Comfort Is the Real Risk with Vittayarukskul

Is the comfortable path actually the riskiest choice we can make?

In Episode 37 of the Tao of Chao Podcast, Philip Chao welcomes entrepreneur Lily Vittayarukskul for a conversation about risk, resilience, and the courage to step outside expected paths.

Lily’s journey began unusually early — starting college at 14 and interning at NASA as a teenager. After a family health crisis reshaped her perspective, she redirected her ambitions toward building technology solutions that address systemic challenges in healthcare.

Key insights include:

• Why comfort can disguise long-term risk
• How unconventional paths create unexpected opportunities
• The role of personal experiences in shaping entrepreneurial missions
• Why founders must embrace uncertainty rather than avoid it
• How individuals can rethink risk in careers and life

This episode explores how purpose, risk, and growth often emerge when we move beyond what feels comfortable.

👓 Learn more about our HOST

Philip Chao
Website: https://philipchao.us
Follow Philip on LinkedIn

DISCLOSURE: Views expressed in the Tao of Chao podcasts are individual opinions and they do not represent the employers of each guest or the firm with which each guest is associated. Our podcasts are for educational and informational purposes only and should not be deemed or viewed as investment advice or recommendations. Please consult your personal financial advisor, investment expert, or investment fiduciary before taking any actions about your plan and investments.

Transcript

0:00

Is just a mechanism to get to a certain outcome. I think like taking the most comfortable path is actually a different form of risk. You just call it something else. It is. It is a form of assuming that our current systems that we, are operating under, will continued to exist, will continue to stagnate, and Google will continue to be Google, and there wouldn't be open AI that comes in or that comes in to disrupt their core business model. And all of that is just fundamentally untrue. Anyone that is looking for like less risk, just overall, that's usually where I see part archetypes, where they say, I want to follow a path that someone else told me to follow. Welcome to the Town of Chell podcast, where we will try to find balance and provide a clearer path forward in this uncertain world. Lily Mitchell Horoscope Water Lilies CEO and co-founder, started college at 14, and by 16 she was venturing into a career in aerospace engineering as an intern at NASA. However, that same year, her life took a dramatic turn when her aunt, who raised her and was a cornerstone in her first generation immigrant family, was diagnosed with terminal stage colon cancer. The ensuing financial emotional devastation, exasperated by her family's lack of preparedness, took a permanent rift in her family and compelled her to pivot her career from aerospace to a life long dedication to building solutions in health care. Fueled by personal tragedy and a resolve to forge change. Lily graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in genetic and data science and led product and engineering at multiple startups before founding water Lily. And here is Lily. Lily, thank you so much for joining me today. And be my guest. This is something I've been looking forward to since the last time we spoke. And so thank you and welcome. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you again for reaching out to me. No. Thank you. And today is, And I can't help myself. Is a Lunar New Year 2026 on the 17th of February. And so we wish everybody who watch this a listen to this. A happy a year of the horse. So I got to know you, Lily. Through really through LinkedIn. If you recall, and I read, a post that you put and I felt compelled, to reach out to you because the story was, really fascinating. Touching. And, and you were kind enough that somebody like me just went out. So just came out with a with a message on, on LinkedIn and that you were willing to to connect and ultimately, of course, willing to spend time today with, with me. So again, thank you. Lily, I know, there are many, bits, of of of podcasts or interviews that you have done over the last few years. And it is not a secret about your passion. In in, in in what you do and in, in some shallow way. We all know, something happened in your life that made you so committed, in the direction that you have been taking, but I like to understand you more, and to understand the motivation and understand determination. Really? So if you don't mind, share a little bit more, detail. I know, I, I know I read that you went to college at 14, and I'm just not smart enough. So I went four years later, than you 18 and, and then you, because of certain issues that happened and you end up not only changing your major, in college direction and your career path or your proposed career path, into something totally different. So I appreciate learning a little bit about your family. I know that long last name of yours, which I always had problem pronouncing, but you were so kind to allow me to pronounce it the way that I pronounced it. Is, I believe she's from Thailand at one time. Or your ancestor. If you can tell us a little bit about your family and tell me a little bit about your your, I guess your immigrant or you were born here, but your your history will be really helpful. Yeah, I could definitely. I could definitely do that. So you understand who I am the way I think. Because that will then not only, help us understand what we designed and the intention behind it, but what is a continued intention? What is a continued innovation as we partner with a variety of, incredible and powerful institutions to improve how we age? So my last name is Ty. My dad is from Thailand. My mom is from Cambodia. And they were the ones that initially immigrated over to the U.S when they were very, very young. It actually came out of necessity. I think a lot of really powerful stories come out of necessity, things that we didn't choose. And so in my parents case, my mom was, a part of my mom experiencing Cambodian genocide when she was quite young. And so she needed to escape. She's actually a war refugee that came here. And, my father's family that, who was formerly, wealthy, also lost all of their wealth, due to the nearby wars, as well. And so both my parents came to the States without a penny to their name and started to build small businesses. And when they started, when they met each other, got married, started a family. I am the youngest of four. And, my first real taste of responsibility was not a exam assessment. Really. It was working at my parents factory when I was five, and I learned very early on just how hard work and the value of it is so necessary to survival and to our family survival. And I, I've learned to deeply appreciate blue collar jobs as well from the expense. And I live a completely different life. But I have I feel so grateful for it. And I also know how difficult it is to kind of move, up in economic status and all that. You have to kind of, you know, put into it. So, I knew very, very early on the value of a dollar, how hard it is to, to get it. It doesn't matter if you work a 9 to 5 job. It's a matter of art. Is someone willing to purchase the good that you produced? Essentially. And so I knew early on that I wanted to improve our prospects. My parents have always taught me be a good person at work so hard. That is going to be that is going to be your differentiating factor is how incredibly hard you work from our perspective passed on to you. And for me, and in your kind of new and better position, what can you do for others around you as well, and how can you scale that impact? And so for myself, I knew I needed to build a career early on, and two, I just couldn't help but be fascinated with innovation and building things. When I was 12 hours, recognized by NASA at an international competition, for a form of, like, rocket building. And, the I ended up winning, the competition. They flew me out to the Kennedy Space Center, and from there, they put you on a fast track to essentially begin your career, at NASA. So I ended up, of course, having my mentors and then, having a full time internship, when I was 16. And unfortunately, that path was cut quite short, because my aunt was a really integral part of our first generation immigrant family. She actually also escaped with my mom under, and helped work for the family factory under the same roof. She was diagnosed with terminal stage colon cancer. And from there, a lot of the stability that we built for ourselves from our own hands, was just quickly getting torn apart from financially, how much we had to pay for her care over the years, as well as the family relationships that we weren't unfortunately able to maintain, our extended family that we haven't spoken to in over a decade because, we we didn't we weren't educated enough, and we didn't have enough tools to have a thoughtful conversation that helped everyone realize that, we're doing our best and we're trying to make the best decisions. Not one person is trying to take advantage of the other. I think it's very easy when you feel so frustrated to, pit each other against, one another. And unfortunately, that is so common on this topic. So, that was a little bit about my trajectory of just, you know, going into aerospace engineering, what, to college early for it. Of course, it's financially beneficial for me to go to college as early as possible as well for for someone that paid for my, my own college. But that experience made me pivot, from aerospace into the healthcare industry and build my technical background in genetics. And I, I've been at the forefront of that intersection and realize that this topic hasn't been solved for. So I, took all of my experiences leading product and engineering at multiple early stage companies to build water Lily very intentionally, with the right perspective and with the right skill set at this point. Wow, fascinating. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that that, that and, so many thoughts go through when you were talking about your typical classic, immigrant family. Hardworking, many a blue collar. Yeah. Many, many hours a day. But it's really the collective is together as a family, helping each other. I know, for example, my my wife, who's, from an immigrant family, and, they used to, in the weekend sort bottles because they ran grocery stores in the old days, you you had to clean up all the Coca-Cola bottles so you can return them for whatever, a nickel, a bottle or whatever it is. So they have always worked. Age is not an issue. Whatever. Age doesn't matter. And and that type of perspective is very difficult to maintain as we thrive in the society and get better standard of living. And we think that is better for our next generation to have. Don't have to go through that type of experience. And I would submit to you, we end up raising very soft children and they they don't appreciate or understand, not because we did not make them understand. We did not cause them to understand. Out of making ends meet, livelihood, all those important values, that a immigrant family have no choice. And they just did what they have to do because they have a commitment and love for their family. And they want to survive and thrive in this newfound country. Third generation is a very different, different place. And, anyways, I think that, a wonderful story. So on along that line, how do you think about, I don't know, may I ask you a personal question? Do you have children or you don't have children? I don't have children. If one day you have children, how would you preserve those values? How would you think about continuing? But bittersweet, actually. Yeah. Things forward so that you actually helping the next generation to appreciate and to thrive and to be self-reliant and still be in the collective. That's a really fantastic question. And it also makes a little bit of just is it genetics or is it environmental factors. That affect our trajectory in some way. And then also you could touch on, I use a little bit of the nuance that the little nuance that I understand about kind of the difference between the two to build that thoughtfully into the platform as well, and predicting what the, what the future will look like. But to answer your question directly, I look at it in two ways. The first one is, it's so incredibly important to teach those that are younger than us are going to have more powerful tools in us who can inherently be smarter and better than us. Discipline and resilience. I think that's the only way incredible innovation is shaped is through understanding the and how difficult it is to to innovate and to fully see it through, and the compounded skilled positive effects of being able to do that. And so I think for me talk practically that, that looks like one, you have to spend so much time, with the children to, to even give them the nuance of knowledge that you have in the case studies that you had, to help give them examples of what does, what does discipline or resilience even look like? It's not just telling them, here's the standard definition of it versus, they might have a completely different definition in different reality in what they sit in versus telling them. Here's an old reality of like, what? What discipline means to me and how hard it was, for me to develop that over the years and how I needed to increase that. The more ambitious my targets were, for example. And so practically that means, probably living a lifestyle that is more modest. If I can, allowing that child to be exposed to, the diversity of cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, and being able to see that as closely, like, firsthand as possible, while, of course, you know, with, with the additional, wealth and, better upbringing also gives them, also give them resources and opportunities to try to make big bets themselves. That's like under controlled experiment, whether they might want to be a famous tennis player or that they want to be a famous pianist or, or other things like that. I think being an exceptional in any way, we can't discount how much, how much discipline and and resilience and work ethic it requires. And so learning failure early on is going to be very, very, important. So that you kind of pull apart sort of, you know, being wanting to just feel good all the time and kind of go down a people pleasing sort of path and you don't really know what you like versus the more, the more you put yourself to a program and experience felt failures. It doesn't faze you when you experience failures. It's more about, well, what did I learn from that experience? And I like what I learned, or I want to continue learning in this way, or should I be adjusting? So this, you bring up very, very important point. I have been an entrepreneur all my life, and you have as well. And I believe you continue to be one, regardless of how successful your business going to be, you will continue to innovate. That's part of either your DNA, which will be basically, you were born with it, or it became part of your DNA because you made it to be part of your DNA, the way that you think about it. So I, I cannot think of any entrepreneur who, successful or not even successful, take on that path requires an understanding that failure is the mother of success. And that failure is part of success is how you deal with failure. And as a result, we're talking about dealing with the risk and the consequence of taking on those risks and believing in yourself and judgment, and able to learn from it when mistakes, happen, either because wrong assumptions or circumstance that cause it not to happen. Something I used to say that, the people with wisdom can find the line between, skill and luck, but the people who have, how should I say humility gives a lot more credit to luck then skill when we're successful, a lot of times is because we're lucky, not because we are exceptionally skillful, because if we start thinking that we are the best, we have stopped learning. We're done and we become our worst enemy. So I think that you have that natural trait. If not, you wouldn't be where you are now and where you will be in the future. So how do you preserve that risk taking, attitude, that comfort, if I may even use that word, because risk is never comfortable and the more successful you are, actually the more risks you are taking because you have reputational risks you have you have a lot of other things. You said, well, I already achieved why do I want to take on more risk? I should just rest on my laurels and I should be okay. But I think that understanding risk and continue to take risks, not for for the sake of taking risk, but to thrive and to reach the goal and the objective and the target. It's a necessary trait. And the question is how does one preserve that trait when one becomes more comfortable and have experienced success? I think that risk has a very negative reputation. When you hear of risks, you immediately want to feel bad. You feel this, something drop in your stomach when in truth, it's exactly like you mentioned. Risk is just a mechanism to get to a certain outcome. And there's, and so it is a necessary journey that you take in order to kind of get the outcome that you're looking for. How else are you going to. It's a form of measuring, the benefits and consequences of each action that you take or each kind of like strategy or tactic or whatever else. Risk is just like your, is is just a, a measure of, is an awareness of sort of that input output sort of consequence, if that makes sense. And there are some systems that are very inefficient and very ineffective, like you take an abnormally high risk. Anyways. And you don't understand fully, you either don't understand the full benefits, and the likely benefits, or you don't understand the full consequences and the full consequences here. It's like many people who, decide, oh, you know, I'm going to I'm going to choose the most de-risk package in some way. And, and what that means is like a form of, like, you know, I'll go to college and then I'll get a really good, you know, you know, big tech job, you know, afterwards and, and feel really comfortable. And all of that is, is a facade, I believe. I think like taking the most comfortable path is actually, a different form of risk. You just call it something else. It is. It is a form of assuming that our current systems that we, are operating under, will continued to exist. We'll continue to, stagnate and Google will continue to be Google. And there wouldn't be OpenAI that comes in our slot that comes in to disrupt their core business model. And all of that is just fundamentally untrue. So anyone that is looking for like less risk, just overall, that's usually where I see part archetypes, where they say I want to follow a path that someone else told me to follow. And, and use. You're doing it in a, in not the most educated like way. And so just even assuming that there's any, certainties in life is also, a, an inefficient evaluation of the risks that you decided to take on. So uncertainty is, the only thing that's perpetual, that is, right. And so everything will always change. Exactly. And so a matter if you want to kind of react to that change. Sorry. I it's almost it's as if do you want to be a reactive to that change or do you want to be the change actually happens. And those that are at the forefront have the most amount of insight into actually how the system operates and the, the red tape, the yellow tape, who you need to go to first to influence a movement and things like that. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your your business, waterlily. What a beautiful name. And, tell us a little bit about, you know, you mentioned your experience with your aunt, that your, your cohesive family or extended family sort of apart a little bit. And it was, probably very, very difficult. And a lot of it probably has to do with money and willingness to support and willingness to sacrifice. And there may be some issue of entitlement, and other. I'm just thinking out loud, I don't know if anything that's true. We could in. Yeah, we could dive in there. So so, which motivated you, but in such a strong way? I'd like to open that up just a little bit. What is it that made you feel so compelled to make a life change at such a young age? It must be so impactful. It was so significant to you and maybe to your to your to your immediate family, your father and mother and so on. And your brothers and sisters and and that made you change that course. And you have never looked back and not only never look back to propel forward. Can you talk a little bit about that energy and that because it's certainly with risk taking a bit, if you talk about uncertainty, it's certainly dealing with uncertainty. But I don't think you thought about uncertainty. I if I may suggest and tell me if I'm wrong, that you said there is a there's a thing that I want to do, there is a thing that I need to solve and is bigger than me, bigger than my aunt, bigger than my uncle, my family. It's for everybody who who may run into this issue, and I think I should help and contribute to a methodology, a solution, or a part of a methodology, part of a solution which can, minimize the occurrence of what I went through. Any other family, in theory. So talk to us a little bit more about that. And then what I'd like to do is pivot from there and learn about your company. Which obviously we can research online and we will find out. But, but I love to sort of understand that a little bit, more directly from you, if that's all right. Yeah. All that sounds wonderful. So it kind of goes back to your previous topic of of risk. I thought I was taking sufficient, you know, risk of the amount of stress that, and amount of, like, hard work and, entrusting myself to be resilient through it and taking a very particular path in aerospace. I thought that was the right risk, sufficient risk. And it did make sense. And then all of a sudden you get perspective and life kind of just throws itself at you. And so when my aunt got sick and we navigated just reactively the way the system was designed, how health insurance, does not take care of long term care needs. And we paid anything and everything for her care, including chemotherapy. We stepped in. We had to step in physically because there wasn't we didn't know where to navigate for resources. And, and recognizing that unless you're under that immediate household as anyone else, even extended family members is a really difficult logistical and emotional challenge, as well, because everyone has their responsibilities under their own household. So, so it's very difficult to make assumptions on, you know, what sort of support is there for you. And it was very heartbreaking for me to see because my mom came from the Cambodian genocide, and I thought nothing could really tear, really her family apart because we've gone through such a traumatic event like countless other families. And it was eye opening to see that an event such as long term care, which is so incredibly prevalent, does tear families apart. And that's why I become so optimistic about the wealth management space in particular, because through a series of taking on the risk of an unpaved path or the risk of going down a path with so much scar tissue, such as long term care, within the life insurance and, life and wealth management industry is is recognizing what do advisors care about at the end of the day, when they take care of their clients, it is that they want to feel like they are taking care of their clients. It's not just letting them know that they're, they're, they're brokerage accounts and, you know, you know, 8% this year. And it was previously about, you know, investment management and, investment management and, like buying insurance. Yes. Just like as a no, you have to just consider that because it's money and money day in and day out. But then after 2008, and after the housing crisis, that's when you see an uprise or, of financial planning in particular, because it was because you can't guarantee returns that the market's not doing so well. And that was a particularly very, very bad time. I think in an economy where you see the rise of like Michael Kitsis and like other, individuals that take on the financial planning movement so that you can now, focus on adding holistic value to your clients and realizing that they don't just want money for the sake of money, but it's a probably a part of, you know, life planning in some shape or form. And it would be awful to, you know, for someone to have a goal of earning 5 million, you know, having $5 million by the time they retire in about 20 years from now. But what if 2 million of that was used towards long term care? And and so you have to not just talk about like there's a risk that you have to get the clients by and understand that you're trying to protect the quality of life that they're looking for in the legacy that they actually want to leave behind. And so that was sort of the silver lining that I found, in terms of building this company was realizing that families had all this, this, this, this current and ongoing pain point. And we have the silver tsunami coming in. So the pain points are going to be more, ever more present than it ever was in the past. And we're not at all prepared for it. And realizing that families, like families have, a lot, have aligned financial incentives to certain systems. As well, where there's a wealth, advisor, to the carrier, to the government, public programs that Medicaid that managed kind of social welfare, like, it's it's recognizing that if there's a way I could build a bridge between, the families outcomes and helping educate them on what their outcomes look like, help them make better decisions. Who else are we serving? Along with that. And, I saw it as both an opportunity and significant risk, to actually go into the long term care space because of how much scar tissue has occurred in terms of the pretty relatively new policies that came out in the 70s and 80s. There was, a significant volume of those policies that were sold. And then realizing that we don't understand aging as well as we possibly could, it is an ongoing, innovation that we need to figure out. And so how do we design new methodologies to try to solve for the core problems around understanding, core factors that go into aging the associated cost and helping build a more, more sustainable financial models, in this industry and edu and, and helping learn and innovate and educate the space on a new methodologies that solve for a lot of the scar tissue that we we've seen. But happy to dive deeper. That was, my hope with taking my experience, realizing how prevalent it was, and trying to build something like the right solution from first principles that's sustainable at scale. Sounds like the, experience without using the word but I we're going to use it. It's about individual sacrifice. It's about everyone chipping in and doing whatever is necessary. On some level, you are lucky that you even have the opportunity to people to chip in. In many cases, in the modern society, modern family, there are not enough people, to even chip in, even if they want. I took the, as you know. Well, you were so kind to walk me through, your app, your. We'll talk about that in a moment. And, it asks the question, you know, do you expect any family members to help if you have to your independent living. And, that was a very heavy duty question. Because there are basically two answers. One answer is that if you ask my children, I don't know what they will say. The natural response is, yeah, of course, if dad is sick, we will come in and step in without knowing what that means. If you have no idea, they most people have no idea unless they go through an experience, right? So assumptions are often misplaced because they really haven't experienced the assumption that they are making. So to actually put down I put down 100 hours. That was the number that I put down on your on your your system. Who knows. And maybe only three hours I don't know. So so on the one hand the children are most likely going to say, yeah, I assure you, if my parents are, you need my help. I'm certainly going to be there. And also, they are putting themselves in today's standpoint, not if something happens to me or to to their mom, but they have children of their own. They have a husband, or a spouse who are less cooperative, who are less willing to sacrifice, who are, who are, who are not willing to do some of the things, and they have their own lives. And so your assumption is totally wrong, not you. But I mean, my assumption is totally wrong. And so I think, I think it's a really difficult, to even think through that, in today's society, which is not the hierarchical society of Asia, where the culture almost shame you for not doing it, and not only shame you, but your entire community and all the people you deal with. Yeah, we can shame my kids, but my kids live in an environment that nobody else is going to shame her. So, so, so it's a very different environment. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just thinking out loud with you. So we'll get into your, your assumption in a moment. So I think number one is sacrifice. And is easy. Were to use very hard were to, to practice. And quite often the assumptions are wrong. So that's one side. The other side is as a father I don't want my, my daughter who may be living in Iowa or Ohio or California. What I'm not doing well. They're going to fly back and take care of me, and I don't want to burden them. Right. Because we're no longer living in the same household with which five families who are all taking care of each other, and they're all watching out for each other, that whole model is gone, at least not here. So mutually, I think it's difficult to to really expect a lot of caregiving and the long term sacrifice. Sacrifice is not just one moment, but is perpetual for a long period of time, either from a sense of duty, a sense of obligation, sense of love. And not everybody have it. And even we assume those who have it may not have it. And I think you didn't say it those ways, but I think I you alluded to it and that your assumptions were wrong. You being your family's assumption. And so those are really important to think through because I know I watch my parents die. I watch my great grand, uncle and aunt die. I watch my in-laws, both in-laws die, and I won't go into all the details. Each one is different and each one end up at a different place. We all chipped in to the best of our ability. But you know, it's not as straightforward because the society is quite demanding. And we all run very busy lives. And are we willing to start our career path, especially for men? Are we willing to be the caregiver and sacrifice and not only sacrifice for the moment, but sacrifice in a way that is material to our career path, material to our lives, material to our next generation? Right. So all of those I think it's really I'm just taking one part of it. But I, but I totally understand that this risk is a huge risk and is a money risk and not everybody can self-insure and a lot of people misunderstand insurance. Insurance is really a mutualization of risk. Right. And to mutualization of risk, meaning that some may use it, some may not. Just like auto insurance, I paid auto insurance. I don't know how long I remember. I had a, a serious accident that that I could even claim that I have made all my premium back. But that's a protection. That's a form of, dealing with risks in a calm and predictable way. So in the investment, the same thing in wealth management, same thing is about risk management. Our lives is about risk management. Right. And basically uncertainty management. If I know when I'm going to die, everything is going to be easy. I mean, I think so, because I can plan with certainty if I don't know. And I don't know how I'm going to die and what all the things will happen before I die. I have no one, no certainty at all. So I need to neutralize that risk whenever that. I think that is economically not feasible or financially not appropriate for me to handle, or I don't have the capacity to handle, which is really what you are doing, I think is too enlightening, people. First of all, the reality of the cost, the reality of long term care. The reality really is about aging and the inability for us to take care of ourselves. And what is that cost associated? What are the duties? So I think that's number one. And then number two is, okay, now, you know, what are you going to do about it? You know, so you know, what's fascinating about like, everything that you shared about the family's sense of responsibility that then crashes headfirst into, modern society in culture, as well. So it's almost like you have the old guard of culture that we come from, especially those of us that, are don't aren't there aren't multiple generations of American from, you know, back from the Mayflower, sort of tons of fundamentally different culture that we have to take into account that goes into our expectations. But also, more importantly, we now live in modern society, where the perception of risk and our risk factors are fundamentally different than the generations prior to that. I think that's the biggest reason why water lilies are why now company? Why does exists now, and why is it so necessary now than it ever has been in the past? And it's because, to your point, in previous generations, like, in previous generations, we lived under the same roof. We had our children. We and the grandchildren were all under the same roof, and we were able to find jobs locally and be a part of local community. But now, as we've received more pressure, through a variety of factors to improve our socioeconomic status or to be able to just survive, a large part of that is getting education and probably not getting education locally where you're at. But towards the best universities that you can possibly get into. And oftentimes, you know, you know, it's a it's a, it's a, it is a bubble that, you know, kind of like live in of, of, high economic potential there and, and to take full advantage of that education. And so we no longer have that household structure and two which we thought, well, we could roughly estimate risk like we can roughly estimate like the cost of aging, as you know, this much. And that's going to be just fine. And it's not just fine. We're seeing the consequences of not taking full, in intentionality and accountability for, for, for the, the lives of our clients and our policyholders and, and ourselves. Really, we no longer have the same support system. We're so, so I think that that further strains kind of having that conversation. And two is that the cost has we lightly talked about the assumptions that we make is from Cms's actuarial tables, where they project 5.4% compounded up into 2031. And so that is our best estimation that we could use. But you could say if you look at nursing home costs and how that's increased over time, if you think about, the advancement of AI and that community be taking over more white collar jobs, what does that mean for the rest of us? We're going to be pulled into, jobs where it's not so easy to build robotics. It's not so easy to build like AI. And that's where we can potentially kind of go back full circle and to into blue collar jobs. So there's a little bit of, you know, what is going to happen to our earning potential, if possible. How can we really maximize, you know, the wealth that we build up to be able to protect it, but how well can we understand risk as one? And one of the most significant risks in our lives is the risk of having a long term care event, the risk of taking care of our parents. Having a long term care event or another loved one. And the opportunity cost of, of doing that. And can we even afford and there's no good language for that. And so what that water really came out of necessity, of, of helping, our ecosystem understand the importance of modernizing the way that we understand risk of aging. So let's talk about your website, which is a fee driven website, subscription driven website, which I appreciate that there's no conflict of interest, which is one of the thing that I worry about all the time, and that we need to understand why should I trust you? Why should I trust the directionality where you, your your AI model drive is so driving more money into your pocket. If you're driving your company to be more successful? Or is it really watching out for my best interest. And it is the latter that differentiates the best from the not so good, so so let's talk a little bit about, you have an algorithm that, draws in a lot of data existing data, some of his health related, because you have past health data, you know, how do I have high BP? Do I have, diabetes? Do I have whatever? So there is a is a probabilistic approach. I'm looking forward at any one moment in time. Then that then then then you use, national averages and sometimes geographical averages depending on the zip code. You also have that information to determine what is the cost of care, you know, all the different levels of care. So let's walk through actually is is really an interesting set of, questions and process that you have, individuals or their advisors go through. I won't say it because, I probably make mistakes. So please, please, walk me through. I'll walk the audience through, what the experience feels like. And of course, welcome to, to have it invite everybody to get on your website to to try it. And I don't think I have to be 73 years old or 68 year old to do it. I think we should be doing it much younger. And I think we should do it more frequently, because uncertainty become more certain once we realize there updated data. Which you are. I'm sure you're constantly updating and that probabilistically hopefully gets better as we get closer to our, later years in life where we will be user of a long term care service, and that because time is not our friend. Because time, allows changes. And so, so as we learn from you, as we get closer, as you update the data, it becomes more and more real. So let me stop there and let you walk us through, all the different components and how you think. Absolutely. It always starts from what the problem is. It's it's a high level. What we've done is we've solved for a lot of the inefficiencies of long term care planning today. When we think of, like, the best tools that we have, we think of the long term care module that exists within money God Pro or EA money, where we ask for, you know, zip code and we use national average statistics. You know, you have a 70% likelihood for male is 2.7 years on average is a into a nursing home. And what's the issue with that? The issue with it is one. Not only is it not going to be very precise to do that, and we actually have data that shows like it's not very precise and it's a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And for much, much younger individuals it's a difference of millions of dollars. How you tell that narrative of risk is really important. But two is clients were not listening to that sort and they weren't acting as a result. And so the only people who decided to protect against that risk were the ones that navigated the event. And unfortunately, the tools also didn't extend into analyzing insurance policies. Not every insurance policy is designed the same way. They're quite complex. And unfortunately, wealth advisors are so incredibly busy all the time. They have to rely on insurance specialists. And that specialists, has a view, on on protecting that risk that, that that in itself makes it hard for the consumer or the client to understand how well did I protect for my risk? And so what we decided to do instead is, is educate, educate so that we can enable a different action if possible. It was it was about taking products that may have been mispriced, existing products in the marketplace that are really hard to understand. A topic that advisors don't want to bring up because they don't know how to bring up, and creating a seamless experience that answers all of those worries as well. So, it was about this movement to modernize long term care planning. Everyone hates the old way of doing things. It it has a lot of issues with it. We could all agree on that. So now it's a matter of how do we create something. We look forward to that. This this makes sense. It's good for the client. And so the way we thought about that is it's always about the client's needs. First. How well can we predict that client's needs not waste their time. So it's a 3 to 5 minute intake survey where we grab the most predictive factors that we learned about how someone ages that that, went across sociodemographic information, medical information, of course, but they're also their financial information, I believe. Correct me if wrong. If you fill out the long form, fill up if you want to. We also talked about ask about family history and your education. That's right. That's right. Very important factors that tell us how you're going to be progressing through your life and when you age, how series is authentic going to look like. So that allows us to, predict what someone's unique likelihood of needing long term care looks like. Their age and, and other need factors. And from only there do we layer in the zip code costs, and localizing kind of the cost of care resources to get a precise sense of what is it cost. We need to solve for? And why does a cost look like that? Have you, I may have asked you that the first time we spoke, but if I haven't, I'm going to ask you now, with the advancement of sequencing DNA, it'd be thought about that being an additional service where if somebody wants to have their DNA examined, give you a more scientific basis to look at a probabilistic, again, both from a disease standpoint and from a makeup endpoint, from a, from a ratio and from a, you know, all those type of standpoint and, and how that helps you, to, even give a, a narrow probabilistic, outcome. Have you thought about that? And if you have, something that you want to implement genetic. Well, given my background was in and, you know, I know, that I mean, that this will always be forever fascinating to me. It's been a really unfortunate the the series of events that have happened in terms of genetic sequencing, the advent of it, the scaling and and unfortunately, the news that we see about how that data is being sold to, to companies where they don't have aligned incentives with consumers to, who, who just want better quality of care at the end of the day, my answer is like, if I could even right now I have 200 questions I would love to ask the consumer, I would absolutely. Bill. I would be so fascinated. I would love to ask the consumer if they had all the time in the world. But when it comes to building out a product that people actually use, it's all about the user experience. So if there's a very easy way, in a trustful way, in which we can integrate, genetic data that all the studies are, I would love to do that. We are, I think in our current modern society, it's it's all about the it's all about the preciousness of time. It's all it's about time to value. And so if I could find ways of of course, we're actively finding ways in which you don't spend 3 to 5 minutes. What if you can instantaneously fill out that initial intake form at the through an integration of, you know, medical workers, integration of, your financial planning software, CRM, it's all about integrations to make the process more seamless. But yes, oftentimes more data, especially medical data is better. Of course. And and being very transparent about how we don't sell that data and, and how it's just used for the sake of educating, you know, the, the, the families, and their advisors on this topic. So I'll pause and see that that answers your question. Yeah. I think all that ultimately I can and my imagination already going while that, that your data set starting with long term care can also get into guarantee lifetime income because you are being predictive of how long one is going to live and how long that income going to last, is going to go into life insurance. If you're going to spend all this money on long term care and everything else, do you want to disinherit your children or not? Because right now, you said 2.7 years for men. Well, that means 50% of them are living beyond 2.7 and 50% of living below 2.7. And I don't know how many more than 2.7 that person is living. So he could be 5.7. The price that the cost is significantly more right is at least double. So yeah. So all those things, it's all all linked. I mean, at the end of the day is two line items. One is the standard of care or the quality of care, and the other is the cost of care. So, so so it's about money. Is it? But is related to money. Is that the standard and the level of care we're talking about. Right. So I think that the earlier one start thinking about that and integrating it into the financial planning framework, or you will call holistic financial planning for it. Absolutely. That are the more realistic, the outcome can be achieved. And it should be integrated into the, into the conversation. And I know when you're 30 something, you're not thinking about death and dying. I know you are 40 something. You're not thinking about long term care at 83 because you feel that you have all the time in the world, having at least some exposure to your point, educating and plan the see the suggestion early, assuming you're going to be in this business for another 50 years, that the people who have done it 50 years ago and say, oh my goodness, I remember I need to do this again and again and again. First of all, I mentioned to you, would you agree assumptions changes. So the probabilistic the outcome changes, as we get more data both on a sort of a macro data, as well as specific population data and ultimately individual data, the combination of all three checks each other to say, are these assumptions valid for this individual or not? So you are really in the data science business happen to be in the long term care outcome business. But you are really in the data science. What they taught me when I was at Cal or at UC Berkeley, when when we first started our data science cohort. One is a they said this is normally a master's degree, and I don't understand why it's only a master's degree. We should give you, as is a part of the undergrad class. Like there's no reason why you can't learn what you need to learn. And two is that data science is all about having domain expertise as well. It's not just having that math background, your science background, statistical background. It's like how do you map it to, how do you apply it to a domain of interest? That's only time it's in. Which is particularly useful is you actually understand the industry, that you are, right. You use exactly who you are. Exactly. But you you have to use it. And why don't like what what what still boggles my mind is like I think it's just a change of narrative at this point. I think you notice how important this topic is. You're incredibly thoughtful, but there's honestly a couple of questions that confuse me. The first one is just if we do annual financial plans is a point of it, to just showcase to the client that, like, I am valuable, like, you know, like, oh, I still do, you know, work for you. Here's your performance. Is it really about reporting or is it is it a way to meaningfully touch base with the client about, hey, has anything changed in your life? Have you recently gone through a divorce? Have you recently had a child? Has your life goals changed because that's going to fundamentally change what your financial goals are going to look like? And similarly for us, if your financial situation, your medical situations, if you move somewhere else that has predictive power to it and it changes fundamentally, what your risk financially is also going to look like. Are we still on track with that plan? And so having a thoughtful plan there is important. And two is also recognizing, I think we all the only way we work as a company waterlily is if we are willing to recognize that, that the old way of doing long term care planning just doesn't work. It's the one way you could just sweep it under the rug. But given how expensive it is, you know, is that the right, like move? And then it's my job to figure out how do I make how do I make that, the move of putting it front and center, easy, effective, efficient, and always iterate on that so that you feel empowered to always be almost, a, omnipresent or just, like, really aware of your client's life and what could affect their financial goals. Yeah. I think, the way to really talk about and I kind of mentioned it earlier for any financial advisor, wealth manager, whatever you want to call them, financial planners. Yeah. Really risk managers, that's what they are doing that identify unique risk to you and general risk to people. And they have to help you manage it. It is their job. It is your job to identify probabilistic what is a probabilistic risk and what is the associated cost and burden to go with that risk. And once you identify that, you prioritize it. I mean, there are many risks. I mean, crossing the street, that's a risk. But you prioritize it and then you put a dollar, amount next to it and then you. That's not enough, because now you have told your client what the problem is. It's not enough. Your job is to help them at least find solutions. It can address those risks, if indeed that resonates with them. So for me, for our practice, we do we do many things. We are very much in touch with our clients all the time. We know when there's a divorce, we know when there's an issue. I mean, not the moment it happened, but quite often, very, very quickly. Because they rely on us to provide them the income. They rely on us to meet specific, goals in their lives. And they know that has change, and they know that we have the relationship. And most important is to trust is to trust that they know that they can trust us to provide them, with responses and ideas and also honesty. If I don't know, we'll find somebody who does. And so, so so that is our job. But at the end it's about risk management. It's about managing the various types of risks. Well, one slice and it is our job to know those risks and to share those risks. And then but is to at the end is the client's, own decision. If they believe that that should be prioritized or not. I rather be scared, than tend to be, stick my head in the sand, like, like, whatever one of those birds and it happens is too late. And I think that, the way to talk to the client about this particular thing is that you don't even have to give a reason. You say, look, I am a risk manager for you. Making money is one thing. We want to protect you on the downside for yourself, for your family, for your children, for your inheritors, whomever. And one thing that I think we should do is that I have uncovered waterlily, and I think that the least you should do is walk through that experience. You make up your own mind. If this is of of consequence to you or not, you don't need an advisor to walk you through, per se, because you have you, your website have made it, pretty straightforward. Yes. You need some knowledge, but but but not not impossible to walk through, and, to have them sort of every question that you ask in there is a should be reflected upon. Why? Why is Lily asking me that question? Well, maybe because, you know, if your parents have IP diabetes, if your parents have heart disease, have you? And why are they asking this question? Well, because chances are I may have a likelihood of doing that. How did your parents live? Did they go to long term care that they need, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all those sorts of things. So I think the experience itself should questions for anybody who is interested in learning about their own risks will find it really, revealing to them of the risks that they are not aware of or shied away from. So I don't think that's anything new to you. What I said, I'm sure that's, well understood by your organization. I guess the last question I will ask you, because we're, you know, we're running up to time. Are you doing, are you contributing or are you bringing money in the door to contribute to, research, in that area, or what are you doing with, you don't to tell me what you're doing with the money. That's not my point. My point is, what are you doing to advance, to continue to in the forefront, due to health and downside protection? That's a fantastic question. Okay. It's it's what we done has never been seen before. You don't need a research institution to recognize, that you've done this, or that you have patents on it or anything else, to, to realize with, with both. Kind of like, with, with your health, your eyes is, can you go through the experience and is it just novel and is it useful? And for us, inherent in our DNA as a, as a innovative software company that's a first mover in the space to predict at the individual level, what your long term care needs are going to look like. Not just not just average simulations or statistics. It's always going back to the question of like, how well do we understand aging? How well can we predict it? What are the core use cases that are going to serve family members? So for us, the better that we, the better we do as a company with resonating with care professionals, financial professionals, making it easier for them to talk about the solutions in this space. Once you understand the costs, how well can we help serve, your different solution paths? The more successful we will be to be able to use that money and recycle it back into the company to continue to be at the forefront of this of this topic. We've been incredibly fortunate as well to be invited by on world, you know, platform at World Economic Forum. Yeah, we were part of the first longevity cohort, and we were the one that was selected to go to Davos to speak to all these different countries that, you know, it's it's that essentially say, like, I have a problem here. I don't know how to tackle it. And sometimes the best, the best innovations at the forefront of that are the ones I commercialize that are in industry. That is the beauty of being in a couple of sick society, right? It's tuning in. It's tuning into what is the net new thing that you do, the innovation that you build and the demand for it that can continue to fund that innovation. Do you work with the organization, like each lab getting data and getting understanding what they are thinking or others like that, and understanding about, you know, disease and disease management and longevity, all that type of thing. Fantastic question. So, Evan, of course, like my co-founder, who went to MIT, was one of the youngest neuroscientists, computational neuroscientist, who who started his PhD at at 16, he is very familiar with, the labs. And we believe right now that we can move faster and so much more, knowing what we already know and build from. Of course, there are academic institutions that do reach out to us all the time about doing research and studies. But if you've ever worked with a lab, you'll realize the hoops that you have to jump through and the benefit of that, it is higher risk for us and for the mission that we have then than not. So, that is our current stance right now. But in terms of do we take into account disease states? Do we take into account, you know, the trajectory of like aging, if anything, a lot of the most interesting data that you'll ever see and, and collaborate on is going to be the private data. I see. It's interesting interesting. There's there's exceptions here and there. I think Medicare S is doing a fantastic job of, you know, publicizing more, more and more data for us. What we see right now is that we, are happy to partner and collaborate with others. I think right now we want to partner where the families are. That's where the scale of impact is. Your website will be.waterlily.com. Like the flower. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Lily. I, I continue to be impressed. I feel that I'm the dumb one in the in the in the room. You guys, you and your partner are all teenager, teenagers who who have accomplished so much. And now, of course, you continue that journey. And and I wish you the best of luck. Luck actually has nothing to do with it. In this case is hard work is determination, is understanding risk understanding how to take advantage of risks to get the payoff that you look for. And I when I say payoff, I don't mean money. The payoff is in achieving the long term goal what you are trying to accomplish. So I wish you the very best and your partner down this journey that not only helping your yourself, your families, but to the world to have a better, better outcome, better future, better family. So thank you for all the work that you've done. Thank you so much for having me on this platform and asking such fantastic questions. My pleasure is easy to ask questions. I have no answer. So so I have an easy job. So. But thank you, thank you for your time and I look forward to staying in touch with you and learning about your future and your progress. You can always find more episodes by visiting Philip Chao Dot USA slash podcast, or find us on your favorite podcast app. You can always leave us feedback, ask, question, or request a topic for us to discuss by sending an email to p c at Philip chao.us. Views expressed in the Tao Chao podcast are individual opinions, and they do not represent the employees of each guest or the firm. Each guest is associated. Our podcasts are for educational and informational purposes only, and should not be deemed or viewed as investment advice or recommendations. Please consult your personal financial advisor, investment expert or investment fiduciary before taking any actions about your plan and investments. Welcome to the Tao of Chao podcast, where we will try to find a balance and provide a clearer path forward in this uncertain.