Stage (Not Age)

Susan Wilner Golden: Sure. I am currently working at Stanford University. I lead a program for the Distinguished Careers Institute called DCIX, which is a mid-career program for people in their 50s, all the way up into their 80s, to come back to the university for a year and rethink what they might want to do in the new stages of their life.

And I was fortunate enough to do that in 2016. While I was there, I learned about the field of longevity and was amazed by all the research that had gone into it, and saw this – just learned it was an enormous business opportunity. It's a $22 trillion market worldwide, 8.5 trillion in the United States.

I was a former venture capitalist in my career, and I started talking to my VC friends and said, "Why aren't you investing in this space?" And too many of them tell me, "Oh, it's all about senior housing and fall prevention and medication management." I said, "No, this is a burgeoning opportunity and encompasses everything!" And that's what got me excited in this field.

So I now run a program for the Distinguished Careers Institute called DCIX, related to longevity and innovations and other impact initiatives. And I also now teach at the Business School there, the Graduate School of Business, on a new course that I helped to co-develop on the business implications and opportunities of longevity. That all became a very purposeful project – series of projects – and a portfolio of things I do.

I also mentor to the Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator, which is solely focused on developing innovations for the 48 million unpaid caregivers of older adults in the United States, supported by Pivotal Ventures, the Melinda French Gates investment and incubation company. And I am a thought partner with them as well.

All of this relates to the fact that I started my career in public health, I then went into venture capital, and then took a career break, which is something that I advocate for in the multistage life course that people are going to be living with longer lives.

Rachel Salaman: Fascinating! Now, as I said, the subtitle of your book calls people over 60 "the fastest growing, most dynamic market in the world." "Fastest growing" because of demographic shifts, but why "most dynamic"?

Susan Wilner Golden: That's a great question. The key is to stop thinking of all older adults as just one type of person. The traditional stereotype was declining, frail, elderly. Rather, people are living with much greater health into their longer years.

And now that we think about health span as being so much of importance rather than just your lifespan, how long you're living, people living healthier lives. And they can be productive, and are productive, and contributing and being creative.

So it's much more important to think about what stage of life they're in. Are they in their repurposing stage, a new renaissance stage? But not certainly all older adults are in this same stage.

Rachel Salaman: So in your book, Susan, you talk about this intriguing notion of the five-quarter life. Could you describe that and tell us how the different stages fit into it?

Susan Wilner Golden: Sure. Traditionally people thought of life in three stages, and that's what inspired me to think about it a little bit differently.

There was the first stage, where it's your education, second stage is when you're working, and the third stage was retirement. And that is all based on when people only lived, life expectancy, to age 64-65, so that retirement geared to that age group made sense. But it no longer does, if people are living to 100 and well beyond.

So I began to think about how do we expand the way we think about our lives into multiple stages, and I came up with the concept that there are 18 different stages you may go through, and not sequentially. You might be repeating stages, you might be a caregiver in your 20s for your children or in your 30s, but you might be a caregiver again in your 60s and 70s for older parents.

So I mapped this out as a "five-quarter" framework. And it's a little bit of funky math, because it's only four quarters, as we know, but there's this extra quarter that we don't know what it's going to look like.

So the first quarter I think about is your starting/launching time, where you're growing and you're experimenting in your early years of education.

And then your second quarter (and these are not tied to age particularly because they can be on a much wider age range): your second quarter, you're developing financial security, you're optimizing your health, and you might be in your parenting stage. You might also be caregiving; you might be relaunching to yet another career stage.

And your third quarter I think about as your renaissance and repurposing stage. You're rethinking what you want to do next with these extra years that you're having, and it might involve caregiving, you might be a "sidepreneur," you might be a continuous learner, you might be experimenting again and repurposing and resetting your life priorities, but again you might be repeating things from earlier quarters; these are not sequential.

And in your fourth quarter you might be making a transition, you might be resetting some life priorities, you might be beginning to think about end-of-life and legacy and end-of-life care and planning, but it can vary. I mean, that could be a broad spectrum of people anywhere from their 70s to their 100s.

Then the fifth quarter I think about (we don't know entirely, these are these extra years) and you could be repurposing and you could be thinking about your legacy, but you might still be a continuous learner. We just don't know what these extra years are going to look like in that fifth quarter, but thinking of it just in three stages I felt was very limiting.

And then the idea of this was that it's a much more expansive timeframe and you have a chance to do things at different stages and ages throughout the life course now.

Rachel Salaman: What are the benefits of reframing demographics like this?

Susan Wilner Golden: So, it diffuses the stereotypes. I mean, you can look at a lot of advertising and marketing towards older adults, it really often portrays people as one type of person, which is frail, somebody's holding their hand, and that may be needed but that's not true for everybody.

When you think about marketing your products and services and how you think about your employees, if you think about them in this broad spectrum of changing stages that they're going through, their needs and wants will change accordingly. So it would be a shame to put everybody into one bucket and think of them in the same way, rather than understanding what stage of life they're in and what do they need.

What do they need as an employee, what do they need from my products and services that my business might be selling? What do we need from society, how do we integrate and value all these older adults who have so much to contribute, and to support their dignity while they're aging?

Rachel Salaman: So how should employers think differently about their employees?

Susan Wilner Golden: There's several things they can do, and they can look to companies that have done this successfully.

First of all, they should commit to the fact that they're going to have a five-generation workforce, and that's brand new, that's just happening now, and that people are going to want to work longer, but they may want to take career breaks, so they should be able to support career breaks.

Companies that have done this well are offering now programs in America called "returnships," where a company that has an employee that took time off for caregiving or for rejuvenation or for a sabbatical [lets them] come back for 16 weeks. It's a paid program that retools them, upskills them, has them be continuous learners, and at the end they're offered a position and the employee or former employee can see if this is a good fit for them at this time.

But it's valuing a person even though they took this career break, and it could be anywhere from 10-15 plus years... people are recognizing that people will need that.

Then companies should be thinking about investing in lifelong learning for all their employees, either setting up funds for them or creating opportunities for lifelong learning, because there is no way your education in your early 20s can last a 60-year career span, and that will become more common.

People may not want to work all 60 years, as I said, because of caregiving breaks or sabbaticals, but they will be working over that period of time.

The other thing companies can begin to recognize is having intergenerational teams, who have been documented through research to be more productive. And they provide greater insights into product design.

Having someone to design with rather than for is the mantra in the field, because you may not know what the needs and wants of an older adult are, but your older employees may well. So that is a new framework: how employers can begin to think about this.

Rachel Salaman: What about the health side of things? Because, yes, health spans are getting longer, as you've said, but you get to the point in your life where you actually have to start working a bit harder on keeping fit and keeping healthy. Should employers have a hand in that, or is it not something they should get involved with?

Susan Wilner Golden: I think supporting healthy aging throughout the lifespan should be critical. Many more employers are providing health-wellness benefits and providing time for that and incentives for that.

Exercise, we know, is the most critical component to healthy aging, and making time for that is important, and many employers are doing great investment in that to support their entire workforce; it may not be just for the older workforce.

Yes, an older adult may take longer to learn something new; that doesn't mean they can't learn it. And there's been a lot of research showing that older adults engage with technology; it just may take them a little bit longer to become digitally literate, which is an important component of healthy aging.

But that's something that can be integrated from an employer providing those opportunities.

Rachel Salaman: In the book you talk about the need for companies to have a longevity strategy, which would be I guess bringing some of these ideas into a kind of formal framework to follow. What should a longevity strategy look like?

Susan Wilner Golden: I think every company is going to need it on multiple levels.

One is, they should be thinking about, as we discussed, their workforce and what they're going to need to support their own longevity and career span. And critical to that will be being a long-life learner, or a lifelong learner as we often say, so education will be critical throughout somebody's career.

Then you also need to recognize that the typical market that most companies are targeting is the 18-34-year-olds, yet the greatest amount of wealth in the United States right now is for people 50 and older.

So from a spending standpoint and from a wealth-accumulation standpoint... so not targeting that customer is a missed opportunity. You may need to target them differently and not by calling them out as older or in any kind of stereotypical way, but what are their wants and needs at that stage of life?

And you may need to alter and modify some of your products, but [so] that it doesn't scream out, "This is something for old people!" but it's something that you can have [as] an intergenerational, multigenerational customer base.

An example being Warby Parker, which is a well-known eyeglass company here in the United States, which targeted just the hipster demographic. Yet they realized older adults need progressives, that they want to have the hipster frame, eyeglass frame, as well. And so they were able to modify their business strategy to include older adults, and have been phenomenally successful.

Wealth-management companies have done this extremely well. One that I've written about is Merrill Lynch, who totally redesigned their products and services that they offer throughout the age spectrum, to recognize that longevity and longer living will be an essential component. And they look at life stages as who their customers are and what are the different stages they're in and what do they need from a wealth-management standpoint.

So employers are thinking about it from their employee standpoint, from their products and services, and from a strategy for their company. That they're going to need to think about how they're going to integrate a five-generation workforce and take advantage of that workforce, would be a successful longevity strategy.

And companies that I've just mentioned have integrated that into their workforce as well.

Rachel Salaman: And what are some first steps for a company that wants to create that longevity strategy? What do you advise?

Susan Wilner Golden: I think it's having representatives of the different generations in their workforce. And looking at understanding what stages they're in and where their needs are, what's not being met, what are their wants as an employee, as a learner, from a career standpoint.

And then looking at their products and services and seeing how they might be missing out on this massive market opportunity to expand, maybe alter some of their products. Like BMW did that for their cars.

They realized that most of the people who buy their cars are 55 and older, but that customer may need certain what we call "stealth features," like slightly bigger dials and font sizes on the dashboard. But they were able to change it without it appearing to be a product now for older people: it was still a successful product, but it might accommodate older people's needs better.

So having that focus on what are the needs of an older adult at different stages will be a critical component of a first step that a company could be taking.

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Rachel Salaman: You've touched a couple of times on the idea that older people don't like to be stereotyped, and that they might be at very different stages in their lives even though they have the same age.

Could you talk a little bit more about the stereotyping of older people and what we need to do differently?

Susan Wilner Golden: It comes in sort of three different ways.

One is language. We tend to call all older people either "senior" or "elderly," and I balk at those terms. I mean, I would reserve them for a very later, later, later stage of life, but not to take everybody over 60 or 65, whatever number you want to choose, and say they're all now senior or elderly.

So we need new vocabulary, and I suggest some in the book. I don't think we've hit upon what the right one is, but lumping everybody into one bucket by terminology I think is a huge disservice to older adults, but also to what you're trying to accomplish.

Another aspect is understanding that people, the way they're portrayed... and again that goes to the visual images, the marketing strategies that are going on.

And the final one is understanding what do they need, so really getting close to what are their needs.

And it might be needs like a new way to find what are the new business or work opportunities for me – transition planning.

People are not thinking about a whole spectrum of needs that people want; they've traditionally bucketed them into senior housing, fall prevention, and medication management. And that is not just the needs of all older adults, that's just a subset.

Rachel Salaman: It is fantastic that people are having longer health spans. But still, many people do lose cognitive function, a little bit of physical function as well perhaps from middle age – not everyone of course – but I've noticed this even in myself a little bit, and in friends and colleagues.

Should people self-report to their companies if they feel themselves moving into a new stage or being a little less able than they used to be?

Susan Wilner Golden: Well, the biggest challenge is trying to figure out what's part of the normal spectrum of aging which everybody is going to experience, and what is the beginning of an illness, such as dementia or Alzheimer's.

Cognitive problems are not limited just to older workers: we know older workers outperform younger peers and retain excellent cognitive function well into their 80s, so this can affect people at different points in their career span.

The key issue is what impacts safety, and that's where it's more relevant, and some simple accommodations can help this. But safety protocols and rapid response times, for example, with air traffic controllers or pilots or surgeons, require more specific steps to be implemented within a company or an organization.

But recognizing that everybody's going to have some spectrum of change over time, and not always limited just to the older worker, is important. So how you handle that... I think it really matters what role that person is in, in your company.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and who should take action: should it be the person themselves recognizing? Say you're a surgeon and you feel like you've lost your dexterity a little bit: should they be the people coming to a boss or the HR department and self-reporting, or should people be looking out for it among their colleagues?

Susan Wilner Golden: I think self-reporting is the right initial approach.

I mean, there are many careers where you have to do annual assessments from a safety standpoint, and that's reasonable because you don't want to endanger somebody else's life when you may not be cognizant.

And anybody who's been a caregiver for a parent has gone through the arduous process of telling your parent, "You really shouldn't be driving any longer," and that is a safety issue, safety for themselves and for other people, but that is a stage of life people will get in.

How it is in a work setting: I think people, professionals, have that integrity to self-report if they believe something is happening, and for jobs that are more critical from a safety standpoint, yes, it's reasonable that there would be professional standards that need to be met.

But it doesn't mean that everybody's in that category all at the same time, and that is really the shift that needs to happen within companies: it's how they view people in their workforce that will be five-generation.

Rachel Salaman: And if people become less able to do their jobs but maybe don't recognize or don't want to recognize that, is that something that companies should address through the HR function?

Susan Wilner Golden: Well, they could be doing something else. They may not be able to do exactly what they were doing that required certain speeds, skills or dexterity.

In manufacturing, I know many companies have changed equipment so that it's easier for an older adult to work.

So repurposing somebody in a way is critical for a company to keep the value of that older worker, which is often wisdom, institutional memory. So they may not fit optimally to their current position, but they may fit optimally to another position, and repurposing I think is a very important stage older adults will be going through with enthusiasm.

Rachel Salaman: It sounds like there needs to be an open conversation about it, and that's crucial for having any of this work, as you describe it.

Susan Wilner Golden: Yes, absolutely, and people understanding that it's not the end, it's just the beginning of something else, is the way I think about all these new chapters and stages that people will be going through.

Rachel Salaman: Yes. A lot of your book is about the market opportunities that longevity presents. Could you outline what some of these are – that we may not have thought of?

Susan Wilner Golden: Yes. So it's almost every consumer-facing product you can think of, but it's also all the needs and changes that might be made to accommodate longer lives.

And a particular one is home: home modifications are a huge need, because most people want to continue to live in their own home or in a different home that provides more of the accessibility, so that's a gigantic area to help people thrive and age in their own home.

Another is housing alternatives: not everybody wants to stay in their own home, perhaps it's too big or it's too isolated. A new trend in the United States, and I'm thinking in Europe as well, is intergenerational housing and co-housing.

I think we're going to see a lot more of this, where there's an exchange. An older adult might have extra rooms and a younger person may not be able to afford a full house, and they're sort of trading services, so to speak, all to support aging in place.

The whole financial services industry is rethinking longevity, thinking about their younger customers as well as their older customers, but also helping people plan for career breaks, continuous learning.

In the United States, prevention of fraud and financial elder abuse continues to be a huge need. It's a public health epidemic.

We're also seeing a lot of services being transferred to the home – healthcare at home and remote care – brought on by [the] telehealth explosion during the pandemic. We're going to see a lot more of that happening.

Caregiving: there are, at least in the United States, 48 million unpaid caregivers, and they need products and services to help them navigate the system in the United States and to help support them.

Then a whole burgeoning area, as I've been mentioning, about repurposing and reducing social isolation, and creating more intergenerational activities. We're involved in a lot of intergenerational mentoring, and that is a fabulous opportunity both for younger and older: we both learn from each other.

Then people getting more out of entertainment, travel... They're not targeting enough of the older adults' needs who might be in a multigeneration travel group.

And then something as simple as fashion and accessories. People have not thought enough about what people might want. Let's say they're an 80-year-old bike rider, but maybe the current types of bike clothing [aren't] as accessible for them in terms of accessing a pocket.

I have one friend who's in his 70s and he says, "If only they could have moved that pocket so I wouldn't have to lean all the way back and aggravate my rotator cuff." Those are the kinds of things that, if you're thinking about an older adult who's active, you might want to design for that person and with that person.

Rachel Salaman: Which of these opportunities do you find the most exciting, and why?

Susan Wilner Golden: I think anything around helping people to find their purpose and their life-stage priorities as they get older would be hugely beneficial. There are a few platforms and a few companies that are doing that.

I'd love to see more in that, because doing it by yourself is very lonely and very hard. But if you're part of a community or part of a group that is thinking through, "What are the different opportunities I might have?" and then matching people to those opportunities, be [that] at work or volunteering or creating a new company...

That really excites me because it engages people.

I'm also a big believer that digital literacy is not taken seriously enough. There are countries in Europe that offer free digital literacy every year to every person over 50, Denmark being an example, and that's so important because you cannot be a successful ager if you're not digitally literate, and this will change all the time.

So if you're not in a company where you're being given that opportunity you need to have... And in the United States it's just beginning.

Google.org is just beginning an initiative in conjunction with the Older Adult Technology Services [OATS], AARP, to make sure everybody has access to digital literacy, which will enable you to order your food and transportation and your medical care, and on and on and on.

I think that's like a missed opportunity again where people could engage older and younger, to make sure people are digitally literate at all times.

So those are just two, and then I think anything related to wellness and fitness will help people age successfully.

Rachel Salaman: So from your observation, how well are these market opportunities recognized and explored at the moment, and what do you think can be done to encourage more of it?

Susan Wilner Golden: So, we see this happening slowly. There's still relatively low investment from a venture capital standpoint in the United States; it's just beginning to pick up. There's a couple of new funds that are dedicated to older adults, Prime Time Partners being one, so we're seeing that happen, but not enough.

So people who truly understand what are the needs of older adults and how they vary over time, and that they think about it as an ageless market, not defined by age... So that can help.

Education, that was my goal in terms of the book, is to give people a flavor of where the opportunities are; it's sort of a guide.

We're teaching a course now about this at the Business School at Stanford. That's very exciting, getting young entrepreneurs to be thinking about this, and that when they go into their companies this will be part of their framework.

I think as early as high school, students should be learning about longer lives and how they should think about their education and careers and work spans, to integrate that.

Rachel Salaman: Well we've focused a lot on opportunities; what about the challenges presented by the aging populations around the world? What do we need to address urgently?

Susan Wilner Golden: Most people don't have enough money to live longer lives, they don't have enough savings, they don't have enough support. Often they're living far away from their families, but that is an urgent need.

We are seeing many, many older adults live in poverty if they didn't have some of the social safety nets that are in place, and those are always at risk.

So that is something that I worry about: how are we going to be able to support all older adults to be able to age successfully and with dignity? And that will take policy and government leadership in every country to support that.

Those countries that have proactive plans are going to do better because they're thinking about this right now and they're integrating it. In the United States we see some of this happening on state levels and in cities, developing healthy aging coalitions and plans, often in partnership with business, and that's very encouraging.

So we're going to need public/private partnerships to sustain this.

Rachel Salaman: Well we've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. What for you are the key takeaways for listeners of all ages and stages?

Susan Wilner Golden: So, first, to embrace longevity as an opportunity and not as a looming crisis, as it's often characterized.

And embrace a multigenerational workforce and embrace a multi-stage life course for yourself, for your employees, and for your products and services in your own company.

And encourage people to take career breaks, and support that. Nobody should work [a] 60-year career span, but enjoy the different stages of your life so that it's not all pushed together in the first 20-30 years.

And commit to being a lifelong learner for yourself and for your employees: that would be a critical tool to enable you to age well over time.

Then the final [takeaway], which I think is the secret sauce here, is engaging intergenerational opportunities.

There is nothing more rewarding for me than meeting a young entrepreneur who's got a new idea, and they want to change the world. And I learn as much from the students and entrepreneurs I meet over time as they ever can learn from me. So that to me is the secret sauce.

We cannot be an age-segregated society, but [to] integrate more I think would be wonderfully powerful going forward.

Rachel Salaman: Susan Golden, thanks very much for joining us today.

Susan Wilner Golden: It's been my pleasure, thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Susan's book again is "Stage (Not Age): How to Understand and Serve People Over 60, the Fastest Growing, Most Dynamic Market in the World."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.