This episode of the My First Million podcast features guest Steph Smith, who discusses the “Silver Tsunami”—the demographic shift toward an aging population—and the business opportunities and societal impacts that come with it. The conversation covers the implications of increased life expectancy on industries like healthcare, nursing, and assisted living, as well as the potential for new startups to address the needs of this growing demographic.
Topics: Silver Tsunami, aging population, healthcare, nursing, assisted living, startups, entrepreneurship, longevity, demographics, business opportunities
Introduction [00:00]
Sam Parr: All right, we’re live with Steph Smith. Steph Smith, this is your eighth time on the podcast. Is that right?
Steph Smith: I know. It’s wild. Yes.
Sam Parr: You sent me a document in advance, and it had a bunch of stuff, but there was one topic that caught my eye. It’s called the “Silver Tsunami,” which basically just means that we are living way longer than expected. If it’s cool with you, I kind of just want to talk about that topic this entire time because, like, there were so many stats here that kind of shocked me.
Defining the Silver Tsunami [00:37]
Sam Parr: Give me the background. Tell the listeners the background. What’s the Silver Tsunami, and what’s like the one-sentence summary of this entire topic?
Steph Smith: I mean, the simplest summary is just we’re expected to live way, way later, and I think there’s this kind of misconception that we’ve hit some sort of basically plateau in aging, right? So, in the last, I think, several decades, the stat is for every decade, we’ve added two to three years to the average lifespan. Which means that, you know, we are expected to grow older compared to our parents, compared to their parents, etc., etc., right? So, you can just go to—I mean, the simplest way to look at it is if you just go to Our World in Data, life expectancy, you can see around 1900, something fundamentally changes, and we’re just growing way, way older. That has to do with child mortality, but also just, again, extending that maybe like 50-year period. And so what that means is that, you know, you have this cohort of people—you called it the Silver Tsunami—who are just going to be around for a lot longer than maybe people expected. And that impacts tons of things. That impacts, you know, the pensions that people were expecting, it impacts the kind of nursing homes you need, it impacts the kind of healthcare people think about, you know, in that later age. Um, it impacts like a lot of young people who then, you know, at least in theory, have to support those old people. And so this whole, um, Silver Tsunami is a little bit overlooked.
The Changing Landscape of Aging [02:01]
Sam Parr: So, all right, so I want to go through the story. So the story of what has changed and the story of what to expect in the next, uh—well, I guess if you’re listening to this, you’re probably at least 18 years old all the way up to 80 years old. So, for—but let’s just say the average. Let’s just say the average is 25 to 35 years old. If you’re in that demographic, what to expect? And then after that, we’ll go through the different business opportunities or potential issues and other things like that that might exist if all of this comes to fruition.
Steph Smith: Yeah. So maybe let’s start with a really simple stat. Um, I got this from a book called Longevity Imperative that I read recently. Um, and he’s from the UK, so he uses UK data here. But he says, in in the UK in 1965, the most common age of death was the first year. Um, that’s perhaps not surprising. But today, the most common age to die is 87. So that’s a really simple just encapsulation of how things have completely flipped on on their side. But then let’s move on to maybe cohort data. So, I’d like you to guess the chance of a newborn girl in Japan, as of 2020 data, what is their chance of living till 20?
Sam Parr: Close to 100%. 98?
Steph Smith: So 99.6% chance. Now guess the same for living to 40.
Sam Parr: To 40? Uh, 95, 90%?
Steph Smith: 99. And the chance of making it to 60?
Sam Parr: 98? I don’t know. No, no, that’s too high. 95 again.
Steph Smith: 96%. So, if you think about it, a woman in Japan, uh, born in 2020 or as of 2020 data, has a 96% chance of making it to 60. That’s like pretty close to 100%. Obviously, there’s not 100%, but the point is your calculus changes when you, when you fundamentally expect to live to 60.
Personal Planning and Life Expectancy [03:52]
Sam Parr: So, what whenever I think about my life, it’s kind of messed up. So, I actually think that like I’m only going to live to be 75, which means at the age of 35, I’m nearly halfway through my life. But then when I like calculate—so I do this weird thing with my net worth where I edit in these calculators and I’m like, “All right, at this, if I have what I have now, and it grows at 8% a year, that means at the age of 40, I’ll have this, at the age of 50, I’ll have this,” and then I’ll drag it out to like 110. And I’m like, “Holy crap, at the age of 110, I’m going to have this,” and like the number is just like massive, right? And so, in some ways, I assume I’m going to live to be like 110, and in other ways, I assume I’m going to live to be 75, which is actually totally, uh, that range is problematic. What ages do people like you and me, so we, we do a lot of stuff that is good for our health and we have resources, what are we going to live to then?
Steph Smith: Well, I think, yeah, the even just like the average, uh, lifespan in America is longer, longer than 75. But I mean, in theory, it’s going to be a range, but that’s part of the complexity here where, so Sam, you’re also thinking about this from the perspective of like, you’ve sold a company, you have a nest egg, and so you can imagine how that nest egg grows over time. But you imagine the flip side for like the average American who expects to retire at 65. Well, if you’re only expecting to live to 75, then you can probably save up for 10 years of life. But as soon as you’re living to 85, maybe even 95, like then you are, in theory, having to save up for 30 years of life. Um, and the way that, again, like our economics, real estate, all of that isn’t really set up for people living substantially longer. And by the way, the last thing I’ll say there is one thing that I was surprised by in the book is one, so this isn’t surprising, America is falling behind some of the other like G7 nations around longevity. But I thought it was because generally people were dying earlier, um, but it’s actually due to these things called “diseases of despair.” So, just like alcoholism, um, drugs, etc. But if you remove those, Americans are living just as long as, you know, the the comparable nations.
Business Opportunities and Challenges [06:05]
Sam Parr: And so where are the different opportunities you think in with that?
Steph Smith: I mean, there are some companies that have, uh, sprung up already. One of them is called Bonafide or Bonafide, uh, another called Gennev. But basically, like all of the symptoms, the 34 of them that women start to face, like hot flashes, but that’s just an example of where I think even just fundamentally, it’s there are less female entrepreneurs. There are less entrepreneurs over the age of 50, right? Who are starting companies. And so I think it’s a completely overlooked space because once people hit this age, they’re not really trying to start a company, and then all the other people aren’t really aware of how significant this transformation is for all of these women, for literally billions of women around the around the world. And so I feel like it’s just totally overlooked.
The Nursing Industry [10:57]
Sam Parr: You there, there, uh, you know, we use this phrase “one chart businesses” because you just see this chart and it like, you said, “Well, they’re that thing’s obvious, just get into that industry.” You have one here. You say, “In the, uh, in United States, um, the, uh, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that nursing will be the fastest growing occupation between 2020 and 2030, growing in number by 275,000, uh, jobs.” That’s insane. That’s insane. Talk to me about this nursing thing.
Steph Smith: Yeah. Well, I mean, I again, it’s like a pretty clear trend that comes with a bunch of people getting getting older. Like everyone’s talking about AI and that’s great, um, but what about the billions of people around the globe that are, you know, 65 plus that are just going to need physical human support. So nursing’s one area. Also, the the rest of that stat talks about in Japan, the number of nursing homes has risen nearly 50% over the last decade. And Japan is interesting because it’s kind of like this early case study, um, where they’ve hit this Silver Tsunami a little earlier than, uh, a lot of other countries.
Japan’s Aging Population and Housing [12:02]
Sam Parr: Why has Japan hit this first? Like, all these stats are, like, Japanese stuff is always referenced when it comes to getting old. Why Japan?
Steph Smith: I think they just hit the declining birth rate earlier than many other countries. And so, you know, another interesting, you could say an opportunity, maybe just an interesting thing for individuals to explore, but because Japan hit the like Silver Tsunami a little earlier, they have this interesting thing where they’re giving away free houses, or super cheap houses, sometimes free. Um, they’re called Akiyas, A-K-I-Y-A. Um, I was in Japan this summer and we did a walking tour and they took us around and they were showing us these houses and they’re like, “See this house?” and it was like in the middle of Osaka, it was a little run down for sure, um, but they were like, “This, this house is free.” And we were like, “What do you mean? What do you mean?” But because there’s so many of these people who have grown old, unfortunately passed away, and then there’s also some social aspects of the Akiyas where in some cases, not all, um, because Japanese people really care about status, if let’s say they grew up in a poor neighborhood, their parents passed away and then they’ve moved into, you know, a different social strata, um, they don’t want to claim the house because they’re like, “I don’t want to be associated with that neighborhood.” And there’s over, there’s tons of articles on this, over 8 million Akiyas that are being given away by the government, um, or again, sometimes for very cheap.
The “Blue Zones” and Longevity [13:29]
Sam Parr: So, have you heard the, uh, the theory about Osaka and how a lot of people are lying about their age?
Steph Smith: Oh yeah, the Blue Zones and how.
Sam Parr: Yeah, there’s a book called The Blue Zones, and basically, like, I read it 10 years ago or something and I was like, “This is my Bible for like living a long, healthy life.” Turns out, uh, now this is a, I believe a hypothesis. So I don’t know like what the, it’s I’m kind of regurgitating like a headline a little bit. So I would have to like actually research it to to definitively say. But the idea is that someone studied Osaka’s population and they found that too many people claimed to have the same birthday in Osaka to the point where the only way that this could be possibly true is if many of them committed fraud in order to say that they are of a certain age so they can start receiving social security and other like benefits that you get when you hit a certain age. And so it potentially puts a lot of like this idea of we study this particular population for old health or, you know, old people and like looking at like, “Wow, they’re so healthy,” when they’re just liars and they’re actually a lot younger, they’re a lot younger potentially than they’ve said they are.
Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) [28:28]
Sam Parr: By the way, when I just said sounds like a lot, it adds up to roughly 10 minutes a week.
Steph Smith: Wow.
Sam Parr: Like it’s not that hard.
Steph Smith: Well, let me just quickly share this one thing on the CGMs, which is Dexcom, which is one of the companies that manufactures them. I think they have like 40% market share or something in that range. Their new product, Stelo, is the first over-the-counter FDA-approved CGM. This was just as of like last month, um, end of August. And to me, this is really interesting because I think before, I can’t, I don’t know exactly how you got one. I think you needed a prescription, but you could get that if you were overweight or you had diabetes. Most people didn’t seek it out. Um, I’ve been testing one for the last two weeks, and I love it. Like I, I’m obviously not affiliated at all. Um, And by the way, uh, CGM, that stands for continuous glucose monitor, which basically you put this little like quarter-sized, uh, box. You got it on. Mine’s a little dirty from my sweater, but Yeah, you like, you basically inject that into your arm and it measures your blood glucose levels, uh, and so you can just like put your app to it at any given point, right? And it will tell you what your blood glucose monitor is, or your blood glucose levels are.
Steph Smith: Yeah, exactly. So each one lasts around two weeks. I think a lot of people just do it for two to four weeks and they get a lot of data around, you know, like what’s your resting or fasting, uh, glucose level.
The “Wearable Challenge” [30:29]
Sam Parr: So, I’m going to do one of those this year. The, the, it’s called 29029.com. I’m doing one this year. Do you want to do it with me?
Steph Smith: Uh, when is it?
Sam Parr: Uh, he’s sending me the list of, uh, he’s letting me pick one and attend one for free, uh, which is like a big deal. I think it’s like five grand. Um, but they, um, Talk about a business. Yeah, it’s, it’s expensive. It’s really expensive because they give you like a glamping tent setup, like it’s a kind of like a high-end camping thing. I, I could get the price wrong. I think it’s I think it’s thousands of dollars. I, I, I thought it was 5,000, uh, but I could get I could have gotten it wrong. But, uh, he’s sending me the the the schedule and they have them in like Maine and Utah and all these places. Uh, it looks pretty awesome.
Steph Smith: I mean, I’m down. I don’t think I, I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to complete it. So, he told me when he was creating it, you said that the rules are to make, or you said that with a lot of these sports, you want it to be hard. He said, he said you want it, he’s like, “We made it hard enough that only 25% of the participants will be able to finish.”
Steph Smith: Okay. And like, and that’s just something that’s really hard. Yeah, maybe I’m not down. Um, I feel like I really care. So, even in setting my goal for the half marathon, I’m like one of those people where I’m like, “I probably should set a more ambitious goal, but like I really want to hit my goal. I’m going to feel really bad.” What is your goal? It’s not even that, that’s what I mean. It’s, it’s nine-minute mile for for the half.
Sam Parr: I think that’s good. I don’t know. If who cares, though, really?
Steph Smith: I mean, I’m 5’3”, so 5’3” female, so I think What does that have to do with anything?
Steph Smith: Well, I mean, it’s I think it’s just like, you know, it’s my first half. I’m like You’re better if you’re shorter, by the way.
Steph Smith: Are you? Is that true?
Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people, I, so I looked into this, uh, because I was always curious. I believe stride length and height are not necessarily correlated. Oh. So the length of your legs is not entirely—no, you’ll have to look this up to verify that I’m right. But the length of your legs is not necessarily correlated with the strength or the the length of your stride. It’s how much force you’re exerting against the ground. Um, and so you can have similar height or different height people have very similar stride length depending on how much force they put against the ground. Does that make sense?
Steph Smith: It does, but I had no idea. I was use Look at me. I was this whole time I was like, “I’m a No, you’re using that as a bullshit excuse. Yeah, I know.
Sam Parr: No, and and in fact, if you look at some of the fastest marathoners in the world, so if you or even like, uh, the 5K, 10K, uh, a lot of them, particularly, you know, these Ethiopian women are quite short. And I would argue, I bet you if you looked up who won the 5K, 10K marathon this year in the Olympics, I bet you the top 10 finishers of each on average was 5’3”, uh, height. So that’s a bullshit excuse.
Steph Smith: Okay. Okay. I’m I’m done setting that excuse. Well, even if it’s not true, I’m I’m I’m just I’m just kidding.
Sam Parr: But here’s a here’s another thing that I was going to ask you when we were talking about living forever. I think a lot of people who live to be old, I think they’re smaller. So, if you look like there aren’t a lot of old giants. Um, and so what always freaks me out is I’m 6’2”, 205 lbs or so. So, I think I’m maybe the 90th percentile of height. Uh, I get nervous that there aren’t a lot of examples of tall people who live a long time.
Steph Smith: Yeah, but I think like so probably the references you’re thinking of are people who are like 100 plus. I think it’s probably pretty common for people to live into their 90s. Um, Yeah, but Steph, I I’m trying to be I’m trying to get to that 120, 130 range. Come on.
Steph Smith: What’s the oldest of like oldest human who’s lived?
Sam Parr: Probably 120 something.
Steph Smith: So yeah, 122. So like you’re you’re aiming for oldest human to have have ever lived.
Sam Parr: I don’t think that’s going to be crazy uncommon for our generation to have a hand to So you have this stat in there. You say that, um, you said that you are more likely to be a billionaire, of which there are something like 3,000, you’re more likely to be a billionaire than you are to be someone who lives to be 110 or above, of which there’s like 800 or 1,000 or something like that. Yeah. Exactly. Um, but I think that’s going to be way more common. Um, like we’ve had a lot of really smart people on this podcast and they were like, I just and they they they just tell these stories where I’m not smart enough to understand the data, but I talk to smart people and they say things like they don’t think it’s going to be particularly uncommon to have, uh, 110, 115, 120 in the next, uh, 50 or so years.
Steph Smith: Well, there’s actually like, yeah, in the book, they kind of break down that basically the calculus around if you make it to 100, um, there’s a certain percent chance that you make it to 110 versus 120, etc. We don’t know 130 because people haven’t really made it there. But if you just do the same math around like, okay, instead of having a thousand people to make it to 100, if we then have 100,000 people make it to 100 or million people make it to 100, then like you just you take those same percentages and you’re like, “Oh, actually, yeah, then we’re for sure going to have like let’s say instead of one person making it to 120 something, you have let’s say 50, right? Um, and in that case, it’s like, well, then we’re going to get some data on it. Likely, you know, not all of them are just going to drop at one, what is it, 122? Um, some of them are going to make it past that.
Sam Parr: Dude, all and all this bums me out because it makes you realize how short life is. Um, like 100 years is not a long time. It’s not, it’s not a long time. So at at 30 years old, uh, we, you know, you are you’re you’re a good chunk of the way through your life already, even though I feel like a child still. Yeah. Uh, it’s just it’s life is I think I I felt this particularly when I had a baby because I saw how fast she grew where we’re at the stage now where every two weeks, like there’s like a a different brain, like some some like just the other day she woke up and um, she now knows how to high-five or like little small things like, “Oh wow, now she knows how to mimic.” She really can mimic and then I’ll look at photos of her just three months ago and I’m like, “She didn’t even have really any hair.” Uh, or like the idea of like mimicking, that wasn’t even part of the equation. And so you go through this thing of having a kid and you’re like, “That’s nothing.” Like it’s just like this it’s going so fast. 100 years is nothing. Or I do the math and I’m like, at the age of 40, when she’s 40, I’m going to be uh 75, which means if I continue having kids for the next six years, I’m going to be in my 80s uh when they’re in their 30s and 40s. And that just seems insane to me. That seems insane, right?
Steph Smith: By the way, have you seen the smile curve around happiness?
Sam Parr: No.
Steph Smith: How older people just generally tend to be happier. So people tend to be happy early in life and then in mid mid-years, there’s this like they call it the smile curve because like generally they become a little less happy and then that curve goes like up and up and up um as people get older, which is really interesting. Um, I don’t know exactly what to take away from that other than like Well, the takeaway is that you spend your 30s and 40s giving a shit about what other people think, climbing the ladder, um, and you want to flex on others and and then uh but when you’re 10 and 15, you care about that a little bit less. And then at the age of 30 and 40, you sacrifice your values in order to appease other people and to climb up this ladder. And then at the age of 50, 60, 70, you have grandkids and you realize none of that fucking matters. That’s what I that’s what I that’s my assumption. Yeah, yeah. I mean, people can interpret a lot from that. But I agree. I think there’s something around like you learn a lot about what to care about and what not to care about and then you’re happy.
Sam Parr: Steph Smith, thank you very much for doing the pod. We appreciate you.
Steph Smith: Thank you. By the way, can I say something really quick, um, which is just the last time I was on, just a shout out to the listeners. Like we talked about, so the product that I had launched a year ago, Internet Pipes, for like 30 seconds at the end of a an hour plus long podcast. How much revenue did you make off that? Off that, I’m pretty sure it’s hard to tie directly, like, but for sure six figures. Which is crazy. Um, so I just want to shout out to to the folks and all the people who listen, who are in Internet Pipes and all that. Um, so InternetPipes.com, it’s like um, it’s a it kind of started as like a book, but now it’s a community, right?
Steph Smith: It’s a community, we run events that are kind of weird and quirky, weird fruit tastings, we did like electric shuffleboard, uh documentary screening. So it’s cool. Um, we can do a code if Do people pay for the events?
Steph Smith: No, no, no, no. So it’s a one-time thing and then you’re in the community, you get access to the events, the um, we do monthly emails. So again, I’m the one I’m sending is on longevity, last month it was on You basically just took our idea from Trends and you uh did it on your own. You said it, I didn’t say it. Um, but actually the point was around Internet Pipes was meant to be a a little different in the sense of Trends was like, “Here are the trends.” Internet Pipes is meant to be, “Here are the tools so that you can surface your own trends as well.” Like, you know, behind the scenes, how the sausage is made. Dude, this is this is awesome. Uh, you owe me uh a dinner then. Oh, totally. More than more than a dinner. And we can set up in the No, that’s all I’ll take. I’ll accept a dinner. Uh, that’s a fair trade. And if future people want to join, they can um sign up. We can set up a code. Why don’t we just do Sam?
Sam Parr: SAM. I’m on your website right now. Sam is a good code. Uh, it looks like it hasn’t been used. Um, all right, InternetPipes.com, use the code SAM. Steph, we’re giving you all this plugs, man. Congratulations. Thank you. You guys are the best. Um, all right, I’ll talk to you a little bit. All right. See ya.