later on Earth, things like that. So you know, I was thinking

Abby Levy 15:38
Gattaca, but I wasn’t sure when it would get that reference minority where I was thinking more minority reports were Spielberg. Okay,

Michael Hughes 15:43
gotcha, gotcha. In much respect to Gattaca, by the way, I love that style Gattaca. Hey, Pablo, who is the oldest person that you’ve ever seen? Take a SoulCycle class.

Abby Levy 15:55
Oh, first of all, we’re not allowed to ask age. But my guests would be in their 80s? Yeah.

Michael Hughes 16:02
Because what strikes me is that when you’re talking about people, getting people to eat their vegetables, you sort of want to be able to demonstrate the outcomes of that and an aging I wasn’t, you know, this is just where I think conversations during a little bit. So thanks for spending a little bit of time here. I think that you know, you have a society where people who are holders just in general are just forgotten, thrown away, that sort of thing. Or they’re people who are doing remarkable things like in their 90s like skydiving. I aspire to, and maybe you see this as well. We see people I know, people in their 90s that play golf every second day, you know, people. So there is a future where you know your good response. healthy for you, good choices for you, good mindsets for you can lead to a place where aging is normal? You know, I mean, you can. I know you can regain strength and flexibility at any age. I mean, we’re going towards a hope for a future I think,

Abby Levy 17:02
I believe so. I think it’s also about the democratization of health. Because, you know, there’s been a lot of press, I forget the gentleman’s name, but some guy in Silicon Valley, who’s spending a million dollars a year on reversing aging. And so it really, anti aging was very much if you think about the expensive creams and all the things in the most advanced longevity tech business, the biggest industry is called the skincare industry, trillion dollar industry focus on Aging, or the reversal of aging. And so that’s really, I’d say, people ask me, you know, give me a success story, I’ll be like, Look at any blood beauty company. But I bring that up, because I think that a lot of things in longevity have started as the very rich 1% figure out how we will live forever. And I think it’s also with concierge medicine and a lot of healthcare that’s happening outside the system, or in addition to. But I think one of the cool things we’re seeing in some of our portfolio companies. So for example, one of our investments in business, Duo’s is a health plan member navigation business. What that means is that most of us don’t even know what our health plan offers us in terms of supplemental benefits, access to services, you know, food as medicine, transportation benefits, and all the types of doctor’s visits we can and should be doing annually. And so duos does is it is a digital tool for health plans to use to reach and engage their members and get them to enroll and utilize the benefits they need. That is a perfect example of democratization. Do you have any type of health care that we need technology to be able to push out to a broader audience? And with that, we hoped that we could have some of those preventative steps that wouldn’t exist otherwise. And so I hear what you’re saying around? Are we going to be in an environment where on the golf course, we’re going to see a lot more people in their 90s or in the workplace, or whatever activity right now is being dominated by the younger generations? The answer is yes. Because we are people who are going to continue to make different choices.

Michael Hughes 19:21
Where do you think gamification lies in all that? And if you are interested in sort of offerings that kind of bring more of that gamified Field of Dreams, I’m just trying to think of those nudges to get people to engage with content and experiences and kind of like chocolate covered broccoli.

Abby Levy 19:39
Sell a couple I hate to generalize about an older audience because it is the most heterogeneous audience. It’s like saying zero to 40 is one segment is how people talk about 60s,

Michael Hughes 19:51
baby boomer generation being from like 1946 and 1962 and 1946 1960 Do share During the same lifetime experience, yeah. So

Abby Levy 20:02
I would say that there’s an incredibly heterogeneous audience. And frankly, as we age, we even get more heterogeneous, less, less, that we all diverge in terms of our idiosyncrasies. But one of the things that I find very interesting is really, how do we engage this audience? I spent most of my career in marketing. And so I’ve been very interested with our portfolio companies to understand what’s working and not working in terms of engaging an older audience. And there’s a couple of things that are kind of obvious. But I think a really important one is content that this audience likes to learn, wants to be educated, wants, makes educated decisions, and is very much focused on their health and well being. The number one concern, according to AARP studies that every older adult has, is losing independence. So that is the anchor issue around which content and education is set. So I think one area is really leading into content. Because this individual has time to consume content, and they’re eager to trust and trust brands, it’s a very obvious point. But we’ve seen some of our portfolio companies really piggyback on other brands. In fact, one of our companies just by mentioning fidelity in their marketing, saw conversion rates go up by three times because it’s a brand people now know and they understand. And the third thing, and these aren’t orders, is saving money. Because being on a fixed income, as most older adults are, is a very discomforting position. To basically spend your whole life building up your asset base, hopefully building up your asset base, and then spend 30 years D cumulating. IT is spending it down. Asset D accumulation is a very uncomfortable space for the average person. And so therefore, marketing that focuses on how to save money is tantamount, you know, people would joke in an HS way, you know, oh, the early bird special that you know, older adults go to. But I think we’ve also conditioned an older audience to senior savings, as if it’s an entitlement in its own way, based on just having reached a certain age. And so we see that from a marketing perspective, that makes sense. We see affinity groups, kind of back to the trusted brand on Facebook affinity groups, older adults are the fastest growing group on Facebook. And they seem on Pinterest and next door, a bunch of channels and unsure, Instagram and TikTok will continue to grow their older adult audience. And so that affiliation, I am a retired teacher, I grew up in this town in Ohio, those AI ways you create identity are very important to an older audience. And so I say all of these things, because when it comes to gamification, I think that there are easier yet easier ways to think about engaging this audience. And gamification has been something that has not really played out in products, largely because of the trust issue. One of the challenges, again, in marketing to older adults, is they have been the subject of so much fraud. You know, the Nigerian prince, send me your money. The AI based, you know, fraudulent spam calls, the email marketing, it created a tremendous amount of distrust of technology. And so this gamification piece, kind of, I like to say keeping it simple, is, you know, is an important piece, but I’m looking forward to companies that can think about behavioral economics, incentives, whether it’s games or not to change behavior. I think that’s that’s gonna be a big piece around this financial savings as well as health healthcare

Michael Hughes 23:58
issues. Yeah, that’s where I was kind of going as far as the interest saving part of it, but I really do want to just switch to a related subject which is design. Yeah, I am a complete fanboy here because you weren’t at all so I you know, we collect design objects in this home. I love universal design. I’ve seen the documentary objectified about three times which features the Oxo. I think it probably even has a good grips peeler, somewhere in a drawer somewhere still in the packaging just was so All right. What do you look for interlac? What did that experience at Oxbow do for you? How does it inform the way that you look at the UX or the product handshake, or really how people put their design together? Or to say it another way, like if you sat down with somebody, what advice would you give them on really designing their experience to be effective?

Abby Levy 24:51
I would give them the advice that they need to pick a target, consumer or target user To intimately know them and understand the psychology, the practices, the preferences of that audience, one of the challenges we get when we get pitches goes back to the heterogeneity of talking about older adults, is that, you know, entrepreneurs will say, Okay, we’re targeting an audience 65 Plus, and I’m like, no, like, Who are you actually targeting. And so at Oxo, which for those you don’t know, is a kitchen tools and products company. They’re known for innovative, functional improvements in, you know, 100 year old kitchen products, by watching users use the products and coming up with insights on how to make them better. And so I think that ethnographic research is really important. So we always look to founders who have been immersed with the target audience, and really defined it. And so there’s this thing in a pitch where they talk about the town, which is the target addressable market, versus the SAM, which is this your size, one of the what you’re actually going after? I’m much more interested in that zero to one, who are you going after? And why is it important to them? So I think there’s that piece that’s just more got to pick a segment. It’s okay not to please everybody, not to solve for everybody. I think the second thing that I learned from Oxo is the reliability piece. Every Oxo product, pretty much everyone, at least in the beginning of the business, had a big black handle that used a material that was a soft plastic material that was squishy, and felt good. You come to expect a level of quality and service and trust from a brand that delivers again and again. One of the challenges in health care is that the NPS score or the satisfaction score that most users have with health care is like in the 20s are 30%. The top is 100%. So we’re dealing with an industry on the health tech side now to services that are but certainly, you know, are hovering around 50, or 60%. NPS. So how can you design into your experience a level of satisfaction, because you’re better at listening, you’re better at personalizing, you’re better at solving problems, you’re better at letting them be heard. And technology. This is where AI comes in. Technology’s really good at doing that, of enabling humans to deliver a customer service experience that feels better and different. And the best brands are ones who have the NPS score because of service. Right,

Michael Hughes 27:53
right. In look, I mean, you probably get at least you think you get about one pitch per week of a company wanting founding funding avenues

Abby Levy 28:01
I said about right, we get 10 per week.

Michael Hughes 28:04
I’m sorry, being a little facetious there. But would you say that it’s easier to sort of look at companies that may have been raised as pros? First of all, is that process of immersion, of immersive investing or really understanding? Because that seems to be your preference? You know, did you find a companies that did embrace that the certain jump off with agent, can you see it when they could pitch to you,

Abby Levy 28:28
you can hear it. Because oftentimes, the best case is where they have data. That said, we spoke to 1000 people. And here’s what they said, or we talked to these potential customers, there’s a waiting list for our product. So obviously, the best thing is the proof. But the second thing is, you hear it and how they talk about the product. There is that pride in the product that comes from wanting to solve someone’s problem. And I have developed a product or service that has solved it. And I know it’s intangible, but you can see that sparkle in someone’s eye. irrespective of their background and training. They don’t have to be the CTO or the like whatever their functional background is. But when they have a product that solves someone’s problem, I’ll tell you one of the businesses we invested in called retiral. That helps center percent of Americans don’t have a financial plan, a financial retirement plan rather, anti Tyler and who started the business. He was a certified retirement financial planner. And then he went to policy genius and did some other startup stuff. But the way he talked about his product, and the way he talked about his consumers, Susan, who knew by the first name, or Bob or all those things, it wasn’t just a slick pitch. It was that he understood the pain point. He solved it and he was Proud to be able to help these people. And one of the most amazing things about being an investor in longevity tech is that every single founder is helping somebody. We are not an ESG, or Social Impact Fund. But our companies are having tremendous social impact. Because the spaces of healthcare, financial services surrounding aging are all topics where there are end users in pain or in trouble, or, you know, whatever it might be, and we are helping.

Michael Hughes 30:30
Yeah, and I just love to see people. This is, again, the energy that you’re, you’re giving here is the same feeling, because I love talking with founders that are just falling in love with these problems, falling in love. And they may have had a personal experience with the problem, but they understand that there’s a bigger problem out there. And they’re taking the time to really just live with an understanding from a whole bunch of different perspectives, and allow that feedback to drive their product development. You know, we’ve just started at United Church homes, our entrepreneur in residence program. Entrepreneurs actually live with us for up to a month, never the first one coming in and staying with us in May, and looking to help you out in skilled nursing and business, getting in there in the trenches. And that’s always an impressive experience. And that’s a great tell for me, you think that there’s anything in the longevity basis being overdone right now?

Abby Levy 31:19
That was a funny question I’ve ever been asked before. Well, when I started in 2019, the first thing I did was I went to the leading age conference leading ages, an organization for each Tech, really technology and aging. It’s a great organization. But at their trade show, I remember walking on the floor. And there were like, six or seven companies that had robotic pets, like you know, grandma’s lonely, we’re gonna get a robotic pet. So I joke because to me, I’m always like, what’s the robotic dog this month? You know? It’s kind of like how brussel sprouts where it became a thing, you know, five years ago? Like, what’s the thing? Then roasted cauliflower? Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, remote patient monitoring is definitely one of those bubbles, we’ll call it a fad, a bubble of entrepreneurs, does it when thinking about remote patient monitoring? Because this is where regulation comes in. Whenever CMS changes, you know, changes a rule, it creates entrepreneurs swarming around those new reimbursement codes. And so it’s only recently that the Peterson Foundation, which is a nonprofit that does healthcare research published a report, specifically remote patient monitoring related to diabetes, saying that actually none of these devices drove health outcomes. And so we have this flurry of companies developing real patient monitoring products, data aggregators, this and that, and they are a part of healthcare to be able to monitor your blood pressure at Salomon, yes, they are tools. But there were many entrepreneurs flocking into that space, because of the regulatory change. And we purposely stayed away from it, because we just feel like it’s a moment in time coming out of COVID. Another area that’s getting a tremendous amount of entrepreneurs, velocity, in the AI space, are all of the workflow management solutions, like transcription services, voice to text. A lot of those businesses which really do help, particularly in senior living channels, could help reduce the work of the paperwork. As you said, 30% of healthcare is administrative paperwork, reducing the paperwork, and so you could free up care staff time to actually care not to do paperwork. But those businesses that the challenge with those businesses is that they’re just these huge AI data businesses owned by Microsoft, and you know, Hippocratic Oath, these big businesses that ultimately will just own that space. And organizations like epic or other health care institutions are going to choose the big players because of their datasets and teams, not individual startups. So we’re seeing a lot of swarming there, but very cautious about that. The places we’re seeing swarming, that we’re really that we are excited about. We are excited about again, I mentioned Duo’s, but there’s this notion of member benefits and engagement. We think we’re going to continue to see more consumer involvement in their own health care. And so having the tools to do so is really important. Post Acute Care is still very fragmented and broken. And so new concepts around, care in the home, not hospital home, the care in the home, and different ways. We are getting care at different levels of care workers at the home. We’re going to continue to see businesses that do that. Well. We’re very excited about the care shortage question. What’s not said about the care? First question, we have a care shortage. Yeah,

Michael Hughes 35:03
please don’t say you’re excited

Abby Levy 35:07
to solve the care shortage. We think we’re just at the beginning of figuring out how to train and leverage family caregivers, you know, the 50 million people in our country who don’t necessarily identify as caregivers, but are to their older loved ones or older loved ones. So if they were going to see more training, types of businesses in this space, and then in terms of keeping people out of the hospital, out of the emergency department, data and AI around risk management, risk escalation, medication reconciliation, all of these things, I think, are in an effort to say, while we’ve been trained from a young age, just call 911. Think about when you call your doctor, the first thing we’ll say is call 911. If you need something right now, I hope every American realizes they go into the hospital as the last resort, not the first resort. So how do we keep the hospital? Other things? I know, I’m rambling, but I get asked the same times like, what’s on my wish list? Yes.

Michael Hughes 36:10
Yes. What’s on my wish

Abby Levy 36:12
List is workforce longevity? How do we encourage employers? How do we build programs for them to understand flex tyrants, to keep people working longer, because if people are going to run out of money, the number one way to change that other than winning the lottery is to keep working. So we need to keep working. So this question on the workforce, we’re looking for solutions. Housing is another one, prop tech solution. So aging in place in our own homes, 80, some 80 plus percent of older Americans own their own home. But you know, the average age of those homes are 21 to 22 years, they are not safe places to eat. While we have an investment in a business called Rosarian. that taps into the Medicare benefit for home modification, and helps individuals get the home modification they need, like grab bars, ramps or things. The real best answer is, you know, from your own organization out of church homes, is congregate living. Congregate living is a good thing. It is good to age in a community, it’s good to age with other people, frankly, it’s good at any age. And we’re so in America, so entrenched on the status of success being owning your own home. I mean, think about what monopoly the game is the hallmark of American gains monopoly. It’s all about buying properties and putting houses on it. Forget the hotels, but houses we’re so focused on. On owning a house, we really are looking for interesting solutions that say, let’s live together, let’s figure out how we live together, we only have 2 million Senior Living beds in this country, we’re gonna have to come up with other things we’re living together. So it’s not to say we’re not interested in health tech, that’s what we’re the biggest piece of the economy is the biggest growth and venture backed firms are, but I’m very keen to find things that sit around that. So those are some things we’re looking for.

Michael Hughes 38:02
Yeah, I gotta say, I mean, if you’re talking about, you know, the two things, you’re raising very compelling issues here, with the workforce, of course, you know, many of our residents still work. And by work, I mean, this is a necessity, and, but also wanting to work, as well. I mean, we talked about it at top, top of the call your father, you know, I’ve certainly known people where you sort of have all your identity tied up in this work life, and it is gone. And then what happens after that, you know, so So I know that we’re very compelled with ideas, like the opportunities to teach online or meet people online or to rediscover your purpose, or to really look at third and fourth acts of life that have periods of self actualization. And I think our aspiration is to really like look at, let’s say, I’ll pick it arbitrarily like age 75 Plus, but how do we turn that into a time where it is a fourth act where you do feel like you have that agency and productivity and like every non western society out there, we’ll get it as a time of wisdom? So that’s my soapbox. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you’ve been a terrific guest. I mean, there’s so many things I’ve written down here that I’d love to dive into. And I don’t know, I guess. I’m trying to think of something that would be a really interesting question to end this with. And you’ve already talked about really what you’re looking for? What is the most exciting thing that you’ve seen in the last week, month or two, that just small, big, you know, either longevity ticker wise or H tech wise, what was the thing that just has stuck in your head of appeal? Because a really clever solution? I’m not

Abby Levy 39:37
going to answer it as the question is asked. I’m gonna start with the I’ll come back to that. But

39:42
we can edit this after.

Abby Levy 39:45
You’ve asked me what I’m most excited about. And I think what I’m most excited about is the small startup ecosystem that a lot of the people on this podcast have talked about, but I get excited. About as the big guys are interested, AOL has 23 million monthly users. They’re over the age of 50. They’re interested in the space, the long term care and insurance players are interested in this space. All of the health care businesses are Medicaid. For the first time ever, Medicaid is paying attention to seniors Medicaid used to say that’s not our job. That’s Medicare’s job. But guess what, because the dual eligible program, which is only 11% of Medicaid members, is two thirds, there’s 20% of their cost. Yeah. So they now care about aging and innovation and aging. And so I get really excited that we have this wonderful percolation of founders and funders who are trying new things and using technology to solve the many problems we have. But paired with big distribution channels, that’s where change comes from. And so I think, as I’ve been in this space for the past four years, the piece that I’ve seen more momentum on in the past 12 months, has been with large enterprises, saying we need to play a bigger role, and we need to work better and more closely with startups. And that’s very exciting. So

Michael Hughes 41:16
Abby, terrific. I mean, I just want your responses. I love that picture that you’re painting of longevity tech. And I love the hope that you have for the future of longevity here in this country and men worldwide. We do auto shows, and we like to ask our guests three questions about aging. And just sort of your personal experience with age eight with aging, you might mind if I ask those of you. Let’s do it. Okay, but first, if somebody wants to find you, where can they find you?

Abby Levy 41:43
I’m Abby at primetime. partners.com primetime. partners.com. website. Please come find us. We’d love to talk.

Michael Hughes 41:53
Awesome. Okay, three questions about aging. Alright, question number one. Abby. When you think about how you’ve aged, what do you think has changed about you or grown with you that you really like about yourself

Abby Levy 42:04
my ability to laugh and find joy? To not take myself so seriously. It’s very cool.

Michael Hughes 42:12
Very cool. And then question number two is what has surprised you the most about you, as you’ve aged, that

Abby Levy 42:18
I still feel sometimes like an 18 year old,

Michael Hughes 42:23
which is not a bad fact. But sometimes

Abby Levy 42:25
It is sometimes those insecurities, sometimes those experiences but that I still feel like I have so much to learn.

Michael Hughes 42:34
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Again, I say this on many of the podcasts with my next door neighbor. She’s in her 80s. She’s wonderful. And she has a bumper sticker. It says, curiosity never occurs. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Third question. Is there someone that you’ve met or been in your life that has set a good example for you in aging? Slim inspired you to, as we say, age with abundance. You know, I want to be like them when I grow up.

Abby Levy 42:56
My business partner, Al Patricof. We started the business four years ago when I was 45. And he was 85. He says in his book will live to be 114. His book is called No Red Lights. I recommend everybody read it. It really is about living a life. Where green means go is the and saying yes to things is really important. He ran the marathon a year ago with the Burning Man, he just got married again. And he started a firm with me four years ago. So I think this sense of Age of having an ageless life is really an inspiration. And

Michael Hughes 43:33
viewers, if you want to see Alan on the show, please write in and we’ll petition and we’ll bring all the names and eat and Abby can tinker Allen and see if we

Abby Levy 43:42
He loved this. Yeah.

Michael Hughes 43:46
I mean, it just sounds like somebody who just lives by experiences. And its sort of experiences are kind of like the elixir of life that just seems with just what you briefly hate. And so that’s very cool. Great. So Abby, thank you so much for being such a great guest on the show. I think I definitely shared a lot of things that are very inspiring to our listeners, certainly to me, so you’re very busy. So we know that making this time has not been easy, but thank you for sharing it with us. Most importantly, though, I want to thank our listeners for listening to this episode of The Art of aging, which is part of the abundant aging podcast series at church shows. And we want to hear from you, you know, what hopes do you have for yourself as you age? How long do you think you’re going to age for? What do you think about the future of work? How would you like to see yourself and the choices that you have for employment evolve as you age? Please write to us. Please share with us at abundant aging podcast.com. We could also give you feedback when you visit the WordPress partner website at United Church Homes. You can find Abby and Abby at Primetimes Partners. And we look forward to you guys listening again in a future episode. Thanks so much and we’ll see you next time.