Planning for the New Longevity (Michael Clinton)

Michael, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast. So I’d love to know a little bit about your background and then what led you to write the book Roar into the second half of your life before it’s too late. Thanks, Gail. It’s great to be with you and to see you again. Well, I spent about 40 years in the magazine publishing business in New York City. I was the longtime publisher of GQ. Then I was a senior VP, exec VP at Conde Nast. Then I went over to Hearst.

where I was on the team that launched Oprah’s magazine and we launched Food Network and HETV and built out a lot of brands. And I was for the last 10 years, the president and publishing director of the company. And I had a great, wonderful career. As I like to say, I was maxed out. I was ready to sort of think about what’s next. And as I was doing that, what I was reading and listening to and hearing out there in the world at large was,

Are you going to retire? you going to wind down? you got to like, wait a minute, that’s not on my agenda at all. I don’t even like the word retire. It’s a false construct that was created by the government 90 years ago. And, you know, people before that used to work and then they died. mean, they worked until they died. So I said, I’m ready for my next act. And I started to do some homework. And I said, I want to write a book on this

And part of it was really to get something off my chest, quite honestly. But what was interesting is I found, you know, I interviewed 40 people and I found people who were very like -minded. And since then I found many, many, many more people who, like yourself, who have said, you know, I’m far from finished. And the other thing that sort of tied into that was this concept of the new longevity. You know, if you’re 60 and healthy, you’re probably going be 90.

And if you take care of yourself, that’s a whole lifetime of, you know, another 30 years of living. And, you know, at 70, another 20, 30 years of living, you know, et cetera. So we can all accomplish a lot more than you’ll pardon the expression sitting around and or playing golf. Right. So the book, the book was really designed to sort of stimulate that thinking for people in terms

this concept of the new longevity in combination with all the possibilities in the second half of your life. So that’s what took me there. Well, I love it. And thank you for speaking for all of us who are in the more seasoned years of our life. We’ll just say it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what does Roar stand for? So when I conceptualize the book, I wanted it to be, I didn’t want it to be homework.

know, because a lot of people like groan and go, okay, this guy’s gonna lecture with me and so forth. I wanted to be informational, entertaining. I wanted real practical tips and action points that people could follow in their own way in their own life in their own pacing. So we created so roar is an acronym. It stands for how do you start the ours? How do you reimagine and the reimagination process for yourself? The own

The O is owning your numbers, owning your health numbers or financial numbers, your owning your age, owning all the numbers around your life. The A is the action plan and that’s life layering is the core to that. And then the R is the relationships that you have because so much of what you’re gonna do next is gonna be, you’re gonna have to rely on support and your community and your family and your friends to really help you get to where you wanna go.

The book was in four parts and had component parts. And I love the feedback I’ve gotten from people when they say, your book is a blueprint. It really is a nice blueprint for me to follow. And it’s not homework and it’s not, you know, it’s too, you know, high in the sky, if you will. yeah, so that’s the Roar concept. I love it. And I remember you sharing at the retreat when we saw you earlier this year.

that you are getting ready to, I think, run a marathon and you are, again, seasoned. Meaning a few years under the belt, but in a very healthy way. And it’s very obvious that your mentality has not slowed down, even though you have reached this level of maturity and you have just so much to offer. So I really appreciate you being this. I would say just later in this particular area of

that all of us should be concerned about at some point. And probably a lot of people aren’t even thinking about until they hit about 50. But it is a very vital topic that really should be covered because I don’t believe people need to act old, look old, be old at whatever age they are, 60 plus. Yeah, no. I think, thank you. I think I’ve become the accidental role model. That wasn’t my plan, but I’m sort of I’m proudly wearing the moniker.

because what I’ve realized, and I like to make, know, the new longevity movement is really a social movement. It’s really being driven by people who are redefining the second half of life. And I always make the analogy that the women’s movement, you know, in the seventies, when it really changed the role models for women as to who they could be and what they could become and the choices they could make about their lives. Today,

Today’s 25 year old woman looks at so many different kinds of role models that she can choose from and say, you know, I want to launch my own business. I want to be a CEO. I want to be a senator. I want to be on the Supreme Court. know, pick your ambition. What I’m hoping is that people like me and others are creating the role models for not just ourselves, but for for younger people who look at us and say, I didn’t realize you could do that at 60.

I didn’t realize you could start a new career or launch a new business or run a marathon or, you know, pick, pick whatever subject it is. So I think it’s important. You know, there’s this great line, Gail, you can’t be it unless you see it. And, know, right. And think about now, think about so many of the role models that are already there in the celebrity culture. know, Oprah just turned 70. You know, she looks amazing.

You know, if you look at Jennifer Lopez, she’s in her 50s. If you look at Cindy Crawford, she’s about to turn 60. I mean, the redefinition of what 60, 50, 60, 70 looks like is changing before our very eyes. And the behaviors that go with that, possibilities of things. I was just at a graduation ceremony for a friend of mine. She just graduated from veterinary school and she’s 60.

I love it. you know, she said, you know what, I’ll be a veterinarian for 20 plus years. that’s perfectly fine. And another friend of mine is 90 just got remarried. So, you know, it’s all it’s just it’s creating the possibilities of what might be and then figuring out what works for you as an individual. So that’s the exciting part. I think it’s very exciting. And I think as long as we don’t look at it as.

a number that we should stop in the ELEKA stop sign and just look at it is just, okay, we’ve got to make some changes here, but those changes hopefully will be positive things and healthy things for us as we go into our sunset years. So what is the new longevity? So, you know, the new longevity is now a concept that is sort of hitting, I’ll call it the global zeitgeist.

It is this recognition that, you know, let me step back. 90 years ago, the average life expectancy was 62. There were 7 million people that were 65 or over in the United States. Today in the United States, the life expectancy hovers around 80. In Asia, it’s almost 90. In Japan and Korea and so forth. Today in the United States, we

60 million people who are 65 or over, and we’ll have over 80 million in the next 10, 15 years. People are living longer because of medical advancements, because of healthy lifestyles, because people aren’t smoking as much, people are paying attention to nutrition and exercise and fitness and all of that. And it’s created

this gift of extra time, this new longevity that is scrambling everything up that used to be perceived as what you were at 65. And as you know, I’m doing a lot of writing for Esquire and Men’s Health and others. And I wrote a piece called Why 65 is No Longer the Number. Because we’ve been programmed that you’re supposed to stop at 65, right? And I would say,

the new longevity is just the opposite. Rethink that. And you can go onto our website, workforward .com under the Thought Leadership tab and see that story and other stories around the new longevity. I joined the Stanford University Center on Longevity Board. And I think we talked about this in the past. Today’s five -year -old has a 50 % chance to live to be 100. So the 100 -year life is gonna be normalized

Maybe in our lifetime, but certainly in our children or grandchildren’s life, it’s going to be, it’s not going to be a quaint news clip on the local news of Mrs. So -and -so who just turned 100. It’s not a novel idea. It’s going to be more normalized and there are going be more and more people turning 100. So this has huge impact for individuals and cultures and society and business and media.

So it’s part of this, it’s the social movement that we talked about. So yeah, that’s the new longevity. I love that. So what is the outdated archetype? Well, you know, we could do a whole hour on that. You know, what happens in media representation and advertising representation is, you know, moving slow, the images of people who are like moving slowly into the sunset, holding hands, know, petting the cat, you know,

very old fashioned dressing. The problem is a lot of creative is done by people in their 20s. And what happens is they default to stereotype because they’re not 50. And so you need more people. It reminds me of the Mad Men era when you had a bunch of men sitting around the table deciding what women wanted in advertising and with the image of women.

And then that all changed. You need 50 and 60 year olds around the table to say, wait a minute, what you’re what you’re showing is so stereotypical and so wrong and just so bad. so the art, the old archetype, they were all built, you know, when life expectancies were in the 60s. And so the new archetypes are being built by more progressive companies, media brands, et cetera.

And I think you’re going to see that. I’ll go back to the women’s movement, the similar analogy. If you look how women were depicted in advertising in the 50s and 60s, you shudder when you look at it today. It’s going to be the same thing with people over 50. It’s going to be a very new archetype that’s going to be created. Well, thank God for that. No kidding, right? Right. Well, you’re officially one of the

Imagineers that you talk about. What are some of the adventures that you’ve been pursuing besides the going on? Hip fitness quest so so You know, I believe You know, I we use the word refire or rewire in our in the book and you know when I was 64 I went back to school and got a master’s degree

from Columbia University. I was interested in nonprofit philanthropy and all of the topic. And I became a student again, is, you know, lifelong learning is so important. You don’t have to go get a master’s degree, but you have to constantly be learning new things. our neuroplasticity going. And the more complex, the better, because that’s what keeps brain health. You know, when the idea of doing a crossword puzzle is not the answer, that does not stretch your brain.

It’s an old fashioned idea. If you talk to scientists and medical people, know, crossword puzzles are that doesn’t do it. You got to do complex things like study a new language or, you know, take on a new topic that you’re exploring. Or in my case, it was going back to school. So one example, you know, I became an entrepreneur, Gail. I launched a business off of the Roar book and RoarForward .com is an entrepreneurial business with a team of six people. And so I became an entrepreneur.

you know, in a very not not planned in the long term strategy. So there was that. I think you remember the story. I did a nine day hike to the Everest Base Camp and ran the Tencent Hillary Marathon down. So I did that just to show that I could and that I can continue to push my my boundaries physically. And so those are just some examples. I think the the re imagineers.

We are, we talk to them about people who are reinventing, rethinking, and it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as going to Everest by any means. What is it that works for you as an individual and taking a first step in that space is really what it’s about. I love that. Yeah. It’s interesting because I think at this, when we get to the season time, this is the time we’ve, have that wisdom to bring to what we’re doing.

And maybe because we have the wisdom is from looking backwards and realizing we could have connected those dots differently, but we learned a lot from whatever we went through. So that gives us that opportunity to explore new things. And I I started this business at 52. So that was not exactly a young age to start a new business, but it was what I did. And here I am several years later. Great example. Yeah.

So what is your goal? How do you want to be when you grow up? I’m going for 100. I’m going for 100. Listen, think if you pay attention to your health span and you pay attention to your wealth span, then you have great lifespan. another story I wrote for Esquire was called, You’re Going to Live to Be Ninety.

Congratulations. How are you going to pay for it? And I think this notion of having the financial resources to live a nice life, you know, of course, when I give speeches around the world, the country and the world, I always ask people, how many want to to be 100? And I get, you know, a decent amount of hands. And then I say, how many of you would like to live to be 100 if you had your wits about you, your mental and your physical

quality of life, we’re operating at a high level and all the hands go up. Because what we don’t want obviously is to have a sort of back end of life experience. So if you take care of yourself in multiple ways, you can have a very long, healthy lifespan and do a lot of the things that are important to you. And I think that’s the track that I’m on. That’s how I think in terms

the rest of my life. The other good news, which you probably know, the older you get and the healthier you are as you get older, the longer your life expectancy tends to be. some of the signs I’ve read is if you get into your late sixties and you’re healthy, your life expectancy is pushing well into the eighties already. you know, that’s, that’s a really interesting phenomena in terms of the compounding effect of healthy living

you know, doing good things through your mind, body and spirit. so now that I’m sort of a you know, all my my family teases me and says, well, you know, you have to live long because you’re preaching this. you like if you if something happened to you and you like drop dead, that would not be good for your message. I’m like, you’re right. So I’m going for a hundred. OK, I think a hundred is a really good target. That’s a good number. What do you want to do to celebrate your 100th birthday?

that’s a good question. You know, I watched the first 100 year old man cross the finish line of the marathon with the Toronto Marathon, which I had run. I’m not so sure I want to run a marathon at 100. I’ll be honest. But we’ll see. We’ll see. But, you know, there are other physical things. I mean, there’s an amazing woman named Betty Russell who just turned 99. She’s breaking all kinds of records as a master

So I want to be agile and balanced and physically fit in whatever shape that is, is the end of the hundred. So I think for sure, I want to do that. I want to be a lifelong learner. I always want to be learning. I was going to be exploring. I was going to be traveling. I always want to be spending time with my family and friends because community is so important to us as we live longer. So I think there’s an alchemy there.

that can keep us very engaged as we live longer. Well, maybe you’ll be jumping out of an airplane at 100. Could be. I did that when I was 19. I swore I’d never do it again, but I might do it at 100. Well, it might be worth it. Maybe that’ll be the way you go. There you go. Go quickly. Yeah, exactly. How is the new longevity affecting the economy? my God, it’s a huge subject. There are some stats that

You know, today, 35 % of the population in America is over 50. And if it was its own country, the spending power is $8 .3 trillion, would be the third largest country in the world. And in 2030, the first millennials start turning 50. That’s in six years. That’s pretty astounding when you think about millennials turning 50,

And that spending power goes to 13 trillion. And so and all of the wealth in this country, about 70 % of it is held by people over 50 spot stocks, bonds, real estate, all the above. So it is an enormously powerful economic group that oftentimes gets ignored by marketers, which is a big mistake because of just the sheer you touched on it earlier.

You know, we have the people in that group have less. They’re pretty much done with child rearing years. You know, they hopefully have accumulated some money. They’re spending it on themselves. They’re traveling. They’re buying products across all categories. It’s it is a it’s having a huge effect on the economy and will for decades because in the generational transfer of wealth, it’s going to happen over the next 20 years.

the Gen Xers and some millennials who are inheriting the next wave of money, they’re going to move into their 50 plus years as very different kinds of consumers. So you want to tap into that group because overall as a group, going to be a very wealthy group. Obviously, not everyone is going to have that experience because we always have inequities. But overall, the numbers are pretty powerful.

How do you think this new longevity is affecting the world of interior design? Well, the numbers we see, you know, all of the renovations and all of the design expenditures and even the new home buying is all happening in the 50 plus. That’s where the action is. And, you know, I think I shared with you a story of some neighbors who I met recently where he’s 90 and she’s in her 80s and they just built a new house.

in nearby and I said, wow, this is pretty amazing. Tell me why. And they said, well, because we can. And we also wanted a modern house that was very high tech. And, you know, I took a tour, it was beautiful design that hired an architect, they hired a builder, they hired a designer. They spent a lot of money on the highest end product. And, you know, to me, that was just a great example. Oftentimes the thinking has always been, well, I have to go chase

that younger consumer because I might have them as a long, long customer. And that’s good. And of course, you should develop new clients. But I would argue that people over 50 are doing a lot of expenditures in that world. So tap into them because they might renovate in their 50s and renovate again in their 70s and then build a new house when they’re 90. So, yeah, that’s a long.

That could be a long trail of a client retention, you know, as opposed to chasing a 25 year old who has no money. Exactly. And it’s funny that you should say that because my husband and I just in the last six weeks put made a contract. We’re building a house and we are putting everything we want in it. And we’re not going crazy. But as a husband, this is the time

I really want to do the house the way I want to do it. I want new furniture. want draperies. I want all those things. And why save this money? We don’t have kids, so we have the opportunity to really enjoy our lifestyle. And he was all for it. So I love it. Great example. It’s really great. Totally great example of what I’m talking about. think you’re going to see more and more of this in general. I think so too.

How can interior designers capitalize on this? Because since, like you said, if you think about it, you’ve got such an opportunity. If people have 25 or 30 years left, and you’re right, and a lot of people move every seven to 10 years, you’ve got probably three projects, four projects with somebody at the very least. And I know, for example, in my situation, I actually said to the person that worked with us on the selections for the house, I said, let’s go ahead and put blocking in the walls

future grab bars just in case. And it is a one story this time. So we’re moving out of a three story into a one story. And we’re thinking ahead because we know that it only makes sense to do that. We hope we never need that, but just in case it’s gonna be there. But obviously I come from design, so that’s what I’m doing. So how would you direct everybody else that is in the field, but really wants to serve this audience?

Yeah, I think some of the things that you just described for yourself are very practical and make a lot of sense. And of course, those are things to consider just in terms of long term strategy. But I think the headline I would give is don’t treat people like they’re old people. Right. Because, you know, if I’m and I have many, examples of anecdotal examples of friends and so forth, they when they’re doing new design in their home.

whether it’s hard goods, appliances, redoing kitchens, bathrooms, software with materials, et cetera. They want the newest technology, the newest innovation. They might have a sensibility for sustainability. They really want to be learned consumers, and they also have the money to spend. So

treat them as if you would treat anyone that you’re doing business with. Age should not be a filter. I have another couple of friends who we know through our families who are in their 80s and they live in New York. They have an apartment in New York City and they are rebuilding a house in Oaxaca, Mexico. And they’re in their 80s and she’s actually in the design space.

as a designer and of tabletop and flatware and so forth. And they’re doing like exactly the way you described it. They’re doing everything that is top of the line, the newest technology. They’re very tuned in to materials. And so I think don’t make the mistake of using age as a filter when you’re working with a client. And that I think is a way to capitalize in on this being one of the

I think it would be a great idea for some people to be focusing on that particular market and marketing to that. I think there is potential out there. Well, the analogy I would use, I’m writing a story right now. I just did the interview with men’s health for men’s health, the world’s oldest fitness instructor. He is 81, but he only trains people 60 and older. So his niche.

has been to keep people healthy. And it might be something in stretching and balance and weight training. And so take that concept in fitness business and translate that over to the design business for second, third homeowners, new homeowners who are in their 60s or 70s who want to trade up. And I think the other thing that’s happening is people aren’t necessarily

scaling down, they are also scaling sideways and they’re scaling up, then they’re scaling, they might be making choice like you, I don’t want three stories anymore, I’ll go to one story. So I think those are other ways to tap into it. Well, yes, and as a matter of that is exactly what we did. We’re scaling up, we’re going 2200 square feet to 3700 square feet, because we’re ready for some more space and we want

to have that freedom and flexibility within the space that we have. So it’s a different mentality now. And I just, wasn’t sure my husband would be on board with it, but he jumped right on and he said, okay. So what would you tell your younger self at 25, knowing what you know now?

Well, first of all, I didn’t really, you know, when you’re 25 and you look at 60 and 65, it’s like really, it feels really old and it felt really, and the people that were 60 and 65 at that time did live archetype, you know, outdated archetype lives. So I think, you know, and I talked to a lot of young people about this who are 25, who are very anxious and have a lot of anxiety

their career and what are they gonna do and like, know, the pressures from their peers and I’m like, stop, you’re 25, you may live to be 90, you have a longer runway, you do not have to boil the ocean, you know, in the next year or two, the way my generation did. You know, we felt like we had to get on a career path, we had to, you know, find a partner, we had to have children, we had, if we chose to have children, we had to buy a house, we had to do all that before we were

And today, you know, I think there is much more of a long of an elasticity to that in in as well as making choices that you never don’t ever want to get married or you don’t want to have children or you don’t. You know, I’ve got plenty of people in the family, myself included. We have no children and many people in the family who are in their 20s and 30s who making decisions. They don’t want to have children. And, you know, you can make you can.

If you go back 40 years, it was really hard independently to make those kinds of decisions. But now it’s very so I wish I I wish I had had the foresight, but I didn’t have enough wisdom to sort of break through the cultural barriers that were there to say, yeah, you know, I, can do a lot of different things. So I would have probably I wish I had that wisdom. So now I’m trying to impart that wisdom to 25 year olds.

I love that. That’s great. Well, somebody needs to that because I do see a lot of anxiety in the younger people right now. We have a lot of people we serve in our community, some are in their twenties and thirties and you can see the angst on their face. I really feel for them because in the end, you’ve got to really enjoy life along the journey and the journey is meant to be not easy.

But if we take our time and make good decisions based on values, we’re going to be happier. So happy based on money and all of the things that would please other people. need to please ourselves. Exactly right. Well, what are three takeaways you’d like to share with our listeners today? I think the top takeaway around this conversation is release yourself from self -imposed ageism, self -imposed ageism. You know, we get

It’s changing, but we still get so many cultural cues around aging and therefore ageism is embedded in a lot of our culture and society and what we get, the input we get from the world around us. It’s just the opposite in Asia. If you go to Singapore, you go to Japan, once again, there’s a whole different attitude about it. But if you release yourself from self -imposed

The byproduct of that is you don’t get stuck into this thing of, that’s not age appropriate. You get stuck into a vision that I want to be, it’s person appropriate. That in fact, you may want to build a house, you know, a new house in the second half of your life. You may want to do many things that you’re holding yourself back from doing and the barriers are your own. So release yourself from those barriers. And that’s part of the art of your re -imagination.

process. I think the part two of that is reimagination and reinvention is possible at any age. You can do it at 30, 50, 70, 90. You can reimagine your life and your life path at any age. And oftentimes we once again put that barrier in front of us and say, well, I can’t do that because. And then my last takeaway would

you are probably gonna live longer than you think. So are you prepared for that? Are you prepared to, do you have purpose? Do you have a reason to get up in the morning? Are you healthy? Are you watching your numbers? Are you looking at your financial security? Like, you prepared to live a long life? And once again, you know, if you’re healthy, you may live a much longer life than you think. And you often hear these stories of people

saying, I didn’t think I was gonna live this long, or I didn’t think, or I’m afraid the number one concern is people are afraid they’re gonna run out of money. So are you prepared? Are you doing the things that are gonna give you a nice and lovely life as you live longer? And that may mean you and I are from the same bolt of cloth. We wanna work forever and do our respective businesses forever.

You may want to work longer, but doing something that you really love and you’re passionate about to make additional money, et cetera. But be prepared to live a longer life because it’s here. It’s here. I love it. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your book. And I am so glad you’re doing what you’re doing. And I do encourage everyone to read the show notes. Go check out Michael’s website, read his articles and join the join the movement because.

Honestly, it’s huge and I think the opportunities are amazing for all of us. So Michael, it’s pleasure. up for our newsletter. It’s a freebie. Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Michael, and we look forward to seeing you around, hopefully in New York. Gail. Great to see you. Take care.