If your fitness business is aimed, even somewhat, at helping people over 50, then you are a part of the growing Longevity Economy.
It covers TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the US economy annually, and it’s only going to keep expanding for decades as more people age into the group.
The over-50 market isn’t just growing – it’s also changing to include more people in Generation X. And people in the group are changing their habits – many working longer before retiring, either due to choice or circumstance. This all has big ramifications for your business and for, well, just about everything else in the coming decades.
It's what I'm discussing on this episode with Brian Clark, a pioneer in the field of content marketing who recently turned his attention to the longevity economy. Further is his new midlife personal growth newsletter. And Longevity Gains offers advice for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to succeed in this longevity economy.
0:01 Marketing to the Longevity Economy
15:09 The Shift Towards Embracing Aging
21:46 Fitness and Aging
29:13 Sponsorship and Affiliates
Resources
Further
Longevity Gains
Life Priority Supplements -- Affiliate Discount here
Functional Aging Institute -- Use FAIMM50 discount code
Prime Fit Content – Engage the over-50 market
If your fitness business is aimed, even somewhat, at helping people over 50, then you are a part of the growing Longevity Economy.
It covers TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the US economy annually, and it’s only going to keep expanding for decades as more people age into the group.
The over-50 market isn’t just growing – it’s also changing to include more people in Generation X. And people in the group are changing their habits – many working longer before retiring, either due to choice or circumstance. This all has big ramifications for your business and for, well, just about everything else in the coming decades.
It's what I'm discussing on this episode with Brian Clark, a pioneer in the field of content marketing who recently turned his attention to the longevity economy. Further is his new midlife personal growth newsletter. And Longevity Gains offers advice for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to succeed in this longevity economy.
0:01 Marketing to the Longevity Economy
15:09 The Shift Towards Embracing Aging
21:46 Fitness and Aging
29:13 Sponsorship and Affiliates
Resources
Further
Longevity Gains
Life Priority Supplements -- Affiliate Discount here
Functional Aging Institute -- Use FAIMM50 discount code
Prime Fit Content – Engage the over-50 market
INTRO:
If your fitness business is aimed even somewhat. At helping people over 50, then you are part of the growing longevity economy.
Have you heard that phrase? It's increasingly used to describe the massive historic financial opportunity involved in catering to people over 50. It covers trillions of dollars in the U. S. economy annually. That's trillions, with a T. And it's only going to keep expanding for decades as more people age into the group and people continue to live longer.
This is one of the reasons I created Prime Fit Content, my marketing business that helps gyms and fitness studios reach more people in this lucrative, yet underserved market.
The over 50 market isn't just growing, it's also changing to include more people in Generation X and people in the group are changing their habits. Many are working longer before retiring or retiring and then going back to work, either due to their choices or to circumstances. So what does this mean for your small fitness business or for personal aspirations to live a healthy life after age 50?
Well, that's what I'm talking about this week on Optimal Aging, the show for fitness professionals who want to grow their business with people over 50. I'm your host Jay Croft. My guest is a pioneer in the field of content marketing who recently turned his attention to the longevity economy. Brian Clark is a writer, traveler, and serial digital entrepreneur.
He's the founder of the content marketing website CopyBlogger, of Unemployable, an educational community that provides strategies for freelancers and entrepreneurs, and of his new Midlife Personal Growth Newsletter, Further. His Longevity Gains offers advice for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to succeed in this longevity economy. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
JAY CROFT: Brian, hi, nice to see you. Thanks for joining me today. Happy to be here. How are you?
BRIAN CLARK: I'm doing great.
JAY CROFT: You came to this in a way that was very similar to how I came to it. I was, in another industry for a long time and had a personal eye opening experience where I realized I was no longer in the coveted target market of the fitness industry and a lot of other industries too. So I was struck by your story. So share that with us about how you came to be interested in the longevity economy.
BRIAN CLARK: I had built a software company. And in 2018, uh, there were a couple of acquisitions where I sold that off and I traveled with my family, uh, to kind of take a break for a little while. And it was actually in France when I realized that upon having some time to reflect, what a concept that, my forties were the most successful time in my life and also fairly unhappy. And I couldn't figure out why. And then I started looking into all of these things and figuring things out about what midlife is like. You usually don't have a crisis, but you do have discontent put it that way. And that's fairly common.
In fact, they even have a number. I think it's 47. 6 years old. You had peak unhappiness. I don't know if that's accurate or not. But this all goes to a book called Oh, the happiness curve. And it's about the U shaped happiness curve, which basically says we're happy when we're kids. And then it just bottoms out continually from there until you get to your forties.
And then, you're sitting here thinking, this is it, it's all over what do I have to live for, but no -- surprise. Things get much better around 50 and I experienced this myself. And so I'm really like, wow, this isn't the end of anything. This is really the beginning. And that got me interested in a project that I work on called further.
It's an email newsletter. Basically about what we're calling the new mid middle age, right? It's more 50 to 75 these days than 40 to 65, right? And that brings up a whole host of issues, but mainly it's about getting people to realize that. It's not all downhill from here. The second half of your life may well be the best part of your life.
And if you take that mindset to it, then there's a good chance it will be based on everything that we know. do you think positively about aging? If you do. You're more likely to take care of yourself, which means you're more likely to have that great health span and have a great second half of life.
If you have the opposite mindset, things go rather poorly, right?
JAY CROFT: Exactly. I hate to hear friends complain about getting old. It just really bugs me. I'm going to be 60 next month and I'm fine with it. I, whatever. I have gray hair now. Big deal.
BRIAN CLARK: It's amazing how much you become aware once you understand these issues.
And then you see people saying casual ageist things, even about themselves. And you're like, don't do that, man. It's not good. Even if you're joking, not necessarily a laughing matter, but they call ageism the last. Prejudice, because it's so ingrained, especially in U.S. culture. Not so much in places like Japan, but here, oh, it's all youth all the time. And the big surprise is our population is aging rapidly. Birth rates are dropping off a cliff. We're going to be a nation of older people. So I think we need to shift that mindset on a mass scale.
JAY CROFT: Absolutely. We do. Tell me about how marketing and business in our country is not catching onto this because my experience was very similar to yours. I just happened to come to it, through the prism of the fitness industry. When I noticed almost within a month or two after I turned 50 that nobody wanted my money anymore So tell me about the lag that I see in the marketing to this demographic in a more responsible way.
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah, it's... It's shocking. Really. We all know that there's a, what in the broadest sense, an 18 to 49 year old demographic. And once we pass that point, it's like, you don't exist. And to the extent we exist, we're just one big bucket old people, even though the difference between Me and you and a 75 year old and how that's going to change even more as we progress into the future and things have changed.
It's ridiculous. Now factor in that people over 50 control 83 percent of all household wealth. We're about to be the largest consumer block of all. And these are demographics. They don't just happen. This shift has been coming for decades. it's interesting that you talk about it that way in terms of marketing, because if you really want to know where our youth obsession came from it started with marketers in the mid 1940s.
The baby boomers were born in 45, right? So you've got this post war climate and this huge explosion of births and marketers and media people said, All right, we need to create a new market here effectively, which was brand new at the time. There was a a gentleman who created the very first market research firm dedicated to teenagers.
At the time, adolescence wasn't a thing. There were children and there were adults and there wasn't this in between period. Then a person named Helen Valentine started 17 magazine. The first teenage or a magazine dedicated to teenage girls. So this was the beginning of it all. And then as everyone saw dollar signs with all these kids including fledgling rock and roll, all of that stuff, it quickly morphed into a kind of ugly us against them situation or, Young people good, old people bad. Don't trust anyone over 30, right? Roger Daltrey. I hope I die before I get old. He didn't. He's an old man now.
He's doing great. And that's a big shift, right? So anyway another thing that was fascinating to me as I got more into this was. Retirement was effectively created in this country with the Social Security Act in 1935. It was designed to help people, those who actually made it to age 65, which actually was not many people.
So the government's kind of here you go. If you actually live this long, we're going to give you some money. Of course, it also was designed to force older workers out of the job market. To make way for younger people at that time, that was the move to make we're in the opposite situation now where we need older workers because we don't have enough younger ones.
But anyway, so that was the genesis of retirement. That's social security. And then again, in that post war period, companies would offer these generous pensions. They would actually compete with one another. This was pre 401k, where your company literally took care of you after, you got the gold watch and you got the pension.
And so again, marketers go. People won't retire. This was the late fifties because it was a very different culture at that time. It was my only value to society is what I contribute. Why would I want to sit around and do nothing? So effectively the young, American Association of Retired People, some insurance concerns, Del Webb, who started Sun City, the first retirement community.
All of these people got together and created the idea of the golden years that, hey, you've worked hard. It's your time to just kick back and relax. Again, a creation of marketing that was very temporary in scope. Cause what happened? Those pensions went away. It all became self directed 401ks fast forward to my own generation X.
And a lot of us just don't have the money whatsoever to retire.
JAY CROFT: That's right. The, yeah, the institutions let us down, but they really weren't institutions for that long. They were.
BRIAN CLARK: It was very, very brief. and yet we have this concept that I grew up with and I'm guessing you grew up with, which, you go to school, then you go to work and then you retire three stages.
JAY CROFT: Wait. And in that third stage, you move to Florida and you sit on the beach and you die in 10 years.
BRIAN CLARK: Exactly. And that would work out because you wouldn't have enough money when you now live 30 or 40 years. So that the idea, beyond not having enough to retire, the biggest fear among people, my age and slightly older is what if I outlive my money? A lot of people think that 65 is an arbitrary cutoff. We're not a manual labor society anymore. People can work past 65, especially if they're healthy and vibrant, which of course, I know you're a big proponent of.
JAY CROFT: Yeah, I am. And it's just fascinating to me when I started doing this just a few years ago, I would talk to people And they would say, Oh, the baby boomers. And I would always say not really, baby boomers were between 46 and 64. It's more than just the baby boomers, The demographic of over 50 is changing and it's going to keep changing for decades and yet industry and advertisers and marketers are still doing the old jokes, you know, one the great images of the last few years for me is when Jennifer Lopez performed at the Superbowl?
And someone put a meme of her performing next to one of the Golden Girls from that old television series, and then they're the same age. They were the same age. Yeah. Gorgeous, sexy, vital, athletic woman next to a matron with a Moomoo and a, and an old lady haircut. It's the same with men.
Brad Pitt was the same age as John Forsythe on Dynasty. Do you remember Dynasty in the 80s? I do. I tried to find a corollary for men.
BRIAN CLARK: What about Wilford Brumley?He was in Cocoon playing a geriatric in 40. Yeah, he was 40.
JAY CROFT: And he looked a hundred exactly.
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah, we have seen in a generation, a massive shift and it's not. Just people that are celebrities or athletes. I see the people I went to high school with and for the most part, they're all working out.
They're all fit. They all take care of themselves. It's a compared to our parents who were younger than us. When we were in high school and I'm just like, Oh my goodness, this is just a monumental shift. And this is what we're carrying into what I, what's being called middle age plus or extended middle age, right?
You're not old for quite a while. And that's what marketers and businesses need to understand coupled with the fact that more people are going to work for longer. health span equals spend spanned. If you want to look at it from a consumer's perspective.
JAY CROFT: Yeah, because you're finally old enough. You've got some money saved and mortgages paid. The kids are gone.
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah. You're not ready to go sit on a beach for 10 years until you die or play golf and isolate yourself. most people want to age in place. They want to stay within their community. They want to be involved and interact and people are using technology in lieu of retirement communities to do things together, connect with one another, all of that kind of thing.
JAY CROFT: You mentioned that the youth economy being created, but the fitness economy came up in the late 70s, early 80s, when Jim Fixx had that big book of running and Farrah Fawcett started jogging on the beach and
BRIAN CLARK: Apparently in the seventies. I mean, I was a kid at the time, but if you saw someone jogging, you're like, what is wrong with this person?
JAY CROFT: What's wrong with this person? Yeah. Well, I remember when it started, it was in the late seventies, and then Jane Fonda and Nautilus showed up on every corner before too long. So all of this was created for the boomer generation, but when they aged out of it, the industry no longer was interested in them.
BRIAN CLARK: It's somewhat inexplicable that you're not seeing like wholesale shift already. But I will say, and again, I started this project five months ago, longevity gains to basically say to businesses and marketers and entrepreneurs, there is an entire orchard of low hanging fruit here.
And I give it five to seven years. Before we hit a tipping point, because think about what happens in two 2030. Every baby boomers over 65. Yeah. The first gen Xers turned 65. And oh, the millennials turn 50. Are they going to ignore them? Probably not. But Gen X is everyone talks about how much money the boomers have, and you can't ignore that.
It's an immense amount of money. And Gen X, not so much, but Gen X, as you pointed out, is really the generation where things change. There are a lot of old school baby boomers who perhaps didn't take care of themselves. That's right. While there's, but there's also a substantial contingent of baby boomers who have led the charge.
They're the ones who are working longer coming, the unretirement trend coming back to work because they're like, what am I going to do? I'd have no purpose. I have no meaning. I want to work. I want to contribute much the same attitude we had before the retirement myth. Was thrust upon us.
So it goes to show you that human nature is perhaps a little more resilient. Then we might think with this, put them out to pasture attitude but you got to look at the employers, who else are they going to hire at this point? They're all pretty much being forced to say, okay, we got to stop forcing people out in their fifties.
Maybe start recruiting older people back into the job market? Especially since, as you said, that 6, 65 year old retirement was just completely made up. It didn't just had no basis in anything except some actuary tables. And I think, yeah, I think the actual tar tables at the time said that's when you die.
So the government was like, let's give them the money then . Yeah. But that's not true. If you make it to 65 now, you're most likely going to make it beyond 85.
JAY CROFT: Yes. When I started working, it was still thinking that we would, retire at 72. And I saw my financial advisor not long ago, and he showed me the projections of my money, my savings and my retirement accounts.
And it's great. The bar is just exactly where you want it to be until I turn 90. And then it drops out. And I said, what's that? And he said, Oh you have to die by 90. I ran out of money. That's it.
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah. Financial planners are much more in tune with reality than a lot of other people with regard to that even when their clients are like, I'm not going to live that long. And they're like, man, you better be prepared to live that long.
JAY CROFT: So I Use content marketing to help gym owners reach this market.What can small businesses do to get their message out there to their communities?
BRIAN CLARK: You want to go after the people with the healthy attitudes. The ones who are already thinking about healthy aging eating better, taking care of themselves.
And if you can appeal with messages that embrace those values and attitudes, then that's how you win. It's not that you're 65. Come on in. It's you're interested in living the best life you can live. Always. That's right. And we show that in our content by having photographs of people who are in the demographic who are not infirm and who are active And we show this by addressing topics of concern to them. People in this demographic are interested in reading and I'm not saying everything says, Hey, you're old now. So we want old people come see come where the old people work out. Yeah. Let me give you an example. Yeah. It may surprise people to learn that most of Apple's customers are men over the age of 65.
The majority of Apple Watch users are over the age of 45. But Apple doesn't use image advertising. They're all at the level of values. And attitudes, right? So it's yes, you want to get the most out of life. So you want to use the apple product and you can do it's got, you know, the old, uh, what was it? Life alert. I've fallen and I can't get out, right? Well, the apple watch has that functionality built in, but you won't ever see some condescending marketing like that. It's all about the holistic health. Of whomever, but it just so happens and they know it, that older people are drawn to cool, well designed products just like anyone else. Get it? older people are people too. Where's my new catchphrase?
JAY CROFT: Did you know they, sometimes they have sex. I know. It's shocking to the young people, I'm sure. And go to rock concerts.
BRIAN CLARK: I just went to see Duran Duran. They were all older than me.
JAY CROFT: So yeah, how did they sound? Were they okay? Still?
BRIAN CLARK: Amazing. Simon and Bond's voice is amazing for a 65 year old guy, or maybe I shouldn't be surprised. That's what he does.
JAY CROFT: Yeah, you don't get all those hit records by being a slouch, right? Any role in AI for this that you see coming up that the gym owners need to be aware of and how to connect with older folks?
BRIAN CLARK: With regard to the current state of generative AI and marketers rushing for it to do the work for them. I would say in this particular case. That's not going to work out too well, we're going to have to actually come up with our own messaging because AI right now only can rely on what's out there, what has been.
And when you've ignored everyone over 50 for decades. And when you have talked to them, you've done it very poorly. There's not a whole lot that AI is going to help you with. Now, I'm thinking good old fashioned organic content at this point is what's needed. Because it needs to be exceptionally relatable to a group that's been ignored. And again, I see a lot of opportunity for people our age. Gen X is the most entrepreneurial generation. Young boomers are right there with us. We're that group of people who don't think old, we don't look old, it's like we're leading the charge into our own future. And to me, that's very exciting.
JAY CROFT: Absolutely. That's partly why I got into this.
Number one, I saw a business opportunity and number two. I'm a writer. I like stories. I like good stories with interesting characters facing conflict and overcoming the odds. And there's, it's no better arena than that. Exactly. Yeah. It's so rich. Let me ask you, I want to tell you quickly what I do for my subscribers and then I want to ask you what I'm not doing for them if you don't mind.
Every week I send them a 500 word article that's ideal for blog posts about some topic related to. All of this. I'm a newspaper journalist by trade, so everything reads like a, a newspaper article. It's researched, but it's easy to read. And I give them a shorter article, too, and a recipe and an inspirational meme and some sort of infographic about nutrition or exercise or something related to healthy living.
And I send this to them. It's basically done for you content for their blogs and email newsletters and social media. And it's not about exercise per se. It's about how much better your life is when you are in good, decent condition. And the idea is that people will see that and over time come to know and and trust the gym owner and do business with them.
So what am I not doing? What can I do to help people more?
BRIAN CLARK: This is an interesting question, and I think we're all making it up as we go along. For example, what you described is what I do every week for our further newsletter, which again is aimed at people over 50, and it touches on healthy aging, money issues, at this crucial time of life.
Including retirement, yay or nay, looking more and more we're going to work a lot longer. And also personal development and that kind of holistic, live your best life at midlife kind of thing. And I always wonder, especially with Generation X, if we can't be a little edgier than we are.
We're not like, the generations that preceded us and we're not going to change as we get older. And I think again for an audience of younger baby boomers, it's the same thing, culturally a very different experience of growing up and You don't just pass 50 and all of a sudden turn into a boring person, right?
And that is something as far as tone attitude what's going to really connect with people, especially, like I said, people who are thinking about doing triathlons and really pushing themselves. Do you push a little harder or do you dial it back? Because, oh, they're older people. Maybe consider your, with your content pushing the audience a little harder than you have been. on one hand, we have an obesity epidemic.
So you want to say, okay, start slow, baby steps, On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are well beyond that. And they're really looking for next level type stuff. That's right. I think that's the issue, which is understanding your audience and understanding that this is not A uniform audience at all, right?
JAY CROFT: There's so much variety in it. It's not a niche at all.
BRIAN CLARK: There are a hundred thousand different ways to slice this, and you have to pick the one that you want to own, but you can't ignore older people going forward. It's just not financially feasible.
JAY CROFT: Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself. Two last questions and then I'm going to let you go. What do you do yourself to stay fit? You're there in Boulder. Everybody's fit in Boulder. What do you do?
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah, it was, I moved to Boulder, uh, to force myself to get fit.
I think because, you know, Um, no, but honestly, I love to hike. And so I'm living in paradise for me. So that's been what I've been doing a lot of for the last 10 years. but this year I finally made myself stick with strength training.
JAY CROFT: Good. What are you doing?
BRIAN CLARK: I've been, you know, just lifting, your general, um, you know, I wouldn't call it bodybuilding per se, but I want to be stronger. And I've done this many times throughout my entire life, but I never really stuck with it because I didn't have a desire to be Mr. Muscles or anything like that. And now after eight months, I'm kind of into it. Like, I kind of want to get bigger now, you know, you decide this almost 56. it's not as easy. Like I, I left it with my 18 year old son at the beginning of the year. He's now a monster, but it's okay. you just have to take a slightly different approach.
Eat a lot of protein and, rest more.
JAY CROFT: Yeah, absolutely. You, I've told your story a hundred times, Brian. This is exactly what happens. We get to this point in life and we think, Oh, weightlifting was just for young boys who wanted to be big and hulky. And I never wanted that. So why should I bother with that? Then you hopefully learn. And something I write about all the time is that weightlifting is really the magic pill for people at our point in life and older for all kinds of reasons. And then you start to like it. That's awesome. I'm really happy.
BRIAN CLARK: Yeah. It's also, just the whole concept of progressive overload and continuing. Through process to get incrementally better. It's such a great metaphor for life in general, especially at midlife. I think because we do have this drive to reinvent ourselves to do things a little bit differently. And yet that's scary. And that requires us to change. But if you take the same approach, just get a little bit better, Every day each time and then you wake up a year from now two years from now and you've got a different life And that's cool.
JAY CROFT: Yes, it is. It's wonderful. It's why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I'm going to leave you with that. Just tell us where people can learn more about what you're doing and sign up for your newsletter. Where would you like them to go? For those who are Jay and I's age, then my newsletter Further has some good stuff for you once a week.
On those topics of try to dig into health concepts specifically with people our age in mind. I do, try to push you. To be more but in a sensible way. So that's our editorial focus. Plus we've, we talk about the issues regarding retirement and what that means.
Do you even want to retire? Can you retire? All of these things we have to face. With, a clear sober view of reality right now, because things are changing very much. And then I do the longevity gains project for marketers and business people who are trying to break into this hugely lucrative market of older people for those who aren't already taking advantage of your services, which they should be.
JAY CROFT: Beautiful. Thanks very much. I will include links to that in the show notes for everyone. I encourage you to check out Brian's stuff. It's really terrific. Brian, thank you very much.
Prime Fit Content, Optimal Aging