The Future of Active Aging with Ken Baldwin | Marketing Muscle Up Podcast

People think that the aging demographic don't have any money to spend. And the truth is that they control 75 to 80% of our GDP. They have money to spend and they will spend it on activities that they believe are worthwhile. The other thing is that probably only 6 to 8% of this demographic will use a gym or they haven't been to a gym. So unless we create a community, an environment, and a vibe For them to be there, they're not going to come to us, and that's where the sticking point is.

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host Richard Ternji, and in today's episode, got a special guest for you. I am talking about healthy aging. I'm talking about a huge population. sector that I believe is a huge trend, a huge trend up, a huge trend to actually think about. And if you want to grow your fitness wellness business, this is a part of the market you just simply don't want to miss out on. The stats are in there, and I'm going to talk to Ken all about stats and how we can get involved in this sector. Because it's a sector that's definitely getting missed out on and it's the future as well. Welcome to the show, Ken Baldwin. Good to have you here.

Thanks for having me today, Richard. Pleasure.

Always great to chat to you, Ken. I think we did a podcast or an interview, I reckon about 10 years ago.

That's about right. Yes. I think you were still doing PT at the time as well.

I was doing, I think I was doing directory back in the day and we were doing video directory. And it's interesting, Ken, when you look at people, You've been in this game for 30 years of industry, fitness industry experience. You're currently the director of Perform Better Australia and the founder of the Healthy Aging Institute, which I want to touch on today as well. In 2019, you were inducted into the very prestigious award, the Fitness Australia OzActives Roll of Honor. And I asked you before what it was for, and you said for outstanding services, but also really talking about this sector. of healthy aging. Um, so I'm excited for today because we are talking about marketing. It's a marketing-focused show, but when I see opportunities in the marketplace, I get really excited because we're all sometimes going, Ken, for all this, you know, fit, fit. We're doing the get the fit fitter, but you've gone down a very, uh, different stream over the last, you know, 20 years, and I'm really interested in why you're so passionate About this, you know, what's the, you know, where do you get this passion from for staying on this course for so long, Ken?

Absolutely. Well, I started before I got into the industry as a physical training instructor in the Defense Force. So my role was assisting broken people, rehabbing and getting them strong and fit to be able to deploy and go on exercises. And water wasn't being used as a medium very well with the physios. And I wanted to explore how to use our bodies better. Fast forward into group fitness and personal training, I transitioned that across. Perform Better is an education and training company where we focus on education and training for the fitness industry. But my transition, I've always been a hands-on person and I'm still on the tools. I still, you know, have about 20, 25 clients and teach about 12 classes a week. But my passion and fire is achieving goals and helping people that are scared to look for help or really need help or have specialized help. And that's where the passion developed. I was getting old. I'm older myself and I'm in this demographic and with lots of injuries from my prior job and experience and also, you know, sore hips, sore knees, not being able to do the things that I was able to. But the majority of my clients are also in this demographic and they're getting older. My mother was a fitness instructor as well for the U3A and hence the connection there and lots of avenues along those lines of how can we do things better? What are my clients looking for? How can we get the best results? And so I made it part of my mission to also create longevity in my own programming and my knowledge to help those as we age, because we're obviously living longer, but we wanna do more. We wanna be stronger. We wanna be healthy. And we can't do that by continually pounding our body and then doing HIIT training all the time and, and not looking at the other side of the coin with the wellness and the focus on inner physiology and physicality.

Well, yeah, we can't keep beating ourselves up and keep getting injured. And you've created— and I've known you in this frame of what you've done, which is your training education provider and the director of Perform Better. Can you take us through what actually Perform Better is and what sort of courses do you that you promote and obviously educate people on? Well,

we're basically a bridging provider. So we provide accredited CEC courses for ongoing experience and training, predominantly practical for industry people. So they say, I need to upskill myself. I'm looking at these things. We've honed that quite a bit to look at specialized training and skills for people that are passionate about functional movement, So they're basically movement-based skills and skills that can transition through the ages. And through my experience of presenting and working with overseas presenters, we've taken their content on board and presented that forward. So we do lots of stuff along those lines. And the Healthy Ageing Institute was born from that, where we specialized in courses For those who are aging, those who wanna move better, those who wanna feel better, wellness coaching, but also specialized areas like Alzheimer's, dementia, general population strokes, and cancer prevention and exercise. So we created a network of resources around those areas so that we can upskill people. And because trainers don't realize How many of their clients have these issues? And you don't know until they come to you. How am I gonna train them and how are they different to everyday training and everyday activities? So it's a little bit of a specialized niche, but it's a niche that is growing so much.

Well, let's talk about the growth, right? Let's talk about the growth. As you said, everybody ages. You wanna age gracefully. We're living longer than we did in the past. People wanna be stronger. I mean, let's talk this, for somebody who doesn't understand or doesn't know what numbers we're talking about here, how big is this trend, Ken? I mean, isn't everybody, isn't it always someone's gonna get older? I mean, or is this a growing trend, Ken, and why?

It is absolutely a growing trend. It's increasing by about 34% a year. Now, the baby boomers are the people that have all the money.

Mm-hmm.

So they will spend money on their needs. So they've got the kids out of the way. They wanna spend time on themselves. They wanna go away and enjoy holidays. They wanna feel better. They wanna move better. So they're looking at wellness as well as fitness. So it's about everyday activities that they can do pain-free and injury-free with movement. And Active aging is, and working with the aging demographic is also in the top 5 trends and has stayed that way for the past 3 years in the fitness industry and is only continuing to grow. So they're clients that are retained. You don't have to chase them because once they're on board, they're on board for life. It's a relationship with these—

Hang on, stop there. Just stop there. Once they're on board, they're on board for life. I wanna know more about this. Why are they on board for life when you're comparing it to You know, someone who's much younger coming in. What's the difference, Ken? What are we talking about here?

Okay. Fitness trends are trends that are transitional. What we mean by that is people come to us for a specific purpose. Those purposes can be to lose weight, to get over an injury, to look better for a wedding, or to get stronger for a competition, or to, you know, to play a competitive sport. So transition into the 50+ age demographic. They're looking at different goals. They're looking at different mindsets where they can focus on how they feel in everyday life, what makes them perform better at work, what makes them sleep better, what makes them have less stress, and so on and so forth. So different goals are identified, but we have the ability to understand that through a wellness and holistic approach. And once they see it's, it's more feel cues and they feel the differences and how it relates to everyday life and they transition to everything that they do. So they continue to come and see us even though they may be doing stuff on their own. Um, they tell their friends about it as well. So it becomes a community and a network where their friends wanna train with you or they want, they want information from you on different styles or stages of life. So you don't have to chase clients, they chase you.

So good quality clients, hey? This is the golden gray. Like, how do we get good quality clients? And you've just hit the nail on the head. This is absolutely outstanding. You've definitely got my attention. So talk about it. Let's say we do have a couple older. I mean, let me talk about that first, Ken. Like older, I mean, what classifies as aging? What classifies as Healthy aging and what's the terminology we're supposed to say, Ken?

Okay. Active aging is the terminology that we use, which has sort of come across instead of baby boomers because that's quite generic American term. So, you know, early 60s born, late 50s. So they're the demographic that we're talking about, but we don't realize how many of our clients are actually in that. Physicality, body changes occur at the age of 50. We start to slow down, our reflexes start to slow down. We have less bone density, we have less muscle growth. Yeah. So we have to look at how we change in doing things. And it's also a positive mindset. So it's that 55 plus, but that can be an athlete, that can be somebody that's been injured as well. So they don't need to be that age, but necessarily want to be able to move better and feel better as they transition into that age.

So we, we, we could have like removing the stigma possibly around somebody who is, I mean, everybody's aging, right? And I love what you've done there, healthy aging. I mean, I mean, you're aging when you're 5 years old, you're aging to 6, right? But essentially what we're talking about is someone who is, um, in an older category and wants to age gracefully and wants to stay active, which I think is a key point. point what you're talking about here. Ken, I want to chime in and sort of do a little advertisement here. If you are watching this podcast, well, before you hear this, you have an event coming up very soon, 31st of May in 2024, and you run these annually. If anybody's listened to this after, I just, it may, you know, podcast, depending on what you listen to, it depends. But if you don't already, you can go to his next one. Go to Ken's next one. Ken, I've just looked at your schedule there. You've got some epic speakers coming. And it's a 1-day event in Brisbane. What brought that on to put an event together? I mean, events are hard things to put together. You'll put an event together and you say, hey, and it is Australia's leading healthy aging summit. How did you put that on and why did you put that on for, Ken?

Okay. So before COVID we as a community and the experience levels that I have with trainers in their specialty fields from overseas, we said, look, there aren't good resources. So it's a little bit different to a fitness event as such, where you go and you use different pieces of equipment and you look at programming that you can take back and implement into your everyday thing. We wanted to create a community where we have resources not just to grow the business, but in marketing, but in wellness and allied health professionals. So we wanna look at, you know, how does breathing affect what we do? What about the research on wearable technology. What about recovery and what are the latest trends in the industry that help us? You know, how do I help somebody that's got cancer to enhance their recovery? And how do I move, feel, and look better as I transition through the ages? So we've got together and thought we want to create this community. 3 years ago, we were successful in starting. COVID shut the doors. So the last 3 years has been a virtual event. has been very, very successful. And we created recordings for the event as well. And it's just grown and grown. And we've tailored each event around the community saying, hey, what do you need? What do you, what do you wanna hear? And who do you wanna hear from? And we've actually brought specialists in from outside the community. So we've got a specialist speaker who is the authority in longevity on the Catalyst program on the ABC. We've got an elite athlete. Guy Leach, the ex-Olympian who's talking about how breathing has affected how he trains, how he implements his everyday life and his journey. So there's some great stuff in there as well. And recovery, you know, what should we be using? Ice baths, heat technique, you know, saunas, infrared technology. I wanna know how I can— we can't stop aging, but we can prolong it by remaining active and getting on board and living our best lives. So that's how it came about.

Yeah, love it. And well done for putting that on. It's gonna be a great event. I know Comms going down there as well. So we're looking forward to that one. It's gonna be a good one. Guys, you can go check it out, healthyagingsummit.com.au. healthyagingsummit.com.au. Now, Ken, if this is, you know, a huge sector in the marketplace, why aren't— why are we still I mean, I don't know if— I don't think this has changed. I don't think I've seen it, but why are we still promoting fitness people to our facilities? Why aren't we seeing more healthy, active promotions going out there, Ken? What do you think we're doing wrong?

Great question. It's a little bit of a misnomer. Number one is that people think that the aging demographic don't have any money to spend. And the truth is that they control 75% to 80% of our GDP. They have money to spend, and they will spend it on activities that they believe are worthwhile. The other thing is that probably only 6 to 8% of this demographic don't— will use a gym, or they haven't been to a gym. So unless we create a community, an environment, and a vibe for them to be there, they're not going to come to us. And that's where the sticking point is. We've created an environment because it's easy because of the equipment and because of our group fitness and our personal training. We focused on fitness, but the community is now starting to turn around and saying, hey, we want to create a community within a community where it's welcoming, where we create an environment of learning, of knowledge, and like a club rather than a fitness facility. And I think that's happening, but we have to create that. We have to make it feel welcoming. And it's not that hard. It really isn't.

Well, I don't think so. If you know your market, you know, I'm really excited for this market, Ken, because with marketing and people deciding what to do, when you said before it's a need, that's really powerful in marketing. We've got needs and we've got wants. And I think when you need something to maintain your healthy active aging, I think that's a really powerful need versus, oh, it'd be nice to get fit or nice, you don't really need it when you're 20, 21, 22. And this is really super powerful. So I love the direction of this and I think this is an area that a lot of people need to understand way more because I just think it's a huge sector that we definitely can play much, much better in. Ken, I got a couple quick questions for you.

Sure.

It's a marketing show, so I'd love to pick your brain. You know, you've been in the game for 30 years. What's your best marketing strategies? But if you're down to your last $100 in your business and you need to get some clients in the door, what would you spend the $100 on?

I would look at previous relationships because that's your cheapest bang for buck as well. I think the problem with most of gyms and some trainers in the industry is they're chasing the dollar rather than chasing the relationship. A dollar is always short-term, but if you can continue to create and nurture a relationship, it's going to go a lot further for a much longer period of time. So I would be reaching out to somebody who I've had success with, who's been part of a community and say, hey, listen, this is what I'm doing. Do you know anybody? I'd like to do this. This is what I'm thinking. How do you think it would go? Because they'll give you honest feedback before you go out as well.

Yeah, I love that. Next question, big one probably. What does marketing mean for your business?

Marketing for my business again means create a community. It's like the movie Build It and They Will Come. It's hard when people don't understand what you're doing, but if you make it real using real people, using Real testimonials and real videos. It's all a visual thing so people can see what you're doing. It's less about telling what you're doing.

Yeah. So seeing what you're doing, not telling what you're doing. I think that's a great explanation. Now, Ken, biggest lesson you've learned that, you know, biggest lesson and Biggest lesson that, yeah, biggest lesson, it could be a mistake or a positive or a negative, biggest lesson you've learned in your business.

Well, that's a hard question.

Big question. I know, Ken, it's a big question.

But it's a scalable question of wants versus needs and comes back to the relationship again. What do I want? But how do I get that from a relationship Rather than how, what, how, how, what do I need? So unless you build a relationship first with like-minded and synergistic people and companies, whether it's just going for coffee, talking to people like yourself, finding out what they're doing and following people and following the community, you can't create a community from that. And I think that's the important thing.

I love that. Wow. That's a big one. It's a big answer too, really connecting with that person instead of going straight for the sale, whatever conversation, whatever it may be. I think that's an excellent piece of advice. Super interesting. So Ken, what do you think the future of aging looks like in Australia? I mean, what is your prediction over the next sort of 10 years? Um, you know, with your direction, your push and your, your events that you have every year, what's your prediction, um, of the, of the active aging, um, space?

Um, I think it is unlimited. Uh, the biggest drawback that we've had is social media, media and our portrayal of an aging person. So when we see things in magazines, we see, um, frail people on walking frames and, you know, very, very old and inactive. But, you know, if we're, we're looking, that's turning around and the government's coming on board. For example, the AusActive CEO is 70 and he says, oh, you know, I don't fit the picture. Um, the politicians are coming on board and they're pushing, uh, longevity. They're assisting trainers through education and recognition and allowing us to create a positive message of getting out there And it's incremental exercise. It's not just about what they do in the gym. The gym helps what they do, but how can we create a positive impact as we move forward? People are wanting these services. We just have to let them know that we're there, and we're there in a way that we can create that relationship. So it is unlimited. Create that relationship, get talking, and you know, connect with community groups would be the biggest thing that I say. Don't look outside the square of, you know, talk to golf clubs because they want to get fit, talk to walking clubs because they want to go on holidays, talk to travel agents because they do group bookings for people who want to, you know, go on hikes and experience everything that they can later in life. And you may give a free talk and create, become the authority in your area on those areas that say, Hey, come and see us and we can do this.

Outstanding. Wow. How powerful. How powerful. I love this conversation, Ken. I want to thank you for that. It's definitely opened up my eyes and ears around this. And I just love this whole need versus want scenario. And when we talk about marketing, we talk about sales, when we talk about we want quality clients, I mean, they're all here, Ken. They're all here. This is the most exciting thing. They're not going anywhere.

And we have a special discount for those that may be interested in joining us at the summit in a couple of weeks. So anybody listening to the podcast, when they go to book, they can put in the code HAS50, H-A-S-50, and they'll receive $50 off their registration straight away. And that includes lunch and networking drinks. So You gotta be there.

Gotta be there. H-A— what's that code again, Ken? H-A—

H-A-S. Healthy Aging Summit 50.

H-A-S 50. We'll put the link there and we'll get that sorted. Guys, come along, find out the way that you can maximize and gain some brand new clients. And if you wanna know more about Ken and the work that he does, and if you can't make it to the summit, go check out He's, he's business there. What's the other best website to get to for your courses, Ken?

performbetter.com.au. And there's an education area there, or just contact us and just say, I'm looking at education in this area. We also do consultations for gyms and so on and so forth. So we can tailor a program to them for CECs and just to increase the knowledge of their trainers.

Love it. Thanks, Ken, and I'll see you at the summit.

Thank you very much. Thanks for today and enjoy the rest of your day.

Awesome. Thank you, guys. If you've enjoyed this episode, you know what? There's like 200 before this. Go check it out on our website, commarketing.com.au. You can check it out and learn totally for free on our podcast. Go check out the website, commarketing.com.au. And if you wanna learn how to become a marketing ninja, Just hit the button and we can get you directly into that process to ensure that your marketing is always seen. Thanks, team. We'll see you next time in the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Bye for now.