What I’m Learning About Consistency—Even When I Fall Short

In this solo episode of The Optimal Aging Podcast, host Jay Croft opens up about the powerful, often misunderstood topic of consistency—and why it matters more than intensity in fitness, business, and life.

Jay shares how showing up steadily over time—through writing, podcasting, and growing his business—has led to meaningful progress. But he also gets candid about where he’s falling short, particularly in emailing his prospects. If you're a gym owner or coach feeling stuck or impatient, this episode offers a refreshing reminder: Slow growth is not no growth.

You’ll learn:

• Why consistency beats intensity in fitness and marketing
• How Prime Fit Content is growing through steady effort
• Where even seasoned pros struggle with follow-through
• Tactics for getting back on track with grace and strategy
• Why self-compassion might be the key to long-term success

This is a must-listen for anyone building a business to serve people over 50—and anyone who’s ever felt like they’re not doing “enough.”

🕒 Timestamps

0:00 – Why consistency matters more than intensity
 1:00 – The fitness lesson every coach knows
 3:00 – Jay’s wins in 2025: book, podcast, YouTube
 4:30 – Growth through daily habits, not viral hits
 5:00 – Where Jay’s falling behind: his own email list
 7:00 – Lessons from Pat Rigsby’s accountability system
 8:30 – Compassion for yourself and your clients
 10:00 – Progress isn’t always visible—track it smartly
 11:00 – Final thoughts on consistency and mindset
 12:00 – Takeaways: show up, imperfectly but persistently

👤 Host: Jay Croft

Jay helps fitness professionals grow their businesses by marketing to the over-50 crowd through his company, Prime Fit Content. He brings honesty, experience, and practical strategies to every conversation.

🌐 Website: https://primefitcontent.com

📬 Contact: jay@primefitcontent.com

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primefitcontent

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/croftjay

📢 Calls to Action
👍 Rate & review on Apple Podcasts
📱 Follow on Instagram: @primefitcontent
📥 Got consistency tips? Email Jay!

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing The Power Of Consistency
• 0:50 Why Consistency Outperforms Intensity
• 2:04 Messaging Adults 50+ With Common Sense
• 3:08 Prime Fit Content And Market Opportunity
• 3:10 Sponsor Message: Prime Fit Content
• 3:12 Consistency Wins: Personal Progress Report
• 4:18 Slow Growth Is Still Growth
• 4:59 Admitting The Gap: Email Inconsistency
• 6:50 Systems, Accountability, And Slip-Ups
• 8:25 Track Progress, Zoom Out, Be Kind
• 11:47 The Big Takeaway And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Optimal Aging, the show for fitness professionals who want to grow their businesses by helping more people over 50 live stronger, longer, and better. I'm your host, Jay Croft of Prime Fit Content. And today I'm talking about one of those big picture topics that applies to just about everything: fitness, business, relationships, money, you name it. And that topic is consistency. Maybe the better title would be What I'm Learning About Consistency and Myself in 2025, including where I'm still falling short. Let's get into it. Part one, why consistency matters so much? Now, if you work in fitness, you already know this. The client who comes in and trains twice a week for a year is going to get better results than the person who comes in and trains like mad every day for two weeks and then burns out. Consistency beats intensity every single time. It's the same with nutrition, dieting, right? You know, you can eat a one protein rich breakfast. It's not going to change your body, but eating well, you know, 80% of the time for six months probably will. It's true for your clients, and it's just as true for you, too. Whether we're talking about growing your membership, building your brand, or developing your email list. Make sure your clients and prospects know all of this. You know, too many people out there are skipping healthy habits, like joining a gym, because they think it's an all or nothing approach. They don't want to give up their favorite foods. They don't want to live at the gym 24-7. It's your job to make sure they understand that they don't have to. Actually, it's my job as well. And that's one of the consistent themes that I address in the marketing materials I provide gyms through my business, Prime Fit Content. 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 and find anywhere. If you're not focusing on them, you should be.com. That's prime, like prime of your life, fitcontent.com. Back to the show. Part two of this podcast is how consistency has worked for me this year. The encouraging part. In 2025, I've been fortunate to see steady upward progress in a lot of areas. Prime Fit Content continues to add new customers, not by huge leaps, but month by month, reliably. This podcast is growing. I now have almost 200 episodes, which I wouldn't have believed possible when I started this. I added a video version on YouTube this year. I don't think I've missed a week of the podcast in 2025. I keep getting requests from people who want to come on the show as guests, and people keep listening. Now, none of this happened overnight. I didn't go viral. I didn't have one massive sales week that made the year. This is all the result of showing up every day over and over again, doing the boring stuff, recording episodes, writing content, emailing people to come on the show, talking to gym owners and ordinary folks about their fitness and trying to understand what's motivating them to change their lives every day. So if you're a gym owner or a coach and you're feeling frustrated that things aren't happening fast enough, I want you to remember that slow growth is not the same as no growth. I get impatient too. I want more. I want right now. But you know, consistency might be slow, it might not be too super exciting, but it compounds. Part three, where I'm falling behind. Okay, so that's the uh good part for me this year. I'm gonna share something that I'm particularly proud of. Despite everything I know of, despite everything I tell you to do, there is one area where I'm really inconsistent, and that is emailing my own prospect list of gym owners who could become paying customers of mine at Prime Fit Content. Yep. I tell gym owners to email their prospects twice a week. I even give you the tools to do it. But me, I can't even manage once a week with any kind of rhythm. Some weeks I send out two, other times I ghost my own list of prospects for weeks. It's chaotic, it's embarrassing. And the worst part, I know it's hurting my business. I know that list is full of people who have shown interest in prime fit content, people who raise their hands and might want to become paying customers. And I'm not showing up for them the way I should. So what's my problem? Honestly, I don't know. You know, maybe I'm tired of making so many decisions. Maybe I'm uh doing too many things and I need to drop something and focus on what remains. Maybe it's poor time management on my part. Maybe it's just a blind spot that I have. We all have them. But I'm sharing this with you because I want to be honest. And you, if you're honest with yourself, probably have a version of this in your own business, something that you're consistently inconsistent about. Maybe it's posting on social media or following up with leads or showing up consistently for your current clients, the ones you're kind of tired of who keep showing up and you want new ones. I don't know. You do, you know. So here's some lessons and takeaways for both of us. Here's what I'm thinking. Maybe this helps you, maybe it helps me just to talk about it, hold myself accountable to you all. Consistency doesn't require perfection. You don't have to do a bang up job every single day. You just have to show up every day and do your best and not quit after a week or two, or when it gets hard, or when it gets boring. If something's important, systematize it. Whether it's workouts or emails, if you leave it to when I have time, you won't get it done. So block out the time, commit to it on your calendar. I learned this again earlier this year. I was working with Pat Rigsby, a fitness coach that many of you probably know. Pat helps gyms grow in a lot of more complex ways than I can do with my content. And he doesn't just focus on gyms trying to work with older people. He's got a really helpful six-step daily process to check off certain items, certain tasks throughout the day. And if you do these things over time, you build up your communications, you're out there more in time to grow your business, right? Well, I did this every day for six weeks, and it was a lot of fun. Got a lot of feedback, saw some progress for six weeks. And do you know what I did at the end of six weeks? That's right. I stopped doing it. I had that accountability with Pat's group. I had his little chart showing me what to do every day, and I could do all of that on my own. I don't have to have Pat there holding my hand, or do I? I yeah, I don't know. I let one skipped day become a skipped week, and then it's really hard to get back on track. And yes, all of this sounds familiar, doesn't it? It's the same thing we all tell ourselves about anything that we're trying to do to improve ourselves. It's the same thing your clients and prospects fear about trying to get in shape again, especially if they're a little older and they've failed a time or two in the past. So remember that. Just like I want you to be compassionate toward yourself about this inconsistency. I want you to be compassionate toward them and make sure they know that they can, you know, miss a workout here and there. They can have a pizza and a beer here and there, as long as week in, week out, over time, we're all doing the things that we've committed to do to get where we want to go, to get back on track. Other things that are coming to mind about all of this is we need to track our progress, not just our feelings. You know, um, many of you have fitness consumers who get frustrated when they don't lose weight after working out with you for a few weeks or months. Never mind that their body fat's down and their clothes are fitting better and they're sleeping better at night. They're obsessed on seeing the number on the scale come down, right? But if you show them the bigger picture of how to look at their progress, they're going to see that they are indeed making real progress, that their effort is paying off. And in my business, and I'm sure it's the same for many of you too, sometimes it feels like nothing's working. Right? I'm coming in, I'm showing up, I'm doing all this hard work, and it's just not happening as fast as I need it to happen. But if you zoom out, when I zoom out anyway, I can see growth. It's probably there. I just have to be able to measure it, to look back at where I was when I started, instead of being frustrated that I'm not always somewhere out there ahead where I want to be. Right? If I can turn back and say, hey, I didn't have anything when I started this, or I only had X number of customers or so many dollars in revenue, and now look what I what I have. That's a much more rewarding and encouraging way to look at your progress than always judging yourself against the future because you're never going to get to the future. It's always, it's always out there, right? Um, anyway, the idea of self-compassion is very personal for me. I'm like a lot of you probably am hard on myself. I want to be perfect all the time. Um and I speak to myself more harshly than I speak to friends. You do this too. Well, I want you to back off yourself a little bit and try some self-compassion. I can be hard on myself about missing these emails to my prospects. It's not gonna make me send any more, is it? But staying curious about how my mind works, about how my daily and weekly schedule comes together, about where I can move this and cut back on that and get some help with certain tasks, maybe those things, maybe that's where a solution is. I'm gonna keep looking. I don't know. Um, so here's the big takeaway. If you want to grow your gym, if you want to serve more people over 50, if you want to build a business you can be proud of, you don't need magic one day, you don't need a shot of excitement once a year. You need to do the same boring, right things over and over for months or years. You're gonna do them imperfectly, but if you do them persistently, consistently over time, they will pay off. I'm learning this in a lot of aspects of my job, my business, my life. Um, some of it's a little harder than others. And I hope that what I've been sharing with you encourages you to take a look at what you're up to as well and see where you can improve, but also where you're doing a good job. Because optimal aging is not a sprint, is it? No, it's a marathon. So let's not beat ourselves up over perceived failings every day. And let's look at how we're doing in the long run. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with another coach or gym owner or health and wellness professional who's in this for the long haul. And listen, if you have tips how you stay consistent with your emails or your marketing or your any business function, shoot me a message. I'd love to hear it. I'll be back next week with an enlightening interview about a nationwide fitness chain that has decided to hone its message toward our beloved older market. See you then.