Channel Mastery - Ep.187: Bradley Schurman, Founder of Super Age

Super Age

Age, futurism, Business landscape, new book, kiba and more

featuring

The Super Age™ was founded Bradley Schurman - a demographic futurist and opinion maker on all things dealing with the business of longevity. Schurman is also the author of The Super Age: Decoding our Demographic Destiny, as well as the co-founder and president of KIBA - an inclusive design firm dedicated to improving the built environment, with a focus on housing, hospitality, and the workplace.

Prior to launching his entrepreneurial journey, Schurman worked for AARP where he led global partnerships. He’s responsible for the groundbreaking AARP Aging Readiness and Competitiveness Report, as well as for developing AARP’s relationships with the Asian Development Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Economic Forum.

Bradley is a social connector that has built his reputation by helping leading organizations harness the economic and social opportunities of our increasingly older and generationally diverse populations. He speaks regularly at in-person events, and his insights regularly inform media, national leaders, and corporate executives in the U.S. and around the world.

show highlights

We are elated to have Bradley Schurman on to discuss the shift in perception of what it means to be “old,” how industries are changing their approach to attracting different age groups, the way Bradley and The Super Age approach this ever-changing climate, and more. It is clear that the definition of what it means to be “old” is changing. As a medicine, healthier lifestyles, and technology continue to advance, companies will need to adjust internally and externally.

Historically, outdoor-focused businesses targeted younger audiences, but times are changing. More so now than ever, older generations are getting outside and participating in outdoor recreation. Within the next 10 years, we could see one out of five outdoor participants in the over 65 age group, as stated by Bradley. These companies who once focused so heavily on younger audiences will need to adapt to the new marketplace.

It is imperative that businesses begin to take a look at how they perceive and approach older people. How exactly does Bradley think these businesses should tackle that problem? How can companies take advantage of these older generations who are eager to enter the outdoor workforce? Join us to hear Bradley answer these questions and discuss much more in this informational episode.

Kristin Carpenter: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Channel Mastery podcast. I have a very special guest here with me today. I'm very excited to introduce Bradley Schurman to you, who is the author of The Super Age: Decoding Our Demographic Destiny. Welcome to the show, Bradley. It is awesome to host you here today.
Bradley Schurman: And it is awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kristin: Well, I am just delighted about your published book that came out in 2022. I learned about it from Tim Parr, from the episode we did on CADDIS Eyewear, which was a fantastic interview. He told me about your amazing book and I would love for you to tell us about your book, tell us about the business that's growing up around it. And let's get into a really meaningful conversation today that will really inspire our audience here to look up and out and just embrace this super trend that we are looking at together.
Bradley: Sure. Well, I appreciate that very kind intro. Tim is awesome. I mean, that's a guy that's just knocked down the door and is blowing up the entire perception of what later life means, but also what the marketplace of goods can be, the real opportunity that exists here. And probably the single greatest thing that people have to understand about the Super Age is that all of their perceived understanding of our population is wrong. We are in a period right now in humanity where we have incredible drops in fertility. We're having fewer babies year-on-year. And at the same time, we've had this radically extension of life, meaning that we're living longer than ever before.
So just in the past 100 years, and it may seem like a long time, but it's very short against the backdrop of history, we've extended human life by nearly double. And that is a really crazy thing that's happened. And during that period, we kept all of this unnecessary baggage of what it meant to be old and kind of said, "Well, it's 65, starting around 50, maybe 60, definitely 65, someone's old. And we need to move them out to pasture. They're redundant. They can't live a life like we live because they're othered, they're retirees. They should go quietly into the night.”
But at the same time, we're extending life. We're extending healthy years too. So no matter where you look in the world, a 65-year-old today doesn't look like a 65-year-old did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and more than anything else because we have such great science and technology and innovation, we track the health of people now. So we know that it a 65-year-old person today, a 75-year-old, an 85-year-old, a 95-year-old, a 100+ person is healthier physically, cognitively, and mentally than they were just a generation ago. So everything you think about old is wrong.
Kristin: That's super interesting and a great place to start, because I've grown up in the active outdoor recreation and also journalism. And as we look to be remarkable to our audiences and our consumers, we have a bit of a training and a lens that we have been, I'd say brought up to look through and we've learned a ton, I think, through COVID and all of the change that's happened through the past two years. But ultimately there's some hard wiring that goes into how we find new consumers, how we nurture these consumers, how we're building products for them, and then ultimately our workforce.
That's another place I'd love to get into with you here today. How many brand meetings have you sat in Brad where it's like, "Okay, who is your demographic?" And then, "Who's your aspirational demographic? Let's put together the 3.0 for this brand." I've done this so many times over the past 30 years of my career. And ultimately what I'm hearing you say and what you've written a fantastic book about is a lot of that needs to be turned on its head, because there's huge opportunity for people that I think we were trying to position ourselves away from frankly. And in actuality, we should be leaning in instead.
Bradley: Oh, no question about that. The Super Age, which is this novel period for humanity is actually a population designation. So it means that one out of five people will be at over the age of 65, at least one out of five people. So this country, the United States, can expect to enter this period by the end of this decade. So it's not like this is some far flung futurism. And when you speak about these outdoorsy types, this focus on people who are really into sport, well, five of the first Super Age states already exist and they're huge on outdoor sports. Maine, Vermont, Delaware, West Virginia, and Florida, big time into outdoor recreation. And they all have at least one out of five people over the age of 65.
Now in the coming years, we can expect a lot more states to cross over that designation. There'll be many states out west I can tell you that for sure. The places that will remain relatively young though are coastal areas, places that have large metro areas, because those places have remained somewhat resilient to the aging of our society.
Kristin: I literally can name 10 brands, and won't, who are like, "Gosh, if we could just break into the Southern California coastal community. It is so hard to break into that and to build our brand to relate with them because they are the future. We don't want to age out. We don't want our consumers to..." I mean, I've even heard some of the strongest brands in our space worrying about this, but what I'm hearing you say is we actually need to throw that entire false rule book out and instead learn how we can actually invite them into our brands.
Bradley: Yeah. And I would like to make a very specific point here and that is, don't go after old, go after active. This kind of outdated idea that somebody over 65 is not part of your brand is silly. I mean, my parents are both 71-years-old and before the pandemic, they had hiked Machu Picchu and hiked the Arctic Circle. I mean, these are people that are really engaged in their later life, what we would consider kind of classic later life. And I wonder why brands want to other them, why they don't see them as valuable when they spend more on outdoor goods per capita than any other group, they're willing to spend on adventure at incredibly high rates. And although they may have been a bit delayed in the experience economy, they're coming in full force.
And as we wean ourselves off of the pandemic, as we come out of it, this population has not been spending the same way that they had during those two years. So they're going to come out of this looking for things to do, looking for places to put their money. In fact, during the pandemic we saw things like motorboat sales go through the roof because people wanted to put money somewhere. Now that they have that greater freedom of mobility, they're going to be out and about and spending at rates that we haven't seen in this age demographic before.
Kristin: I love that. And before we hit record you said something I thought that was very profound. Everybody has heard COVID was the great accelerator. Can you talk specifically about how the Super Age existed globally, but what happened during the last 24 years that just completely catalyzed it?
Bradley: Well, we are able to make really smart projections on demographics because we count. The government, the business sector does an amazing job of counting people. We know where they are. We know where they live. We have a better sense of what they like, what their aspirations are, what they do in terms of employment. What happened during the pandemic though is that we took a giant syringe of speed and thrusted into the veins of change. And with that change, we're just starting to figure out now what actually happened. But one of the more impressive things that happened is that this group of older consumers that were really kind of nascent in the digital space became active. They became true novel consumers online. And the sales amongst this population went absolutely through the roof.
They adapted to the marketplace. They met the market where it was because going to the mall really wasn't a thing you did. Going to REI wasn't a thing that was normalized when we were locked down. So getting online was a big, big change in behavior, but also just engaging with technologies like this became something that's very normalized today. The fact that we can look at each other thousands of miles away and have a real time conversation is pretty crazy.
I think a lot of people saw too that outside of the pandemic, they were looking for more purpose in their life. It's kind of a reality check when you're faced with death, right? What am I doing? What's my life mean? And I think that a growing number of people are really looking for that purpose and that purpose can be delivered at work, or it could be delivered in play. It could be delivered through a vocation or an activity. I mean, I see it through the lens of my own parents' eyes how they've adapted in this new era. They were globetrotters and now they are 100% outdoors. They snowshoe throughout the winter. They bike in the summer. They motorboat throughout the year. I mean, they are nonstop and they are a golden ticket.
And they're a part of a larger emerging group of people that my company, The Super Age, same name as the book, really zeros in on because companies don't see them. They don't see them even though they know they're there. They know there's great wealth. They know there's great interest in being connected and being part of things. Yet they still spend 500 times more on marketing to millennials than any other group.
So there is a massive disconnect and this disconnect was built in. We've always had a really weird relationship with getting older in our society and this goes all the way back to the Egyptian and the Roman period. So it's nothing new. The difference is that back then the average life expectancy was 35 and today it's nearing 80. So we have to break ourselves off this mold. And there are just going to be fewer younger people. So saying, "Oh, we're focused on the future and it's going to be these kids, these Gen Alphas," that's a bit of folly. You have to focus on building products that are inclusive at the end of the day. And there are a number of good companies that are doing it right here right now and you wouldn't even know it unless I pointed it to you.
Kristin: Well, I have to ask who they are. Point us to them.
Bradley: Well, I mean, I think certainly for your audience, for these executives that are listening today, the first and foremost is Peloton, because people couldn't get out and about like they used to. And Peloton when they launched, even though they've had some hiccups in the marketplace adapting to a pre pandemic, a pandemic, and now a post pandemic world, their target market is 35 to 65. Well, that goes contrary to what everyone is taught on who to focus on, which is 18 to 34. They went above and beyond that. And in fact, their average age actually ticked up during the pandemic. Apple has done an absolutely phenomenal job of tapping into this marketplace. In fact, 65+ men, men over the age of 65, utilize Apple products at a higher rate than any other age group.
Kristin: That's super interesting.
Bradley: Which comes as a surprise, but why is that? Well, it is pretty clear people at a certain age, at a certain stage in their life fall in love with the Apple watch, because the Apple watch, and this is part of this novel group that's emerged. We call them the middle plus or we refer to them as Super Agers sometimes, they're people between kind of your traditional adulthood or middle age and what we would call a very classic and traditional retirement. They exhibit all of these interesting traits of people who are middle aged, but they just happen to be older.
They're as physically fit, cognitively fit, mentally fit as anyone who's in their 30s or 40s. They are very intentional about their health and their wellbeing, again, monitoring it, but also being out there in the outdoors skiing, biking. They are very curious people. They're looking for solutions that will help them be part of the pack, be part of us, solutions that will help them feel normal in spite of decline, be it vision or dexterity or mobility, and they're willing to spend for it. And perhaps what's the most unique is that they're still working many of these people.
So unlike previous generations that retired and went on to a fixed income, this generation, this group of people is not retiring. So they are active earners. And what we know about active earners is they're active consumers. So they're just looking for companies to buy products from right now. And the products that they're looking for are not products built for them. Let's be clear about this. They're looking for products that are built with them in mind.
So Apple thinks about this wellbeing piece, this health maintenance piece, and people who are using the products say, "They get me." And in fact, even Apple's aspirational advertising gets to some of their core concerns about being physically active in an outdoor space. There's this really phenomenal ad called Bob and I encourage anyone who's listening to look it up on YouTube. It's an Apple advertisement called “Bob”. And the “Bob” advertisement opens on a forest, it pans into a forest. And a female robotic voice comes on the line and says, and the white text flashes on the screen, "Bob has suffered a hard fall while biking. He is located in X longitude and Y latitude. Please send help." This message will repeat.
Well, what Apple did so deftly and so subversively is they turned the Life Alerts, "I've fallen and I can't get up," on its head. And they spoke to an older, active, engaged, physically fit consumer who's out there biking in the wilderness, doing mountain biking on a weekend or skiing on the holidays and says, "We got you. Just in case something happens, we got you." Because those fears that we have, because we're taught that old ages decline, even bubble up in our own lives, in our own heads.
Kristin: It's almost like we can't help, but have them do that. We've been conditioned for that. And I think we're surprising ourselves that... I mean, how many people have you talked with who are just like, "Everybody over 50 will say it's so weird that I'm over 50. I literally feel like I wish I had what I have now when I was in a younger body." But our bodies are still really doing great things.
Bradley: You know Debbie Harry, Blondie?
Kristin: The first album I ever bought when I was seven.
Bradley: Oh God. I mean, the queen. Debbie Harry a couple years back she had just turned 70-years-old and she was releasing her sixth or seventh album, I think. And she did an interview on CBS Sunday Morning and they said, "Debbie," because they always ask these terrible questions. "What do you think about getting older?" And she gave the most real answer I've ever heard. She said, "The problem is," that kind of heavy Queensy, Brooklyn accent. "I'm 20-years-old up here," and she points to her head. She goes, "But I'm 70 down here."
So it's the physical appearance that she finds degrading, because people see that first. But in her mind, she is in a different place altogether. She's as creative, as engaged as she's ever been in her lifetime. And I think most us, whether we're in the C-suite or in the admin pool, can say that around middle life, everything we were taught was going to happen didn't. Now of course we'll have some health challenges as we approach or in middle life and maybe as we approach elder hood, but we can get over those. And in fact, middle age, the middle plus years are really our last chance to turn things around if we've been putting them off.
So there's a great opportunity to market to people about the benefits of staying active, because our longevity at the end of the day is entirely malleable. If you smoke too much, you're more likely going to die at an early age. If you drink too much, the same thing, illicit drugs, all of those things. If you don't exercise, of course you're likely to die earlier. But if you turn those things around, you can live healthier for longer periods of time. And that's something most people want at the end of the day.
Kristin: Especially coming through COVID. And I wanted to make sure we touched on the workplace. It is such an important concept for us to touch on here with this, because coming through COVID and looking at the transition out of this pandemic, we have a very different workforce with very much evolving loyalties, the same as our consumer loyalties continue to evolve. And I would love for you to talk about how you're seeing the Super Age navigate the workplace as we've come through COVID.
Bradley: Well, all the workplace trends that happen, this great resignation that we're in right now, really started from somewhere else. They started from what I call the great retirement. We had more retirements during COVID than ever before. And we're still trying to sort through the data to get a very good sense of how that happened. But we can reasonably hypothesize that people were let go because of cost, fear they couldn't keep up with technology, or they chose to step away because of the way the market was performing, or they were concerned with their own health.
The problem is when you have that many people leave the workforce at once, it creates an artificial contraction in the labor market. So that's what really has allowed “The Great Resignation” to occur. And we're right at the precipice of the next phase of this thing, which is the great realignment. Which is how do we get workers and employees back on the same page or do they renegotiate what that page looks like? Because we are so focused on youth and every single one of your HR directors is making this mistake right now I guarantee you, they're looking down. They're looking at new college graduates and they're saying, "Those are going to be the ones that save us. They're going to be the ones that get us through this."
But the reality is older workers are just waiting. They're waiting to find the right opportunities to come back, but we who are in HR tell them things that are coded language within the advertisements like five years of experience, recent college grad, high energy environment, meals provided on campus. Well, all of those things signal people that are going to be nose to the grindstone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They don't signal to somebody who might want to be spending half their time climbing, skiing, biking, that they, in their middle plus years, that this is the place they want to work. Coming out of the pandemic more and more people are going to want flexibility, that's the first thing. The second thing is more and more of us are going to be required because of the reality of our social and healthcare systems to take care of somebody we love at least part-time, if not full-time.
The third thing is because the consumer landscape is changing, it behooves us as businesses to say, "Let's get products and services to this new, emerging, active, engaged, wealthy population." But each time we do that just through the lens of younger people, we get it wrong. That's why Tim Parr is so cool in this space, because Tim Parr is building a team of people that is generationally diverse. They're thinking about what they want in the marketplace. Well, you only have to take a look overseas at the luxury car makers, whether it's Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, they are intentionally building their companies today around generational diversity.
And when you bring in older workers, people that are over the age of 55 or 65 or even 75+, well, all of a sudden empathy starts to come into the workplace. People start to think about the product differently. So a lot of the things that we consider as maybe middle aged and younger to be quite normal in cars these days, push button start, rear view cameras, airbags at literally every corner, those are really designed with older customers in mind, not exclusively younger customers. But when we use them, they work for us too.
So when we push forward into this new era, thinking about inclusivity is really the name of the game. And we can only get to inclusivity if we bring older people into the conversation upfront, those people that are actively hiking Acadia National Park in Maine, or living there full time and going sailing on the weekends. Those are the people that you really want to tap into to lead us into this new era.
Kristin: So I'm imagining that your consultancy helps a lot of different organizations, but most likely brands, connect with their version of this consumer in a way that feels like they have permission to do. Can you share any just snippets of that? I realize that's the secret sauce, but any snippets or any commonalities that you might be able to share with us? Because I mean, I have a small company, 21 employees, and I'm excited to try and go this route.
Bradley: Yeah. I mean, I think that age inclusion in particular is really the way we approach gender or race or sexuality in the workplace. It'll just be commonplace in the very near future. And there's a lot we can learn from those DEI practices, what we did right and what we did wrong, in those transformations of the workplace to really plan for this one. But in this era, it's not just about old people, it's thinking about how to extend working lives, because we simply don't have the same numbers of people coming into the workplace. So like I said I think early on, we've been in seven years of birth rate decline in this country. So Gen Alpha is going to be one of our, as a percentage, smallest generations on record. And there's no sign that's stopping.
And it's not just the U.S. that's like this, let me be abundantly clear. Japan's well ahead of us, nearly one out of three people over the age of 65. Germany, France, Italy are also in the same boat and places you'd never think of too, some developing countries. But taking all that into consideration, it's not just the U.S. landscape that's changing, we have to think about global markets as well. We can't just look at China and say, "Well, there's more free labor there, more cheap labor there. We can build stuff cheaper there." Those days are ending or we're going to have to move those places to other spots.
But when I work with companies, I like to work with them on their HR first. I think that's the easiest place to start. We bring to these companies what we call the business case, and that stands for compete for new talent, compete to keep talent. And that's typically through salaries or novel benefits. Caregiving leave is a big one that's there and it's new, but we've even seen companies implement in a really meaningful way grandparent leave, which is really cool.
Kristin: That is so cool. I've never heard of that.
Bradley: Yeah. And it's a couple companies who've done that now. And I just think it's so badass because it meets people where they are. They're going to have to augment their workforce with technology. That's ongoing, but those critical investments need to be made specifically around communications technologies, because time and time again, that's where the hiccups happen in a five generation workforce. Is that a boomer doesn't talk to a Gen Z the same way that a boomer would talk to Gen X, there's more commonality up the line.
The third thing is that support is going to have to be more and more important. And support often comes through flexibility, giving people the license and the ability to do their job when they can do their job and where they can do their job. Obviously those of us that are in the knowledge sector, it's a lot easier for us. But middle management is really a barrier to this, because middle management as we know it today is really based on keeping people in line.
And the third piece is working to extend working lives. Because again, we're looking at assets right now. Our labor force, our market of labor in this country right now and frankly in most of the developed world, looks a lot less like the pre pandemic years and a lot more like the post World War II years. So pre pandemic we had about a 20% participation rate for 65-year-olds. World War II, 1950, we had a nearly 50% participation rate for 65-year-olds. So we're going to get back to that. In fact, we might blow it up. It might be actually bigger than that, because we're going to need people to keep humming along here.
And this is a bit macroeconomic for I think most people, but more people in the workforce means more people spending money on your products. So making people redundant just because they happen to be an age you don't like is really counterintuitive to your survival.
Kristin: Absolutely. And also I just believe that the same way our markets have worked very, very hard to depict a more diverse consumer across all of their points of entry and also in their workforce, this feels to me like something that has really flown under the radar in outdoor rec for sure.
Bradley: Yeah. And I think from the marketing and communications side, you have to be very careful about treading into lookism in advertisements. And that's why that Apple ad that I mentioned is so subversive, you never see what Bob looks like. Bob could be an 18-year-old kid, or Bob could be an 85-year-old cycling enthusiast. We don't know, but because of that, it gets to core wants and needs of the customer not saying Bob is gray haired, wrinkled, and feeble. And if you see somebody who's white haired on screen, it might suggest that maybe they shouldn't be out there biking, or if you're a 70 or 80-year-old person they're saying, "Well, that's not me." Because we do think of ourselves as younger than we actually are. Our brains trick us into thinking that we're younger 10, 15 years on average.
So don't make the mistake of just throwing an old person on the screen, that's not going to get to it. Be a bit smarter about it. Be a bit more subversive about it. Lean into sometimes even influencers that are younger than the target market if they are performing well with the target market. So you kind of have to look at the outside in. And I mention this because one of the things that we've seen evolve because of social media is the rise of older influencers. They were really blocked by ad agencies for years because, well, who wants to listen to some little lady talk about vodka? Well, it turns out a lot of people do. And a lot of young women do. They want to know how older women are dressing, what their beauty routines are, what they consume. And there has just been this explosion of older influencers and they are really being leveraged by big brands today.
And I'm not joking about the vodka piece. The biggest ones are actually repped by Svedka now, a significant vodka brand in this country. And even one of these ladies now is actually repping for Tillamook Cheese. These are big brands that you wouldn't associate with an older woman, but these companies see that there's advantage to getting to them because younger women like them and the opposite can be true too.
Kristin: I love it. This is exactly what I was hoping it really is forcing us all to look at this in such a different way. And I love how optimistic you are. I mean, I would love for us to close today for you to talk about this opportunity and really the time with which it's manifesting, because this is not something that we can sit down and plan around for next year, in my opinion, it's already here in full force. And I feel like for us to truly align with it in a way that, again, our brand has permission to do, we need to start that now and not wait until we have a strategic planning meeting in August or September.
Bradley: Yeah. You're absolutely right. This is come at us very fast. When I sat down to write this book, by the way, I've spent 25 years in aging and longevity and demographics so this is long term thinking. And when the book deal came through in January of 2020, just before the pandemic really took off, the world looked a lot different. And when the book came out just a couple months ago I thought to myself, "Oh my God, is it going to be relevant, because so much has changed?" And it wasn't just relevant, it was prescient, because it talks about what's actually happening right now.
And there are lots of things that companies can do in this immediate moment to start adapting to the change, but the single greatest thing they can do is consider how they see themselves in this new period. And as CEOs, as heads of marketing or comms divisions, people who are in innovation design, I'd like you to really think about the future self of you. What do you want out of the next 10, 15, 20 years? Because I bet most of you are probably in your mid 40s to maybe mid 50s and in a very short period of time if you don't start to pivot, you're going to be othered just like you've othered other people that are older.
And when I think about the future that I want, I'm looking at the future that I want for myself. I mean, I'm selfish in this at the end of the day, we should all be. And I don't want to be put out to pasture when I hit 65 just because some marketer on Madison Avenue decides that's where I need to be. My money's not going to not going to shut up when I get older. My physical activity will hopefully not decline. I will fight against the grave as much as I can. And I think a good number of people, certainly these middle plusers, these Super Agers are doing that already.
So little things that we can do to amend our ageist ideas in our head, call out your own ageism. You didn't lose your keys because you're old, you've lost your keys your entire life. Those little aches and pains, that's part of a life well lived. Those wrinkles, those are battle scars. Don't think of them as decline, think of them as signs that you've gotten through a really great life.
Kristin: I love that. I literally, absolutely love what you just said. That is just so empowering and I know that it's going to really enable people that they can walk into this and feel like it's for them. And I'm talking about throughout the organization. And one of the other things I'd love to just have you touch on before we wrap up here today is, again, the concept that DEI and inclusion includes this. The generational diversity is such an important part of that. And it obviously includes all walks of life, a lot of different people from different backgrounds, but let's not forget that we also have to consider people who are aging as part of being inclusive.
Bradley: Totally. I mean, I think that when you take a look at businesses that have leaned into diversity in a meaningful way, they've really seen the overall quality of their product improve and they've seen a greater reach in terms of where they can get to in the marketplace. So if we agree with the fundamentals, the fundamentals are older populations are exploding, younger populations are contracting, then you're going to want to get older populations into your workforce if you want to reach them. Again, high net worth. Obviously there are some poor people that are older too. Again, it's not all sunshine and lollipops, but there is a high net worth group of people here that is just everyone's dream.
And if you look at where they're spending now, where they're buying its high quality, luxury type products. They're buying the Porsches, they're buying the Teslas. Just look at the demographic data around it, it will shock you the average age. In fact, two thirds of all new cars in this country are purchased by people over 50. That should put things in perspective for you. And that's not even the luxury car market where the average age of a buyer can push up as high as 70 now.
So think about these things as you move forward. The best way to get them is to bring people into the workplace and be very intentional about how you include them. Don't just bring in and say, "Well, we've done it," which is the mistake companies make all the time. "Look at us. We look like the rest of the country." That is one step to DEI. DEI actually means including people in the conversations around innovation design. There's a great case study of Barbara Baskin who was 90 something when she entered IDEO. And she really informed IDEO's work about older populations, degenerative disease, she was blind, and that kind of thinking is necessary to move us forward.
I can't express just how much opportunity that is there for the taking right now if you do this, but here's the pessimistic side, because I think we need a little reality check in all this today too. If you don't do it, somebody else will. There are going to be dozens of Tim Parrs out there that say, "I can build a better bike. I can build better skis. I can lean into this marketplace in ways that you are not and I'm going to do it." So competition will take over, the market will fix this itself. The opportunity that you as corporate leaders have today is to say, "We have all this capital, we've got this great market position. Let's keep it going." But if you don't, somebody's going to slide right in. It's a tale as old as time.
Kristin: You're so right. Thank you so much. And will you tell us where we can learn more about the Super Age, both your company as well as the book, and also if you have a book tour or anything that we should be keeping our eyes peeled on?
Bradley: Yeah. So you can find me at thesuperage.com. I do speak at events, both corporate and association events in the U.S. and around the world soon as we get back into a somewhat normal life, both also virtual events. In fact I did one with the U.S. Embassy in Slovenia this morning and we'll do one with the U.S. Embassy in Germany next month. But visit me at thesuperage.com. Reach out to bradley@thesuperage.com or find me on social media at Bradley Schurman, S-C-H-U-R-M-A-N, or The Super Age. But I'd love to hear from you. This is a great period to be diving into something new.
Kristin: Oh, it is. And I just literally feel like I couldn't have a more perfect guest here today. And so excited to also make your book available. So I will have all of the links in the show notes here today and on all of our social postings. So thank you so much for joining us. This was absolutely invaluable and so inspiring.
Bradley: Thanks so much for having me.