How Robotic Companion Pets are Making Life More Joyful for Older Adults with Ted Fischer

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we'll be breaking down how robotic companion pets are making life more joyful for older adults. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Ted Fisher and the EO Fire Studios. Ted is the co-founder and CEO of Ageless Innovation. He is passionately committed to championing Ageless Innovation's belief in play as a basic human need for individuals of all ages. We'll talk about the origin story of Ageless Innovation. We'll talk about what's changed since 2018.

0:36We'll talk about the power of meaningful partnerships for people of all ages and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ted and our sponsors. Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Ted, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:19Great. Thanks, John. One of the things that I look at is how do you want to find success, right? So there's been successes, there's been failures. So I'm definitely a work in process. But I think, you know, through all of that, what I truly believe is you have to be authentically you through the process. Right. And I hear a lot of people say, you know, fake it till you make it kind of thing. That's never really that's never really worked for me or been my style. You know, I wear it a bit on my sleeve. So for the good and the bad and all the difficult times and the highs and lows, I think just trying to be authentically who you are and therefore, you build people and teams around you that share your values and your passions.

1:59And that, I would say, has been a key to success for me. Well, that's a great start to what's going to be a really fun episode, Fire Nation, because you've always heard me say the riches are in the niches. And today we're going to be talking about how robotic companion pets are making life more joyful for older adults. Let's start with Ageless Innovation. What is Ageless Innovation? Tell us that origin story. So Ageless Innovation is a company that we serve a global population of older adults. We make fun and joyful products that improve quality of life, well-being, and really have positive health impacts for older adults.

2:38The origin is, so we're, as Ageless Innovation, we're about seven years old. But the brand Joy for All, which is our brand, started in 2015 back at Hasbro. And I was brought in to lead a new innovation team there that was focused on sort of internal, you know, innovation and organic growth. And, you know, early on, we saw that health and wellness was an area where the things that Hasbro was really good at, the ability to gauge, gamify, make meaningful connections. We thought those would have great value in the health and wellness space. And so as we explored, we found that there was a, you know, an animatronic toy that was made 25 years ago for young girls.

3:22And about 20 percent of the reviews were mom not buying it for their daughter, but buying it for an aging loved one. And as we explored that and the reviews would literally make you cry, like this impact that these, you know, simple toys were having. And so we dug into that and we found a couple of things. One, it was this need for interactive companionship that was unequivocal. equivocal. There was this epidemic of loneliness and isolation well before the pandemic that was gripping older adults. And then two, every older adult we talked to wanted more fun, play, and joy in their life. And they were seen to be a void of products focused on this demographic.

3:57And so the Joy for All brand was launched back in 2015. We launched it with a line of robotic companion pets, as you mentioned. And in 2018, after running it internally for three years, it was getting harder to focus 100 % on older adults inside of that Hasbro engine. And they loved what we were doing. We had a great, you know, the halo effect, I think, across the board was something everybody appreciated. But we thought we had a much better chance to grow and serve this population outside of the walls of Hasbro. And so we completed a friendly management spin out in 2018. And for the last almost seven years have been running it as Ageless Innovation and growing the Joy for All brand.

4:38I love that. And I want to move into what's changed since 2018. I mean, 2018 to today, you know, that's over seven years. What has been the biggest levers that you've pulled that have made the biggest changes within the company over that time? Yeah, great question. So I think one, we've learned a ton, right? Because we really, as we, you know, embarked on this thing, if you think, we think back 10 years, there was no product like this. There wasn't even a category like this. So we kind of consider ourselves category creators, which sounds really sexy, but it's really hard. And so as you realize there's really not a spot for you in an aisle, you know, in a retail location, there's really not a marketplace that serves the audience that you're trying to serve with the type of products that you have.

5:28You've got to create all these channels. So I'd say, you know, a couple of the biggest sort of changes or things that we've learned is one, we had to go and figure out how to meet the needs of older adults where they were. And so in some cases that, you know, that could be a self-paced situation where people could buy it in a direct consumer standpoint. And in others, we needed to find, you know, these healthcare funding channels that allowed older adults to use and find our products that were funded by a sponsor or a payer. So as we've expanded more into healthcare, I think that's been one of the biggest learnings.

6:05And then two, it's what's always been part of our design principle is don't assume that we know what older adults want. We include them in the process. And so from concept to launch and every product that we've had, older adults have been involved. And so when we look at the features of our products and as we've expanded into games and other things, we don't assume that we can, you know, enhance or reimagine games without older adult input involved. So, you know, I think those are two of the biggest things. And then just to make sure that we're continually listening to our end user and to our end user and our customer are sometimes two different people.

6:46A lot of times our customer is a loved one who's caring for an older adult and our end user is always, you know, most typically the older adult. And so we have to think about both of those audiences as we move forward. I love real world examples. They just make things real. So share a story of the impact that Joy for All Pets has had on the life of at least one older adult. We ground ourselves in meetings most weeks with the letters and the stories and the testimonials that we receive. And, you know, I'm honored and humbled to say that it's now in the thousands. But, you know, from a real world standpoint, I think what we hear the most, it's a letter from, you know, call it a mom who's, you know, raising a family, living further away from her, you know, older adult parent or parents than she wants to.

7:43and we're getting a letter saying, hey, my mom was lonely, isolated, not engaging, not being social. We gave her one of your pets and we found that it has changed her life in a way that she now has this interactive companionship, someone that she feels close to, is named Fluffy after a childhood pet or whatever the story might be. But that's a very realistic theme. And on the most sort of extreme level, we've probably received dozens of letters saying, you know, that in the last year of my dad or my mom's life, your pet meant so much to them that we actually buried them with it. So, you know, when we launched this thing 10 years ago, if you would have told me that we could possibly have that kind of impact with what I consider a pretty simple technology, but also, you know, a pretty engaging product, I wouldn't have believed it.

8:38So, you know, it's pretty humbling to get those type of letters that this product has had that kind of impact on the lives of older adults and their families. It's really powerful. I'll actually share a personal story. So, like back in 2010, I was living in San Diego, and I just decided it was time for me to get a dog for whatever reason. So, I went to a shelter, found what ended up being a fantastic dog. I named him Sir Diego. He was this little dog. He was a mud of many colors, but he was just a great little dog, very friendly, lovable. I moved cross-country back to Maine, started up a job that now is just keeping me out of the house for at least 10 to 12 hours a day.

9:17And so this dog was just not thriving alone for that long of a time. So I literally talked to my grandmother, who was not really a dog person, but she just loved this dog because it was special. And so she ended up taking ownership of the dog. And for the next eight years, this dog gave her so much joy. She went everywhere with this dog, drove around to do like meal delivery services, groomed it once a week. It was always on her lap. She slept in her bed. I mean, it was just, it was one of those stories. And then when the dog passed, my grandmother was devastated and we weren't in a position because she was getting pretty old.

9:52So she really couldn't start over with like a dog. Like it was just too much of a risk. Like Diego was a perfect dog for her. very low maintenance. So she just went without for a couple of years. And like, just me thinking of like, man, we could have just slid in, you know, this robotic dog that was really would have been risk-free to at least just try or test to see if she resonated with it. It would have continued to potentially bring her so much joy, joy that she got with Sir Diego, that it would have been such an amazing experience. So I just kind of wish back then I knew about this company.

10:26Actually, this was back in like 2013, 2014. So it might've been too early. But I mean, to me, it's just like, there's so many great opportunities within this fire nation when you're thinking about, man, like, where does this fit possibly in my life or the life of a loved one? And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Is this your year to grow a successful business? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

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13:01Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash fire. Zip Intro, post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. Ted, we're back and we went through the joy for all pets. I mean, I shared a personal story. You shared a real world example. I mean, it was real cool to kind of hear that. But I want to talk about the joy for all games. What is that? We spun out of Hasbro in 2018 and have maintained a very close relationship. Our headquarters are a few miles down the road from where we all used to work. A few of my co-founders also came with me from Hasbro. So we have this growing Hasbro presence or what we call has-bens.

13:41If you leave Hasbro, you're no longer a Hasbro, you're a has-bin. So we have, I think there's like half of my team now are has-bens, but about a year and a half, maybe almost two years ago, Hasbro came to us and said, hey, listen, we're seeing an uptick in the use of our iconic board games by older adults. and we're seeing a real spike. And we're also hearing some feedback that they're not as easy to play as they used to be. They're not as inclusive as they might be. And in some cases, they're just not as much fun as they used to be. And so they said, we think there's a great opportunity to reimagine these games.

14:19And we think no one's better suited to do it than you. So we became Hasbro's first exclusive licensee for the older adult population. And we now have access to their entire catalog of games and in 2023 launched our first set of games with Trivia Pursuit Generations, which I'll just humbly say has been nominated for Grown-Up Toy of the Year. Nice. The Toty Awards, which we're going to tomorrow night in New York City. We'll find out if we actually won, but we've been named a finalist. And then Game of Life Generations, Scrabble Bingo, and we've since launched Taboo Charades and about to launch, we just put a press release out yesterday for our newest game, which is called Yahtzee Slots, which is just a phenomenal take on Yahtzee with a real slot machine.

15:13And so it adds a little game of chance there. And so, you know, what we found is, you know, based on the experience that we had had with our pets, you know, and now, you know, we've sold our pets in about 30 countries. We've got about 700 ,000 of them out there that have been adopted. We've heard a lot of feedback from older adults. And so as we got this opportunity to go and say, you know, what about Scrabble makes it more difficult now to play? So, you know, we heard some things like you can't pick up the pieces or see the tiles and not enough contrast or the gameplay is a little too slow. We just, you know, we took what's great about those games and we've just modified them and reimagined them in a way that, you know, make it more fun for this population.

15:53And we really have a focus on intergenerational play because we think so much of social isolation and loneliness that's impacting older adults is because there's, you know, your peer group starts to get smaller. And we want to encourage intergenerational connectivity and bring people together. And so that's been a real focus of our games. And we couldn't be more honored to be working with Hasbro. We've got more to come, but we're really excited about Yahtzee Slot's launch at Toy Fair this weekend. Man, I'll tell you. Well, good luck on that award ceremony. I mean, it's really fun to just be putting stuff out there in the world that's getting so well received.

16:29And you know, like you said, that there's so many people that are lonely and isolated. And, you know, if maybe they can just even get through a couple hours of the day, like that can be so meaningful where, you know, they have their morning routine, they have their evening routine, but sometimes that middle of the day can just be so brutal because, you know, we grow up, like we're usually so busy in that middle part of the day all the way from, you know, when we can first remember being a kid and going to school and sports and then, you know, college, and then we get a job. And then all of a sudden, it's like, what do we do between like nine and five now?

16:58Like that can be so tough for people. Sometimes, again, just that couple hour bridge can be so important. So what is the future of the Joy for All brand? What is your vision, Ted? By the way, I totally agree with you. In the middle of the day, you know, my grandmother, who sadly has passed, but had dementia as we were launching this brand, she was sort of my single person focus group. You know, we all lived my I have a big, you know, sort of Italian family in Providence, outside of Providence, Rhode Island. She was there. And we were all within 10 miles of her. So we visited all the time. And my grandmother still spent 20 hours of the day by herself.

17:32You know, so, you know, even if we could all be there four hours a day. So creating something that allowed her to interact with her friends and others in the community and those type of things was a real driving force. So your point is really well taken. So the vision, you know, is we want to, you know, be the world leader in creating fun, joyful, playful experiences for older adults that have really meaningful impact. So with our pets, for instance, you know, as I mentioned, we really focus on the health and wellness side of it. We want to make it fun and engaging, but we also think there's, you know, we've had validated proof that our products are making a difference on need states like loneliness and isolation.

18:15and depression, Alzheimer's and related dementias, and mobility with our walker squawker. So it really is something where we're constantly talking to older adults about what are the challenges, the issues, what they're facing, and what is it that brings them more joy and fun and play in their life. And then we try and integrate those things going forward. We're working on a 2.0 version of our pets. we've got some exciting things coming that I'm not going to talk too much about today but maybe we'll chat again in the next year or so and we've got some really exciting things we've been through the ARP H-Tech Collaborative Accelerator we have we won a National Science Foundation grant to think about how AI might interface with our platform and those type things so we're moving in a really innovative direction.

19:11But as I said earlier, nothing that we do will ever interfere with the relationship between our products and our end user, right? We don't want to interrupt that. We only want to enhance that. Ted, we talked about a lot of things today. I mean, we talked about the joy for all pets, joy for all games, where you're seeing the future going, the origin story, of course. What would you say you would want the one takeaway from our conversation to be? If our listeners were going to be able to walk away and say, hey, this is the one thing I took away from that episode between Ted and John, what would that be?

19:46I'll give you the thought that I give to my kids. So I have kids in their late 20s and 30s. And I tell them all the time that this is really a bit of the forgotten generation, right? We have this enormous population of people turning 65. 10 ,000 people in the US for the next 30 years, every day, 10 ,000 people are turning 65 years old. So, you know, if we have called 50 some odd million older adults over 65 today, by 2050, we're going to have almost 100 billion. And the needs and the, you know, the desires and, you know, just the ability of this population is not being served in a way that I think others could.

20:30So, you know, I'd encourage all entrepreneurs. And since we started this thing, the number of entrepreneurs in the older adult space has grown 50-fold. We were one of a few 10 years ago, and now I go to conferences and I see a lot of the same people, and there's dozens and dozens and dozens. And most of them are, it's based on a personal experience that their family faced that they couldn't solve. And so they start, is it care management tools? Is it this tool? Is it that tool? But the one takeaway is we've got this amazing older adult population. I don't think as a society, we're focused enough on, you know, interacting with them or meeting their needs.

21:11And I think there's opportunity in both. So, you know, I think I've never had more fun. This is, you know, about my sixth or seventh, you know, career. And, you know, I would do this for the next 50 years if I could. I mean, it's just, it's an amazingly gratifying business that has impact and opportunity. So that'd be the takeaway. I love that. And if somebody's listening right now or many people are listening and they're saying, how do I get in touch with Ted? How do I learn more about his company? What is your call to action for our listeners today? You can always go to our website, joyforall.com or agelessinnovation.com.

21:52And there's tons of information about the products there. All the contact info is on there, bios, et cetera. That'd be the easiest way. And I think, you know, if you really want to explore more deeply, you know, what we're doing, hit the contact page, reach out to us and you will absolutely get responded to. So appreciate you asking that. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with TF and JLD today. So keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Ted in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

22:27Ted, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much, John. I appreciate being here. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Ted for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation question. Are you an entrepreneur on fire who is looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs newers on fire. To learn more about EO Fire and becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest. I'll catch you there or on the flippity flip side.

23:07Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.