Pinning Down Turnover

In this episode, Dr. Mike Strouse and Ivo Ivanov sit down with Lewis Walton—attorney, tech innovator, longtime board member, and one of the most respected professional family teachers in GoodLife’s history. Together, they revisit the pivotal years between 1999 and 2002, when the seeds of remote support, professional family living, and the three-day work week were planted—years before the rest of the field caught on.

Lewis shares his unique path from philosophy student to tech leader to extended family caregiver. You’ll hear behind-the-scenes stories of GoodLife’s first analog-to-digital transition, the birth of the extended family model, and the invisible infrastructure that has supported some of the nation’s most innovative care models. The trio also dives into professional wrestling, podcasting, neighborhood networks, and why some lives—and careers—just don’t punch in and out.

🎧 Tune in to explore what happens when care becomes a lifestyle, not a shift—and how technology, relationships, and purpose are transforming what’s possible.

Transcript

Ivo Ivanov (00:00:00):

And hello and welcome to the Quest for the Good Life with Dr. Mike Strouse. This podcast is a production of Good Life University. Your host as usual is Dr. Mike Strouse among many other things, chief Executive Officer of Good Life Innovations. I'm your co-host with the co-host Ivo Ivanov. listeners. We have a special guest today. He's an Esquire. He is the assistant vice president and staff attorney and compliance auditor of the Kansas Bankers Association. He is a good life board member, a tech guru, and finally one of the most esteemed professional family teachers in the rich history of good life innovations. Welcome Louis Walton.

Lewis Walton (00:01:00):

Thank you. Thank you very much. Ivo. I have to say I'm used to a slightly different introduction from you.

Ivo Ivanov (00:01:08):

We do have A podcast.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:01:09):

How long about history do we all have together?

Ivo Ivanov (00:01:13):

Oh my gosh. Put together probably a hundred years

Lewis Walton (00:01:17):

Just about when I interviewed to start at what was then CLO back in 2002. Ivo was at my second interview. So I met Ivo before I met you actually.

(00:01:34):

Three Years ago.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:01:34):

So 2002, and we're going to get into this. His whole pathway through good life is important.

Ivo Ivanov (00:01:41):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:01:43):

But that was an amazing time and for people, and really it documents you started as the director of our technology.

Lewis Walton (00:01:55):

Right. So interestingly, I didn't start as the director. I applied for the director position and that went to our friend rest in peace, Doug Williams and Doug came in and realized that the things that CLO, again at Good Life, the time CLO was talking about doing, were way more than one person could do, one person could run.

(00:02:19):

And so Doug essentially talked to the administrative team and said, I got to have some help. And so I came on as basic tech support in 2002.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:02:30):

No kidding. I guess I forgot that.

Lewis Walton (00:02:33):

That's

Ivo Ivanov (00:02:34):

Right.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:02:34):

Because all I can think about is that you led and you did lead technology.

Ivo Ivanov (00:02:39):

Yeah. Lou, you took over the technology department and you oversaw a historic period. I liken it to historic time that I experienced in the late eighties when the wall crumbled. The Cold War ex expired basically. And I was lucky enough to be in East Europe at the time and experience the transition from authoritarian society to a democratic society and democracy with elections and all that stuff. It was incredibly exciting because everybody that was involved realized that this is history in the making and we occupy a moment in history that is unprecedented. And you came to the company at a time where analog gave way to the digital era.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:03:35):

I want everybody to appreciate this and this is why I say, and I'm claiming it now, somebody's going to have to dispute me, but I read a lot of stuff about the history of remote support technology and in fact, it had been published in different ways and we weren't in it. And it started about 2007. I sat there and thought, no, it didn't. I mean, the reality is it started with

Ivo Ivanov (00:04:02):

Gary Graham,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:04:04):

1999.

Lewis Walton (00:04:05):

That's right.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:04:06):

Ad pro technology.

Lewis Walton (00:04:08):

I was just going to ask you if you remembered

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:04:10):

Ad pro technology, which was analog. It was military encrypted technology, and fundamentally it was over phone lines. It was over

Lewis Walton (00:04:21):

Analog phone lines.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:04:23):

And you could see it was like think of snapshots of movement, but still effective in reality. You could tell somebody was up or if at night or a variety of things. We literally used it for night support. I remember was it m Kazinski? He would wear a clown nose and walk across the camera scene. So we can't see him disappear and appear and disappear and appear across with analog technology. But we still saw him. I mean, we still saw him, but that's how it started. And Lou, didn't you kind of come in at a time where we were like right. Moving from that,

Lewis Walton (00:05:06):

Literally one of the first

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:05:08):

Things, two crystal speed internet of about one.

Lewis Walton (00:05:11):

That was literally when I came on board. One of the first major tasks that I had was switching all of our homes from the analog connection to the central site because the way it was set up is each home had a monitoring system installed, and

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:05:29):

It

Lewis Walton (00:05:29):

Was a military grade, but it was a fancy camera system. And so each one of those systems, whenever they would, for instance, have a sensor go off, they would call on the phone line and call back to the central system and literally tying up the phone line. And if somebody happened to hop on the phone, it was a problem. And there were just so very many problems. And did

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:05:54):

We share the phone line? At a

Lewis Walton (00:05:56):

Certain point, they were shared, and that was again one of the first things I looked at and was like,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:02):

Shouldn't do that.

Lewis Walton (00:06:02):

Let's try something a little bit different. And so Lawrence happened to be one of the test sites for this brand new technology called Cable Modems back in 96. And so we were one of the first places in the area that actually had broadband internet. I literally remember going to the Lawrence Cable Company to get this giant box about the size of two toasters. That was my first cable modem, and it was a fantastic

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:36):

Cutting edge. Fantastic.

Lewis Walton (00:06:37):

Yes, cutting

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:38):

Edge time. Every time we honestly did was cutting

Lewis Walton (00:06:40):

Edge.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:41):

But looking back, they were pretty big devices that have been micro.

Ivo Ivanov (00:06:49):

Now they're invisible.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:51):

They're so small you can't see.

Ivo Ivanov (00:06:52):

Yeah.

Lewis Walton (00:06:53):

And so getting the homes transitioned from that analog connection to the central site to broadband was really the first step.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:03):

So just to take our place in history, I think it's important is that from 1999, which by the way, as you know, was right before Y 2K where we thought the world was going to end and it was a big nothing burger.

(00:07:21):

But from 1999 to 2002, when you entered into the scene, a guy by the name of Gary Graham, we worked with him. He was in home security. He was also a part of our founding group with the teaching family model. He had done work with Boystown and the chief I Place training project. He had huge history in all this and so did his wife. And so we of migrated from that. But at that time, and this was before anybody reported using remote technology, honestly, Lou, when you were there by 2002, I'm sure that we were well over 20 homes or more. Absolutely.

Lewis Walton (00:08:04):

Absolutely. We had homes when I started in 2002, there were, I want to say 13 homes in Lawrence and maybe 10 or 12 in Johnson County. So we had just crossed the 20 home

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:08:18):

Threshold by, and this was years before it was claimed that it existed. Absolutely. I just want to point that out. So I loved it because we collectively saw the vision

(00:08:33):

Of things here and we'll talk about later, but I think that is something to be proud of, to know that you were there. And I remember, and one of the motivators for that, Lou, was because we used what was called teaching family model, where there'd be staff that lived on one side supporting three people or so that lived on another side of a duplex. But we also had up at night staff and we thought, well, we really don't need up at night staff. If we knew when somebody's up, we couldn't have the sleeping person get up. I mean, we saved at that year, we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars that we redirected to other things, day services and stuff. But we saw that value of technology way long ago.

Ivo Ivanov (00:09:22):

Yeah. I wonder how much of your visionary superpowers Mike are influenced by science fiction and movies and 1980s movies because there was a movie called War Games with Matthew Broderick. Remember, I've

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:09:38):

Watched it many times.

Ivo Ivanov (00:09:41):

I bet. I bet. It was 1983 that movie was made, and it kind of predicted a lot of the things that we are going to use in daily life. And I recommend the movie, by the way. It aged. Well, it's very entertaining. But Louis, you might be wondering why Mike is wearing a fedora and it has to do with 1980s and movies again.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:04):

Do you know what movie it was? That's got to be

Lewis Walton (00:10:07):

Indiana Jones.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:08):

It is. Everybody already on the podcast knows this is because he was a scientist and I liked that part of him. And he tried to go, he questioned over things that were fundamentally ridiculous and unattainable, which is something I I'd love to do. My favorite poem that I did was coming home with the third tablet, and we only had two arms. So you don't know that there isn't a third tablet. It could happen. So it's those kinds of ridiculous quests that we shouldn't give up, right? Yes.

(00:10:47):

And every now and then you find one. And that was definitely, but there's been a lot of 'em. But what was so cool about technology, and it still is true today, Evo, is that we recognize that certain service approaches could be leveraged by technology live in family. Teachers could be used cost effectively

(00:11:15):

To Support people at night instead of having traditional staffing. I mean, way back then we were looking at a different way to staff.

Lewis Walton (00:11:22):

So that's one of the things that was super interesting to me about what we were doing at the time. And there's something that you said that I heard you say quite a few times, and I think it's profound. When we were talking about using this remote monitoring technology, when you would talk to people, you would say, you can have an environment at night where you can sleep and the individuals that are served can sleep. Or you can have an environment where the staff is awake. You can't have both. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:11:55):

You either create a environment where everybody can sleep or everybody's awake, but I've never seen one where you can have both. And it's true. So when we implemented that, people who were constantly up at night, clients who were up at night would sleep, and then you would see those people when they did it, when it was just staffed and they were up all night because they wanted to be with staff or they were somebody who was vacuuming or just lights were on or whatever it was because staff had to stay awake. And I don't know if you've ever been in a car trying to drive somebody late at night. Your windows are open, you start singing. You do. I mean, it is not easy to stay awake.

Ivo Ivanov (00:12:38):

Yeah, that's true.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:12:39):

And so you either are all awake or you're all asleep. And then when we did that, and what happened is in day services in that environment, you see all the men and women were sleeping. I mean, the energy was just one thing in the quality of life stuff. Add to that, we found out that the live-in staff, which Lou this more than anybody, and we'll get to that, they stayed five to seven years at that time compared to direct support staff. That was just constant turnover. And they still are. They still are. So it was like we were always trying to leverage different models that not only help deliver more cost effective services can didn't pay much, but also it helped move into other ways to deliver better care. Right.

Ivo Ivanov (00:13:35):

Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:13:36):

And you were part of that, but what I loved about what you did is you kind of had always a foot on the technology doc. It went on caregiving. You knew more about caregiving than most people did. It was like a bit of a social service approach. What was your, remind me, what was your I think I remember. I don't think it was technology. So what was your background?

Lewis Walton (00:14:03):

The long story is it was my degree. I basically started working at Good Life immediately after graduating college. It took me 10 years to get my undergrad in philosophy. That's what

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:14:16):

I remember.

Lewis Walton (00:14:17):

Yes, yes. So I had a degree in philosophy, but at least part of the time that I was taking classes part-time to get that degree, I had actually spent working in other nonprofits, other direct care based nonprofits.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:14:31):

That's why you knew so much.

Lewis Walton (00:14:35):

I will say that all the programs are similar. What Good Life did even way back then was kind of light years ahead of what I had experienced before in that there was no, oh, I can't think of the term. We didn't have any restriction. Physical, restrictive, physically restrictive programs.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:14:59):

Yes. Oh, you mean behaviorally restrictive? We were positive.

Lewis Walton (00:15:03):

Correct.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:15:04):

And that's a big deal.

Lewis Walton (00:15:05):

And so there were a lot of things that I had to learn when I came to good Life as far as how the direct care programs went, but it wasn't outside of the bailiwick of what I had done previously. So yeah, I have always had a interest in essentially human interactions at almost every level. That's probably one of the things that drives my personality more so than anything else. And I like to break stuff. And so technology fits the way that we go through stuff.

Ivo Ivanov (00:15:41):

I remember Lou, how impressed you were at that interview where I was present when you were being interviewed, how impressed you were with the fact that we look at behaviors as something that can be fixed through science. And it's no coincidence. Our chief executive officer is a behavior of scientist. This is the foundation of this organization. And I remember you were really, really, really impressed by this approach.

Lewis Walton (00:16:14):

It was, I had had some familiarity with Boystown and I hadn't ever considered using that in an MRM RDD environment. So I was more, my curiosity was peaked more than anything else. How does this work? I needed to know more.

Ivo Ivanov (00:16:39):

Yeah. It was looking back at your path through good life, it's quite amazing that in any company that exists for half a century, we have, there are inflection points and turning points, and you've experienced firsthand, no degrees of separation. One of the inflection points, the technology embracing the technology, the emerging digital technology and making it happen. And then another inflection point is the transition from traditional shift based services towards family teaching. Because you are, like I said in the introduction, one of the most esteemed professional teachers in the organization.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:26):

Well, I mean both of you guys are, how did you guys meet? Did you meet at this point?

Lewis Walton (00:17:31):

Yeah, literally. I met him at the interview for working with Good Life.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:36):

Well, you guys have been fast fasting evil fans together for years.

Lewis Walton (00:17:40):

Now

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:41):

You

Lewis Walton (00:17:41):

Evo is the best person on the planet. Oh God. So I am continually honored every single day to call him my

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:49):

Friend. Oh,

Ivo Ivanov (00:17:50):

Thank you.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:51):

And you guys separately from this have a long running podcast.

Ivo Ivanov (00:17:58):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:17:59):

Tell our podcast viewers a little bit about that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:18:03):

So we had a silly podcast and we still have it. It's called Wednesday Night Undressed, and it takes place in a pub in the city of Lawrence, Kansas. And it's very eclectic. We have representatives of multiple generations. We have teenagers, we have people in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. And we engage in kind of random, seemingly random conversations, current events, popular culture. And every week is something different. We sometimes involve random people from the pub, but

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:18:42):

Isn't there like a theme each week? What does it center around?

Ivo Ivanov (00:18:48):

Louis comes up with the theme.

Lewis Walton (00:18:49):

That's really kind of it. I will generally speaking, scour like current events to see if maybe there's something that I think might be interesting to talk about. Or if I can't find anything on current events, then I just come up with a question. For instance, I will tell you one of the questions in a week will be, so this is how I structure my questions. I try to find an open-ended question that can be interpreted differently by every person on the panel so that when they answer, they have to explain their

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:19:22):

Interpretation. I got it.

Lewis Walton (00:19:23):

So one of the questions for the next podcast will be, if you had to pick one, would you rather the people around you be nice or kind? So everybody that answers that has to tell the difference between what it means to be nice and what it means to be kind. And if they don't tell what that is, then I force them to, you can't answer the question without explaining that

Ivo Ivanov (00:19:46):

He's been trying to escape his philosophy degree for decades. And he cannot. It still carries the momentum philosopher forever. But yeah, it's fun questions and thought provoking.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:19:59):

But in regard from the South, I would hear that question and I'd go, nice is what you kill people with niceness,

Ivo Ivanov (00:20:06):

Bless your heart, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:20:08):

Bless your little heart, bless your legal heart, but kind intent. To me it's more intent. But I love the idea of that.

Lewis Walton (00:20:21):

And so in addition to that, I will have is a hotdog, a sandwich? I will have those two topics as question.

Ivo Ivanov (00:20:31):

We also have another podcast that's more serious. It's called Transatlantic Perspective. And it takes place once a week and we discuss more serious events and occasionally we have guests. For example, one time we as a guest, we had the prosecutor that prosecuted the BTK serial killer in Wichita. And she was fascinating and she went in depth and told us things about this case that we didn't know. They were not public in the public domain. And it was really fascinating. His name was Dennis Rader, by the way, the murderer. And she told us how they discovered the evidence in his office. And just really interesting, one time we had as a guest, a boy from Lawrence who had half of his brain removed, it's called Hemispherectomy, the procedure. And that kid is absolutely incredible. His name is Gibson Huston, and he was a spectacular guest. And Mike is a scientist, so he knows about neuroplasticity. This is a quality of the brain to rewire itself. Obviously early childhood education relies a lot on neuroplasticity. In his case, the Hemispherectomy was performed so early in his life when he was like three years old, that the remaining hemisphere acquired the functions of the removed hemisphere. And he made a full recovery, the right part of his body, his partial paralysis because the left hemisphere was removed. So he has a little bit of mobility issues with the right hand and right leg, but intellectually, cognitively, he made full recovery. He's absolutely a fascinating kid.

Lewis Walton (00:22:37):

We saw him last summer.

Ivo Ivanov (00:22:39):

Yes.

Lewis Walton (00:22:40):

Put on the Elvis Presley

Ivo Ivanov (00:22:42):

Impersonation. Yes. He's a

Lewis Walton (00:22:44):

Little concert.

Ivo Ivanov (00:22:45):

He's Elvis Presley impersonator. He does a spectacular job. He went to college. He graduated from high school. He's working two jobs. He's just made a complete full recovery from the most traumatic surgery imaginable when he was three. So this is a story I just love and makes me tear up every time he was in at UCLA surgical center with his parents and his grandmother. And as you can imagine, Mike, they were petrified this procedure, imagine you're being told that your kid has to have half of his brain removed because he was going to die otherwise he was getting seizures. They were concentrated in his left hemisphere, so they had to disengage the left hemisphere. And his parents were petrified. And his mother just started crying. And she asked the doctor, wait, wait. He's got a great personality. He's got a great sense of humor. Is he going to keep his personality? And then the grandmother interrupted her and said, don't worry, don't worry, Sasha. His personality is not in his brain. It's in his heart. So it's going to stay with him.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:24:01):

Well, I tell you the human stories that we collectively have experienced, but I think, and I'm going to say, I say probably you were the most interesting person that I've ever worked with. It was Serious

(00:24:19):

Because you have so many different facets to your life. And by the way, Evo, both of you too probably were involved in what I would call the defining moments of a three year period, 1999 to 2002. I know that just sounds like arbitrary. But in that three year period, technology came in. We created Shared Living before anybody called it Shared Living, but it was what we called their extended family model. We created the Teaching family model. We implemented and published in the Journal of Applied. I actually published it, and it was a group of us that pioneered the three-day work week.

Ivo Ivanov (00:25:14):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:25:15):

And that publication is in the Journal of Organizational Behavioral Management. And that was done in the year 2000 to 2002. That's when we created that model. Now, honestly, we used all those things, technology, family, teaching, professional, family. The three day work week has evolved and woven itself into our new models. And honestly, they're still the things that differentiate us in many ways from lots of service providers. But that three year period, literally all of those things were born. Isn't that interesting?

Ivo Ivanov (00:26:06):

It's interesting how back then we didn't look at it this way. No. We were just doing those things. You were kind of steering the boat and we were just doing it and we didn't expect that it would be a revolutionary moment in time. And now looking back, we recognize, my goodness,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:26:26):

The value of technology and remote support and

Ivo Ivanov (00:26:29):

So

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:26:30):

Much we still, when I published that in 2002, what I said was the three day work week back then, and it's evolved so much since. So it's a different thing now. But then it was unusual. What we found out is it improved our capacity by about 15%. And I can go into the definition of what I mean by that, it doesn't matter. But it made 15% improvement, which was something, but not, I mean earth shattering, but 15%, we were able to pay 15% more. It improved the stability of our care. That's where Evo, we came up with a measure of not turnover, but the number of different people involved in care was the most important measure. And it still is today. But that happened during that. But what we also found out was nothing that we could do if shift based staffing was ever as effective as live in teaching family or extended family teaching. Nothing was as good as that. And that was in 99 and 2000 and 2001 and two. And it's doubly true today.

Ivo Ivanov (00:27:52):

And it's incredible how freeing this model was because Louis got involved in the model firsthand. He became a professional teacher,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:28:07):

He was part of that creation,

Ivo Ivanov (00:28:09):

But at the same time, he was able to do other things as well. He was still director of technology for a while.

Lewis Walton (00:28:18):

For a while. I think I actually,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:28:20):

So tell everybody, what did you do? What was the thing that you participated in? What was the model?

Lewis Walton (00:28:30):

Oh, I had worked the other nonprofit. It is O'Connell Youth Ranch here in Lawrence. Yeah. So I was a house parent out there.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:28:40):

So that was part of the version of the teaching family model. But for

Lewis Walton (00:28:44):

Youth. Yes, exactly.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:28:45):

From Boystown actually.

Lewis Walton (00:28:46):

And it was essentially for youth that were experiencing behavioral issues or family home type problems. And so I had a working knowledge of how the system worked, but that was again, while I was getting the undergrad and I came to CLO and saw that or Good Life and saw everything that was going on here. And I think the first time my wife and I applied for becoming an extended family teacher at the time, I think it's called Professional Family Teachers now was probably 2006, 2007. And it was

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:29:28):

So we had a nucleus of people who were that.

Lewis Walton (00:29:30):

But it wasn't

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:29:30):

A huge program.

Lewis Walton (00:29:31):

Correct. Correct. And it was important. It is important to get that mix. And so we essentially waited until we had a couple of gentlemen that would fit well with our family and it worked.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:29:49):

How many years did you do that, Lou? 14 years.

Ivo Ivanov (00:29:55):

Unbelievable.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:29:55):

But see, that's what I'm saying. That's not average. I think average is seven years, but still, I mean there's nothing that compares to the stability of that

Ivo Ivanov (00:30:09):

Is basically zero turnover. And also this coincided with your children growing up. And this was very important because you've discovered the work-life balance you needed and you found the opportunity to raise your children the way you wanted them raised and be involved in their day-to-day life, be close to your children in their formative years. As we know, those are the most important years in shaping of a personality and a human being.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:30:37):

Well, I'm sure that program isn't easy from because I've never done it. I know a bunch about it, but I can't know everything. I didn't do it, did it? Did you feel like it elevated the quality of life of both your family as well as the people that you serve? That's what I always say. But is it true?

Lewis Walton (00:30:57):

No, no. It is undoubtedly true. The program allowed essentially exactly what I said. We were interested in it because we wanted to have a close relationship with our kids. And so when we started thinking about having a family, we considered becoming extended family teachers and immediately it increased our quality of life. It just allowed us to do more things. It allowed us to spend more time doing the things that we needed to do. You don't really think about the fact that when you work a nine to five job, all the things that you need to do during the day are between nine and five. So you have to leave work to get those things done. And so just being able to go pick up the kids from school and not have it be an interference with work, you literally built that into your schedule as part of an extended family. Those little things just increased the quality of life. And as far as the gentleman that we took care of, immediate distinguishable improvements in health, in behavior behaviors and in their demeanor, eva.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:32:16):

So there is a lot of people who don't understand. I don't even calling it shared living. I think it is descriptive, I guess. But there's so many versions of that. And that's why we call it the Professional Family program or I like the extended family model because it is an extended family. But I always try to explain to people, if you got something where it's a family and you're joining kind of a life and you have an enjoyable life and stability relationships, I mean all those things, it just makes everything better. I mean, there's some that don't always work out, but I'll give you a little statistic. With 3% average turnover since 1999 for 135 people we currently support with about 90 families, we have to replace about two or three families a year to maintain support for 135 people. If those 135 people were in shift based homes, we would have to hire 150 people a year to maintain that. I mean, there's no way you can conceive that. Shift based services are better yet. I have more trouble explaining this model to people who come from even families who come from a shift base mentality.

Lewis Walton (00:34:05):

That's interesting to me, Mike, because I would think, and I could be a hundred percent wrong, I would think that it's super easy to explain. It's like you're adopting these two folks into your

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:34:19):

Home. It is. But what happens when they see it and live it, they get it

Lewis Walton (00:34:25):

Right.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:34:26):

Okay. But the problem is they had trouble, but they never had support. It was like they had to work too. They had to do all this stuff. And they sit there and they think, well, I couldn't do it. How come somebody else could do it? And you go and you talk to 'em. Well, because they're professionals that that's the job. That's what they do.

(00:34:46):

And We teach them and try to cultivate things. And by the way, they don't just start out as two people that don't know each other normally. They're people that already knew each other that we've already forged relationships someplace else. It is not like they're from left and right field. And

Lewis Walton (00:35:03):

Just for the folks that aren't familiar with it, a huge component of what we do as extended family teachers is skill acquisition for the folks that we take care of. We do data collection. We are responsible for ensuring that

Ivo Ivanov (00:35:20):

Medications,

Lewis Walton (00:35:21):

Medications are met daily, ADLs are maintained. So it is a job, but it's also your family

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:35:32):

At the same, it's a job. I'm caring for family members a job, but it is a job

Ivo Ivanov (00:35:38):

I feel like.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:35:39):

But it's a purpose.

Ivo Ivanov (00:35:41):

I feel like Mike, we like to say here, Lou, that Mike reverse engineers problems before figuring out a way to solve them.

Lewis Walton (00:35:52):

Kind of like Indiana Jones,

Ivo Ivanov (00:35:54):

Kind of like Indiana Jones. And I feel like with the family teaching model, the extended family teaching model, and now the professional family model, I feel like he approached it like a philosopher like you, and he reverse engineered the concept of happiness and what is another word for happiness? I say it's good life. But what he discovered or deciphered was that people, when they go to work, let's say they manufacture components like a gasket for head gasket for a car, they punch a clock, they go in, punch a clock, make gaskets, punch out and go home. And then they live their life. Well, Mike looked at this and said, well, that's shift. That's the shifts. People go to work with people with disabilities, they go to manufacture gaskets

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:36:51):

And they leave it

Ivo Ivanov (00:36:52):

And they leave and they punch in, punch out and go, what if they don't go to work? They just live their life and

(00:37:01):

It's a life. The work is their life and their family. And could that be a pathway to good life to happiness? And that's how he was

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:37:12):

Born. I want to tell you something. I hung around. None of this really was any of my ideas, but I knew people who had ideas. I think a Jim Sherman who was a founder of our program or leader of the Department of Human applied Behavioral Science and creator of all of that. But another mentor was Todd Risley.

(00:37:40):

And Todd Risley wrote one of the most definitive articles so far ahead of time called Get A Life. And he had this way of titles. He had another book called Meaningful Differences. Differences, which is a difference. You can have differences, but are they meaningful? It is a really important, that's one of your questions. What all this science out there? And all of a sudden it's not meaningful. But he did that work and it really was getting a life is the art of the deal, and you can't punch in. And I mean, we have to have shift staff, but we always do it in balance with other things. I mean, even you guys had respite staff that would come in and help and

Lewis Walton (00:38:29):

Do it. And you have to have

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:38:30):

It. You have to. Sometimes it's natural and they don't punch in and punch you out just like family members do some of that. But other people pay people to come in. So you always have it, But

(00:38:43):

It's like you have a balance of it. You're the primary person in their lives providing care, and then you have this relief or family teachers are the anchor of a home and then they have shift staff on top of it, or if neighborhood network. We have professional neighbors now and shift staff on top of that. But honestly, and I'm going to power forward to that because Lou, where all of this has gone is now we're looking at since 2010, I think we started the neighborhood network. And that actually is pretty long time now, right? Yeah. I mean, I keep thinking I was there for that. You were there for

Lewis Walton (00:39:24):

That too. Oh yes. I installed these systems in those homes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:39:28):

Oh my gosh,

Lewis Walton (00:39:29):

Lewis,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:39:30):

Nothing happened since years. Every turning point. Every turning point. That's the whole problem with this thing. Now I get it. That's missing. We don't,

Ivo Ivanov (00:39:38):

Well, he's on the board. I know it. He's doing

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:39:41):

Both boots on the ground sometimes too. But now is so fun looking at these problems and looking at them differently because the truth of the matter, there is a theme through here is like, and you're right, Evo, you don't punch in and you don't punch out. You know what I mean? Every model that we created, we have an element that is more of a lifestyle like professional. We created an ecosystem to carry the neighborhood network based upon the geographic region. We have professional neighbors, we still have shift staff. But here's an interesting thing. Professional neighbors, we pay for their housing and we pay for a salary and they work the three day work week, and they're in charge of that collectively. They provide remote and in-home support. So they do both. So they know the person really well, so they're able to do more effective remote care. So we figured all of that out a lot, but then we still had this, still kind had this problem with the shift staff stability in those settings. We have three day work weeks, and like I said, it's always better. We invented the premium pay for the weekends. We've done all kinds of little things to improve it, but it's not the same because punching out and punching in. And so just to let you know how things evolve, working with the other next generation of tech people.

(00:41:11):

And Dave McDonald came to me and said, I've been working on this software that I want you to buy Mike, and its heat mapping software and it takes all the census information, all the stuff we know about neighborhoods, and it helps us learn about the hidden resources in it. And so here's the kind of that question of why can't you organically look at a neighborhood and instead of hiring people on Indeed to go work there in shifts, why can't you now instead just bypass all of that and come up with a different marketing strategy to actually find people in that neighborhood to work? If you ask every provider across the country and you ask them, and I have literally in 20 states, ask them, where do you get your staff? There's only one thing they say is indeed. I mean, they'll say a few other things. Some will say they have a referral program and this, that and the other, but 90% of the people that they get in their agency come from. Indeed. Indeed. And so the problem is how do you that six block radius over there, I've already done heat mapping on it. It's got 2000 seniors over 75, over 75 in a six block area.

Ivo Ivanov (00:42:39):

Wow.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:42:40):

There's like 26% seniors that organically live there. They want to age in place,

Ivo Ivanov (00:42:47):

Right? Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:42:47):

We're using heat mapping to find out where everybody is. And I was looking at as the people we serve, but then I got into this whole thing of what about looking for the people that could serve them? I mean, there's got to be nurses over there. There's got to be maintenance people over there. There's got to be caregivers or want to be caregivers over there. Well, I could pay them like a professional neighbor. I have to pay $25,000 for the housing as a benefit, which is great. They deserve it. And it is one of the reasons they say they're seven years, but I could probably pay $500 a month stipend for people who already live there as a premium. As a premium. And so now that's what we're doing. I've got a whole, but you know what the thing is, it's a whole frigging different way of marketing. You can't just broadcast it everywhere on Indeed and get people to move there. Why do that if you've got 500 caregivers that already live there, but how do you find them now? It's like, okay, I've figured out the problem, but I'm working now. We're all working on the marketing strategy, but it's way different. But the theme across all of it, the whole thing was the same, is we can find people that aren't punched in an IMP pension out. I mean, if you're part of the neighborhood, you're already vested. You got all this stuff going for you. You don't have to infuse people there. You just got to find them.

(00:44:20):

Just crazy stuff. But you got to think differently on that stuff.

Ivo Ivanov (00:44:25):

And you always think differently. And you look for pathways to get people to work, but to not work, whether it's a family or a neighbor. And it's important also for the people that receive services because it's a different feeling when somebody comes to work in your home and punching in and punching out. And it's completely different if you are just being accepted and embraced as a family member or a neighbor, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:44:58):

I mean, it is like organic. It is. You're vested. And then we did research once Lou ask to teachers or caregivers, what they wanted. They wanted good schedules. They didn't want to work. They wanted time off. That's where the three day stuff come in. They wanted to work extra, but only when they wanted to work extra. They wanted flexibility. They want to work close to home. They want life balance. They wanted different benefits. A lot of the caregivers actually are fairly poor, and they're eligible by the way, probably for the same benefits that the people we serve in many ways from a public assistance perspective. Do they really, I mean, do they want a 401k or do they want cell plans and housing subsidies and transportation, and I'm sitting there, what do we doing?

Ivo Ivanov (00:46:03):

Yeah, they want to control the streams of benefits themselves, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:46:08):

Yeah.

Ivo Ivanov (00:46:09):

And

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:46:10):

Then you look at these other industries I'm fascinated by currently, I'm just fascinated by Uber. I think Uber is the perfect behavioral of the performance organization. I mean, the people who give rides and the people who get them, their interests are all lined up. It is taken people who were employees and made them kind of owners of their own destiny. They get cars. The more rides they get, the better their ratings are,

Ivo Ivanov (00:46:45):

The

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:46:45):

More they get. And it is just fascinating.

Ivo Ivanov (00:46:49):

Yeah. It's a genius yet simplistic concept with feedback loops within the model that perpetuate high quality of services in both directions, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:47:02):

Yeah. But what it taught me among a zillion things is by looking at a whole nother industry, is that with Uber, they use the person's car. They don't use an agency car. I'm putting that to good life. It's Like

(00:47:20):

We invest millions of dollars in transportation. Why don't we invest millions of dollars in transportation in the staff's car? I mean, it's the same number, same amount of money, but can you imagine what that would mean? Or we buy all these phones for our use, why don't we rent their funds? It is like we are spending money that they could use and it doesn't cost us anymore, and then it elevates their life. And it's a little bit of a golden handcuffs to us too. So it's like,

Ivo Ivanov (00:47:57):

It's fascinating,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:47:58):

All that early stuff. It just keeps getting more and more ideas. And the other thing I learned about Uber, we all learned about Uber, actually, it wasn't really me, but is that we went, and I've said this in the past podcast, but I get interesting to get your take on it, is that one of the major problems with in-home care, and there's a lot of them problems with in-home care, we interviewed a couple people who receive it, and it just made my eyes water on the problems. But one of them is that they hire a staff person to provide care for every individual that is needed. And that is the problem because staff turns over and that causes gaps in care. And their needs are not great schedules. They're not great schedules. So they work wonky hours, which means they turn over more literally. And we've just shown this, they're getting 50% of the authorized hours because of all these problems. And the problem is, is that if that was Uber, that would be renting, having a driver for every individual instead of sharing. But when you have a density of people who need rides and you have a core of rider, they can have better schedules and you have more backups

(00:49:35):

And you don't have gaps, you still get rides a few minutes from need 24 7.

Ivo Ivanov (00:49:40):

Yeah, we need care B and B. Let's trademark that, trademark it quickly.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:49:45):

We're off the rail, we're off the rails when we should be talking about things. Do you know of all the great things that you've done though, the thing that I always like to talk to you most about?

Lewis Walton (00:49:59):

Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:50:01):

What do I always talk to you most about Pro

Lewis Walton (00:50:03):

Wrestling,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:50:04):

Championship wrestling?

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:06):

You guys both like pro wrestling?

Lewis Walton (00:50:08):

Yes. Mike and I were sitting in a bar after we were out in California, and I remember literally I'm exhausted and I'm ready to go to my hotel room. And Mike just happens to say literally as I'm getting ready to walk away from the table, do you like pro wrestling? We had never talked about it before. Not one time. And I remember I'm turning and Mike says it, and I stop and I turn around and look at

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:39):

It. Then you walk out, please. I don't want

Lewis Walton (00:50:41):

To sleep anymore. I want to talk. I

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:43):

Say

Lewis Walton (00:50:43):

Yes, because

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:44):

I'm

Lewis Walton (00:50:45):

Confused as to where this came from. And we probably spent another three hours

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:50):

Talking about that

Lewis Walton (00:50:51):

In that bar, talking for pro wrestling. But we're talking about old school.

Ivo Ivanov (00:50:56):

Old school pro. So who are your favorites? OGs in pro

Lewis Walton (00:51:02):

Wrestling? Mike is a generation before me, but I'm a student of the game,

Ivo Ivanov (00:51:09):

Which

Lewis Walton (00:51:09):

Is why I fell in love with this is because he knew I was talking about Yes. And so I grew up, and when I was a kid, when Rick Flair was coming on the scene, this

Ivo Ivanov (00:51:23):

Is flamboyant beyond Words,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:25):

And my dad

Ivo Ivanov (00:51:26):

Hated.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:28):

That's why I knew that I really liked him a lot. Well, he was a

Ivo Ivanov (00:51:31):

Heel. He

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:32):

Was he a heel or did he start as a heel?

Lewis Walton (00:51:35):

He was always a heel. He

Ivo Ivanov (00:51:36):

Was

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:36):

Always,

Lewis Walton (00:51:37):

But Rick Flair was based on the nature. Who was the original nature Boy, I can't think of his name right.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:43):

I do know that. But yes,

Lewis Walton (00:51:44):

It just literally left my

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:51:46):

Head. He was not the first nature

Lewis Walton (00:51:47):

Boy. He was not the first nature boy. And so this is the kind of stuff that Mike and I literally sat there the very first time we talked about it and talked about the current crop of wrestlers and who they reminded us of from the old days. And for me, it's literally, I'm just talking about the highlight reels that I've watched in wrestling, blackjack, Mulligan and

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:52:08):

Harley race.

Lewis Walton (00:52:09):

Harley Race, yeah. Some of just the hardest smash mouth wrestlers of all time. Oh man. Just remembering wrestlers from like

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:52:19):

Skin Bar Act,

Lewis Walton (00:52:21):

Bar Scandar Act bar. Yes, sir.

Ivo Ivanov (00:52:22):

Is Buddy Rogers the original nature boy,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:52:25):

Nature boy, buddy Roger Nature boy. That's right. You got it. And then there was one guy, and I can't remember who it was, but he was always the champion, and it was like all he could do is put people in the headlock. It's all he ever did. Bruno, are you talking about Bruno San Martino?

Lewis Walton (00:52:40):

Yes. Bruno San Martino is, I think still, because I don't think Roman Reigns beat his record. I think he's still the longest continuous run of any wrestler of

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:52:51):

World championships. And literally the entire 30 minute map, you have some padlock. That's funny.

Ivo Ivanov (00:52:59):

Well, professional wrestling is fascinating because it's kind of a performance art. It combines so many elements of entertainment, athleticism, drama, storytelling, acting, theater.

(00:53:17):

It's everything packaged in one. And it's really, really interesting. And there's a lot of behaviorism, and I not seen a sport where the audience is such an active part of the actual entertainment. The audience is essential, and the feedback for the audience is essential for propelling the storytelling and the plots. And yes, the outcomes are often predetermined, but there's a lot of room for improvisation and not often always, always, but there's a lot of room of improvisation and expression of unique personalities. And it's for a young person is fascinating. My son was obsessed with it, so I ended up taking him to many of the WWE wrestling shows most often in Topeka. And we saw the current crop of stars like Ray Mysterio and all these guys. And I started understanding little by little the behaviorism aspect of it and how it can really fascinate and provoke your imagination nation. And it's also, there's something else. The villains, the heels, just like in Shakespeare, are more interesting than the heroes. Always,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:54:51):

Always, always more interesting. Yes. Yes. And that's why all the heroes at some point in time are

Ivo Ivanov (00:54:57):

Heels become heels.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:54:59):

They all cycle in and out of that, and it makes great stories. But are you watching currently

Lewis Walton (00:55:07):

Right

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:55:07):

Now? A little bit. Not like I once did, but yeah,

Lewis Walton (00:55:11):

So same here. I haven't really, really watched with any regularity. But John Cena,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:55:15):

Oh yeah,

Lewis Walton (00:55:16):

Just had his heel turn. Like

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:18):

John

Lewis Walton (00:55:18):

Cena's had a career become, become

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:20):

Villain. Though

Lewis Walton (00:55:21):

I want to say he's been in the game for 20 some odd years.

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:24):

He has

Lewis Walton (00:55:25):

Never ever been anything but a face in wrestling. And just this year he announced that he was going to retire this year, and this is his year to be a heel.

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:36):

Sometimes people are puzzled and ask the question, why are some of the most famous action actors now, former professional wrestlers? And I always think, well, of course they are. They're actors. They're actors first and foremost. And that's why the Rock and Batista and John Cena are massive stars with incredible acting ability. If you notice they're comedic potential, how

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:56:09):

Quick, I mean, they all become true actors.

Ivo Ivanov (00:56:12):

Actors, and he have incredible neck for comedy. Batista his face. You wouldn't think that he would be a good actor. Right? But he's incredible comedic potential. John Cena, just his face makes me laugh. And the rock, he's become the biggest action star in the world in movies. It's quite amazing.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:56:35):

It is. Yeah. I still love Guardians of the Galaxy, and he's so funny. And Root was it Root

Ivo Ivanov (00:56:44):

Groot. Groot. I am Groot, and that's being diesel voice.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:56:49):

And I never thought I would cry about a plant at the end. I literally teared

Ivo Ivanov (00:56:54):

Up, and that plant has three word vocabulary. I am Groot. But he says so many things with this sentence depending on the intonation of how he says it. It's a great storytelling and really, yeah. It's interesting that you guys are both such big fans of professional wrestling.

Lewis Walton (00:57:11):

Honestly, the thing that I expected, at least in the entire time that I was working here at Good Life, and I can still imagine what my face must've looked like when you said that. It was just completely, I didn't tell a whole lot of people that I was in. Now, it is one of the first things I tell people when I'm talking about me. I am a pro wrestling fan, so don't talk about our tribal Chief Roman reigns and expect me to not have some kind of reaction. But yeah, I was just not expecting that. It seemed much too lowbrow for you.

Ivo Ivanov (00:57:46):

Well, no, it was good. Well, because we talk about this, we don't want to miss the opportunity with Mike. We usually ask this question from our guests here.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:57:58):

Oh yeah.

Ivo Ivanov (00:57:59):

But we usually end up asking you who would be,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:58:07):

I was like, I am Indiana Jones, and that's why I have this Fedor.

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:15):

Who

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:58:15):

Are you

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:16):

Your favorite movie character you would like to be?

Lewis Walton (00:58:19):

Okay, I've been thinking about this for a minute or two, and my first answer was probably going to be I like characters that are kind of omniscient that can see far. So Iron Man, he's a futurist

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:44):

Scientist,

Lewis Walton (00:58:45):

He's a scientist,

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:46):

Technology,

Lewis Walton (00:58:47):

He's a maker, but most important has a vision for how things will be and how they should

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:56):

Be.

Lewis Walton (00:58:57):

And so that appeals to me a lot.

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:00):

So you're saying his superpowers don't come from some kind of mutation?

Lewis Walton (00:59:05):

Correct.

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:05):

They come from his scientific acumen.

Lewis Walton (00:59:08):

Correct,

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:09):

Yes. Interesting.

Lewis Walton (00:59:10):

And so that is always appealing to me, and as I'm sitting here talking about it, the quintessential Lou character comes to mind, and that is Paul Modi, the leader in Dune.

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:31):

Oh, interesting. Yes.

Lewis Walton (00:59:34):

Just to let you know, if you haven't read the books, he turns out to be a bad guy. Yeah. But I think what happens when you have that much vision, you stop thinking about people in the way that I think normal people think about people. I

(00:59:54):

Would hope to never get to that level, but the ability to see into the future, to see all the possibilities that might be

Ivo Ivanov (01:00:04):

Like Dr. Manhattan,

Lewis Walton (01:00:05):

Dr. Manhattan. Yeah. Dr. Manhattan is

Ivo Ivanov (01:00:08):

He kind of got detached from his humanity.

Lewis Walton (01:00:10):

And so this is the issue. This is the big problem. Again, one of the things that drives me internally is understanding the relationship I have with other people that people have with other people. That's just literally my jam. That's what I'm interested in. But I don't want to be so far forward thinking that I lose sight of that. But those characters do interest me more than anything else.

Ivo Ivanov (01:00:34):

I don't think we've had more complex answers.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:00:36):

That's a pretty complex one because you know what I've come to believe about podcasts, and again, this is definitely the biggest diversion in our podcast that we've had usually, but I want people to understand a couple things, is that we're really talking about how we create lifestyles and this whole idea that we talked about at Punch in and punching out. Honestly, gosh, I look back at our friendships across the years and the people that I know people in this podcast may know I'm going to a guy, a retirement lady this year, Alan Hark. Do you remember Alan?

Ivo Ivanov (01:01:19):

Yes. Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:01:19):

Okay. Well, I mean literally Good Life is just this massive group across my 40 years of relationships that have done good work. I mean, just generally good work and looking back just, I mean, really important things that we've worked on other people have too. And so I'm not suggesting that any of that, I'm just saying we were able to work on some things that made a difference and set the occasion hopefully for the next generation to do the same thing. But there are principles that we've identified, and that is relationships big, not punching out like the lifestyle positions that we have in good life technology. I mean, there are some characteristics that are so important for care, but I just think it's interesting just watching all of us today and we're all sitting around the mic. You guys have two other podcasts that you do?

Lewis Walton (01:02:30):

Three. I have another one that I haven't even mentioned. I'm the podcast host for the Kansas Bankers Association.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:02:36):

There you go. That's right. I think podcasts for many people are another way of having the conversations you really wished you had if you didn't have mics in front of you. I mean, we've created this opportunity to have discussions that you wouldn't necessarily just have, but it is pretty cool that you're able to get friends together. I met with Flo De Reed. I'm going to be meeting with some really cool lineup. I can't even tell you all the different people that's coming from different parts of the country. And it is like the podcast is the opportunity for that. But if I didn't have it, I'd like to have, I'd still love to do it

Lewis Walton (01:03:27):

Exactly,

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:03:27):

But they'll do it for a podcast. People will come and sit down and you have these kinds of conversations and stuff, but there's so much that we have to do in our field, and it is in technology. I'll say this, I just finished working on some stuff in technology that I never thought I would work on, and it is moving so fast. We are in the middle of a revolution right now, and the problem in our field is weird in that we've done the same service model over and over again. We do the same things over and over again, and I think we expect the different results is that weird thing. But now you can see other industries, other things, and this explosion of new models with technology and how that's improved our life. I mean, honest to goodness, every time I talk about intrusion and privacy and things like that, and I say, look, 65% of American people want hybrid jobs,

(01:04:37):

65% want. That means they want to not go to work. They want to work from home, they want to have a remote meeting. They value that more than having to travel. They figure out how to do life balance. They figure that all out on a personal basis. And then they come to services and they pretend none of that actually exists and have regulations and everything are all kind of around creating services to be the same way they always was. That's the way regulations work. They regulate existing services and it makes it very difficult to do new things. But if we as a group don't start doing new things, we're just so far behind. We're just so far. And part of being innovative that's frustrating is the push, the pushback to the way you do it and how hard it is to

Ivo Ivanov (01:05:50):

Advance, to

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:05:51):

Change those things. And then you go to private pay world and it's like, yeah, I'll do that. But you get in the Medicaid world or the public funding world and it's like, well, you can't do that.

Ivo Ivanov (01:06:04):

Yeah. What we've found out throughout the years, and all three of us probably would agree, is that changing technology and changing models is much easier than changing opinions and attitudes. So yeah, the pushback will always be there because

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:06:23):

More work, as much work as we're putting into the new models we put into stakeholder education on why we're doing it, which is one of the motivations by the way of the podcast, is to bring in thought leaders and just, I want people like with you for example, your life is so remarkable in it. I mean, you were a caregiver in good life for 15 years or more. That's not common. I always say people like that should be studied. And I mean that in all sincerity. It's like what was different? What were the people who are here and the people, 15 and 20 years, very few of them were doing traditional services. Those folks are not punching in and punching out. They joined the Lifestyle

(01:07:23):

And we're trying to change the lives of the people we serve and not be part of the lifestyle. And it's like, yeah, you can do that, but it is a lot easier to do if you're a part of the club. And that's what we need to keep championing for.

Lewis Walton (01:07:42):

And it's always difficult that, like you saying, that reminded me of when CMS came in to visit the technology.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:07:52):

That was like 2005.

Lewis Walton (01:07:55):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:07:56):

CMS came to view us,

Lewis Walton (01:07:58):

Oh boy,

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:07:59):

In 2005 and blew. I remember the regional director of CMS says, this is going to be everywhere.

Lewis Walton (01:08:10):

He said something before that. Do you remember what he said?

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:08:12):

No. I

Lewis Walton (01:08:12):

Can't remember. He said, I came here to shut you down, but

Ivo Ivanov (01:08:16):

This is going to be everywhere. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:08:19):

He loved it. And he saw the vision and it was like, boom, man. And ironically, 20 years later, we're still having that discussion. And Darren is the problem. I am doing this thing called the Privacy Paradox, which is a new presentation that I'm doing conferences and stuff. But the irony is, it used to be that our job was to use the least intrusive, potentially effective approach to care, and that includes that. If you do that, it means two things. One, you have to compare it to something, and the second is it still has to be effective. And we are not making decisions that way when it applies to technology. It is not like we're comparing it to what would be in place if it wasn't for it. We're just looking at the technology and saying, Hey, how can we make this technology less intrusive? I give the example of angioplasty. Well, angioplasty would be a little bit less intrusive if you took the camera off the end of the stick. And if you did that, it'd be more private. Well, yeah, it would, but I wouldn't want that thing on my heart So

(01:09:41):

It wouldn't be effective. Right. But what they did in angioplasty, they compared. It knocked to angioplasty compared to open heart surgery. And it's like, okay, because that's what would happen if you didn't have it. So what would happen if you didn't have remote support? Well, you would have in-home support. So you've got to compare the intrusion of remote support to in-home support. But they don't do that.

Lewis Walton (01:10:05):

Correct.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:10:06):

So we've lost the ability to compare and contrast to what would be in place if it wasn't for that. So we've got a lot of learning to do on how we get to the next generation of care. But why we're doing the learning, the Ubers of the world are just,

Ivo Ivanov (01:10:28):

Yeah. And the Airbnbs of the world

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:10:31):

Passing us by. And by the time we fully grasp that, we don't have the resources to deliver care the way we're doing it, and it's not working anyway, and nobody wants it that way. We're going to be so far behind. And I don't really believe, I think we'll get through it, but I'm just always surprised that it is a lot of effort to keep up with technology. As you know, Lou, I mean, back then it was, but can you imagine now? I mean, I can't even figure out how are we going to even grab AI and pull it into everything so that we don't have to even do it anymore. It is just boom, it is exploded.

Ivo Ivanov (01:11:16):

Yeah. Things change at breakneck pace. And I was thinking about traditionalism and how people are traditionalists and they fear change in many ways. I'm one of these people, I was in journalism most of my life. I still write articles for weekly and daily publications in Europe. And I was attached for years to your traditional newspaper, the paper newspaper that gets delivered to your door every morning. Right? We've never lived a day in our lives without a daily newspaper. And the time is coming when the traditional paper newspaper will be gone. And we have to kind of accept it because

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:11:59):

I would never have believed that would be true.

Ivo Ivanov (01:12:01):

Me neither. It's such an integral part of our life. And I like the paper. I like the ink, I like the delivery in the morning and the coffee and the newspaper. But the truth is, there is more far more functional delivery methods now of the news. And by the time that paper comes to you, it's all news now. And paper costs money. It takes trees to make paper. The ink costs money, the production costs money. The Kansas City Star invested at the wrong time in 1 billion printing facility that's now defunct and it's in the downtown Kansas City's spectacular.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:12:44):

Know exactly The building.

Ivo Ivanov (01:12:45):

Building right glass, beautiful building. It's now empty

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:12:49):

Because

Ivo Ivanov (01:12:49):

There's no demand anymore for printing newspapers. So we in delivering our services, we want to deliver them in a more functional, more better way and not try to deliver newspapers in the 21st and 22nd century when paper and ink and all this stuff is very expensive. There's better way. There's better way. And even I am now accepting, finally canceled my subscription a couple of months ago, finally canceled my subscription.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:13:28):

So you kept onto that.

Ivo Ivanov (01:13:29):

I Hang Gone for Dear Life.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:13:31):

They make papers still for seniors. Literally. It is

Ivo Ivanov (01:13:35):

For

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:13:35):

That

Ivo Ivanov (01:13:36):

Deal

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:13:36):

That

Ivo Ivanov (01:13:36):

People, but the truth is it will be gone soon. And the news, there's another way for you to get the news that's much faster. And you don't have to read the old news every morning, but we can talk and talk and talk about this forever. Louis is fascinating, but we've hit our 13 minutes, one of our longest podcasts.

Lewis Walton (01:13:59):

I'm sorry about that. Thank you guys. No, I've had a fantastic time. Thank you guys

Ivo Ivanov (01:14:03):

For having me. Yeah, we have to wrap it up. This was the quest for the Good Life with Dr. Mike Strouse, the Hulk Hogan of Next Generation Services. Our guest was Louis Walton. Our producer was Megan

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:14:18):

Allon wrestler or you? Lou.

Ivo Ivanov (01:14:20):

What wrestler would you be? Rick Claire

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:14:26):

G comment. That's one I wanted. Alright, now we got a new question to ask our

Ivo Ivanov (01:14:32):

Guest. There you go. Yes. Our guest was Louis Walton. Our producer was Megan Olafson. For everything else is my fault. We would like to thank our listeners for their attention and patience, and we want to assure you that our inability to stay on topic was completely deliberate until the next time. This was the quest for the good life.