Zemplee Podcast : Episode 8

Ishanya Anthapur (00:11.146)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to AI powered caregiving, our weekly podcast where we're sharing stories, breaking news and new innovations from the space of senior living home care and technology. My name's A'shawnia Anthapur and I'm the host representing Zempley. Zempley is an AI powered remote monitoring company where we're designing solutions for caregivers, families, elder adults to age in place and stay at home with dignity and privacy.

We're excited to have on our podcast today's guest, Ted Teal. Ted Teal is a renowned entrepreneur, business owner, a Harvard business school grad. He's bought companies, he's sold companies, he's done it all folks, mostly in the senior living market and the technology market. We're really excited to dig into conversations with him. He is the CEO of a company called TouchTown, which is the largest provider of engagement for senior living.

And Ted's currently the CEO of Longevity Community Consultants, as well as his new venture, Brain Boosters of America. Welcome to the podcast, Ted.

Ted Teele (01:21.389)

Thanks Ishii, it's great to be here. And I'm a huge fan of Zempley. I really think the way they leverage AI and human beings too, because humans are a critical part of the equation, you high tech, high touch kind of thing to improve the quality of life of seniors is impressive. And I really love the concept behind Zempley.

By the way, TouchTown, I was the CEO. sold the company a few years ago, but it's used in 3,600 senior living communities to engage the residents, to help them improve the quality of their lives by getting out of their rooms and interacting with their fellow residents.

Ishanya Anthapur (02:13.486)

Thanks, Ted. Yeah, we are really honored for your support as well. And I love that we're both in the mindset that technology plus human power is going to create the biggest impact and the biggest success within the senior living market. I'm really curious as to, well, congrats on having sold TouchTown, first of all. I know it's been a few years, but that's always a big milestone. Yes, for sure.

Ted Teele (02:36.163)

Thank you.

It is a big win, yeah.

Ishanya Anthapur (02:42.158)

And I know we're really curious about your current ventures. Like tell us more a little bit about longevity community consultants, but we really want to know about your latest exciting project, Brain Boosters of America, which sounds like it's targeting a really key issue amongst the older population.

Ted Teele (02:59.639)

Yeah, thanks Ishii. It begins with the fact that surveys say that 90 % of seniors say they never want to live in a senior living community. So you have a product that 90 % of the target market says they never want to use the product. That is not a good thing, right? And when you talk to people why they don't want to live in senior living,

Ishanya Anthapur (03:22.113)

you

Ted Teele (03:27.363)

The biggest reason they say is they look at it as a place you go to die. Even though I love seeing your living communities because of the social environment and I think it's, but the branding, the perception in the consumer's mind isn't good. And right now there's been major developments in science and technology to help people live healthier and longer.

And I came up with the idea for longevity communities, which will make it easier and more enjoyable for people to do what they need to do, seniors specifically, to do what they need to do to live healthier, happier and longer lives. that'sinstead of the place you go to die, let's build a place you go where people feel that if they live there, they will be happier and healthier.

Ishanya Anthapur (04:17.613)

Thank

Ted Teele (04:26.445)

for the last years of their lives. And so that's the idea. And there's a lot of science. There's a concept of scientific wellness that we'll talk about a little later. so leveraging that, making it easy and fun, because the basic principle of marketing is if you make it easy, more people will do it. For example, Amazon OneClick, just click it and buy it.

Ishanya Anthapur (04:52.814)

Mm.

Ted Teele (04:52.843)

So many people will do that because it's easy. And if you make it more fun, more people will do it. So longevity community consultants was created for me to help senior living providers make the transition and add longevity components so they will be differentiated from their other competitors so they can provide a better service, get better outcomes for their residents, and improve

their business financials. So that's Longevity Community Consultants. That's one of my companies. Well, it turns out, go ahead.

Ishanya Anthapur (05:29.356)

Yeah, if anybody, sure, if people were interested, are you consulting nationally for longevity communities and how to build those?

Ted Teele (05:38.988)

Yes, I am. And you can find me on LinkedIn under Ted Teal. And that's probably the best way to reach me is send a direct message to me through LinkedIn. But yes, I'm working in all sorts of different permutations, existing providers, people that are acquiring properties that want to transform them, or people that are thinking about building a new community and want to be differentiated.

Ishanya Anthapur (06:03.086)

Mmm.

Ted Teele (06:08.931)

from everyone else. Because when you start the building projects now, you really have to think about what will consumers want five years from now. And right now, the oldest baby boomer is just coming into 80. So senior living, which has been the silent generation up until now, it started to get more and more baby boomers. And five years from now, baby boomers really don't want to go to

place you go to die, right? You know, and so that's longevity community consultants. But in the process of working with senior living providers, it turns out that the low hanging fruit, because people have asked me, you know, Ted, we don'twant to spend X number of millions of dollars to build a longevity community from scratch. But what's the low hanging fruit? They can help us.

Ishanya Anthapur (07:03.278)

Mm.

Ted Teele (07:06.915)

move in that direction in a way that will differentiate us from others and really help our residents. And it turns out that the answer is brain health. Brain health happens to be the one major point of intersection between the silent generation and baby boomers. Nobody wants to forget the name of their grandchild. And there are a number of surveys. There was one that Love and Company did last summer.

of 1600 people interested in seeing your living. And they asked them to rank the number from eight different aging related concerns. And the number one was Alzheimer's dementia and cognitive health. That's what they're worried about because they've seen it. They've seen it in friends. They've seen it in people that they live with. Everybody can tell a story of somebody with dementia. And it's a sad, sad story.

Ishanya Anthapur (07:58.254)

Mmm.

Ted Teele (08:07.127)

And it turns out that there is a lot of science now. There was a major study last summer called US Pointer, which basically worked with 2000 people and were showing that a structured lifestyle intervention using scientific wellness can provide, can really help in cognitive health relative to just making recommendations. The idea of a structured program.

Ishanya Anthapur (08:33.431)

Well.

Ted Teele (08:36.907)

is, can be really impactful. So I decided to start a second company called Brain Boosters of America. And we haven't actually launched it yet officially, but we already have a number of clients that I was telling you just got another one today, which is great. And to essentially create Brain Boosters clubs that leverage scientific wellness.

to make it easier and more enjoyable for seniors that live in senior living communities or people that are on the wait list for those communities to do what they need to do to improve their cognitive and overall health. And the reality is if you improve cognitive health, you're going to improve overall health along the way, right? So, because the brain controls everything. And so that's what Brain Boosters of America does.

Ishanya Anthapur (09:16.654)

Mm.

Ted Teele (09:35.524)

And longevity community consultants is the bigger picture. you want to add other longevity elements or build a longevity community from scratch, that's longevity community consultants. And anybody that would like to brainstorm with me, please reach out to me. I enjoy talking about these kinds of things. I'm very passionate about it. so I'd love to...

Love to hear from you.

Ishanya Anthapur (10:06.924)

Yeah, open invite from Ted. It's amazing. Your passion does really come through. mean, you've been in the space and the industry for quite a while of your career. I'm curious about what you said about cognitive health and you said there'sbeen a lot of scientific advancements and studies and I completely agree. And I know that there was this app called Lumosity that, you know, is taking a stab at this.

Ted Teele (10:22.753)

Yes.

Ishanya Anthapur (10:36.14)

trying to maintain people and keep them cognitively engaged for like 10 minutes a day. Do you think those like an app like Lumosity was successful or do you think it was actually worked for improving cognitive health?

Ted Teele (10:49.271)

Well, I use a product called Brain HQ every day. Brain HQ was created by neurologists and neuroscientists, I should say. And it's been studied.

thousands of times, including in the US pointer study that I mentioned that was a huge five, it was a five year study period and very scientifically rigorous. And Tom Brady actually used Brain HQ. He won four Super Bowls early in his career and most people don't realize this, but he went 10 years without winning a Super

Ishanya Anthapur (11:24.046)

Mm.

Ted Teele (11:39.308)

And he was thinking that maybe his cognitive processing speed was declining, which for a quarterback in the NFL is critical because the defense is trying to disguise what they're doing. And so if you can recognize at the very last minute, you can move the ball where they're not. Right. And that was what Brady was so good at. And he was afraid that he was losing that. So he started using brain HQ every day and.

Ishanya Anthapur (11:39.406)

Ishanya Anthapur (11:49.23)

you

Ted Teele (12:09.155)

He ended up winning three more Super Bowls, including at the age of 43, which is five years older than any other quarterback. And I went to his last game and he definitely did not have the physical skills that he had early in his career, but he felt like he was just as mentally sharp. So I would recommend Brain HQ, but Brain HQ is part of a structured program where you

You you gamify it and you with other people and with your teams that you're on is even better than Brain HQ is just somebody that's doing it. But you, but I do it 10 minutes a day. First thing in the

Ishanya Anthapur (12:53.432)

So even that short of period, like 10 minutes, can really help spending time on these apps or engaging.

Ted Teele (13:00.875)

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is people say, well, I do Sudoku or crossword puzzles and they're great, but they're not the same because what brain HQ, if you start getting things right, makes it harder. And if you start getting things wrong, it makes it easier. And it knows what you didn't do well. if so, there's a whole bunch of games that it's all about what they call neuroplasticity, which is, you know, brain processing speed.

Ishanya Anthapur (13:05.9)

Yeah, I've heard that.

Ted Teele (13:30.051)

And so like you could do a crosswords puzzle at glacial pace and nothing bad happens, right? Well, BrainHQ, you start getting things right, you have less and less time to figure it out, right? So they just show it to you and you have to make a decision. And so that kind of product is far superior to crossword puzzles or Sudoku because it knows the different neural pathways.

and it knows how to make you think faster, which is so important.

Ishanya Anthapur (14:06.318)

think that's a beautiful story for how technology and AI can really come into play in this space because like you said, these games that maybe you're doing on your phone or you can do it on your laptop, I'm sure, they're kind of changing. They're evolving with you over time, right? Like, I'm not sure exactly how much AI is in BrainHQ. Yeah, and it evolves to what you're doing and it can like map out a whole plan for you and helping your

Ted Teele (14:26.125)

Yeah, yeah, you get better at it.

Ishanya Anthapur (14:35.48)

particular brain evolve. I think that's really amazing.

Ted Teele (14:38.659)

So that's part of the brain boosters, but there's a lot more to it. We're doing some really cool things with VR. And with virtual reality, you could do an awful lot of things that are relaxing and enjoyable, but yet have benefits, neurological and benefits. And there's other, mean, part of it is also just education and food.

Ishanya Anthapur (14:46.19)

Ted Teele (15:08.603)

and things that are already being done in senior living communities like, you know, resistance training and aerobic training. But what what Brain Boosters is doing is bringing all that together into a program where you're actually measuringwhether it's working or not. And one of the things that's been missing in senior living, which is why people say

Ishanya Anthapur (15:29.998)

you

Ted Teele (15:37.378)

It's place you go to die. But, and, there's, you know, probably a billion dollars spent on wellness programming over the last 20 years in senior living, maybe more. But the challenge with the wellness programming and senior living is they don't measure whether it has been successful. And they're also not using things like blood biomarkers, which are absolutely critical. For example,

Ishanya Anthapur (15:58.062)

Hmm.

Ted Teele (16:05.545)

If you, there's a amino acid called homocysteine. And if you have high homocysteine, that increases your risk of dementia. So you can take a pill every day to lower that, which I do, right? Because mine was higher than ideal. It was in the reference range, but it still higher than ideal. But you look at blood and the blood tells you a story too.

Ishanya Anthapur (16:23.918)

Hmm.

Ted Teele (16:33.805)

Right? And so you've got to look at these things in a holistic way. And that's what scientific wellness is all about. You look at a whole bunch of information about somebody and you basically take that and you create a digital twin of that person and then run thousands of scenarios against an anonymized database so you can predict disease before you get it.

And then if you can predict it, you can prevent it. And then there's four Ps of scientific wellness. Predict disease so you can prevent it and personalize recommendations based on somebody's individual profile and biology. And then participation is what you have to do yourself. And the idea of brain boosters is to make that easier and more enjoyable. The second two Ps there.

So in any event, scientific wellness is significantly different from wellness and wellness programming. And for those of you that are interested in scientific wellness, there's a book done by Dr. Leroy Hood, who's one of the gods of biology. He wrote the algorithm that was used to decode the human genome and

is a member of the three national academies, science, medicine, and engineering. He's one of the few people. And the brilliant Dr. Nathan Price, they wrote a book called The Age of Scientific Wellness. And they feel like we can save a trillion dollars a year in our health care system by being preventative as opposed to just being a sick care system where come to me when you have symptoms. And so you can save a trillion dollars a year

But you could, but for each of us as individuals, the more we know, the more we can predict disease. Like right now, most people find out that they have pancreatic cancer when it's stage three or four, right? You're dead. It's spread so much. It turns out you can actually find pancreatic cancer two years before there are any clinical signs. This is from the book, The Age of Scientific Wellness.

Ishanya Anthapur (18:45.665)

Yeah, and it's already fatal, right? It's almost... yeah.

Ted Teele (19:01.281)

And the way you do it is there's a unique configuration of proteins that only exist when you're on the way, you're what they call the disease transition process towards pancreatic cancer. Because there's millions of biochemical reactions that take you from being healthy to having pancreatic cancer stage four. And so you can see the byproducts of those reactions if you're looking for them. Today, we don't look for them.

Ishanya Anthapur (19:09.23)

you

Ted Teele (19:31.331)

They're starting to look for the, there are proteins that also show that Alzheimer's is on its way and it's phosphorylated tau, like various different permutations of phosphorylated tau. But the idea is find out early. And so we want to do that for brain health with the Brain Boosters program.

Ishanya Anthapur (19:38.637)

Mm, right.

Ishanya Anthapur (19:58.092)

I love that idea. think I'm excited. Sounds like...

These things aren't currently part of any senior living community that I know of, right? Like getting your blood work drawn and getting it analyzed. The engagement is, it's there and some would do it better than others, but I agree. There'snot really this like user response, measurement goals to success levels to achieve. So I think something like this would really transform the way that senior living is currently operating. Is there, yeah, that's the goal.

Ted Teele (20:29.731)

Well, that's my goal. I love seeing living, right? I love seeing you're living. The people are such good people, so caring, and it's a great experience to visit a senior living community. But yes, scientific wellness is not currently practiced in any amount across senior living. And that's my goal is to...

Ishanya Anthapur (20:53.934)

Hmm.

Ted Teele (20:56.843)

leverage scientific wellness for longevity, but the brain booster is focusing on the low hanging fruit. And one of the other things that came out of that Love and Company survey is that 94 % of those 1,600 people said that a strong brain health program would positively impact their choice of where to live. you know, so it's obviously some said it would

be very impactful and some said it moderately, but 94 % said it would have some positive impact. Because if you go in and you go and you're getting a tour and you see the Brain Boosters lab and that's really cool place with VR and all that and you hear about the programming and you hear about the program and you you go to the next place and you know, you're just looking at, know, here's our two bedroom suite and here's our one bedroom suite, right?

Ishanya Anthapur (21:42.894)

Ha

Ishanya Anthapur (21:54.606)

Here's our bingo night.

Ted Teele (21:57.102)

Yeah, here's our, that's our bingo. Yes. You know, so all that and then nothing wrong with bingo. It's a good social activity, right? But it's not a program that's going to material improve your cognitive health and make it easy and enjoyable.

Ishanya Anthapur (22:00.302)

you

Ishanya Anthapur (22:14.926)

Yeah. Is there anything else that you think could be fundamentally changed about the aging services or senior living in general?

Ted Teele (22:26.657)

Well, you know, I think, you know, the number one challenge is the fact that 90 % of the people don't like the product that exists and that they see because they visited somebody else, right? Certainly there's a lot of ways you could improve senior living. And, you know, and the same thing is true. There's a whole category.

Ishanya Anthapur (22:40.935)

Yeah.

Ted Teele (22:56.023)

below senior, not below, but below age target called active adults, know, places like the villages. And it's the same thing, you know, there's not a whole lot of science, you know, active adult communities do give you a chance to do healthy things like lift weights and take yoga classes and pickleball, but you could implement scientific wellness based programming at those kinds of communities as well.

Ishanya Anthapur (23:01.986)

Right.

Ted Teele (23:25.411)

And again, become more attractive. So, uh, you know, there's a, there's a lot of things that, uh, and certainly AI plays a big role. AI plays a huge role in scientific wellness. And I think each of us, if I make an editorial comment here, if you're not using AI for your own health, you should start because you know, you, you know, I feed chat, GPT, all of my test results.

Ishanya Anthapur (23:48.942)

Thanks.

Ted Teele (23:54.926)

you know, my supplement list, you know, everything. And I asked lots and lots of detailed health related questions all the time. And the fact is, that, you know, AI knows me, ChatGP, and I actually call, given her a female named Sage, right, Wisdom. And she talks to me in a British female woman's voice, and she can answer my questions, right.

And obviously you can check with your doctor, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to talk to your doctor, right? No, not, you know, maybe once every six months or you could send them a message through the portal, but you know, there was a, a panel discussion where they said how long until it's malpractice to not use AI in diagnostics.

Ishanya Anthapur (24:29.558)

Yeah, not these days, yeah. Definitely.

Ishanya Anthapur (24:49.006)

Hmm.

Ted Teele (24:52.617)

And the panel agreed that it's no more than five years. things are going to change a lot in senior living. Senior living operationally and marketing, AI plays a huge role in all of that. No question about it.

Ishanya Anthapur (25:06.456)

Yeah. Yeah. We're seeing trends like AI helping with like recruitment and with marketing, as you said, and staffing. But I love the, I think we're both passionate in both of our ventures. You exemplify in you with brain boosters and longevity community consulting to see AI in terms of wellness, in terms of education, in terms of life, in terms of health outcomes, life expectancy, et cetera. I'm gonna.

Ted Teele (25:35.118)

Yeah, and happiness, happiness. And I think Zempley plays a big role. Zempley can really make some, I do believe Zempley, first off, Zempley provides peace of mind because there are alert systems that are a lot better than pushing onthe button and getting an ambulance to come, right? You can have a human being find out if you've fallen, right?

Ishanya Anthapur (25:37.995)

happiness. I love that.

Ishanya Anthapur (25:55.064)

Yeah.

Ishanya Anthapur (26:03.8)

Yeah.

Ted Teele (26:04.171)

based on AI and triaging and looking at all this extra data that right now, the services where you just push the button, they don't have all that data.

Ishanya Anthapur (26:15.756)

Yeah, we just had this, I'll share really quickly. We had an incident where one of our, patients that were helping service, they couldn't get to their PERS button in time. It was not around their neck, something like that. were able to, with Zempley, they were able to just, now we send out texts. their family got a text alert. Your caregiver also got a text alert, but the family just called the caregiver who was local, sent them over. And so that's.

That was like an amazing story for us to hear.

Ted Teele (26:46.019)

But you guys can, using AI and humans, you can figure out risk factors that you can't do it otherwise, right? And so I think that's really important for the frail elderly, right? To be able to know that. And then you have grace, which I love your saying age with grace. I love that. Grace is an artificial human.

Ishanya Anthapur (26:54.435)

Yeah.

Ted Teele (27:16.205)

but has a real warm personality and can communicate to them. And if they need to talk to, if it's escalated above a certain level, they talk to a real human, right? And who knows them? And it's very efficient. So you've got that real human there when you need that person based on the AI inputs, right? So you get, mean, the example that I absolutely love is,

You know, somebody that's a frail elderly person that's waking up to needs to go to the bathroom. And Grace can remind Mrs. Smith that she should take 10 deep breaths before getting out of bed. So she reduces the chances that she'sgoing to fall, have a catastrophic fall because somebody is noticing that she's up. She's now up and you know, it's.

Ishanya Anthapur (27:57.387)

yeah.

Ted Teele (28:13.079)

You kind of fall out, you roll out of bed and that's really bad and creates a crisis, right? And, you know, but why not avert the crisis by getting her to kind of, you know, take a deep breath, get ready, and then she can go to the restroom with a lot less risk. But if she falls, if she's in that restroom too long, then you know that, right? So more of this information in a noninvasive way, no cameras, which I think is really important as well.

Ishanya Anthapur (28:36.524)

Yeah.

Ishanya Anthapur (28:43.63)

Yeah, we call that part of our secret sauce. No cameras, no wearables. But I wanna wrap it up with a couple kind of rapid fire questions just to get your take on a few interesting topics here. I'll start with, were you ever a caregiver or are you in a caregiver capacity currently?

Ted Teele (29:07.253)

I'm not, you we had my mother-in-law was sick, but she wasn't living with us. my sister, while I, you know, I was observing her, but my sister-in-law and her husband really did, took the burden. And guess what? She did not want to live inassisted living because it's the place you go to die. And so I've never had.

Ishanya Anthapur (29:16.704)

I think that still counts though.

Ishanya Anthapur (29:27.822)

Mm.

Ishanya Anthapur (29:31.064)

Hehehe.

Ted Teele (29:36.035)

somebody with dementia, but man, I've talked to an awful lot and it's heartbreaking, truly heartbreaking to be in that situation and not, you know, just not being able to be there all the time. You have to have your life, you have to have your job, usually.

Ishanya Anthapur (29:49.784)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like, you know, everyone, the more and more we talk to people, the more we find out all the avenues, everyone's got someone in their life that is getting older and they've got to care for them in somewhere or the other. You're remote, you're across the country or you're, you're the one in the house with them. It's, I think all the stories are. Yeah.

Ted Teele (30:13.483)

Another good reason for Zemple, so because, know, Zemple gives you an awful lot more information that could be used by AI to make better decisions and text the family, right? Just like you suggested.

Ishanya Anthapur (30:29.346)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're working on all of that right now, actually. We've got some exciting stuff coming up in 2026 in terms of AI and predictions, but.

Ted Teele (30:38.915)

By the way, you know, I love to have some stock. kidding. So, love the company. So, I'm just kidding about it. But yeah, put it out there. Put it here. Put it out there.

Ishanya Anthapur (30:46.63)

I I'll put that out there. If anyone's interested, message me on LinkedIn. Ted, what's a book or a TV show that you're reading a piece of media that you are currently do interested in.

Ted Teele (31:04.161)

Well, again, I would recommend the Age of Scientific Wellness by Leroy Hood and Nathan Price. It really is a seminal work that will transform, I believe eventually, you know, there's a lot of resistance with the medical industrial complex, but I believe that the efficacy is so much there for doing it this way.

Ishanya Anthapur (31:23.735)

Mm.

Ted Teele (31:32.983)

that the evidence will start piling up. So read the Age of Scientific Wellness as my biggest recommendation to answer that question.

Ishanya Anthapur (31:44.588)

Yeah, that's it sounds amazing. I'm going to take a look at it. I'm curious myself, so I'll be ordering that off Amazon after this.

Ted Teele (31:51.48)

Yeah, one thing that is she, I have a document that has links to all sorts of resources that you could attach to this podcast if you want, I can email it to you, but it has a link to, for example, lots of things that I've done relative to longevity communities, presentations, podcasts, et cetera, but also scientific wellness and

So there's a link to the book, but there's also linked to podcast. Like if you only want to listen to a 30 minute podcast, there's a link to that. There's also a bunch of links to brain health information. And finally, what I call personal longevity recommendations. If you want to up your own knowledge, you know, about longevity, where you can get sources like books, podcasts and all that. So I can email that to you and you can attach it.

in some way to this podcast, if you would like.

Ishanya Anthapur (32:53.27)

Yeah, that would be excellent. We can do that. Thanks, Ted.

Ted Teele (32:59.202)

My pleasure.

Ishanya Anthapur (32:59.722)

Okay, with that, I'm gonna wrap it up. Let us both off the hook here, but thank you. We had so much fun. I had so much fun, like getting to know a lot more about longevity, science of wellness and wellness science. And yeah, hope to have you back in the future.

Ted Teele (33:21.219)

Well, I would love to.