Kyle Robinson Podcast Transcript
Kyle Robinson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Kyle Robinson. Kyle Robinson is an entrepreneur with degrees in journalism, health communication, and gerontology. Kyle spent her career providing senior living organizations with marketing and sales support, preventative health programs, wellness services, and technology.
She has 20+ years of experience working for nonprofit senior living communities. As an entrepreneur, Kyle has successfully launched three companies, including Wellzesta. A health tech software company dedicated to active aging, where she leads Wellzesta’s RevOps team. She has experience as an adjunct instructor in marketing and public speaking at the university level.
Well, good afternoon, Kyle. Welcome to the show!
[00:00:54] Kyle Robinson: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:00:56] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And Kyle, I appreciate you making the time. I know we all have to, work around our crazy calendars, multiple calendars, sometimes to get together behind a mic on a podcast, but this is certainly the most favorite thing I love to do every single day.
And again, thank you. So Kyle, we’re going to jump right into your questions. You’ve got quite the career in healthcare, senior living technology, you’re an entrepreneur now, the partner of Wellzesta. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:27] Kyle Robinson: Big questions to start off with, which is great.
I love to answer things like this. Really. No secret per se. I asked people in our industry that all the time you the secret to longevity, the secret to purpose and all of that. But I would say for me, really, I grew up in the senior living industry. My. The father had a consulting firm for 40 years, and so really building upon the work of others, surrounding yourself with people who are gifted and smart, intelligent, and really have made a mark in whatever industry you are interested in. I really gravitated to working with older adults at a very early age and went to school for journalism and gerontology and then, you know, master’s in health communication. So, I was focused on really being around older adults and ways that we could improve their lives.
So, following my purpose I don’t know. I think of my career and my family life and All of it together loving God serving God loving people serving people and as long as I’m doing that every day and surrounding myself with people who want to be part of that, then that’s really the secret, if you will and also, having grit. You probably many of you have heard Angela Duckworth’s talk on grit, and I really think that that is just super meaningful and how you can grow a career is, having tenacity and just going after it. And if you fall down, getting back up and continuing on that journey. And then the second part of what you asked was about inspiration and no doubt about it.
This the senior living industry and the technology industry as they intersect really allow us to see and witness some amazing stories, testimonials from the people that we serve. So, we work with people who are anywhere from 60 years old to our oldest user of our software is 104, I believe, so really seeing their lives positively impacted and one person that particularly inspires me is actually my grandmother, Mimi, and I talk about her often in this industry.
She will be 103 this month. She lives in independent living at a lifeline community. She actually is a user of the Wellzesta technology, which is really interesting to see and just witnessing how her lifestyle choices have really positively impacted her life and the lives of others and then putting herself in a literally in a place, a position that her life can be enhanced, on a physical level, intellectually stimulated emotionally.
And physically, mentally, all of those things. Watching her socialization just increases, which has increased the, not only the longevity of her life, but I think the enhancement to the lives of those around her. So, she’s a certainly an inspiration to me personally and professionally.
[00:04:38] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And you have a lot that I can tell you’re, you have your purpose, serving like you said, serving God, serving people but also, I love your story of your grandmother. That is amazing. 103 years old. I wish we all could live healthy till to a hundred, but we can’t always get there, but I think we can start if we can help each other.
And again, people like you that are developing platforms like WellZesta that actually help those that are aging, in that community make themselves a better life. So, I appreciate that share, Kyle. Jumping into the next question. Can you explain how technology has transformed the senior living landscape, particularly in the areas like wellness, community building, and how has it impacted the quality of life for older adults?
[00:05:22] Kyle Robinson: We have a, a saying that says, that if you are, empowered by technology, but people are always part of that. So as a technology company, we are always looking for kind of high-tech high touch because you can’t leave the person part out of that are, the staff, the teams that surround the technology, make it all work and happen.
And then, of course, the end users themselves. I’ve personally seen applications not just, of course, WellZesta, but many, many applications that have positively impacted the senior living industry and beyond and health care certainly as well, I’ve seen a lot as it relates to, we’re really big on personalization.
And what does that mean? I think back in the day, if you will, it was more of a one size fits all technology could help you have a drop in solution. That was really more generic and what could help people. A lot of the applications were helping people on the physical level, whether it was enhancing, how they could go through their day or providing the staff with data and information to help them make better decisions. But today we really see technology and we at WellZesta are also really focused on how do you support personalization? What I mean by that is giving the residents, the end users autonomy and the ability to really go about their day in the way that makes them feel the most valued and significant and that they’re making their own decisions and then just supported by the technology, but still, guided by their own internal compass, if you will, and that that also supports scalability and growth because.
People can do a lot, but they can’t do it as much as at scale as technology can. So, allowing you to have strong staff members and team members that then can be empowered through technology to touch. More lives and we’ve seen that over and over again. And then, personal stories that I’ve seen as it relates to that. One story of a resident who I was able to get to know, she was in her nineties and her husband had just passed away and she was using our platform to connect with others.
In a new way that she never had before. And so, she would see through the application, people attending certain events, she was able to, with one touch of a button, either text them or email them or call them very easily. And also, by communicating with them that she would say let’s meet for lunch, or let’s go to this water aerobics class together or Tai Chi class.
And they would show up and she told us in kind of a story that she shared was after her husband died, she was nervous to. Start exploring again and be out on her own, but through the ability to connect with others through a platform, just even by sitting in her own apartment, or she could do that.
And then her life was enhanced. She was trying new things, which opened up, kind of her eyes to exciting new challenges and hearing this feedback is always helpful for us, especially for our developers who don’t sometimes get to see it firsthand. And so listening to personal feedback, how technology helps people is something that is really valuable, especially to our developers who are out there creating this to be put to good use in everyday life.
[00:08:53] Brian Thomas: I love that. Technology can be a barrier to some, especially older adults, but I like how you’re bringing in that personalization and enabling older adults to actually be able to connect with others. And especially in times when they lose their spouse it can be very difficult.
So I love this story about Kyle and Kyle. The next question I want to jump into is how do you see the intersection of technology and senior living evolving in the next five to 10 years?
[00:09:20] Kyle Robinson: One thing to keep in mind that’s a little bit unique to the work that we do at the average age, we have multiple products and platforms, but the one that we’re probably most known for as well as as to life, which is our resident engagement and wellness platform and the average age of the end user for that platform is 84 years old and we have super high utilization of that platform due to many different things, like, we really pay a lot of attention to our UX UI, which will continue to, I think, see evolve in the technology and senior living sector the application of how people use software will not only be enriched and enhance really again, going back to that personalization.
Understanding people’s personal preferences because of leveraging the actual feedback that they are providing through the platform and listening to that. I think we’ll see an evolution in voice that has continued to be something that is leveraged, especially with older adults, which increases their autonomy and gives that end user more control and guidance over their day.
We certainly are doing a lot with AI and the enhancement of ChatGPT and those kinds of things as that evolves. That I think is just the tip of the iceberg for technology in this field and industry. And then of course, using it in a smart way, in a way that is really thinking about the person first, being really people centered first, and then, technology driven second, which is maybe odd for a technology company to say, but I think super important.
And then we will see more detailed data and, on that data, we talk a lot about of course, big data and data analytics, but how does that support both the residents, the end users, the staff to help them make more timely decisions. Especially things that are related to positively impacting their health and well-being.
And then we’ll also see no doubt about it. The growth of people staying at home. So, a lot of our senior living communities already have at home programs. There are. All different industries that are working on this, but technology certainly in the home, whether that’s at a community in their home, or literally at their own home, providing people with services that they can easily access through technology through a platform and the ability to communicate and talk to people that way.
So, it’s more socialization. And whether you’re getting that I don’t know. I call it digital intimacy, which might be a funny way of thinking of it. But really, how do you stay connected, maybe when you aren’t able to get out quite as much or quite as often, or maybe in the same manner as you were used to before, but yet staying very socially connected, moving away from social isolation.
So, I think we’ll continue to see that evolve really in that intersection.
[00:12:21] Brian Thomas: I love that. And thank you for sharing that perspective. We talk about the over saturation of social media and people are being addicted to their smartphone, right? But in your particular case or your industry it’s actually a positive because you can, and again, I’ve not heard that, but social intimacy that’s amazing that you’re doing that.
And you did highlight the human connection first and technology, second technology enabled. And I really like that. So, thank you again for sharing your perspectives, Kyle. Kyle, last question of the day. We ask everybody doesn’t matter if you’re a technologist or not like I am, but if you’re leveraging any new or emerging tech in your tech stack, if not, that’s fine.
Maybe there’s a cool tool or app you might share with our audience today.
[00:13:05] Kyle Robinson: Absolutely. We’re trying to always stay ahead of things, which is not the easiest thing to do as technology, of course, is ever evolving and usually one of the most rapidly changing industries, if you will. But we have leveraged some things differently.
Two years ago, we moved from one cloud to, we actually are on GCP, Google’s cloud, and that in itself has given our platform more scalability, and then also it gives you access to more tools, like all of their new AI tools, their AI suite from Google Bard, which is their, Google’s kind of chat bot and that provides us just with a great deal more in In addition to what we already have created for ourselves, having partnerships like that. We also have a partnership with an organization, an AI company called NVIDIA, and we leverage their GPU on the Google cloud, and that helps increase speed and with increased speed, that really helps people feel comfortable in the platform to use.
As soon as they take an action to be able to we have what we call event driven architecture. So, our API will publish an event. It says this just happened and then it’s routed to one or more cloud functions. And then that action occurs, and that’s really where the A. I.
happens, which we have seen very much positively impact not only organizations in the communities that we partner with and serve, but the end user themselves and think that will quickly continue to evolve and be something that we leverage as well as something that I think will be leveraged in this industry as well. On a personal level, tooling. I’m a huge fan of I mean, it’s the new year. So, a lot of people are thinking through this, but I’m a personal fan of tools and apps like the Calm App which helps with, doing with sleep as well as positive thinking and mindfulness and really starting my day with that is important.
There are all kinds of fantastic platforms out there. I think learning new vocabulary, things that push us in new directions with languages, those are things I’m personally always exploring as well. And so, I think we will just continue to see not only technology impact health care and senior living, but our own personal lives as well.
[00:15:29] Brian Thomas: Thank you, Kyle. Appreciate the share both on the business side, right? You talk about GCP and in the cloud and leveraging some of the technologies and power in the cloud for your platform, which is amazing. Thank you. But also on the personal level, we do like to hear what busy executives are using as far as applications on their phone to bring more efficiency, or in your case, maybe some more balance in your life and your mental health and your sleep.
So, thank you. Kyle, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:16:01] Kyle Robinson: Thank you, Brian. My pleasure. And look forward to speaking with you as well. Really enjoyed today.
[00:16:06] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Kyle Robinson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
