Optimal Aging

How Adventure Travel Can Motivate Your 50+ Fitness Clients

• Jay Croft • Season 3 • Episode 15

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Want to inspire your 50+ clients to stay active, connected, and confident? In this episode, I talk with Road Scholar’s PR Director, Kelsey Knoedler Perri, about how fitness and travel work hand-in-hand to promote healthy aging.
We explore survey data from Road Scholar’s “Age Adventurously” campaign and how fitness pros can use these insights to motivate clients, boost retention, and create content that resonates.

🎯 Great for: gym owners, trainers, wellness professionals

Topics include:

  • How travel encourages fitness in older adults
  • The social power of group adventures
  • Using storytelling and Facebook communities to connect
  • Why adventure doesn’t have to mean extreme

💥 Special highlight: Learn more about Age Adventurously Day on June 8th — a movement redefining what it means to age boldly.

🔗 Learn more: https://www.ageadventurously.org
🌐 Road Scholar: https://www.roadscholar.org

Connect with Jay Croft here:
• Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/primefitcontent
• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/croftjay/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/jaycroft

For more tips reaching the over-50 fitness market, subscribe to The Optimal Aging Podcast or visit www.primefitcontent.com.

Email: jay@primefitcontent.com

Thanks for listening!

Speaker 1:

The survey that we did for on adventure and travel and happiness and health really inspired us to create this day, so Road Scholar is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. We've been around since 1975 and we wanted to celebrate our birthday in a special way, which is June 8th. It's the first day 50 years ago that we had our first programs.

Speaker 2:

Hi everybody. Our first programs communications, content and making powerful connections. We're talking about three of my favorite subjects today fitness, travel and adventure. They go together for millions of people over 50. There's plenty of wiggle room in the definition of each to apply to just about anybody. Now I write a lot about the desire to travel being a key motivator for people over 50 wanting to get fit or stay fit, and it turns out we can apply a lot of the same messaging and marketing ideas to encouraging travel, fitness and other kinds of adventure.

Speaker 2:

This all comes together beautifully in a non-profit organization called Road Scholar, in a non-profit organization called Road Scholar planning its 50th anniversary this summer, with a focus on aging adventurously. The group conducted a survey of its participants and found that the top three components of aging adventurously are staying fit and healthy, traveling and continuing to learn and grow. Today's optional aging guest is from Road Scholar and I'm delighted to share our conversation because I love fitness, travel and adventure and I love talking about how we can encourage more mature adults to get excited about them, to stay excited about them. Kelsey Perry is the PR director for Road Scholar and our chat will be illuminating and, I think, a lot of fun to anyone trying to work with older adults in fitness, health, well-being, probably just about anything. Stick with it to the end to learn about the group's special day coming up in June and what the hottest spots in over 50 travel are these days.

Speaker 1:

So we did a survey recently of both our participants, which is, our travelers who travel with us each year and also people who have not traveled with us. We wanted to be able to kind of compare both communities, but we surveyed all people over 50, from 50s to 90s, to make sure we had a good range. We wanted to make some determinations about the interaction between travel, adventure and health and wellness in older adulthood specifically. So we asked a lot of questions about the interplay between those different things and what we found is that those who considered themselves adventurous also rated themselves higher on both a health scale and a happiness scale. So there's definitely a relationship between the idea of being adventurous and how healthy and how happy you are. But we also found that folks felt less adventurous as they aged, which was interesting, and to me, with that, the story that I'm a storyteller, so I'm always looking at what story does the data tell me, and so the story that I'm interpreting from this data is that I see adventure like a muscle, so tying into fitness here you have to keep flexing it.

Speaker 1:

It's something that it's easier at any age really to kind of get comfortable in our day-to-day routine and become less comfortable going outside of our comfort zone essentially, and the more you flex that muscle and the more you push yourself outside of your comfort zone essentially, and the more you flex that muscle and the more you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, the easier it becomes.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of us saw this during COVID. We all became a little bit more of a homebody during COVID and both the adventure muscle and the social muscles we had to start flexing those again, coming out of the pandemic and getting outside of our comfort zone. And so I think that adventure is something that really keeps you mentally both physically and mentally spry and agile and it keeps you alert and learning in older adulthood and it can really result in a sense of empowerment. It's related to your pride and your self-confidence that help you remain more independent in your later years, and I think that's just really what how adventure plays into the health and happiness in older adulthood is, because it has so much to do with confidence. If you flex that muscle, the more you'll want to do it and then you'll also then get the results of being more adventurous, which keeps your mind fresh, keeps you learning and then also benefits your mental health and your physical health.

Speaker 2:

Right. You know, as I was telling you a minute ago before we hit the record button, that travel is one of the primary motivators for older people to want to either get fit or stay fit. So they go to gyms and that's one of the main reasons that they give for wanting to start lifting weights and doing yoga and developing their cardio or their cardio endurance, these kinds of things, so they can travel. They've worked at a desk job, they've raised their kids and now they want to go do these wonderful things that they've always dreamt of. So being fit is really helpful to do that. Just walking through an airport with luggage is difficult, you know, if you're not in good condition. You asked folks what it means to age adventurously and the number one answer was, in fact, staying healthy, staying physically active and healthy. That is amazing to me. How do you define aging adventurously and how does that connect with what we're talking about?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, like you said, that was the number one answer to that question was, when we asked them what it means to age adventurously, they said staying physically and actively healthy. 82% said yes to that. Number two was traveling and exploring new places, close behind at 81%. And then the third was continuing to learn and grow, which I think was around 70 or 71%.

Speaker 1:

So I think obviously where this comes from is a lot of people, when you hear the word adventure, you think of adventure. You think of like whitewater rafting and like mountain biking and things like that. So I think that's part of what's happening here is that's how people think of that word, the connotation that they have with the word adventurous. But I think that you know it's obviously important to stay in shape to benefit you physically and mentally and help you live longer and be healthier in those later years, but it also gives you access to more options for being adventurous, like something like river rafting or ziplining that you wouldn't be able to do. But I also think that at Road Scholar we think of adventure. We like to try to challenge that and broaden the idea of adventure, because it's different for everybody and everyone has different physical abilities and the reality is that adventure is going to change. It's going to look different as you age. Everybody ultimately will have mobility challenges as they age. It hits them at a different point and we should try to stay physically fit so that we can have those physical options as long as possible. But there are still lots of ways to be adventurous, even if those physical hiking and biking and things are maybe outside of our of our reach.

Speaker 1:

So we try to really encourage people to think of adventure differently, in terms of really, it just means trying something new or doing something a little bit outside of your comfort zone. So that might mean something like taking a language class, learning a new language. It might mean just like trying a new restaurant, like an ethnic restaurant in your neighborhood, or doing something that just stretches you a little bit. And I think, as we talked about, you stretch that muscle. Maybe the first thing you do if you're a little bit of like, if you don't think of yourself as a super adventurous person, maybe the first thing you do if you're a little bit of like, if you don't think of yourself as a super adventurous person, maybe the first thing is like let me go out and try this new restaurant in my neighborhood. Once you do that, you gain the confidence, and then you can start to stretch it and stretch it even more, and maybe some of those things that you hadn't thought of being capable of doing before become more and more possible for you.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I'm glad that you explained that, because when I think of adventure, I think yeah, I think whitewater rafting, but you could also think of it as, as you said, exploring a new neighborhood in your city or trying a new restaurant, or going to the gym for the first time since college, anything like that really Joining a book club, joining some kind of community, accessing your, your social opportunities.

Speaker 1:

That's another thing that's so important in older adulthood and it might be a little bit, like I said, when you're not stretching that social muscle might be a little intimidating. But the more you just kind of tiptoe out and you push yourself, little little, then a little more, and a little more, then something like traveling to europe may become more accessible for you as well. And maybe some people that's their starting point is traveling to Europe and maybe they want to build up to go into Antarctica or whatever that might be. But everybody's starting it from a different place and we want to meet them where they are.

Speaker 2:

Tell me more about the results from your survey that were so interesting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think those were the biggest things as far as the interplay between adventure travel. But also, I mean, what we were hoping to find and we did is that our participants that travel with us, compared to those who don't travel with us, they're more adventurous, they're happier, they're healthier, which is, you know, a great thing to see, and it was something we were hoping to see. But the data does also back that up. So we definitely saw that not only does adventure keep you happier and healthier, but so does travel, and that when you travel with Road Scholar, you're happier, you're a happier person when you travel with Road Scholar, so that's a good thing.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's talk about that Traveling with Road Scholar, compared to, maybe, how you want to travel when you're 25, 45, now you're 65, or 85, whatever. 45, now you're 65, you want it, or 85, whatever. How do our desires for travel evolve with age? And, you know, perhaps one of them might be going with a group. Instead of just striking out on your own and just going wherever the wind takes you, you want to go with a group. There's some good reasons for that. What else can you think of that's different? Because I'm thinking about myself at 25, listening to this podcast, would say I'll never do that when I get old. I'm going to go out. I'm just going to get on my motorcycle and my backpack. I'm going to go out and do my own thing. Well, you know, maybe not right to go out and do my own thing. Well, you know, maybe not right. There's a lot of good things to be said for group travel.

Speaker 1:

So tell me about that Definitely. Well, in the same way that adventure changes as we age, so might travel. It's going to look different for us later in life than it did in our 20s and 30s. Like you said, we see some people start to travel in older adulthood because they're retiring and they have more time and they may have more money. But we also see people who have been traveling for their whole lives independently and they start to think about and consider group travel, and there's a lot of people who are hesitant about it.

Speaker 1:

Even me, like before I worked in group travel, I've always been the person who loved to put my spreadsheet together and plan my travels and go solo or go with my husband and be able to explore on our own, and I never thought group travel would be for me either, but then I started working in it. I've worked for a couple of different companies now and I love it and I think there's a place for both independent travel and group travel, no matter what age. But I think there are a lot of specific benefits for older adults, so I can talk more about those, yeah please do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I think that what we see in our travelers is they love that all the details are taken care of for them. Some people do, like I said, love to do the research and love to have their spreadsheets and everything like that, but when you travel with Road Scholar, all of those logistics are taken care of. A lot of people hate those things and so all of that is taken care of. You don't have to bother with the planning. You have the confidence, knowing that there are experts who are making these decisions for you and planning all the logistics. So you don't have to worry about train times and booking tickets between one place and the next and you know hotel arrangements and all of that stuff is taken care of for you. So that's one thing that becomes something that can be a bigger burden in older adulthood, especially as technology changes and the way that we make these plans change, it can become more intimidating. So we don't want those burdens to become a barrier for travel for people as they get older. And another thing is that as we age, we become more vulnerable travelers. Maybe our reactions aren't as quick, we have more trouble carrying things, so you're worried about your luggage and you're not as aware of your surroundings. There's a lot of reasons why travel might become a little less safe as we age, and so our participants really like to go with the group because they know that there's that comfort in traveling in numbers, but also you have the group leader who's looking out for you, making sure you are where you need to be at all times and everything like that. So there's definitely a comfort level and just the safety aspect of it as we age.

Speaker 1:

And then the last thing I want to mention is the social aspect, because when you're traveling independently, it can be easy to go on a trip and not talk to anybody the whole time if you're really going solo.

Speaker 1:

But what our travelers really love is interacting with the other participants on the program, sharing the experiences with them, learning from their life experiences.

Speaker 1:

You know all of them have lived long lives and have amazing lived experiences, so they love learning from each other as much as they love learning from the instructors, and loneliness and social isolation has been declared love learning from the instructors and loneliness and social isolation has been declared an epidemic in the US and beyond, and we know that social interactions in older adulthood benefit our health our physical health, our mental health everything, and so any opportunity that we can have later in life to create new social connections and foster those is always a good thing for our mental health. So Rhodes in life to create new social connections and foster those is always a good thing for our mental health. So Road Scholar can create new connections for us. We have a lot of solo travelers especially who meet other travelers on our trips and they become friends, they stay in touch, they travel together in the future. So that's a big element of what our programs offer too.

Speaker 2:

So you have people who go by themselves, but to join your group.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, I guess in my head I was thinking it would be a group of friends, or no, all of our trips it's just, you know it's group travel where you typically it's couples or solo travelers or a couple of friends enroll in the program and then they're with a bunch of strangers that become friends throughout the week. We do do private group trips as well. So if you want to get a group of your own together and go on a private date, that's an option, but typically that's a very small percentage of what we offer. Mostly you're coming either with a partner or you're coming solo.

Speaker 2:

Okay, a lot of what you're saying about traveling is what we talk about with fitness too. It's good for you socially, it's good for you mentally. You can join in things. It builds up your confidence. The more you do it, the more you want to do it and feel good, not just in performing the exercises at the gym, but in doing the things in your daily life lifting up the groceries, playing with the grandchildren, enjoying your sports, whatever it might be. You have that confidence right. So there's a lot of similarities here. So tell me about your marketing and your outreach and maybe what you're finding that's really effective in speaking to today's over 50 traveler.

Speaker 1:

I will say our participants are over 50, but the average age is 72. So that really truly is an average, because we have people in their 50s and we have people in their 90s. So 72 has been the average for years, even before I worked here. It's weird, it doesn't even like oscillate between 71 and 70. It's like always 72. It's kind of bizarre, but you know, we have two thirds baby boomers at this point and so that's really who we are serving for the most part. But we're at this unique point where we're now serving three generations at once, which is, you know, certainly those generations are all very different from each other and all people over 50 are not just like old people who all have the same characteristics and desires and physical abilities. Those are three completely different generations, and even the boomers you can kind of break down into two. So yeah, those are three completely different generations, and even the boomers you can kind of break down into two. So yeah, but in general, you know, I worked at road scholar for almost 10 years now and so I've been writing for and speaking to and marketing to older adults for a long time now and I've learned so much about that demographic I've also, I have to say I'm so grateful for the way that it has changed the way that I see aging, that I I see my own aging. It's helped me be a less ageist person and I've learned a lot about ageism and just.

Speaker 1:

I'm inspired by our participants every day. My favorite part of my job is when I get to speak with them and do interviews and hear about their adventures and they're just, they're so inspiring. I've built friendships. One of my participants that I've I met her just through, you know, doing an interview for PR, and she just handmade a pillowcase for my son that she sent me. So I've built these connections, these social connections with cross-generational, which is something that we just don't see. There's not enough opportunities in life anymore to create cross-generational relationships with people who are not in your family, and I'm so grateful for that gift that Rhodes Scholar has brought to me. But back to marketing some things that I've learned about.

Speaker 2:

Can I pause you there? That is marketing and the way that I practice it. What you just described, you're talking about stories and, for lack of a I hope this isn't a crass way to put it You'll know what I mean, but people listening might think I'm being rude. Material, because people at this age in life are so rich with material and you get to know them and you help them do things that are important to them and they open up to you and you get in positions like yours and mine. We then get to share these stories with others who are then touched by them and motivated by them to do them as well. That is a part of the marketing picture to me. Anyway. I'm.

Speaker 1:

maybe I'm too no that's absolutely my theory and approach on marketing and communications. I have an MFA in creative writing, so for me it's all about storytelling. That's what I love about it and that's my approach showing examples of what our participants are doing, and it really just creates aspiration, inspirational content that can empower other people who are reading it or consuming the content who might be hesitant. You know we're talking a lot in this conversation about how so much of this is about confidence and so if they see somebody else who's doing these things and they hear these stories, they think, oh well, she's doing that. I guess it's not out of the question for me.

Speaker 1:

And so it's so much about storytelling but representation. You know you talk about representation a lot in marketing in terms of other things like racial demographics and gender, but there's also representation in terms of age, and I think that's one of the demographics that a lot of. Obviously, we serve only older adults, so we're thinking about that all the time, but there's a lot of brands and companies out there who are not representing older adults in their marketing enough. It's definitely you hear studies all the time especially older women being completely ignored by marketers, even though they hold so much of the purse strings in our society these days.

Speaker 2:

It makes no sense, it's just mind-boggling. But everyone wants the youth market and in some industries that's probably really smart. But in fitness it's very limiting, and perhaps it is in travel as well. I don't know. I don't know much about the travel industry, but tell me more about the marketing. I interrupted you and I apologize for that, but you really touched me because that's how I relate to all of this as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and tying into fitness and representation too is like I think of you know, whenever I'm doing like a, I like to work out at home and I like workout videos, yoga and stuff like that. But when I watch these and it's like everyone in the video is like completely fit and I just think well and young of course, but even just from a fitness level, I'm like I'm intimidated and watching even if it's an entry level yoga it's like I feel like, well, this isn't really for me, because these people have no problem with it and this is challenging for me. So then I end up watching this and just feeling like even worse about myself if it's challenging for me, and then I don't even want to do the video anymore. So a lot of it is about the visual representation of showing somebody who is in that demographic doing something adventurous, doing something physically active, so that other people can see that and think, okay, maybe I'm not there yet, but like if they're doing it, I can do that too. That's a big part of it, I think.

Speaker 2:

Hey, are you a fitness professional trying to grow your business with people over 50? If you are, then you need to know how to communicate with them, how to market to them and how to get them to trust you with their fitness, well-being and money. We're talking about millions of people who are a little older than the typical market that the fitness industry usually pursues. They have more money, more time and better motivation to make the best long-term fitness consumers you'll find anywhere. If you're not focusing on them, you should be. Prime Fit Content is the only content marketing company designed specifically to help you engage people in this group and to help you distinguish yourself from competitors in your community. It's effective, affordable and super easy to use. Check it out at primefitcontentcom. That's prime like prime of your life, fitcontentcom.

Speaker 2:

Back to the show. Tell me about just generally, maybe a bigger picture view. Are you actively going out and finding people and trying to convince them to come along with you, or do you find people are coming to you and I ask that because a lot of the gyms I work with struggle to find enough leads of people to talk to and get in their sales funnel and convert to customers, that kind of thing. What's your process? How do you find your? Your is customers, the term you use. Do you say members?

Speaker 1:

We say participants.

Speaker 2:

Participants that's the word we use. How do you find them and get them into your program?

Speaker 1:

I mean we do, we do everything and and also a lot of people come to us I mean word of mouth and friend referrals is the biggest and most powerful form of marketing and that's something that is the least controllable. So the best way you can control that is just by offering an experience that people love so much that they are motivated to go out and tell their friends. So, as much as you can go above and beyond for your customer, for your participant, so that it will empower them to go out and tell their friends, that's the most powerful but again, like the least controllable of forms of marketing, I think, yes, we do go out and sort of like you know, we send a lot of print material. Still, because of our demographic, we send brochures and catalogs. A lot of our older participants still like to have something in their physical hands to look through and browse. So we do a lot of print marketing to new audiences. We buy lists, we do things like that. As far as we also do a lot of social media, but for social media, for us it's mostly Facebook, because that's where our participants are.

Speaker 1:

What's been really successful for us is our Facebook groups, which is not something that a lot of companies do as like a marketing or communication strategy. But our Facebook page, it feels more promotional. But the Facebook groups that we have we have about four or five of them it's a community, it's all about community. So, although we are the ones who created the groups and we've invited people to join them, they do most of the conversation. They ask questions, they share pictures from their trips, they give testimonials. It's so much more authentic. It's kind of a way, as I said, like to create that friend referral channel and that word of mouth channel by letting them talk about it to each other and it comes off as so much more authentic and it's so much more powerful than anything that we could say. So we post content in there to get conversations going. It's more like conversation starters, but it's not any kind of like salesy type perspective that we come at it with. So and we're lucky in that we are, I mean, we serve like a hundred thousand travelers a year. So we weren't starting from creating these Facebook groups from nothing, like we had a lot of people to invite and so that community already existed.

Speaker 1:

You know one of them is called the Women of Road Scholar. I think having a community of women is really powerful because women feel more comfortable with other women and talking, giving advice, asking for advice, talking about concerns, like we have a lot of widows that travel with us. That will post. You know, I became widowed and I'm nervous to go on my own. Does anybody have any advice? So, again, when you're talking about confidence and you're talking about fitness and there's maybe a lot of women who are particularly nervous and have less confidence, so maybe having some kind of community, whether it's online or events or something like that, where you really focus on women, I think would be a really powerful thing to do. It's been powerful for us.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing is one of our Facebook groups is just called Retired Teachers Travel Club. It doesn't even have Road Scholar in the name, because a lot of retired teachers travel with us because of our focus on learning, so that community people come there because of an affinity to being a retired teacher and so, although Road Scholar is involved in it and a lot of people talk about Road Scholar and travel through Road Scholar, it's not so focused on us. So that's even one step removed from being like salesy. But there's a lot of ways to create community through social media. In-person events, I mean because we're a national organization. Yes, we do trade shows and stuff, but I think, in terms of you're talking about like a gym owner getting involved in your community and creating like local events, could be something that would be really powerful too. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad you mentioned the Facebook groups and I'm really glad you mentioned that you were an established organization with many thousands of followers by then, because it's hard you know to do when you're. I tried it. I have a business page for my business, prime Fit content, and then I have a group, prime Fit Pros, and I tried for the first year or so to get it up to become self-sustaining and it just was too much. A lot of work, too small. Yeah, I've got maybe 1,000, 2,000 people in there. I'm not sure of people in there. I'm not sure. And you have to have so many people to have enough who are going to participate in it that much that it does drive itself.

Speaker 2:

But it is a good thing to try and I know some of my gym owners do it. It's really a good way to encourage their people to communicate with each other. That's fantastic. What's happening right now with travel? Are there any sort of trendy places among our demographic that people want to go to? And I'm glad you corrected me about the over 50, because I say over 50 because that's just a line in the sand that I drew for fitness consumers, but a lot of the people I'm talking with and writing for are 60s, 70s, 80s as well, so it's 50 and well above, yeah, 50 as well, because that's when you have to.

Speaker 1:

You have to pretty much be 50 to travel with us. That's kind of the starting point. So we say over 50 as well in a lot of our marketing and communications, but that's not the average, you know.

Speaker 2:

I just wanted to like be clear about that I'm glad you are, because I, when I talk to people about this a lot, they'll say, oh yeah, 50. And they'll talk about 50-year-olds Then they forget about 75-year-olds. And that's a different stage of life and some people at 75 are elite athletes and very comfortable walking into a new gym and getting their workout, and many are not, and same with 50-year-olds. And so there's, like you said, there's all this diversity in this age group. It's way too big and complicated to call a niche, I think. But I like that reminder that we're not just talking about 50-year-olds because hey, 50, you're still capable of a lot of things that you might not be capable of at 80, but you still want to go and do things and participate in life.

Speaker 1:

There's both the physical ability that changes, but also, like you said, just life stage. I mean someone who's 50 might still have teenagers at home. Yeah, they may be parenting. They're probably working full-time and then when you start to become empty nesters and retire and you have maybe more time, more financial capital, and you have more time to go to the gym, you have more time to focus on yourself, and so those things change enormously in those years too.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So what's hot right now? Where are people going?

Speaker 1:

What's hot, where are people going? I would say the Azores is something that's really popular, which is a island off Portugal. We've heard it described as the Hawaii of Europe. My colleague who is our videographer she's a full-time videographer on staff. She's been to tons of places, both independently and with Road Scholar and she said it's one of her favorite ever. She just she described it as a combination between um, new zealand, hawaii and scotland I'm ready, let's go beautiful.

Speaker 1:

it's a great outdoor destination and also it's one of those places where people it's starting to become popular, but she described it when they were there like they were the only people in all the places that they were. So it's still a little bit undiscovered and and I think those are the places that I'll probably talk about here the most is places where it's like they're starting to get hot. We're starting to see more interest among our participants, but they still feel a little bit undiscovered because that's kind of the. I feel like that's like the line that you want to kind of toggle right. So I would say the Azores we've had a lot of interest in Malta recently, so we've been adding some more programs there. That's a place where, if you've kind of already done Europe maybe you've done some Italy, you've done some France, you've done kind of the big ones it's a place that you know you're like maybe I've never thought about going to Malta, so that's another place that's a little bit more undiscovered and less trafficked are you finding any interest in fitness travel?

Speaker 2:

or maybe spa, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Spas, right, I mean, I don't mean getting massages, I mean wellness retreats yes that kind of something like that well in general, the our walking and hiking programs are one of our most popular collections. Um. The national parks in the us are always super, super popular, whether you're doing something physically active like hiking, or if it's more of like a slower paced birding type adventure, but walking and hiking is always the biggest for us. We do have cycling programs as well. We have pickleball programs, which is obviously something becoming hotter and hotter, and I just love that trend because it's been completely driven by older adults.

Speaker 1:

You don't see a lot of trends that are like originated by older adults and I just and now everyone's doing it, but it was really driven by people over 50, which is really cool. So we have pickleball programs, we have golf programs, tennis programs. Let me think what else we have like multi-sport, where you're doing more like whitewater rafting, canoeing, that kind of thing as well. But yeah, we've definitely seen more interest in that. It's something that we're always adding more destinations and more places to do that. There's a lot of places where, like the azores will, where we'll have a hiking version, we'll have one program that's hiking and then we have one that's like more focused on volcanoes and vineyards. So we kind of offer a lot of destinations at different activity levels. That's something that's really important for serving older adults. For us is having a huge range of activity levels so we can serve as many people as possible. So a lot of destinations will have more and less active programs.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh, it sounds great, let's get. I want to wrap up by getting back to adventure and I want you to tell the folks about the event you have coming up or the day you have coming up. That gets us back to adventure, and please tell folks where they can learn more about it and more about the organization.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So the survey that we did for on adventure and travel and happiness and health really inspired us to create this day. So Road Scholar is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. We've been around since 1975 and we wanted to celebrate our birthday in a special way, which is June 8th. It's the first day 50 years ago that we had our first programs. But we didn't really want it to be just revolved around Road Scholar. We wanted to go back to our roots in a way, to create a movement again.

Speaker 1:

When Broad Scholar was founded in 1975 as Elder Hostel, it really was a movement because it was a time when retirement and social security were new things, sort of. They were still sort of new. And so there was this whole time in someone's life where previous generations were expected to just sit in a rocking chair on their front porch and watch their grandchildren play, and there was this whole new generation of older adults who didn't see themselves that way and they were looking for things to do in retirement and older adulthood. So that's where Elder Hostel was founded as a way to give learning opportunities to people in retirement, and it really was a movement. And so, anyway, we now, 50 years later, wanted to create a movement again around celebrating the joys of aging and trying to help reframe the way that people see aging and thinking of it as just another time and an excuse to be adventurous and to stretch those adventure muscles.

Speaker 1:

So we declared June 8th Age Adventurously Day and we are putting out a challenge to our community and beyond for everybody to plan on June 8th, do something adventurous, whatever that means to them If it's, like I said, trying a new restaurant in your neighborhood, or if it's booking a trip to Antarctica, it's getting a tattoo, whatever adventure means to you. Plan to do something adventurous on June 8th and we're going to try to make it an annual event where it can snowball and become really a movement. So we are doing a contest where people can share what they're doing on June 8th to win a Rhodes Scholar voucher. So we're a part of that, but we're trying to get everybody involved in just doing something outside of their comfort zone on that day to celebrate the joys of aging and to flex those adventure muscles.

Speaker 2:

I love it. It dovetails beautifully with my message at Prime Fit Content and on this show and I just love it. It's so positive, such a positive thing to do for people and to get them thinking about this in a good way to counter some of that negativity that we still have associated with aging. It's just.

Speaker 1:

And even our own aging. I mean, we have internalized aging, and that's something that we all have to change about, about society and about ourselves on an individual basis.

Speaker 2:

so absolutely so. Um, what's the website where people should go to? Yes, ageadventurouslyorg ageadventurouslyorg will tell me all about it beautiful, beautiful. Well, I just love this organization and I'm so glad that we got to know each other a little bit, and thank you so much for your time, kelsey.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, it's been really fun.

Speaker 2:

All right Thanks. Thank you for listening to the Optimal Aging Podcast. I'm your host, jay Croft of Prime Fit Content. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll subscribe, review and tell a friend. All of that helps me grow my audience. I hope you'll share any comments you have with me, including suggestions about people I should interview and topics I should cover. You can learn more about my newsletter and content business at primefitcontentcom and write me at jay at primefitcontentcom. Again, thanks for listening. Join me next time.

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