The Untapped Goldmine: Why Serving Clients Over 50 Is the Smartest Move in Fitness with Jay Croft

The Untapped Gold mine why serving clients over 50 is the smartest move in fitness with jcroft hi, I'm Beverly Simpson.

Former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

My name is Chris. I'm giving you your intro and today's guest is someone who's been quietly rewriting the narrative of fitness marketing one powerful, underserved demographic at a time. Jaycroft is the founder of Prime Fit Content and the host of the Optimal Aging Podcast. After spending decades as a newspaper journalist and corporate communicator, Jay noticed something critical. Fitness spaces were leaving out people over 50, arguably the people who need it the most and have the time and resources to invest. In this episode, Beverly dives into how Jay blends storytelling with strategy to help gyms and coaches attract and serve this often overlooked market. They'll talk about the age, bias and fitness, what it really means to niche effectively, and why ignoring this demographic is not just a disservice, it's a missed opportunity. If you've ever felt unsure about how to work with older clients or you've struggled to connect your message to the people who actually want your help, this episode is going to be a game changer. Let's get into it Sub.

Jay, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm great, Beverly. Thanks so much for having me. It's nice to see you.

It's nice to see you. I cannot wait to dive in. I think we're going to have an excellent conversation. I think that what you do, helping professionals really attract and connect and convert people who are in an older. I don't want to say older, but.

In the Democratic, you can say older. You know, it's not a dirty word.

I'm into it. I feel in my mind like I'm 26, so.

Exactly. We can talk about that. That's really important. You just stumbled on something really important.

So can you share with us a little bit about how you got into the space in which you're. You're working in now?

You bet. So I for many years, I was a newspaper journalist. I was a reporter and an editor at mainstream daily newspapers in cities across the country. I ended my career at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. So I wrote and Edited the newspaper that you got on your doorstep every morning, basically. Then, you know, that kind of went away about 15 years ago when the Internet and smartphones and everything blew up traditional media. And when that happened, I was, I guess I was in my early 40s and had to find a new way to make a living. Kind of stumbled into corporate America doing marketing and employee communications for massive, huge, multibillion dollar corporations based here in Atlanta, where I live. And I did that for a few years and just didn't fit in. You know, newspaper journalists are kind of, we like to think that we're a little bit of rebels, you know, cowboys and can't be tamed by the. On the cubicle farm, you know, I didn't fit in. I didn't like it, I wasn't good at it. So I thought, well, what the hell am I going to do for the rest of my working life? I guess I'll be a freelance writer. What do I want to write about? And one of the things that I focused on was fitness because I've always been fit, I've always gone to the gym, I've always enjoyed athleticism. And I noticed this was around the time I turned 50. I noticed that I was no longer attractive to the fitness industry. It's hard to say to someone much younger, you're a lot younger than I am. But you'll feel this. You will, you will notice when you age out of the primary consumer market, which ends at about, I think it's 18 to 49. And the closest I can come up to, to match it is when you are driving in a car with teenagers and they sing along to the songs on the radio that you have never heard. You have no idea. These are the top 10 records in the country and you don't know who the hell, who the hell's singing or what the song is. And that's because you aged out of the market for pop music. And similarly, I realized that when I was aging out of the market for fitness. So I looked into it, did some research, found that indeed, the fitness industry is notoriously focused, obsessed with young people, which makes no sense to me because the baby boomers still rule the economy in many ways. And story short, I decided to create original marketing content, sort of combining my journalism skills and my corporate communication skills into a new digital platform that I call Prime Fit Content, wherein I sell subscriptions to my content that helps gyms and trainers and other fitness professionals develop distinguish themselves as being capable and interested in training the older, active adult.

Okay, so this is Just so amazing. Right? Because I, I wouldn't say that I have necessarily aged out in terms of. Right. But I definitely feel that shift. Like I feel the shift in the market space and see just by the clients that I work with. Right. That, you know, that it is. It is. You can't deny that it is. It is focused on a younger demographic, which is always confusing to me because it's like, wait, you're telling me that, that nobody, you're telling me that nobody wants to invest in fitness because you're talking to teenagers when instead you need to be talking to your people who. Who are. Have careers. Like, yeah, there's some dissonance here. Right. But I'd love for you to kind of dive into, because I think it's clear that, that we have bias and we have preconceived notions and we have, we have, you know, thoughts around and feelings around like, you know, what is old? What is, you know, interpretations of what those words actually mean. So can you. And you started to dive into it a little bit just when I was talking about it. So I'd love for you to just unpack your perspective for me and for the people listening.

Sure. Happy to. Let me. Before I get into all that, I want to make clear that this is not about being nice. This is not about being positive in the world. This is not about helping little old ladies feel better about themselves. I mean, if you do all that, that's great, but the, the primary motivation, and if this is crass or too vulgar or whatever. Sorry, but the primary motivation should be that this is where the money is. This is a huge economic opportunity for anyone in fitness. And if you're missing out, you're missing out by choice because you're choosing to turn a blind eye to this incredible historic economic opportunity. Okay, so that got that out of the way. The thing about aging, like you said, is it wrong to say I don't want to call people older? I don't mind the world older. It's not insulting. I mind it because it's not clear. And you know, as a communicator, that we need to be clear in our word choice. So I'm 61, you're 42. We're different generations. I could basically be your father. Right. And, and you know, my people who are the age of my parents are still living and active. So a 17 year old might look at you and say, oh, she's an old lady. Well, Arya, you know, I don't know. So the point is the word old, older, whatever, is meaningless. So. So I say for my business and promoting my business, Prime Fit content, that I help gyms and fitness professionals reach more people over 50. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be interested in someone who's 47. You know, that's not what I'm talking about. It's just I like to give that cutoff point because that describes the point in life that we're talking about. Women have gone through menopause or they're about to. Men are noticing that their midsections are getting thicker. Everybody's starting to feel those aches and pains. Maybe you might need to start going on medication or talking to your doctor about a hip replacement, something like this. These common things, right? So our bodies are changing. And in addition to that, we are. We might still be working. A lot of people are still working at 50 and 60, still very ambitious, still very driven. So we can't ignore that. We can't pretend that everybody's retired. But either you're close to retirement or you have retired, or it's on your mind somehow in a way that it wasn't when you were 22. So your kids might have moved out. You might be thinking about the next 30 years of your life in a different way. So you've got these body changes that happen and then your situational changes that are happening in your life as well. So there's a lot going on in life right around 50. And that's why I kind of picked it, I think, because you can. You can put your finger on that. You said I'm 42, but I feel like I'm 26. Everybody does. Everybody. No, seriously, there are studies. There have been studies about this. You ask someone who's older, and it's always someone who's 8 to 12 years older than the person you're asking. So you know, my mother who. Who died a couple of years ago, she was 87. She would refer to Mrs. So and so, you know, that old lady down the street, because Mrs. So and so was 90 or something, right? So to my mother, who was 80, that was the old lady down the street. And that's very common. I'm 61. I kind of feel like 48, 52. Like, I don't think I'm 26 by any means, but 61. Golly. My dad was dead by the time he was 61. And men of his generation didn't live the way that men of my generation live. And it's just a whole different can of worms, isn't it? So it's interesting to say older, aging, retired, golden, silver or worse. Oh, they're so cute. Right? Don't call an older person cute. That's ridiculous.

It's so good. And what I really love that you're talking about is what I'm always telling my, my, my clients work well, which is that we're not what, you know, the traditional ways that we've been taught to niche down. And I'm putting that in quotes for those of you listening. But, you know, is usually through demographics and age and what I love, and I think that's old and outdated because I've never met a mom who is busy, 40, or a mom over 40 who doesn't identify as busy. Like, I'd love to meet her, I would love to meet her. She doesn't exist. Or maybe one that proves the rule. Right, right. The point is, is that when I hear you talk, you're talking about specificity in problems and desired outcomes. Someone who is at whatever age. Right. I'll think of my husband as an example. He's 40, but he is experiencing a lot of problems or you know, and struggles that we're addressing. But the concerns that have come out of his mouth are things like I just feel like I'm 80, trapped in my body. And those are from the experiences he's going through. Right. Like you were talking about midsection growing, what feels like unexpectedly, aches and pains that weren't there, you know, throwing back out, like blood pressure, health marker concerns. There's so many different experiences that people face as they get wiser than you did when you were 12, 19, 22, 13, even in your 30s. But you know, those are just baseline metrics. I feel like it could happen at any age.

Well, the thing about those, those metrics that are so relevant, I think to, to people in the fitness industry, health and well being industries, these is that they're not inevitable. You know, so many people in the situation you just described your husband being in will say, well, I guess I'm just getting old. My back hurts for no reason. Get some old. You know, I can't, I can't, can't beat my brother in law at golf anymore because I'm old. Well, no, no, that's not it. What happens is we stop moving our bodies at a certain point in life generally and we eat crap because we're Americans and that's what we do. And we have this thing called sarcopenia, which you know as well as I do is a natural thing about getting older. It starts in our 30s, we naturally lose muscle mass unless we do something about it. And what's that something? Lifting weights, strength training, resistance training. So all this means that for every man or woman out there who said what your husband is saying, many of them, particularly my generation and older, don't have any idea that they can do something about it, and that exercise is the solution. Because when we were younger, weightlifting was something that only freaks did on TV in the Olympics every four years. It wasn't something you did at every strip mall on the corner. It wasn't something ordinary people did. I think people your age and younger are hip to the idea that exercise has health value beyond just how making you look better or lose weight or have big biceps or whatever it is that you want to feel attractive. So what we have to do in the fitness industry is communicate that. And I don't think we've done it as a society. Maybe we're getting better at it. But that's what I'm trying to do, is tell people, hey, you're not getting older. You just stopped moving. Get off your ass, put down the chips, get to the gym.

Yeah. And I think there's two things here, right? There's two facets that I think is really important for you as a coach. Who's listening is. That is, number one, you have a demographic of people. It's so easy to think, oh, everyone knows this, but you are looking at it through a lens of 1% of your community, that the algorithms are showing you when, just like you said, there is a huge demographic of people, and I would even put my husband in that. Who's 40, who. They are apprehensive about going into the gym. They've never gone into the gym for the first before, but now their doctor has said, listen, you gotta do this. And now they have absolutely no idea where to start. Because in their mind, they're like, I'm gonna become Arnold Schwarzenegger if I touch. Because that's. That's what we were told when we were younger. Or that's like, what was. What's. What was. People thought. My husband thought that, right? He. You. I laughing because he used to tell me all. He tells me all the time. You guys are freaks. You live in the gym and you're a freak.

Yeah, yeah. But the main thing is we don't know. People don't know. I recently. It's been about a year now, but I recently had on my podcast one of my college roommates. Her name is Jill. She's exactly my age. And Jill was. Has become a power lifter in her 60s. She never went to the gym. She was, you know, active enough, but she had a busy career and two kids and a house to keep and, you know, it's about it. She just was living her life, right? So now the kids are gone and career is taking a new phase, and somehow or another, my friend Jill is a powerlifter in her 60s. And when we did the interview for my show, Shameless Plug, it's called optimal aging, if you want to listen to it. She said, you know, Jay, no one told us this when we were young. When we were in school in the 70s and 80s, no one ever said to us, lift weights so you'll have a better life when you're older. I said, yep, that's why I'm in business, because no one told us this. And I think something changed there in the early 80s when fitness become a. Became a more a part of the culture. But what you're talking about with your husband is common still. We don't make that connection between working out in a gym, lifting weights, practicing flexibility, maintaining endurance and physical autonomy and quality of life. As we age, that connection is not made. So the gym owners and trainers who make that connection have a golden opportunity.

They really do. Right. There is just such a huge market for people to help people get confident, but it's in and confident in the gym and with the skill of lifting. But what's interesting is, you know, I think that there's apprehension for coaches. I won't speak. I won't speak for all coaches, but I know for me, when I was first starting out as a trainer, when I, you know, 10 years ago, I had apprehension around, you know, just like I did with pregnant women or postpartum women, is I don't want to break anyone. Like, what are the life changes that are different? I don't want to hurt someone. Right. It felt, at least for me, through my bias lens, it felt for me that there was more at stake for someone who. Who was older than someone who was like 22 or 30 lifting for the first time. Like, for me, there felt less. I felt less, you know, like, precious around it. So I'm curious if you've experienced that or, you know, how you have navigated that for your clients and helping them train and coach people who are, you know, older.

I hear that from. From trainer. No, I hear that from trainers sometimes, but. But it's a very simple solution. Get educated, learn a little bit. You know, what the heck you're gonna. You're gonna say no, don't tell me about a hundred million people in this country that I could be helping. Don't tell me about people who have the time and the money and the loyalty to become my best customers. Don't tell me about people who I can upsell on nutritional supplements and on personal training. I don't want to know about them because it's just so much easier to stick with a 25 year old musclehead who wants to, you know, pay $10 to walk into my gym and throw around weight whenever he wants to. Why should I learn anything? Golly, that's crazy. No, look, do I, do I look like you're going to break me? No, I'm asking you, you're a fitness pro. Would you be afraid to train me?

No, not now, but I would have when I was younger, maybe newer.

Because of what? Because, because you, you would ask my age and I would say, I'm 61, and you would say, oh, no, you're gonna, you're gonna break.

No, I think more is more like the noviceness, right? So like, you know, feeling more like, oh my gosh, like, where do I start?

Like, so here's how you start. Here's where. Yeah, here's where you start. You realize that people are coming to you with different motivations. They're not coming at you to lift the most heavy weight they possibly can so that their pecs stick out and other young boys are impressed with them and other, whoever you're attracted to wants to be attracted to you. That's not a motivation. There's nothing wrong with any of that. You know, if you want to, if you want to lift weights to have a hot body, go for it. I don't care what age you are. But most people in their 60s or 70s have a different motivation for coming to see you. They're not coming to max out their reps or their personal best or their, you know, the, the heaviest amount of weight they can lift. They're coming because they want to look better and feel better and move better and have better health and extend their autonomy. They want to play with their grandchildren. They want to be able to travel in their retirement. They want to be able to continue to play golf and play tennis and garden and go ski in the winter or do whatever it is they like to do. I don't care. It doesn't matter what they like to do. You can help them continue to do it. They want to get off medication. They want to have better, better mental focus. There are seven motivations for this. I put it in an ebook called 7 Secrets to Selling Fitness After 50. You can get it on my website and for free. And when you understand what they want from you, that's the, that's the number one thing. Number two is get a little extra training. You know, there are certifications, there are, there's an organization called the Functional Aging Institute, which will give you a functional training certification and help you understand a lot of this through your. With your programming and your approach and learn some substitutions. You know, what are common health issues that people go through at this point in life. Joint replacement is big. So if you might have a client comes to you and says, you know, I don't like to do squats. Cause I had my knee replacement and that's not good for me. Okay, what can I do instead? You, the trainer, need to be able to say, okay, Mrs. Johnson, got it. Instead of squats, you're going to do this. It's really not insurmountable learning how to do this. And then, you know, you focus on functional fitness for a lot of people who are older because that's what they want. When a young person goes into the gym and does a bench press, he wants to bench press so he can do more bench press. I don't care about that. If I'm 75 years old, I carry about bringing in the groceries, turning so I can lift up to the cabinet and put them away, carry my luggage through an airport and lift up and put it in the overhead bin. So you're talking about those multiple planes of movement, right? Which trainers can talk about better than I can. But you know what I'm talking about the side to side, the front to back, the rotational, right. Focusing on lunges and squats and pulling and pushing and the basic things rather than on like the young vanity. So that's my short answer for if you're afraid. I get it, I guess, but then again, I don't because I see people at the gym I go to. I almost said my gym. I don't have a gym, but I've been going to the same gym for 20 years and it's mostly young professionals. But during the daytime between about nine and three, it's full of older people and a lot of them look old. Frankly, there's nothing wrong with saying that. You know, they look, they look like what you're talking about where you think, oh, she has white hair and she's so thin or she's hunched over or whatever. You know, that might make, might give you pause. But they're in There doing it. And the trainers who help them are everything from 25 to 65. So. So it can be done. And it's a great way to pack your gym in the middle of the day.

Yeah. So, you know, with that says, since you were helping create content for these types of gyms, what are some of the messaging components that you see? A lot of gyms make the mistake of creating and missing the mark when trying to connect with this, with this demographic of people in their neighborhood. How. What are the changes that they can be making in their messaging to really find and create a community and a place for this demographic to feel safe in their place in their area?

That. That's a great question because that's, you know, as you know, we got to tell people what you're all about. Otherwise they won't know this. If I build it, they will come. Might have been great in a fantasy movie, but it doesn't have any bearing in reality. Right. You know, I mean, Field of Dreams makes me cry too. Come on. But it doesn't have anything to do with opening a business. So if you open a business, you're in business to solve someone's problem. And you have to let those people know that you're there, that you can solve their problem and that you're qualified to do it and that you're going to be a good experience for them, a good value. You're going to give them the results that they want and the experience that they want.

Wow.

So you need to communicate that. I advocate doing that in three primary platforms. None of them involve spending a lot of money. I don't think that's necessary. And those are social media, of course, for this market. We're talking mainly Facebook. A little bit on Instagram too. Come Instagram's coming up. But still Facebook is far and away the dominant social media platform. So you don't have to. I don't think you have to worry about TikTok or anything that new that comes along. You can. I'm not saying don't do it, but if you want to reach this market, you have to be on Facebook, period. And then you need to update your website with blog material once a week, once every two weeks. You need to have regularly. The keyword is regularly post good, fresh material on your website. And the best way to do that is through a blog. And your website needs to state clearly on the homepage, above the fold, that you are in business to help people who are over 40, over 50, over 60, women after menopause, men after retirement. I don't care. People over 70, whatever it is that you want, make that clear in text and in images that show the person that you want to get. And then the other thing is, probably the most important thing is you need to have a good, constant, steady email newsletter. And I think that's even more important than social media because you control your email newsletter list. You don't control anything on Facebook or Twitter or excuse me, X, whatever It's called, or TikTok or any of those. Those are not yours. Your email newsletter list is yours entirely and you can do whatever you want to with it. And a great thing about it, quote unquote, older people is we read. So not saying we don't watch a video now and then, but we read. Whereas maybe a 20, 20 year old audience isn't going to read as much. So focus on those three channels to get your word out. But then also network in real life. Find, find merchants in your neighborhood who also want to help people in this market. You know, high end hair salons, golf pros, restaurants that have a fancy wine list. Because people in this demographic have money to spend. And if they're going to spend money on a gym membership or personal training or small group personal training or whatever it is you offer, then they're probably also spending 150 bucks to get their hair colored or $100 at a restaurant for a bottle of wine, these other things. So network in real life, don't just hide behind your computer, you know what I mean, and support your community. Get out there, man, show people you're around, sponsor a little league team or a team at the 5K fun run or show up at the jazz festival, whatever it is.

I love that. So what's your opinion on LinkedIn.

For fitness marketing? You know, I think if you're targeting people through a business association, it might be effective, I guess. Or if you want to find people who are at a certain level, you know, you, maybe you've got a program that's designed for older executives who are still really busy and traveling a lot and don't have the time or desire to stop their busy workday and go out of the office and go to a gym and do all of that. You know, there are some, some guys maybe people, excuse me, making a good living doing that, you know, appealing directly to older business people. I guess that you can do that. But I do, I don't think that LinkedIn is really strong for necessarily the localized kind of training that a lot of brick and mortars do. If you're maybe if you're an online trainer, LinkedIn has more applicability for you. What do you think? You, you know, you know more about it than I do.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, what caused me to bring it up was because, you know, you were talking about how the demographic reads. And so LinkedIn is be like forward on like articles like you want to be posting articles. A lot of people are reading there. I'll tell you that. My bias on it was always that why do I want to go to LinkedIn when all those people there are, are looking for jobs. But from what my, from what I understand that is that there's just been a huge shift to that market and I, me personally have not focused on that. But I was curious if you did because. And I've seen a lot of done on there for gyms.

Yeah.

So I was curious your opinion if you found, you know, gyms successful for fitness marketing.

I have not. That doesn't mean it's not happening or that you shouldn't do that if you want to. But for in my experience, the gyms that I know that are successful and that use my material in the best way with the best results are on email newsletters, their website and, and Facebook, slash Instagram. Because that's just where people are and where they tend to go for that kind of thing and where you can put up stuff that isn't career focused. Like if you're going to go on LinkedIn, then say why this is relevant for your career. You know, having a career is still working and still being very ambitious at work is hard. You know, it takes time and dedication and maybe you don't have time to eat right or exercise. And you know, that's a, that's a whole other niche that you could focus on. And I'm sure there's a great way to use LinkedIn to do that. I don't know of any of my customers who have done it with people in their neighborhood, in their area to help grow their gym. But again, doesn't mean it's not happening.

Yeah. So, you know, something I'm also curious about. So I noticed this. I just think this is human nature. Age does not really matter, I think in this. But we, we, we tend to resist change. Right. Our brain is resist change. Right. And so as time passes, I find for myself that you, there is this fine line between navigating like digging my roots in and being stubborn and staying with things that, because that's the way that it was done versus, you know, innovation and Coming with the times, right? I think of things of like, I remember a time before Internet. I remember the time for we had these smartphones. I didn't, I remember when I was in college, my parents were like, you have to have your phone on you. You never have your phone. Where's your phone? Right? Like, the thought of that now is just so absurd, right? So I'm curious, with that context in mind, how are you navigating the innovation of AI? The innovation, like these AI tools that are coming, these, these, you know, new platforms like TikTok or coming over, like, how are you implementing, integrating this innovation into your business and helping your clients with their, with their, you know, grow their marketing and their content messaging.

Okay. So unlike a lot of people in my line of work, I think AI is a great tool. I'm not afraid of it. You know, maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember when something didn't kill me and something else didn't kill me and something else didn't kill me. And, you know, so here we are. One more thing, right? I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a really powerful tool and I try to use it to my advantage. It can save me a lot of time. It can give me some good ideas. I work mostly at home, home mostly alone. So it can be a great way to kind of almost have a collaborator that I used to have all those years in newspapers, you know, I could turn around and there was a room full of really smart, talented, engaged up on everything, people, right, and say, hey, does this make sense? And somebody would come over and read it and say, no, that's crap, do it again. Right? I mean, I don't have that anymore. So AI can be those kinds, can help you with those kinds of things. It can also do a lot of powerful things that I don't know how to do, like find people on LinkedIn who would be ideal customers for you. There are probably programs you can do on chat, GPT or any of them. Find my perfect person and then they can probably do it. I don't know how to do that, but how I'm, how I'm dealing with technology in general is I kind of evaluate everything that comes along and see, well, do I need to know about that or is that just for the kids? Is that just for advertising? Is that something that's going to be gone in six months? I don't jump on everything that comes along. I might check something out if I'm curious about it. And if I can see a business reason for doing it for me, not for everybody. I'm talking about every gym owner or trainer out there, but just for me, is going to help me reach more gym owners who are trying to reach more people who are over 50. If they are. If it is, then. Then I'll learn how to do it. It's not always easy. You know, this is something where I feel a bit of a generational divide. It's not natural. I'm a writer. I. I grew up wanting to be one thing in life, and it was to be a newspaper reporter. And that was how I programmed my brain in high school and college and in my 20s. So now here in my 60s, it doesn't always work like that anyway anymore. It's not 1980 anymore. You know, it's not even 1990 anymore. And so my go to is, is this a good story? How will it read? How can I put this word here and that word there and maybe find a picture to go with it? Right. Because that's what we used to do. So I have to be very. I have to force myself out of that rut. Was that sometimes it's not comfortable. Yeah, it's hard. All the. It's. It's hard sometimes. It's not. Like, I took the podcasting pretty easily, and I think that's because I. I'm good at. At interviewing people, and I'm comfortable talking to strangers and asking them questions and listening to them and helping them feel at ease. That came easily. Something that doesn't come easily to me is reels on Instagram. I've been trying to do this more lately. I've taken a class on how to promote my business, and one of the things they want me to do is do a reel every day. Well, you know, you could probably do a reel in 90 seconds that I'm here taking two hours to do a reel. But I'm getting it. I'm learning it. I'm doing it. It's okay.

I'll show you a trick, Jay. I'll show you some tricks. Okay?

Please do anyone. Call me. Help me. I'm. I'm okay. Boomer. Right here. But the point is that I don't let it stop me, because if I've learned anything in my communications career is that the world keeps on spinning, man, and it only goes forward. It's not coming back because. Because I feel left in the dust or poor, poor beautiful me is things aren't the way they used to or, oh, weren't the 80s grade or yet no one cares. If you want to stay relevant in today's business world, fitness world or whatever, then you got to learn what's going on out there and how it can apply to you. So I think AI is great for some things. It's not going to take care of all your content needs. It cannot replace what you can do for people. It cannot replace what I can do for people. But it can help us save a little time here and there, I think.

Me too. I mean, the tool is only as good as the skill of the one who's using it, in my opinion. So my clients and I, you know, we, I'm building AI tools for my clients.

Sure.

Hey, I put this into the, the chatty G and I'll look at it and I'll be like, oh, we need to. Let me show you how to do. Let me show you how to do it. Right. It's always the user, I think.

Right, but absolutely.

And the skills that you have had as a journalist have transcended through change. I think people, people miss the mark in, in, in understanding the difference between what the principles are of human conversation and communication versus the tools that are going to be used to deliver the message.

Yes. So if, if AI is a tool to help you, here's, here's an example just off the top of my head. Let's say that, that you're a gym owner out there and you want to write something for your newsletter. A short little thing about three reasons why women over 40 need to lift weights. Okay? Go to chat, GPT or whatever AI tool you use and say, I need a 200 word article for a general audience that will tell people why women over 40 should lift weights. Give me three reasons. Make it easy to read. Go. And it'll spit something out and it'll be fine. You can use that. Okay, big deal. But it can't find people over women over 40 whose lives are improved because they have taken on weight training. It can't, you know, help you understand the transformation that their lives have gone through. The emotion of their story, how difficult their situation was before they started doing this. How confusing and overwhelming it was when they started the light bulb moment when they found their guide. You know, who could help them? The gym owner who could introduce them to this new world, recall the senses and the smells and the sights and the specific details of that person's journey, and then tie it all together with why it's relevant to the reader or the listener or the viewer. You know, that's profound emotional storytelling and it can be done in a very short number of words, a short amount of time on video or an audio clip. But to do all of that and then tie it directly to your business and your audience can't do all that. Or maybe it can, but then you'd have to become an expert on AI and you've got a gym to run, so forget it for real.

Or you hire someone who's going to do that. But really for me, just like you, that creative partner, like when you're working alone in your room or in your office by yourself and you're not, you're no longer. I need that like outside team processing. Right. So I can even go to it and be like chatty G. I was asking you about. What was I asking you about yesterday? And then it's like.

Yeah, and I, you know, I have multiple clients and some clients want it this way and some clients want it that way. And, you know, I can say, hey, I was doing that lead magnet for the people who like everything to be very scientific, help me with. We're going back to them now. And the chat will say, okay, I'm back to that one. Ready when you are. You know, you can go back and forth. It's, it's, it's really great, I think for. It's, it's been really great for me and I don't mind admitting that. And I also don't think that that it me. I guess the fear would be okay. Now that everyone has AI, does this mean that gym owners who previously would have paid me money to do their content, are they now going to think they can do it themselves? No, not really. Short answer is no.

I mean, not even close. Most people don't even know how to prompt the chat GBT yet. Right.

So, right.

My, my dad and I. My dad who is now, he's now retired, but he's starting to use Chad. And I was like, oh, dad, you got to do it this way and this way. And he's like, wow. Yeah, it's very interest. Interesting, right? I can usually tell based on, on how people respond versus, you know, who has a growth mindset and who is. Has a fixed mindset mindset. Because I think that the there is like, oh, I'm going to be replaced. I'm not going to be needed. But no, but most people don't even know how to prompt the, the tool.

Right. And if you feel like something's that powerful, that it's going to change everything, then learn to keep up or leave, you know, and that's that's how I was when newspapers changed, came along and killed the newspaper industry, period. And a lot of you might be too young to remember that. And you might say, oh, my mom still gets the newspaper, but she doesn't, you know, I mean, it's not like it used to be. Not like it was for decades and decades and decades in every city in this country. It ended about 15 years ago because the Internet came along. Internet and smartphones came along. So when that happened, I took my skill set and I adapted. And the first time I tried, it was okay. It wasn't great. Now I've adapted again. It's hard. But you know what? I'm still here, and I'm still using my skill set to help people. That's all I ever wanted to do. So bring it, you know? Bring what you got. AI.

You know, my memory is now starting to remember, like, we used to see commercials where the dog would run outside and get the. Get the newspaper and bring the newspaper in. Like, that just doesn't exist anymore. My children would be like, mom, that's so old school. I'll be like, what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's so funny. Pretty soon I'm gonna start hearing my pop ch. My. My pop songs on the oldies channels, if not already.

Yes, it will happen. It will happen, my friend. And. And you know, when it does, it's okay. It's better that it's better than the alternative. You know, I. I really dislike hearing my peers complain about getting older because we're still here, you know, and we've all lost people who didn't want to go, right? And I don't want to go. I'm glad to be here. So I got wrinkles, I got gray hair, whatever. Yeah.

Next. So something. I am curious that I did hear you say that. I'm. I'm. I'm interested if you have resistance around this is that, Jim, is the specificity that in terms of who you serve for gym owners. So I teach my clients to be specific, but it's easier to do that, I think, online than it. Than it might feel like that in. In gyms. Meaning gyms are like. But I'm here. I want to help everyone. Does my. Does my gym have to be only for this demographic? Is that something you teach or how do you. How do you navigate resistance around specificity and niching?

I think that each gym owner needs to decide who it wants to help if you want to be. This idea of I help everyone is nonsense. So get over that. If you meet what. What they. No, seriously, it is. You know it is. Come on. When, when they say that, okay, I think what they really mean is I want to be a general interest gym for the general public. That is not the same as saying I want to be for everyone. Because I'll tell you. Are you for handicapped people, severely handicapped people? No. Okay, Are you for children? Raises a whole different set of liability issues and expertise and consent and all these things. Nope, you're not for children. Then you're not for everybody. Are you for blind people? Are you for the very, very old and frail? Are you for. On the other end of the spectrum? Are you for elite athletes? Can you train Division 1 athletes? No, you can't. Then you're not for everyone, so stop saying that. If what you mean is you want to be a general population, general interest gym, then say that. But that's a specific strategy you're adopting and then that's fine. Figure out who you want to help and why you want to help them. And also remember that you can have multiple avatars. You don't have to devote your entire gym to helping little old ladies. You don't have to have your whole gym devoted to helping 25 year old muscle boys. You can mix and match, you can choose. That's great. A lot of gyms do, you know, they focus on one niche or another and that's wonderful. But you don't have to. And I'll give you an example back to my gym, which is not my gym, it's the gym I've been going to for 25 years here in Atlanta. And it started as a gym primarily for here in the city, in the middle of Atlanta for professional gay men in their 20s and 30s, maybe 40s. Well, you know, in a big city that means really hot, image conscious. How's my body, how's my hair, how's my outfit? Kind of people, right? And it did really well at that. But a couple things happened along the way that made the owner go, hmm, let me think about this one thing. Like I said about that middle of the day, he noticed that from 9 to 3 his gym was empty and his trainers didn't have anything to do. And so he started marketing to the quote, unquote, older people in his neighborhood. And they filled the gym now from in, in those crucial daytime hours. So they've got customers in the daytime that they didn't have before by specifically reaching out to people in the zip codes who were relevant to that. And then a couple of other gyms that were serving the university nearby Went out of business. And when that happened, the owner of this gym went to the owners of those gyms and said, you know, I want to make, I want those people. And they said, oh, they're just college kids. He said, I want them. They'll come in, they'll come in at night. So this gym owner who started thinking, I'll just get all the hot young gay guys and did well, now he's got people in the middle of the daytime from the neighborhood who come in and fill him up. And he's got college kids who come after six or seven when all the yuppies are gone. Genius, right? They'll get them all in there. So is he for everybody? I don't know. Does he need to be? I don't know. He adapted to his community at the time and he's been around for 25 years and going strong.

That's really cool. Does he still have all those demographics in his gym?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's awesome. Yeah, seriously, there's this, there's this guy at the gym who's probably a trainer who's probably 25 years old and, and he. A lot of them, I, I'm picking on one. There are, there are multiple 20 something trainers at this gym who train primarily older people and it's just awesome to see. And then I don't like to go in the evening because it's full of kids, you know, 20 year old bros, you know, in, in pajamas and Crocs. It's like, ah, get out of here. You know, I don't want to be around this. Right. It's doing great.

Gosh, it's so funny. It's so funny. Okay, so Jay, this has been awesome and I definitely want to be very respectful of your time and so sure on it. And we'll definitely make sure that we link up the book and that we link up the website and that we link up the show. So for those of you who are tuning in, want to work with you or, or go deeper with you. What are some of the other best places that I can send them and make sure I link them in the show?

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. My website is prime. Fit content dot com. That's prime. Like the prime of your life. Fit content dot com. You can go there and get my free ebook on the seven secrets of selling fitness after 50. That'll get you on my email list. It's not spammy, I promise. You can check out my podcast which is called Optimal Aging and it's wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube and I'm on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever. And I would love to hear from you. You can email me at j a y primefitcontent.com and yeah, let's talk. We'd love to hear what you got on your mind.

Great. I love it. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

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