How to Build a Profitable Business for Baby Boomers

[0:00]  have I lost my purpose as a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad well now I can go be a part of somebody else's life and provide value for them to lean on how fulfilling is that work uh that's been the most surprising part for me you know I had this theory that there were all these people I just had no idea to the extent they're out there uh it's just every single day we get to see the best side of humankind uh you know on the neighbor side and somebody of these investors early on said oh you're not going to be able to find enough neighbors to satisfy the demand and I said really you don't think there are that many nice people out there um we now have lots of data to support that absolutely there are enough people to be neighbors but when they apply to be a neighbor they write a paragraph about why and every single one

[0:48]  I don't know if there's any other company like this they each come with their own why built in we're not pushing our why on them they bring it um and we say all the time at neighbor Force you can see my thing more joy um that we're inspired by Joy because we are bringing joy to our clients now you're getting these communities that are multigenerational where younger people can help older people and you know what we say at neighbor force is in the old days that you had that sense of community you knew who your neighbor was and you wanted to lend you know help the older man down the street roll out the garbage cans on Tuesday Mornings it's become less close in it all right guys welcome back to a brand

[1:42]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited because we have a very special guest with us here today Paige Wilson is joining the show she is the CEO and founder of neighbor force a platform connecting seniors with neighbors and companionship and assistance Paige welcome to the show it's great to be here thanks Kenan absolutely this is going to be a lot of fun because we're going to talk about the challenge that we see in our society I'd like to kind of bring in this little element of our conversation in 2022 the surgent general came onto a national broadcast and said the biggest challenge we're facing in society today is not another viral outbreak in a pandemic but a epidemic of isolation and loneliness absolutely what do you think about that uh this is basically the core of what we're addressing at neighbor force and you

[2:29]  know the way I frame it with people you're too young to remember this but when I was a child the last time the Surgeon General came out with some big announcement it was about cigarettes you know how cigarettes can kill you and every cigarette pack had to have the warning label on it both my parents were smokers this was a big thing but when he came out in 2022 and talked about loneliness what he said is loneliness is more deadly than those things than 15 of those cigarettes that's how Monumental epidemic epidemic excuse me that's how Monument okay you got to cut this one that's how Monumental this whole idea around this epidemic on loneliness loneliness is worse than cigar uh

[3:19]  smoking 15 cigarettes a day and when we're just matter of fact with that fact it really kind of hits it home I mean if you think about you know one of the biggest challenges that I think all of our Generations faced today is our addiction to these little devices um in 2021 I think there was there was a a a documentary that came out called the social Dilemma on Netflix and it talked about the power of these social media platforms and these little devices is not in disseminating and spreading information but rather changing your behavior without even you noticing a small change over a period of time can completely change how you interact with people and it's interesting to think about how we we often look for social Connection in places where we're never going to find it because we've been tricked with our brains to say ooh likes

[4:07]  comments more friend requests equal connection but when we talk about the the demographic of people who you're serving that will never suffice not at all and you know it is that false security of feeling like you're connected I really every piece of data says it's it's driving people apart they're getting less connected um it's all fake and we're using technology to actually bring people together human let's talk about it let's talk about it so what technology have you developed what roote actually let's go back to the cause so we talked about the cause here but there has to be a personal Catalyst in your life where you recognized this is worth my time this is a mission that I want to dedicate my energy towards how do we kind of develop neighbor force and where the inspiration come from you know it came out of they say that necessity is the mother of invention well I

[4:55]  invented neighbor Force because of my mother and the necessity of what I was dealing with with her but um this has been about 10 years now but she was 75 and broke her hip and I was very close to my mom I lived 5 minutes from her my mom was widowed so she was alone I was widowed very young uh but I had a teenage daughter and all of a sudden when that happened when she broke her hip there was a period of time where she had to give up driving you know she couldn't with a broken hip and then all of these little things started happening she was pretty vibrant still but she needed help with little things and it was anything from getting to the beauty parlor it might be going up in the attic and getting the bridge table down cuz she had friends coming over um or the one that I laugh about now it was not that funny then

[5:44]  which was you know reprogramming the remote it's broken again and I had a demanding career I had a teenage daughter I was trying to raise my by myself and so it was hard to drop everything all of the time um and I could tell she didn't even want to ask all the time she knew I was busy she didn't want to feel like a burden on my time and I started looking for a resource for a backup for all those little things only to find there really was nothing there were a lot of options once she needed care a care.com or a Home Instead those kind of people who are babysitting you and care she didn't need that at the time what I kept saying is I just need another me I need a clone you know that could step in um so anyway we got through it but ultimately a

[6:31]  number of things and we can talk about later if you want led me to the answer I know exactly what the answer is they're all these people in the community that if we could work at a little bit like uber tap them when they're available they'd probably love to step in and and be that backup and that was the Genesis of neighbor Force now what I quickly learned once once it launched and we made it through Co yes people need little bits of help but what they need mostly is that connection for sure this experience is the reason why I love hosting the podcast is when my guests share their stories it's easy to find ourselves inside of their story the shared experience that we have of having a loved one who is living on their own I naturally went to the place

[7:18]  of thinking about my now 91-year-old grandmother who still lives in Yak Washington by herself and the biggest argument that we get into is Grandma you cannot be on that lab by yourself trying to go up into the attic it's hard to give up that control you know and people say that older people want to be independent I actually argue that's not true we're all interdependent what they want is to have control to be autonomous to be able to do it when they want it on their terms and that's what you start giving up when you have to rely on other people or asking for your friends and family to help you it's tough and it's a paradigm shift as well you know if I think about the process of getting older means you've gone through different seasons and chapters of your life and when you

[8:06]  start getting to an elderly age where unfortunately if you lose a loved one you are in a place where you don't want to burden your family members like talking about let's come program the remote there's an intuitive nature of saying I don't want to be a burden my job is to kind of step back and to now manage my life as I can and let you do the things that you want to yeah but like you said there's also so many other people who need that sense of connection it's almost like the independence or the request for autonomy is a double-edged sword if that makes sense it it kind of is and you know people have this idolized view of Aging in place everybody wants to stay in the home where they've raised their family and that's great but sometimes they don't think about some of the consequences and some of it is they shouldn't be getting on the ladder like your grandmother but also as their social networks start to

[8:54]  dwindle and then maybe they've given up driving how are they going to stay connected you know they can't get to church they can't go to their Bridge luncheon all of those pieces they need to think about and I think that takes a back seat it does and when I think about you know there's statistics that talk about our aging elderly population and so just from like a pure business perspective your total addressable Market continues to grow so let's kind of talk about why this business model makes so much sense like beyond the mission if you wouldn't mind yeah I mean I didn't know this you went through this all this with my mother and then when she passed away I even moved cities it just emotionally and physically took a lot out of me and then I started learning about this age wave some people call it the silver tsunami I have

[9:41]  learned that that's agist because it makes it sound like it's a disaster it's not a disaster um you know does it have challenges sure but the number that most people point to is that 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every single day uh for the next several decades then that's followed by the Gen X's uh but the reality is the one that I'm more focused on 65 is pretty darn young these days starting next year 10,000 people are going to be turning 80 every day for the next several decades so in I think it's in 2031 we will have more seniors than children for the first time ever in US history birth rates have come down the baby boom you know it was a boom and they're all aging and there's a there's

[10:28]  a another societal element that kind of compounds on top of this which is people who are my age I'm 33 years old are having children later and later because of some of the psychological I would say um limited safety because we think about if I'm going to have children it's going to be an expensive process I have to be able to make rent I have to pay my bills I want to be able to raise my child properly the child the cost of child care continues to rise every single year so one of the questions that I have for you is when we start a business to meet this need how are we leveraging Community to be able to meet the need of isolation and loneliness with our senior population because we're not going to be able to even build our way out of this problem to build enough beds like assisted and you know um nursing homes and everything else to to this they

[11:17]  don't want to be there either that Senior Living nursing home of the past is is a thing of the past that's you know they are trying to figure out better ways to do it and there's a lot of innovation in senior living but that's not what people want now you're getting these communities that are multigenerational where younger people can help older people and you know what we say at neighbor force is in the old days that you had that sense of community you knew who your neighbor was and you wanted to lend you know help the older man down the street roll out the garbage cans on Tuesday Mornings it's become less close-knit people are busier they're behind their phones they're in their garages you don't know your neighbor and so we're using technology to make it safer and simpler to get that help of a neighbor because I live in a a row house Community you know turn to the

[12:06]  century homes and so it's pretty tightly packed and there could be somebody a block away that needs help but how would I know right and how would they know to ask so that's what we're doing with our technology so let's talk a little bit about the technology so we've mentioned um a great use case or a great example that people kind of frame in their mind which is like uber as an example so is it the actual seniors themselves who are often saying I need companionship and support or who is the individual who is engaging with your platform well it's it is the senior many times but more often it's the adult they're adult kids and so you you nailed it right you're having your kids later and so you know now we have this whole sandwich generation of caregivers they're still raising children at home and their parents have

[12:53]  reached the point where they need a little bit of help and they're getting squeezed not to mention you know their career and everything else and so a lot of times just like I needed backup they're the ones that are signing ooh a Lights Went Out hold on we'll come back there go you gotta move a little we need you to leave me a little bit more animated yeah sorry about that uh lost my train of thought there um yeah so that sandwich caregiver you know they're looking for a little bit of backup and there just like I was there's this gap between when you can do everything yourself or maybe you ask your family friends or neighbors for help and then you hit that home care care workers we're bridging that Gap and so we're a huge resource to the family we can step in for an hour here two

[13:42]  hours there and get your mom to a last minute dentist appointment or sit and have lunch with Dad um I just saw well it's another story but a a neighbor we picked up a client and her dog and took them to the groomer and then walked around the park with the you know the dog after his nice little bath um but it it's all kinds of things like that it's what we're doing it's it's a beautiful story I think in our previous conversation we met each other for the first time I asked you if you had ever heard of blue zones blue zones there's five places across the world where people live to be a hundred more so than anywhere else and they have societal commonalities like connection re resource sharing purpose exercise all these elements and it's interesting to think about the place that we live in society today you mentioned we're all busier than ever

[14:29]  but are we really I listened to a podcast the other day that talked about a concept called The Busy trap and the busy trap is you're busy so you can't do other things which makes you more busy so you fill your schedule with more task and it makes you busier and busier and unfortunately by the time that you look up in the morning you're waking up you're looking at your calendar first thing which I fall trapped to and it's like how many things do I have to do today and you're always trying to fill your schedule when it comes to combating this macro problem of isolation and loneliness it seems like we need to get a little a little bit less busy and we need to spend a little bit more time caring for the people around us we do I am in the very beginning um I had this neighbor and I loved what he coined he said he believed it is the ministry of being

[15:16]  present and that's it you know um that's what neighbor force is doing um you know yes are we helping with little tasks but we are there connected to you people ask if we match by personalities or skill sets or traits not at all we match by proximity so your helper is a neighbor and people find ways to connect it's just the human nature so one neighbor might help somebody and they find that they both uh you know loved the Eagles back in the day and then the next neighbor might come and find they both play maang it's it's just it's amazing they find ways to connect and it's good we are secretly yearning for that sense of connection and I love that you're using a technology platform as more of

[16:04]  like an enablement platform to create opportunities for connection now I have to ask the question paig you do not exactly fit the normal Avatar of a tech founder so I want to kind of know how did we tackle this big problem and why did we go down the tech route like let's talk about the early journey in neighbor force and how we got here I mean the early Journey so my whole career has been up until neighbor force in large Corporate Finance I was a CFO of a public company investor relations things like that um very well capitalized investment gr companies very different from a startup but you know after the experience that I went through with my mother I think it changed me uh but as I mentioned I I moved cities took a different job I was an investment banking then kind of sold my soul uh it

[16:52]  was a great job but I saw my friends going through it I started learning all these demographics and two things happened and my mother by then had passed away again that all of a sudden a light bulb went off and I thought I know the answer to this problem that I needed with my mom and there was really no turning back and so that's uh I had moved to Washington DC after my mom died took a new job there it was great but I wanted to get involved in the community because I had always lived in Richman outside of my whole life pretty much um and so I thought well what can I do that I don't have to make too big of a commitment cuz I have a pretty demanding job and I thought well I'll sign up for Meals on Wheels great organization you know I have soft spot for older people doesn't take a big commitment well they were very happy to

[17:40]  hear from me but they needed me to commit to the same day every week because they had their routes well I couldn't because of my job I traveled a lot so that was disappointing and about a month later I was talking to a friend of mine back in Richmond and she mentioned something about driving for Uber and I thought wait she'd been lawyer what in the world was she doing driving Uber and what she said was you know Paige I left my law practice several years ago to finish raising our two boys who were teenagers at the time and she said now they've gone off to college I wake up in the morning and I feel like I have no purpose I'm used to helping people taking care of people being needed being connected and she said I'm not going back to my career that's done and she said I could get a part-time job but even if it's part-time

[18:28]  I still have to adhere to a schedule and I'm 53 and I love the idea that I've earned this flexibility in my lifetime and she said so Uber if I just happen to have an afternoon free I can just go out and talk to people and that was it because I thought wait a minute I bet there are a lot of people like her or me that if they could do it when it suited their as you say busy schedule you know um we could tap them to step in and kind of be that backup daughter to come in and help our parents and create you know that connection and that's exactly what we're doing it is um 72% of our neighbors are over age 50 they are empty nesters and retirees on average they do it a couple times a week for an hour or two but they may do it for a few

[19:15]  weeks and then say Oh for the next six weeks I'm taking care of my new grandchild it's fine it all works for them um so that's what we're doing you know from a business perspective once the light bulb went off I had to do a lot of work on sizing the market well that wasn't hard nobody questions the demand on this uh but it was clear the only way it would work is with technology because if we're going to truly be on demand neighbors are available sometimes clients only need you sometimes you couldn't do this with dispatchers and schedulers it would have to be more like uber so um no I'm not a tech well I am a tech founder I guess technically yes you are nontechnical Tech founder but what I did in the beginning and I didn't realize that it was brilliant at the time but it was um because I couldn't code I went and got a

[20:04]  no code solution so air table um is for non-coders and I built this little MVP that was enough to test the tech backside of it would clients buy into this kind of booking through Tech and neighbors accepting and giving schedules and doing through Tech so on the surface it felt Technology based really I was Oz sitting on my bed every Sunday night you know doing this in the background but the great news is I mean we operated for a year and a half on that open source software and then we got some people to help us build further on it and then once it was really clear that I was on to something big then we went out and built I can see your dog's tail lagging went out and built um Enterprise level Tech platform but because of starting with that mvp it

[20:55]  helped to inform on what to build I learned in that first year and a half which parts of the technology were going to be critical and which parts were um so that was really helpful oh man you're you have the perfect intersection of lived experience professional experience understanding of what appropriate resources need to be allocated towards a problem I love the approach that you took in going to an MVP specifically because one of the things that we know about I'm also in the software saf space and one thing that we recognize is it takes twice as long and is twice as expensive for us to be able to build right and I love the fact that you really kind of leaned into why did you choose to say I'm going to build an MVP we're going to prove this proof of concept we're going to be able to build what like a certain threshold of users

[21:44]  daily active engagements what was that looking like well you know I bootstrapped the company in the beginning but I knew it was going to take a lot of money to build the technology so it was really what kind of traction did I need to go out and start raising a little bit of capital to build the tech and that's really kind of what drove the timing and that it turned out that it was about the right timing in that 18mon period what we were learning and how we were growing I mean we had revenues the very first month and our first client we're getting ready to hit six years is still on the platform and our first neighbor is still on the platform because that was me I did everything in the beginning um and you know you were talking about the intersection another thing that I often talk about especially when we started raising Capital people might some sometimes they want to see on your team slide that maybe I had you know Decades

[22:32]  of experience in Right healthc Care maybe I don't know even though we're not really Healthcare but I actually think the fact that I did not come from Healthcare is the reason neighbor Force exists because I was able to jump the curve and just see this as something entirely different while yes it helps healthc care outcomes it's not healthc care solution and so anybody that's in say Home Care they try to do home care differently and and see that as um being Innovative but they're doing the same thing just a little bit differently you know I didn't I wasn't fettered by that or blinded by that to me it was clear getting me fired up you're getting me fired up because this was this is my experience and this

[23:18]  is the problem that I often see I'm a big believer and if we're going to see the changes that our economies our societies our cultures deserve it comes from the mind of an entrepreneur because we're often an outsider back in 2014 um I was starting my first business and we started a tella Health company back in 2014 and I was going to all these healthc Care Systems and saying there's going to be a future for virtual interactions in the healthcare experience and all the people inside the system said no way never going to happen and then something happened in March of 20120 which changed everything which was great but when you have that first mover Advantage you can really identify perspectives and challenges that the bigger systems themselves can't adapt to quickly it's like turning a cruise ship

[24:06]  when we're on a little speedboat yeah absolutely absolutely and we've had people from the health care space try to replicate what we're doing and they get it wrong because they can't get the way it works in their world out of their head um so that kind of helps us and I feel like there's a a duality of the purpose of neighbor Force you're not only comb isolation and loneliness but we are also creating opportunities for purpose for like you said empty nesters who are like I have a little bit extra time have I lost my purpose as a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad well now I can go be a part of somebody else's life and provide value for them to lean on how fulfilling is that work uh that's been the most surprising part for me you know I had this theory that

[24:53]  there were all these people I just had no idea to the extent they're out there uh it's just every single day we get to see the best side of humankind uh you know on the neighbor side and somebody one of these investors early on said oh you're not going to be able to find enough neighbors to satisfy the demand and I said really you don't think there are that many nice people out there um we now have lots of data to support that absolutely there are enough people to be neighbors but when they apply to be a neighbor they write a paragraph about why in every single one I don't know if there's any other company like this they they each come with their own why built in we're not pushing our why on them they bring it um and we say all the time at neighbor Force you can see my thing more joy um that were inspired by Joy because we are bringing joy to our clients and my

[25:41]  mother's name was Joy so we were literally inspired by Joy um but these neighbors invariably they will tell you they get more than they give 100% And I think I shared with you a story that um kind of a Bittersweet story but as I mentioned most of our neighbors in their 50s 60s and 70s kids have gone off to college maybe they retired maybe they're widowed well we had a man Ken green that applied to be a neighbor uh in the summer of 2021 um and I could hear his interview in the next room looked like a nice man older um went swimmingly we got up to leave and he reached in his pocket and pulled out a flip phone and so the person hated to disappoint him but said you know Ken you have to have a smartphone to be neighbor

[26:28]  because we run it on an app and so he left and you know very agist of us to think well that was that right well three hours later the phone rings here's Ken green on the line saying I just left the Apple St Apple Store I have a new iPhone how do you like that 78 years old got himself a new iPhone well he started going on visits that was summer of 2021 uh went on hundreds of visits and did all kinds of things for clients um until the fall of last year in November of last year he went on a visit that's one I was mentioning because I you can see the notes it says take me and my dog to the groomer then I want to walk around the park he did that and as he was getting in his car to leave the

[27:15]  visit he had a heart attack and died um 81 he just turned 81 and obviously it was devastating and we reached out to his wife and so forth um his picture in his abitu was him in front of the neighbor Force sign and his wife wrote us the most lovely note saying that it allowed him to heal you never know what's going on with someone he had lost an adult child that just tore him up about four years prior and she said he died doing something that he loved and was allow allowed him to heal and bring him back into the world of service apparently he'd been a minister for 40 years so you they're not all like that but it just goes to show it it's so important so important and there's so many people out

[28:03]  there craving it good people craving it oh man that uh May me a little emotional you know when you think about your ability to show up for others um it's what we often give that has the biggest impact not what we take and when we are willing to give to others we find fulfillment we find purpose and this is a prime example of that yeah the neighbors will say a lot lot of times you know they feel selfish that they're getting so much out of it you know they love making these connections and for some of them especially the younger ones and we do have some grad students um you know it gives them a different appreciation for older people and they realize wow these people have had some amazing lives we have one guy here in Richmond who um he doesn't have any

[28:51]  family so you know when he needs a little bit of help we're there for him turns out he was on Soul Train his band was on Soul Train how cool is that we have a client in Raleigh who was the very first woman uh anchor on National Television back in the early 70s so but you meet these people um there's a guy in Atlanta he's 101 and our first visit with him was to take him to get a new laptop because he wanted to check on all of his um royalties because he had published all these books on Amazon 101 gotta love it oh man it's a the I just I'm gonna use this word intentionally the joy that you inspire is absolutely amazing it's a just like opportunities to reconnect and this is where I find a lot of

[29:40]  opportunities for resiliency come from you know one of the biggest things that there was a study that was released and it talked about gen Z and I'm not casting any judge whatsoever is one of the first Generations that has the lowest level of perceived efficacy on their lives meaning they think that somebody is going to come and save them and they have the lowest levels of resiliency now part of this is because of exactly what we're talking about here today the common experience of when I was born my family was from yaka Washington my parents lived moved to Seattle in 1997 after I was born they moved to Detroit because there was opportunity there for them to build a life with themselves M now one of the missed opportunities that I had in my lived experience was spending enough time with my extended family my

[30:28]  grandparents to listen to the stories that they had overcome which then inspired and instilled messages of resiliency in us this is so multiplicative when we talk about just the exchange of knowledge and being able to spend time with each other we have lost a lot of the ability for those oral stories of the things that we've accomplished and the times that we've overcome to be passed down from generation to generation because we're so separated there are a lot of companies out there helping with that and I I even wish that I had done that with my parents but we did two years ago around the holidays we had neighbors we outfitted them with um a form and they asked questions of the clients when they were with them and then we made it into a little booklet for the families and they were the kind of questions that you

[31:16]  might not even ask your parent and so they were lovely you know like what's something that you're really proud of your daughter about but she might not know it you know and then to have the mother tell that story or you know something that was a fear when they were little and it you know it was really cool but that's not the core of what we do there are companies that do that but it's important oh man you've been able to create something so beautiful and I can tell that there is so much passion behind what you have built I want to ask you a little bit of a question about mindset now this is something that is inspired it's not on our framework that I provided to you but how did you establish the mindset of grit to be able to accomplish this because when I know when you're going out and you're starting to not only say we have an impact with our MVP but now we're going to go raise money you come across

[32:03]  investors and other people who don't believe in your vision so how did you instill that level of grit in yourself to know that one day as we sit here today you were going to create such a big impact well I don't know I think it's in my nature this is just the way I am so I don't know if you can create grit um you know every my my friends laugh because everything I do I never do it little I want to take up tennis I got to win the Club Championship I got to take up running I to you know make the 18-year-old time at Boston Marathon which I did on my first marathon um but so I definitely have it in there and I got that from my parents uh but you know what I do tell people it is harder than I thought it was going to be I'll tell you that I mean I knew it would be hard I had no idea um and a lot of times I Mentor younger or not younger newer

[32:54]  entrepreneurs less experienced and I always tell people if you're in this for the money stop now because the chances are the money's never going to come one but two more importantly it's going to get too hard if you're not 110% driven by what it is you're trying to solve it'll never work you just it gets too hard um and you have the doubters and all of those things so I think that's what drives me and I mean we have plenty of challenges don't work don't get me started there but seeing what we're doing and knowing how absolutely necessary it is I my quote is we can't not succeed the double negative we have to succeed there there're too many people counting on us so we will as a a

[33:44]  Founder you are willing to go through experiences in hardship that a lot of other people can't relate with and so my question for you is why do you do what you do you know because there's so many other paths that we could go down we've touched on it a little bit but like the purpose of your why is so important well as I said it almost it sounds too hokey but called not called me but you know I had this great job I was making a lot of money but all of these pieces my personal experience plus all of these like aha moments like I had to do it this is something that the world needs didn't exist um and still it's hard at this point because it is so new but um and I

[34:34]  will also say in the last six years I have learned more than I learned in the first 20 some years of my career and that's cool it's hard but it's cool every single day you know it's learning something new failing mostly doubting a lot um but at the end succeeding we're doing a lot of things right as well there will be years where you will doubt you will wonder if it was all worth it you will think if you should have taken a different path but at the end of the day entrepreneurship in which I found I just crossed as of July this year my 10year anniversary in being a entrepreneur and a business owner and I've realized that the entrepreneurial experience in itself is kind of like a mirror right we have to look ourselves in the face we can't lie we have to really be honest with are we putting in the most effort I hosted a guy on the

[35:22]  podcast recently his name is Jason yusi and he has an emphasis that he calls live 100 now live 100 is about applying yourself to 100% of being the best version of yourself having the best relationships that you possibly can being the best partner the best boyfriend girlfriend Dad Mom whatever that could be it sounds like a lot right but he said often one thing at a time I know he says we live these lives where people will live 68% here and 91% here but we never understand the Delta of where we are compared to giving 100% of our effort and I thought that that was so beautiful yeah it is and only recently and I think you know after hitting some big challenges with the

[36:09]  company and we're moving past those but it did make me step back and say am I balancing all of this correctly and I wasn't um and working harder doesn't necessarily make things better you have to have that balance this gives me an opportunity to talk about a framework work on the podcast which I really haven't mentioned here before but I've been thinking about the framework of energy depleters and energy adders okay so we have experiences in our lives where we have things that take energy away from us those are energy depleters but then we also have the ability to focus on energy adders my energy Adder is going to the gym my energy Adder is being able to spend time with my dog and take a walk midday now I believe that it's really tough to reach a point burnout if we

[36:58]  spend enough time focusing on the energy adders if we don't focus on those we're constantly depleting from our energy reserves yes what do you think about that energy depleters and energy adders I I've been operating on deplete deplete deplete and so I've just started adding back in those you know energy adders for sure and one is my dog um and you know for instance I haven't played tennis in seven years joined my tennis team again so so excited about that but all of those little pieces you know my book club my social all these little pieces extended family that took a back seat I don't think that was the right thing to do not taking vacation you know you have to recharge you have to get that energy back so I'm feeling much better about

[37:46]  that but absolutely um and I think for me and probably a lot of entrepreneurs maybe the biggest depleter is self-doubt you know every every day and I try to be mindful of that I heard a statement on a podcast the other day um I'm sorry it wasn't a podcast there's a book I'm reading it's called expert Secrets by a guy named Russell Brunson and he talks about the process of building self-confidence and one of the interesting things that happens as you become more and more successful we often start to doubt ourselves more and I think that that's really interesting because you know another saying that I like to kind of reference in conversations like this is you've already accomplished things that you said were going to make you happy oh yeah but one of the biggest things that

[38:34]  we experience as people with high achieving mindsets is the finish line is always moving moving and that's a really tough place to be in often yeah you know I call it a little bit like you know children little kids little problems big kids big problems the business is the same way the bigger you get the harder the problems and the more deep and Broad the problems are so yeah it never gets easier unfortunately I had somebody tell me years ago was pretty daunting when you let it sink in but he said today is the easiest it will be when talking about building a business and he's right so right I know he's so right yeah there was a there was a picture um or not a picture but my father I've seen this picture a couple times since but my father used to say

[39:22]  something uh to me when I was growing up he said Keenan you can always tell who the chief of the um tribe is by the number of arrows in their back and how many times they've been hit and as we get older we get stronger right and when I was younger I used to think like there's no way I'm going to be able to write this email to this Prospect but now you know our problems get so much bigger and our problems and our mountains that we've climbed have become so much more greater that we now look down on some of those small problems and wonder what was I doing kind of tripping about that back in the day yeah yeah I follow all these videos of you know great entrepreneurs and we can debate whether he's great or not but Elon musk one of the things that he says really resonates which is you know the founder is the one that always has to deal with all the worst problems

[40:10]  anything that's easy there's somebody else at the company that can take take that and the fun things it's all the stuff that's no fun and hard that's what always ends up you know on the Founder's desk so that does make it tough but it really does yeah I want to ask a one of my last question questions here is about um work life balance yeah so one of the things that we can both understand about being a founder of a business and a leader is often it's very difficult to turn it off I lay first thing I do when I wake up in the morning people say don't look at your phone I have to because I want to make sure the world isn't on fire um I've been trying to work with the framework of not finding work life balance because that's a very difficult act but more so work life integration what do you think about work life integration compared to work life

[40:56]  balance yeah it's something I need to work on it all falls back to that energy depleter and making you know being there the for the different parts of your life I haven't been very very successful at that to be honest um but you know I'm widowed and I'm single and sometimes I tell myself I need to turn it off right but to be honest it's what I choose to do many of them it's not doing it because I have to I mean I do have to do it but you know on the weekends when I could be doing certain other things most of the time I'd rather be doing this yeah maybe that's not healthy um and I am making room for other things but it's hard um and yes I I know my friends are tired of

[41:44]  hearing about neighbor Force so I try to change up the conversation from time to time but well you know I'm I'm incredibly um blessed to be able to sit across from this virtual table with you because I recognize that this Brotherhood and Sisterhood that we are in of Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart no there are so many challenges that we couldn't have even comprehended that we've overcome and there are going to be challenges in the future that we're going to stti up to we're going to Puff out our chest we're going to take it on with the best of our ability and that's all that's really important as we uh kind of close here I want to give you an opportunity paint a picture of the future uh let's say two five years of neighbor Force what do we anticipating um well in that 2 to 5 year time frame could be as soon as two but

[42:32]  certainly within five neighbor force will be a national brand um and we'll be bringing joy to seniors um across the country uh and that's just step one because this is a global issue it's not just a US issue and the investor that led our series a they are Global and this is what they're viewing that's step one um and maybe at that point it gets easier but guess what I don't think it will it'll just you know the problems the challenges will just continue to grow but um you what we're patiently not patiently impatiently waiting for is really for this to click because we know it's needed everywhere anybody who's been exposed to neighbor force and has used

[43:19]  it is obsessed we do these product Market fit surveys and in the industry they tell you need 40% of your users to say they couldn't live without you ours is 90 some percent I mean it's exactly what they need and the neighbors too we've got this you know strong on both sides but it is a brand new white space it's hard white spaces are one of the more risky places to start a company but if you get it right it's golden you know Uber was kind of like that so that's our biggest challenge is you know it's it's going to click it's kind of like in the beginning when Uber came out people said oh my God I would never get in the car with a stranger you know and then a couple years passed and then all of a sudden how did you live without it that's going to be neighbor Force just right there our only objective in

[44:09]  entrepreneurship is to never stop and I've always try to give myself the the grace to think on longer time Horizons because when we give ourselves that long time to accomplish our goals we give ourselves the air cover to figure out our problems to struggle to succeed and to enjoy the journey and know that this journey is just starting for you and I can't wait to continue to read and hear all about the things that you're going to accomplish over the next 5 years and I'm going to need neighbor Force for me because I have one daughter and she doesn't live near me so um you know there's a little selfish piece in there but yeah for sure I'm not only building this for you but I'm building this for my future self you know and I am my ICP which is beautiful um so the last question I have from you as a tradition on the podcast here is we

[44:56]  love our previous guest to ask you a question now this question is interesting as you continue to think about building out your team and especially in the space that you work in but how do you deal with the multiple Generations in the workforce o yeah that's interesting and we have all generations all the way to we have a program we call the golden intern program um it's on Hiatus for the summer but we had a 70 something and an 80 something intern paid intern helping us um we serve older people we need to live that vernacular but yeah we've got everyone from the early 20s to our golden interns um and we are an in office company it's all about human connection

[45:44]  and we're a startup so we believe it's important um but we do have to try to figure out how to communicate with the different um generations and so we do a lot of things mostly more social to help people understand each other's perspective because usually that's you just have to understand perspective you don't need to change you just need everybody's going to look and come at things differently so um it's constant yeah but so far so good we people love working at neighbor Force so that's great I don't think we've ever had anybody quit had some people that didn't work out but you know for for everybody who is watching and listening today I just want to thank you for being that that first

[46:31]  mover that impact leader that person who's advocating for change but also advocating for connection because like we talked about multiple times in this episode together we need it more than ever we do so everybody who's tuning in today Paige Wilson thank you so much for coming on the show I appreciate it