To commemorate the closing of Women’s Month and to encourage you all to continue the fight for women’s rights, please enjoy this expert from the new edition of my book Gray is the New Green:
Everyone from solopreneurs to large corporations needs to recognize that this market is essential to staying in business in the future, or even in the present. Especially important is that Ageless Women themselves are in a unique position to serve this market just as they are in this market to be served. In other words, gray is the new green!
As author David Wolfe observed, “I believe companies are largely ignoring the largest and richest customer group in history for three reasons. First, stereotypical beliefs about older customers paint them as resistant to change, so why bother. Second, there is widespread uneasiness about how to market to older customers, so let’s spare ourselves the pain of failure. Third, people under 40, who are not in the same mental space as members of the new adult marketplace majority, dominate marketing processes. They relate most comfortably to customers of their own ages or younger.”
Yet, the economy, business, and the workplace are all undergoing glacial change from the status quo, despite a combination of massive upheavals and a constant media focus on the aging Boomer population. Throughout history, chaos and major shifts have always been accompanied by renewed attempts to hold on for dear life to the (false) security of How Things Have Always Been Done. There is an ongoing conflict between the stories of our past and the stories of our future, and the battlefield between them is inevitably our present story.
Knowing full well that the maturing Boomer generation was about to turn aging on its head, in the late 1980s I set out to sound the clarion call of “Gray is the New Green.” For years wherever I showed up I provocatively asked, “Are you leaving money on the table by ignoring the Baby Boomer boom?” I continue to ask this question today.
My message continues to be, “Here’s how to stay in sync with the generation that keeps you in business.” I present to professional and corporate marketers, strategists, and entrepreneurs (experienced and newbies) across many sectors. I attempt to wake up those who have the most to gain or lose in market share and reach if they close their eyes to the 40-plus market potential. I warn them that they best get on board fast, because their ability to monetize going forward will be based on their willingness to serve this enormous force field of new Boomer demand in the workplace, the U.S. marketplace, and around the globe.
I continue to travel the country to present one of my signature talks, “Visionaries Have Wrinkles: Serving the Generation Who Will Change the World…Again” to my fellow futurists, academicians, coaches, consultants, gerontologists, and all manner of professionals from marketers and service-providers to product companies, those in financial services, and from large to small businesses, including solopreneurs.
A small percentage of marketers “get” what is coming, so they are leaping ahead to own segments of this market. Others, studies reveal, may be undervaluing a key demographic and losing a changing game.
Most businesses are still trying to figure out what Baby Boomers want, and Boomers are still trying to figure out what they want. The Gray Tsunami is heading to Madison Avenue and Main Street, USA.
No matter your industry or field, those who recognize the new rules of the game will reap the benefits and gobble up market share. For starters, the new rules are customer-centric, not product-centered, as has been the case for eons.
Let’s get back to the here and now stats that should blow your socks off. Based on a 2021 briefing paper prepared for AARP informed by data from the CDC, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is estimated that the 50-plus market controls 56 cents per dollar via direct spending in the U.S. By 2050, this $7.6 trillion in annual spending is set to increase to nearly $8 trillion! If you snooze, you lose. Any entrepreneur or service professional who ignores the enormous power of the Big Gray already on our threshold might as well kiss her business goodbye. To anyone not paying attention, I must ask, are you sure you want to leave money on the table by ignoring this 40-plus market?
If you are not already serving or planning to serve the 40-plus market, you are not only missing out financially—you are missing out on the chance to align what matters with an audience that is consciously choosing companies that are making a difference as well as a profit.
The immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 Recession can seem like the worst possible time to focus your business on your values, versus working the business, but the opposite is true. Living your values and focusing on what matters in your business is not only what you need; it’s what the world needs—and it’s what the world is willing to pay for.
Businesses that want to tap into this trend must shift their focus from value to values, from the bottom line to the Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, Profit.
Let Ageless Women lead the way into a greater future, not only in business but in all aspects of life.
Who are the Ageless Women that inspire you?
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