A Lift for a Toilet? Learn How a Toilet Lift Can Help You Age In Place

Summary

In this conversation, Janet Engel interviews Tom Nardone, founder of Dignity Lifts, about his innovative products designed to assist individuals with mobility challenges in using the toilet independently.

They discuss the importance of toilet accessibility, the installation and functionality of Dignity Lifts, and Tom's journey into the Longevity Economy, highlighting the lack of innovation in products for older adults and women.

In this conversation, Tom Nardone discusses innovative solutions for incontinence care, particularly focusing on the Dignity Lift, a toilet lift designed to enhance independence for individuals with mobility challenges.

He emphasizes the importance of female perspectives in product design, the real-life impact of the Dignity Lift on users, and the economic benefits of such devices in preventing assisted living.

The conversation also touches on future innovations in toileting solutions and the comparative analysis of existing products in the market.

Takeaways

Dignity Lifts provides essential products for toilet accessibility.

Toilet height can significantly impact bowel movement ability.

Installation of Dignity Lifts is straightforward and user-friendly.

Innovative products can enhance independence for those with mobility issues.

The Longevity Economy lacks product developers focused on older adults.

Humor can play a vital role in marketing assistive devices.

Tom's background as a mechanical engineer informs his product development.

There is a significant gap in innovation for women's health products.

Dignity Lifts aims to improve quality of life for its users.

Understanding customer needs is crucial for product design. The Pure Wick has revolutionized incontinence care for women.

Female engineers are crucial for designing products that meet women's needs.

Clothing management during toileting is a significant challenge for those with mobility issues.

The Dignity Lift promotes independence and dignity for users.

Many customers purchase the Dignity Lift out of necessity, not as a luxury.

The VA supports the use of toilet lifts to keep veterans at home.

Economic factors play a significant role in the decision to use toilet lifts.

The Dignity Lift has received high praise from users for restoring independence.

There is a growing market for innovative toileting solutions.

Future innovations may focus on enhancing existing products rather than creating new ones.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dignity Lifts
05:38 Installation and Functionality of Dignity Lifts
16:39 Tom's Journey into the Longevity Economy
22:14 Innovative Solutions for Incontinence Care
29:47 Enhancing Independence with the Dignity Lift
35:04 Comparative Analysis of Toilet Lifts

Transcript

Janet Engel (00:01.157)
Hello everyone, and today we have Tom Nardone. He is the founder of Dignity Lives. I met Tom recently at the VGM Live at Home Conference. He's very funny and very interesting and has a very interesting professional history, which we'll get into. But Tom, thank you for being with us today.

Tom Nardone (00:29.582)
It's a pleasure Janet, I'm really happy to be here.

Janet Engel (00:32.897)
Yes, so Tom, tell us about Dignity Lifts and about the different products that the Dignity Lifts line has.

Tom Nardone (00:44.056)
Sure. So Dignity Lifts makes toilet lifts. So these are devices that help people that don't stand very well. I use the toilet independently. So it's a pretty simple thing. know, people want to be independent in the bathroom and we help those people do that. Our most popular lift is right here. It's called the Deluxe Toilet Lift. Push a button and it stands up. Push the button again and the other way and it sets you down. And this is used by all sorts of people in their homes.

to stay at home so they don't have to move to assisted living. But we also make a bunch of other toilet lifts. Really we're focused on assistive devices that help people use the bathroom as independently as possible. And that's what we do. So if you don't have a sense of humor selling toilet lifts, not sure what, I think you're in the wrong line of work.

Janet Engel (01:34.171)
Yeah, well, I think it's a great service that you're providing a great product because as an OT and I did home health for many years that was the biggest challenge area that people had was transferring on and off the toilet. I think many of us will think that it's getting in and out of the shower but it's actually getting on and off the toilet. And when you consider that we use the toilet several times a day

Tom Nardone (01:35.644)
Yeah.

Janet Engel (02:04.569)
then it becomes crucial when you start having mobility issues, your quality of life is going to suffer. You're either gonna have to hire someone to help you with transfers, or you're going to be putting yourself in danger several times a day, every day. So one thing that you mentioned when I first met you at the conference that I thought was interesting,

was the height of the toilet. And as an OT, the way that I would try to help people that had a challenge with transfers was most of the time raising the height of the toilet would improve their ability to transfer on and off. But you said something that made me think of...

Tom Nardone (02:53.89)
Right.

Janet Engel (03:00.567)
or it was a learning moment for me because you said when the toilet is too high, then it's going to impede that person from having a bowel movement. And then I thought about that.

Tom Nardone (03:02.85)
Yeah.

Tom Nardone (03:15.758)
Right? It's the opposite of the squatty potty. If people familiar with the squatty potty, squatty potty puts you into a deeper squat by raising your feet up and your knees up so that your body is more crunched and you evacuate better. higher and higher toilet seats do the exact opposite. They make sure your feet are dangling further and your knees are lower. And, you know, we see this in assisted living and independent living facilities where

Janet Engel (03:20.921)
Yeah.

Tom Nardone (03:45.23)
there's just wax that is all over the place, you know, because people are getting constipated from these tall toilet seats. Now I'm not saying tall toilet seats are a bad idea because they certainly very functional for a lot of people, but you know, you get too tall and you're not, you're impeding that person's ability to have bowel movement. So a toilet lift gets you all the way down where a toilet seat, a normal toilet seat would have been.

Janet Engel (04:05.911)
Yeah, and you don't

Tom Nardone (04:12.856)
but then it stands you all the way up as well. it's not the cheapest. Yeah.

Janet Engel (04:16.045)
Right. So it helps you in both areas. So doesn't impede your ability to go, but you can remain independent. So that is really, really important. I think that I would love for there to be a feature like that for the regular toilet, because everyone needs to be able to sit down and get off the toilet, but then also be able to go.

Tom Nardone (04:46.39)
Right. Right. Well, there is. You just have to buy one at DignityLifts.com. I think what I might have said to make you laugh is sometimes I'll describe DignityLifts as the squatty potty for the silent generation, you know, because basically, you know, they're certainly, you can't put a squatty potty in a person who has balance issues bathroom. You know, it's a small stool. It would just be a nightmare.

Janet Engel (04:52.356)
Right.

Janet Engel (05:12.408)
Right.

Tom Nardone (05:15.85)
And usually, know, young person can bend over and move it out of the way and they can get their feet up on it. But for our for the people that you and I work with, that's not even close to a possibility.

Janet Engel (05:28.781)
Right. Can you explain the installation process of a Dignity Lift and how it will integrate into an existing toilet?

Tom Nardone (05:34.67)
Next.

Tom Nardone (05:38.19)
Sure, I have a picture. This is a special effects for you. See, in this photo, I have a purple toilet so that you can see that it's distinct from our white toilet there. So what happens is we replace the toilet seat with the Dignity Whip. The Dignity Whip has four feet on the ground, so it makes a nice stable base. And what you do to install it is you remove the person's toilet seat and you put this in its place.

There's four feet on the ground that you adjust to get the right height for depending on how tall the toilet is. And then there's a couple of brackets at the back that just sort of lock it in place so it doesn't wander around. Installation process takes about 20 minutes.

Janet Engel (06:20.452)
very simple. And...

Tom Nardone (06:21.662)
It's very simple. And then this particular model, which is our most popular, our Deluxe Lift, has a battery in it. Now you would say, well, why would I need a cordless toilet lift? That seems sort of silly. But the answer is a lot of people don't have an outlet near their toilet. So it saves them the bother of having an electrician to come and put in an outlet so that they can then install a toilet lift. Whereas this device, you could buy it and install it very quickly.

Also, the battery lasts a long time. Most of the time it's sitting here doing nothing. It only drains itself when you're going up or down. So it will last a month between charges. So pretty easy to work with.

Janet Engel (07:04.217)
well, that's very convenient. with the one that you have on your right, is that a bariatric? No, your other right. I guess me looking at you. that one. Is that a bariatric or no?

Tom Nardone (07:18.638)
Yeah, over here. So this one is, this one is ArgoX Lift. This one is what we call a helper lift. It sits somewhere between a hoiler lift and a sit to stand lift. So it is meant for, it's a single person assist and it's a sling lift, but it a very small sling. And it's meant to pick someone up from AC to position in one place and bring them to like a toilet.

So, would sit the person on the sling and then you'd kind of go and pick them up and then you lift them off usually from the bed or something like that and then you use the lift to lift them off the bed. Kind of like a forklift for people I guess is a crude way to put it.

Janet Engel (07:56.086)
Okay

Janet Engel (08:12.954)
Janet Engel (08:17.493)
I've never seen that, a Hoyer lift in a toilet shape.

Tom Nardone (08:19.534)
That was real. I'm like a, yeah, I'm like a Hoyo lift, which has a pivot way up here and people are swinging all over the place and it's a two person assistant, has a, needs a wide base. This lift, the person sits inside the lift. They actually don't sit this direction, but I just want to demonstrate that they don't swing very far, you know? Like there's no, where they're going and it's narrow. It fits through doorways and things like that. This is a product we, I didn't invent this product.

Janet Engel (08:41.189)
Right.

Tom Nardone (08:49.166)
But I saw it in an international trade show and I said, hey, what is that thing? And they said, well, this is, you know, like a lift. said, I've never seen one like that. They said, you don't have these in the United States? I said, no. And they said, well, what do you do for someone like, you know, they had wire lifts and they said, well, what do you do for someone that like a wire lift is for someone that is immobile? What do you do for someone that can like...

sit up on their own and they have like enough balance and to be able to sit in a stable position but they can't use their legs. might not even have legs or use them at all. How do you toilet that person? How do you transfer that person? I said well in the U.S. we use a Hoyter lift. said what? That's ridiculous. That's you know big giant contraction for a small transfer. So I was like okay so we call this a Hoper lift.

And the best part about it is, yeah, the best part about it is it can be used by a spouse, because it's just this one person assist. And you could you could bring someone to a chair, like an office chair, to a dining table, to the toilet, to, you know, shower chair. It's from the bed. So it's meant to be used indoors, but all around the house. So, OK. Yeah.

Janet Engel (09:49.528)
Okay, well, very useful.

Janet Engel (10:15.225)
Hmm. Okay, very convenient. What about...

Tom Nardone (10:18.99)
Yeah, there's some negatives to it though, because it came from other markets, it has a low weight capacity, and it's quite small. So it has a 220 pound capacity. It's fairly new for us. It's our newest product, I think. And if it takes off, if it does well, we'll probably make a heavier duty Americanized version. But for now, it's kind of a low volume product. Let's see what else. This one here.

Janet Engel (10:32.11)
I see.

Janet Engel (10:45.764)
Okay.

Tom Nardone (10:48.066)
That's our basic toilet lift, our least expensive model. Doesn't have a battery, but it's still, you know, still gets you off the toilet. And I want to see, I got a couple others here. You want to see them? This is our.

Janet Engel (11:00.709)
So how does it get you off the toilet if it doesn't have a battery?

Tom Nardone (11:05.333)
It has to plug into the wall.

Janet Engel (11:07.671)
okay. It plugs into the wall.

Tom Nardone (11:09.398)
Yeah, still electric. They're all electric. This particular model is our commercial model. It's meant to be used in facilities where they might need a toilet lift in the room for a week or two. So it's unlocking wheels and it can be moved about. Some good parts about the wheels is you can move it around. Bad parts about the wheels is you lose the height ability. So it only works with commercial height toilets. And then I have one more to show you. don't have a, this is our bidet model, which has, and our fax machine.

And so it has a bidet and a blow dryer built in. So this is for people that can't turn and wipe very well. And it works to handle all of their toileting needs. Push one button and it will clean and dry.

Janet Engel (11:58.565)
Boy, I really like that, that you can, I've never seen that, that you can incorporate a bidet into a toilet lift mechanism.

Tom Nardone (12:08.878)
Right. Yeah. It took a lot of work. You can't just slap a bidet onto a toilet lift because as it moves up and down, it will stress all the plumbing and that sort of thing. And it won't be more than a month or two before you start having a leak someplace. So it took a company to, you need to put all those things together. It has to be an engineered solution for that problem. But it works quite well.

Janet Engel (12:29.819)
Is this the only product that has that kind of integration with a bidet?

Tom Nardone (12:37.486)
It's the one I've ever seen, so yeah.

Janet Engel (12:40.421)
Boy, that's a great product. How much does that cost?

Tom Nardone (12:43.854)
That's our most expensive lift. It's $29.99, so $3,000. Our most popular one, this one over here, is $14.99.

Janet Engel (12:55.137)
Okay, and that one it has the battery, correct?

Tom Nardone (12:59.33)
Yep, up and down. Yep, it goes up and down. It has 14 inches of lift. So I'll show you what that looks like at its maximum.

Tom Nardone (13:14.446)
I probably should have dressed nicer for this. I didn't realize you'd be seeing my pants. So there you go. That's at its maximum. The battery is stored right here.

Janet Engel (13:17.979)
You

Janet Engel (13:25.795)
Okay.

Tom Nardone (13:29.26)
Yeah, nice and easy to work with. I like that product.

Janet Engel (13:31.925)
And with that kind of model, you could not add a bidet to it.

Tom Nardone (13:39.126)
Right, right. The bidet model has the plumbing has to run all through it and everything. So, and we had to use like special flexible plumbing so they could go up and down, up and down, up and down.

Janet Engel (13:53.605)
Can you sit on the one with the bidet and show us how it goes up and down?

Tom Nardone (13:59.566)
Yeah, that one actually has to be plugged in to use, it's actually the same lift mechanism as the other, as this one. Hold on.

Janet Engel (14:06.093)
Okay.

Tom Nardone (14:12.206)
Whoops. This one. This way. You can see there, they have the same lift base lift mechanism. This one just has this bidet model on it. And the water comes out of here. And this opens up for the blow dryer. It has a heated seat. And there's this real handy knob.

Janet Engel (14:23.385)
the yes.

Tom Nardone (14:41.166)
A lot of our people have dexterity issues as well. So, and that sort of seemed to be co-mingled with the inability to reach and do the hygiene tasks. So we have this knob on the side and all you need to do is nudge it and then it will automatically run through an entire wash dry cycle for you. So you have no real dexterity needed. And we learned that too, our switch we had to change. So we have this really lightweight.

Janet Engel (14:45.09)
Mm-hmm.

Janet Engel (15:01.178)
Fascinating.

Tom Nardone (15:11.246)
switch for it up and the down as well. Just changes over the years.

Janet Engel (15:16.091)
Do your customers, are your customers only in the US or are they all over the world?

Tom Nardone (15:23.33)
We do North America. So we do US, Mexico, and Canada. Our lifts don't work super well in other countries because the toilets are different. Toilets, because they're big and heavy, don't ship well. So every country kind of has their own toilet manufacturing. So, and that means they take liberties with the shape of the bowl and the height and where the tank is located. So...

Janet Engel (15:43.995)
you

Tom Nardone (15:52.802)
We're not really prepared for like, if you're in Ireland or something like that, I don't know what your toilet looks like. So if you call and say, will your lift work with my toilet? I don't really, I don't know. So we stick to, right? We're sticking to the Mexico and the United States, which is good for us.

Janet Engel (16:10.647)
You learn something new every day. I didn't know that.

Janet Engel (16:18.661)
So, okay, that's it. Okay. Well, that's very interesting. Now, tell me more about how you got into this business. I know your background is as a mechanical engineer.

Tom Nardone (16:38.798)
That's right. I had another company that I had started and ran and it went really well and I sold it. And when you sell a company, it's a really great feeling. It's kind of like retiring, but they also give you a check. So it was pretty good. But I wasn't ready to retire because my kids were too young. They were in like middle school and high school.

Janet Engel (16:54.361)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tom Nardone (17:03.35)
And I didn't want them working hard at school every day and coming home to see me playing video games all day. That would be a bad look. So I said, I'm going to start another company. So I launched into this whole research project of what I wanted to do next. And I read this great book called The Longevity Economy. And it was about how people are. Yeah. It's actually very difficult read. I found it to be very poorly written, but filled with great facts. And,

Janet Engel (17:22.799)
love that book. I love that book. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Nardone (17:34.568)
And, and, but basically it said that, product developers, which is what I consider myself. I know I'm an engineer, but I use my engineering abilities to make products better, to design products and that type of thing. So I wouldn't call myself an inventor because oftentimes things are already invented. They just aren't quite right. And usually you can make a difference in the world and you can sometimes make a business out of just working with something that's been around for a long time.

and just getting it right. So that's what I feel like I do. That's what I did in the Bulletproof Vest industry and some other things I've done. So this Longevity Economy book pointed out that most product developers, people like me, work on things for themselves. So I might do, if I like snowboarding, I might work on some new snowboarding boots or bindings or something. Or lot of my friends mountain bike and they're always thinking up these new mountain bike inventions.

What the longevity economy pointed out is that once someone is like 70, 75, 80, 85 years old, there's no product developers in that age group. And this is why I think a lot of the products in our industry, Janet, have stagnated because there's no one out there dying to make a better Walker or dying to make a better Roy.

You still see that aluminum one with the tennis balls on the bottom everywhere. And it's because there's just not a lot of people out here like breaking new ground. And in my mind, the way my mind works is I want an easy career. I don't want to compete with the best of the best. I want to do my thing in an area where no one else is doing anything.

So I looked at the industry and there was really nobody out there focusing on toilet. You know, a of people were focusing on lift chairs and a lot of people were focusing on in hospital use patient lifts, but nobody seemed to want to work on, you know, So I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm prideless enough to work on toileting. I'll go do that. I can find some humor in it and enjoy the process. So, so that's what I, so that's what I decided to do.

Janet Engel (19:58.427)
Well, that's I love that you mentioned that book because I've read it about four times and what I did was I bought the physical copy and then I also have the copy on audible which and most of What I've done has been listened to it But I can totally see what you're saying how it would be hard to follow it because it is like tons of statistics tons of facts

Tom Nardone (20:25.671)
Yeah.

Janet Engel (20:25.927)
And it's a lot of information to take in. And that's what I like about listening to books is you can rewind and then play it back. But you need to have the physical copy so you can go back to the fact.

Tom Nardone (20:37.676)
And some of it just ends up in your Yeah. Sometimes audio books, right? Sometimes audio books just end up in your brain somewhere, you know? Like you were just driving down the highway and the facts went in there and they remain. It's like, you know, it's great to, I like audio books as well.

Janet Engel (20:48.768)
huh.

Janet Engel (20:58.203)
So something else that Joseph Coughlin, the author of The Longevity Economy, mentioned that I thought was fascinating was what you just mentioned that there's a lack of innovation for this demographic. And then something else was that there was an even bigger chasm when it comes to products for women.

Tom Nardone (21:29.114)
yeah, yeah, right. That's, yeah, there's tons, tons. It's wild. You know, like I think of, I think the greatest, one of the greatest inventions for women in the last 30 years is probably the Purewick. The Purewick. Do know what this is? It's the, no, no, no, it's the vacuum. It's a,

Janet Engel (21:49.947)
the scented.

Tom Nardone (21:58.574)
urinary collection device. I thought everybody knew what this was. It is to just remove, like it uses vacuum. if you're in a hospital. Yeah, it's an external catheter for women. Thank you very much, Janet. It's like an external catheter for women, but the way it's designed is...

Janet Engel (22:02.614)
Janet Engel (22:06.171)
You

Janet Engel (22:14.767)
So if you use a catheter, you're saying, if you use a catheter.

Okay. Okay.

Tom Nardone (22:26.602)
It is, it doesn't require anything to be stuck on or anything like that. It just rests over the women's area and then vacuums away because it just hooks up to the suction that every hospital room has. It just sucks away any urine. And it's called a pure wick. And this thing has saved so much effort because it doesn't need like, there's no

Janet Engel (22:46.127)
Hmm.

Tom Nardone (22:55.734)
need to remove and change a diaper for urinary issues with women, you can just swap these out. They have a disposable head on them and boom, boom, boom, and you're done. And it's just saved like, saved the CNAs and the nurses tons and tons of time and energy and effort and medical waste, you know, in all the diapers. here, so here's

Janet Engel (23:18.381)
and prevented pressure sores, I'm sure, a lot of pressure sores.

Tom Nardone (23:23.374)
ETIs and all sorts of other issues. And here's this thing that I think anyone who works with incontinence would tell you this is a genius invention, but the world has nothing. There's nothing about it. You never would see it. It wouldn't ever make Time Magazine's best innovations. And I think it's been around for like 20 something years. It just took forever to catch on.

Janet Engel (23:45.295)
Right.

Tom Nardone (23:53.336)
You know, it's just a strange sort of thing, the pure wick. So.

Janet Engel (23:57.135)
Well, I'm surprised that I haven't heard of it because I worked in Home Health and we had many nurses.

Tom Nardone (24:02.99)
It's now, yeah, and now it's coming into the home health markets, but they have to provide a suction pump, a vacuum pump for it. Because the reason it was so popular in hospital environments is, you know, it has a collection.

Janet Engel (24:07.79)
Okay.

Janet Engel (24:12.623)
Okay.

Tom Nardone (24:20.408)
container where the liquid can is collected and then there's a vacuum line that goes to the vacuum but every hospital room has a vacuum tap that they can just plug it right into and that made it really convenient. So then when you got outside the hospital environment you have to have this separate vacuum pump that sits in the room and probably makes noise. Right, so it is becoming something that you might start to see in the home but you know.

Janet Engel (24:33.092)
Mm-hmm.

Janet Engel (24:38.747)
Now I understand why it's not in the home.

Tom Nardone (24:49.688)
But anyway, my thing about the pure wake, I'm not trying to invent another pure wake, just pardon me, because I don't, without the right anatomical features, sometimes things are, it's hard for women, sometimes women engineers to design things for men, and it's hard, I think, for male engineers to design products for women. I won't say it's impossible, but it's not as intuitive.

Janet Engel (25:11.323)
And I think, and that's the explanation why we don't see as many products for women, because a lot of the engineers are male, and so they're thinking about things that are going to solve their problems.

Tom Nardone (25:23.223)
Ready? Yep.

Right, because like they said in the Longevity Economy book, the problem he pointed out, product developers like to develop products for themselves, not for others. So, yeah, we need some female engineers to get up into their 60s and 70s, or we need some female engineers or male engineers, younger engineers, to look into communities that are not their own and design products for them.

Janet Engel (25:52.859)
Now, I wanted to ask you about one of the most difficult activities of daily living involved with toileting and that's clothing management. So that is where people really get in trouble and where they really are at high risk for falls when you have impaired balance. Now you have clothes that's by your ankles. How does the dignity lift?

Tom Nardone (26:07.556)
yeah!

Tom Nardone (26:11.882)
Yeah!

Tom Nardone (26:15.959)
Nice.

Janet Engel (26:22.651)
help someone manage clothing better.

Tom Nardone (26:27.758)
Right. It's a great question and it is a great issue. And I'm sure as an occupational therapist, you do, you handle this all the time. Fortunately, in our population, digmenos usually are sold to people that can stand on their own, but they just can't get up from a low squat. So they might be like a walker or a rollator user.

So they generally have the ability to position themselves in front of the lift in a useful, in a way that helps them with their clothing management. So you might have someone that comes up to their lift in their toilet, you know, with their rollator, and then they're going to stand here. Then the lift will probably be in the up, mostly up position where they left at the last time where it's comfortable for them to sit. So they've got a locker rollator here, or maybe they're just using a handrail to get around.

or cane, but they have hand of ours here, they can stand here and then they can take their pants down far enough to go to the bathroom. Then they can sit down bare and then lower themselves. And then when they're done, they can raise themselves up to a point where they're near able to stand. And then hopefully at that point, they've avoided the problem of having their pants drop too low or they can't reach the mat.

you know. So hopefully their pants are still at knee level and they can kind of get in position or if they have to halfway up they can kind of move them into position and then get the rest of the way. So that's usually how the clothing management works with this lift, with the toilet lifts. With our helper lift it's an issue because they're sitting on a sling so it ends up being clothing management like you'd see with a lawyer lift where you really have to have them prepared before they get on the sling.

Janet Engel (28:02.395)
Mm-hmm.

Janet Engel (28:21.047)
I see. What I really like about the lift is that it has the handles incorporated into it, which is a very important feature when someone has mobility issues. Yes, when someone has mobility issues, they not only need one grab bar, they need two. They need one handlebar on each side and they have to be equidistant to each other in order for that person to be stable.

Tom Nardone (28:21.079)
Yeah.

Tom Nardone (28:30.392)
Right.

Tom Nardone (28:34.466)
Right.

Tom Nardone (28:51.63)
Mm-hmm. That's good. One of the things I like about our Deluxe Lift and our Bode Lift, it's a feature some of other lifts don't have, is they have the controls right under your thumb as well, so that you can maintain your hand on the hand grip while lifting the lift. Whereas some of the, like our Basic Lift has a wired remote, so it's good for like a caregiver to use, but we're kind of really...

Janet Engel (28:52.335)
So that's a great feature.

Tom Nardone (29:18.924)
Most people want to toilet so they can toilet independently. So having to push this button uses up your one hand. So it gives you a little less stability. So I like the integrated. Yeah.

Janet Engel (29:29.199)
That's a great point. And that's a great lead into the next question I was gonna ask you, which was, how does the Dignity Lift help someone remain at home and increase independence with their ADLs?

Tom Nardone (29:47.458)
Yeah, that's entirely what we do. The funny thing about it is, you you work on these toilet lifts and you're like, okay, they're going to help people go to the bathroom on their own. But then the way people buy them, their behavior when they decide to get a toilet lift is really interesting. And nobody buys a toilet lift because they think it's cool. They don't, no one runs out and buys one. I might need this in five years. They do not buy in that situation at all. They buy a toilet lift because they need a toilet lift.

right now. They either got stuck on the toilet yesterday or earlier today and had to call 911 or a relative or something like that. Or their spouse hurt their back lifting them off the toilet. Or they're in a rehab facility or a hospital and they're trying to get discharged and they want to go home and the hospital wants to send them to assisted living because the hospital doesn't think the social worker and the OT at the hospital

don't think they can toilet independently. So this is where we come in. They say there's only a few things that will drive you into assisted living. One is IV drugs because you can't do those at home. And one is if you can't toilet yourself because it's round the clock. We talked about bathing earlier. You can have someone come to your house and bathe you a couple of times a week, it's fine. But if you can't toilet yourself, that's six to eight times a day at random.

unpredictable intervals. So that's not something you really can, you know, that is an assisted living driver. And most of our customers want nothing to do with assisted living. They want to age in their homes. So they buy a toilet lift. And so I'm pretty.

Janet Engel (31:29.775)
Right. Can you tell us about a success story you have with a customer?

Tom Nardone (31:36.366)
There's tons, you know, I don't we don't do a ton of follow-up with the folks we hear from them and they you know Give us high praise people love these things like it's it's it's weird, you know, it's sort of weird because When you're the toilet person the toilet person And socially it's a little awkward like at dinner parties and at trade shows. It's a little awkward because other people are selling

you know, wheelchairs and they're selling, you know, shower installations like at BGM, right? They have these cool shower installations or they have ramps and things like that. They have all these kind of cool things. And I'm over there with my toilet seat, you know, in the corner. It's not really like you're not. It's not a high status position to be the founder of Dignity Labs. But among our customers, we are incredibly well loved because

We give them back an independence that they really, really want. Nobody. You have kids, Janet, do have kids? Everybody likes them. Yep. Everyone who has kids, one of the weird lessons of having kids is how much you valued alone time in the bathroom.

Janet Engel (32:40.923)
I have two kids.

Tom Nardone (32:54.242)
Because when you have kids, toddlers, you go in the bathroom and you close the door and then you're like, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Dad, what you doing in there? Dad, do you want to talk? Dad, come see this, you know? You're like, please, can I just have like a minute to myself? And we give people back that process and we allow them to keep that. And I think, so that's the big success of the business is that there's.

It's the simplest thing. It's not glamorous, but it does become a very positive emotional thing when you provide it for people. So that's one of the things I like.

Janet Engel (33:33.367)
a great example you brought up because I have a girlfriend that that was how she would find alone time is she would lock herself in the bathroom so that her young kids couldn't reach her.

Tom Nardone (33:43.918)
Thank

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good one. Did you see, I saw something on the internet the other day, not to take a sideways thing. It was a dad and he had his kids and for the activity, he gave them all paper and crayons and he said, okay, draw a picture of daddy. I'll lay really still so you can draw it. And then he took a nap on the couch. That's good, right?

Janet Engel (33:49.851)
you

Janet Engel (34:09.837)
that's hilarious. That's hilarious. We used to have this game, my mom and I used to have this game with my daughter when she was really little. We would tell her it was a contest and whoever fell asleep first won the contest. This was when we wanted to take a nap and she fell for it for about a year.

Tom Nardone (34:35.764)
Yeah, that'll work. I heard one where you tell the kids like, okay, I'm going to go take a nap. And when I get up, we're going to do and then you list a bunch of chores that they don't want to do. So then they won't disturb you because they know if they wake you up, then they have to go take out the trash and clean up the lawn and all of those. Yep.

Janet Engel (34:47.311)
huh.

Janet Engel (34:53.571)
yeah, all these strategies. So Tom, does the Dignity Lift compare to other products in the market? And I can tell you, I've never seen a product like it.

Tom Nardone (35:04.812)
Yeah, never.

Uh-huh. I had, I had to do toilet lifts before I launched the company. There are other companies that make toilet lifts. I'm not, I did not invent the toilet lift. It wasn't even invented in the United States to be honest with you. But before I launched, I think the first patent was in Sweden, like somewhere, one of the Nordic countries. Yeah. But, but they're popular in Japan. They're popular in Scandinavia and they're popular in India and China.

Janet Engel (35:09.339)
I've never been.

Janet Engel (35:21.199)
Where was it invented? In Japan?

Janet Engel (35:27.086)
Okay.

Janet Engel (35:38.755)
because they have older populations.

Tom Nardone (35:38.924)
Because in India, right, and oftentimes that older population lives with the younger population.

Right? So like, it's like a, instead of helping grandma go to the bathroom six times a day, let's put this device in her bathroom and then she won't have to ask us to be lifted off the toilet.

Janet Engel (36:03.5)
Mm-hmm, which everyone loves.

Tom Nardone (36:05.163)
Yeah, so everybody loves that, right? You know, like Toilet Lifts is the VA. It's interesting, the VA buys them because the VA is responsible for veterans in their home, but then also they'll be responsible if they have to pay the assisted living costs if they move into a VA home. So the VA has a reason, has a strong...

reason to keep people in the home. I didn't mention it, but these things are a great economic decision as well, because if it keeps you out of assisted living, it's going to save you $4,500 to $5,000 a month in assisted living fees. Plus you have to move and sell your home and all this other stuff. Whereas for $1,500 once, you save $4,500 a month. So it only takes 10 days to pay for itself. So the VA sees this.

economic side of it. The veterans want to stay at home, we can help them stay at home and then we don't have to have them in a VA home where we'll spend you know five grand a month keeping them.

Janet Engel (37:11.375)
think that the VA would especially love the new lift that you have with the bidet integrated into it. That's going to save even more money. That's going to save hospitalization.

Tom Nardone (37:17.715)
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, we're selling a lot of them.

Tom Nardone (37:26.454)
Right. Yeah.

Janet Engel (37:26.811)
and home care when you have nurses coming in just to treat pressure sores. That was one of the most common reasons when I worked in home health that nurses were going in to see patients. It was pressure sores. It was, and wound care. Those were the two biggest reasons.

Tom Nardone (37:34.103)
Right?

Tom Nardone (37:49.398)
Right. Yeah. Terrible. Yeah. So I don't...

Janet Engel (37:54.787)
So you have the Dignity Lift that has the Bidet integrated into it. And you told me that that's your newest product. Is there?

Tom Nardone (38:05.546)
I know it's not it's not our newest but it's it what we didn't launch that one right away. Yeah, it's been around for a while. It's our number two seller actually. So this DeluxeLift is our number one seller and then the BidetLift is our second most popular product.

Janet Engel (38:15.323)
I'm not surprised.

Janet Engel (38:23.009)
Okay, and are there any other innovations that you see down the pipeline with the toilet?

Tom Nardone (38:32.558)
Yeah, we're making right now. think there's a lot of refinements things that you never really, you know, like I'll show them to a trade show. Hey, this handle got changed and this, you know, we made this difference. But right now we have six lifts and that and the reason we have six is we're trying to cover the toileting needs of everyone. So I think we're set with six. I don't think there's room for a seven. The top three sell well and then four, five and six.

You know, there's people that need these things, but it's just, it's not a business. Like, so I don't think we're developing them very small. Like for example, our battery at trickle lift, you know, it has a 650 pound capacity. It's giant heavy duty thing, you know, and it's hard to ship because it's so heavy and it requires a lot of space in the bathroom, which a lot of people don't have because it's so wide.

Janet Engel (39:06.937)
It's a small percentage of people that need them.

Tom Nardone (39:29.838)
And but people need it, you know, like if you have a 600 pound patient in a facility, you need to get this person on and off the toilet. Or maybe you don't need to, but you want to, so you're not, you know, diapering them and handling that side of the equation. But they're just that, you know, there aren't a thousand of those people a year. You can't make that into, you know, into a business. It's great as an accessory, you know, as a.

another the fifth and sixth product.

Janet Engel (40:00.827)
That's option that's available for extreme people with unique needs.

Tom Nardone (40:07.87)
Right. So, but people have mainly stopped asking for things like when you start out, you bring out one toilet lift and people say, do you have one that does this? And then you bring that one out and then they'll ask, okay. Then less people ask now because you kind of met the need. Do you have one that does this? Like first it was, you know, a basic lift. And then it was, you know, do you have one that maybe looks a little nicer that, you know, that controls are on the under your thumb? And it's like, yeah, we can do that. So we do that.

Then people want a bidet. Like I have a bidet already because I can't reach well. I need a toilet lift too. Can you combine the two? So that would make that, you know, do you have a bariatric model? But now I think people have stopped asking for more. So that's good. So six is good. So then the question is, what do we do? Do I do anything next? And my daughter who's going to go to school to be a biomedical engineer.

Janet Engel (40:56.847)
Six is good, okay.

Tom Nardone (41:05.974)
And I were talking about something having to do with getting people in and out of the shower or the tub. But there's whole other companies that do that already. So I'm not really sure if we're going to go that way. We might just stick to our toilets.

Janet Engel (41:20.417)
Okay, well thank you. I've learned a lot with you today. That was very fascinating, everything that's available and all of the different functions.

Tom Nardone (41:26.082)
Great.

Tom Nardone (41:31.982)
Janet, my favorite people in the whole world to talk to are occupational therapists. And this is why. Because only an occupational therapist would have an hour long conversation about toilet lifts and then at the end say, that was fascinating. Because I don't think the rest of the world was fascinated by my conversation.

Janet Engel (41:38.171)
Boop.

Janet Engel (41:49.179)
You're right, you're right.

Janet Engel (41:57.505)
Yep. And also engage with you in talk about toileting with a straight face.

Tom Nardone (42:05.37)
yeah, right, right. Yeah, respect. You've been very respectful. You know, it's very different. So I really like that. geez. There are...

Janet Engel (42:14.843)
Okay, well I hope a lot of you tease watch this one and because this episode is you know so visual I will include the video component in the show notes so that you can see the dignity lift and all of the different products that Tom showed us today and how they work.

Tom, how can someone get in touch with you?

Tom Nardone (42:44.302)
yeah, DignityLifts.com. It's got an S at the end, Dignity Lifts. that's all, you can contact us through there. We're happy to talk to you. We answer the phone. And email.

Janet Engel (42:56.747)
Okay, all right, great. Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom Nardone (43:00.952)
Thank you, Janet.