Merry Christmas at 60: It sure ain’t what it used to be
I’m sitting here with a Pimms and lemonade contemplating my Christmas message to you, our beautiful community, on a drizzly hot Christmas eve afternoon in Brisbane. I’ve decided to tell some home-truths about Starts at 60 and myself today so stay with me. I hope I don’t bore you but we get a lot of questions in our inbox so I thought I’d answer a few about the year gone by, who we are and “why”.
My first of two turkeys is in the oven complete with my homemade stuffing recipe packed with mince, pickles, walnuts and cranberries learned when I lived in the UK as a youngster. I’ve pre-cooked two days of potato salad, rolled dozens of rumballs and chilled some champas in anticipation of the days ahead.
By the time you read this my family will have descended on my home for what will be a rolling series of feasts and squealing pool-jumps over the coming 36 hours. There will be three generations at every meal too – each vying to be heard.
The kids will be heard giggling from the pool, only getting out and dry long enough to eat and wait their obligatory 30 minutes before getting back in. The adults will be heard bragging about their cooking, and telling tasteless jokes.
What will your family be doing?
This is my first Christmas in nearly six years where I won’t be online with you very much personally. I vow this as a present to my own family having lived with a device in my hands almost permanently since I started the Starts at 60 community – even on Christmas Day. You see this is my passion. I love what I do, and it feels like much more than running a business in the baby boomer and older generation. It feels like some kind of crazy calling to build something you, our community really loves.
But this year we’ve turned a corner, becoming much more like a professional business in which I focus on leading into the future as a CEO – a strange thing to say but important as a goal if we want to get bigger and better for you every year in a rapidly changing industry. You see we’re not just a community media company anymore. We’re a professional media company with a huge and beautiful community, a travel company that works to curate specially for that community, and an amazing team who have a real sense of purpose. And we have one big mandate – you have to love what we do for it to be worthwhile.
Starts at 60 has changed a lot since the early days – having built on our early generalist team to a team with a lot more experience in every single area of our operation – from media to technology to travel. It’s frankly amazing to look around our building at the end of this year and see the passion everyone has for bringing over-60s news and travel that they are thrilled to enjoy! It’s also amazing to consider how hard our teams work to make Starts at 60 and Travel at 60 function in a way that many people think “just happens”. I want to help you be a fly on the wall.
Our Media Team
Each day (seven days a week) our media team starts at 5am, and finish well into the evening to bring you the stories relevant to you. They giggle at the reactions you have to the stories as they break and you make them go viral, loving your love of the royals, your health, and real stories from our bloggers. They know what you love, shrieking with delight when a story breaks that they know you will adore and rush it to beat other news outlets to you.
But don’t underestimate them. This is an internationally experienced media team that breaks relevant news, researches exclusives and develops deeper insights into money and health in retirement that you can’t get elsewhere. They’re the best we’ve ever had and make me redundant in the newsroom as they are so incredibly good at what they do.
Our Travel Team
The travel team is now a full-service travel agency that you can call six days a week to buy travel at superb prices. They curate amazing travel deals, create stunning member emailers, and put servicing our community first. They’re extraordinarily well-connected within the industry and just a few months in are getting a hold of amazing exclusive deals that really suit our over-60s community. [Watch out for our Travel at 60 Boxing Day Sale – it’s going to be superb! – sign up here]
Our travel team comes in at 7am to open at 8am for NSW and VIC residents and works through to 6pm Brisbane time, when WA winds down a little. I’m thrilled to say they’ve never been busier. They start their day by calling through the long list of enquiries that come in overnight, talking to each community member about their travel dream, and placing bookings on an enormous variety of cruises, air, rail and tours.
They create packages of the deals you most love to buy, so you can get better pricing. They hustle for “allocations” to be reserved for our community on major cruises that sell out and secure events like Ten Tenors and Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
On days where we have big sales, the phones start ringing at 7.59 as people try to get in on a big cruise or entertainment deal. It’s great to see, and important that you enjoy buying travel from us and trust us with your circumstances, and to help you find your dreams. Whether you’re a solo traveller stretching your budget to go as far as you can, or a regular traveller who wants advice or extravagance – we’re thrilled to be able to help you.
Our Services Team
There’s a whole batch of jobs in our office that have to be done that you cannot see. None are easy, and they often go unnoticed but should be appreciated. You’d be proud of the way our sponsors and advertisers are served and looked after with incredible quality of sponsored content prepared that respects you. I know I am. And, like all employers, it’s important that our accounting, payroll and taxes are all done properly. Hard work – it certainly is. But we’re not complaining.
Our Development Team
You can’t deny the that our new website at startsat60.com is stunning, and much easier to navigate thanks to our software team. And the travel website at travelat60.com is changing for the better. In addition to this, increasingly, this year we’ve fought hard to move the way we deliver our content away from Facebook – which is where many of you found us (and perhaps lost us in the changes this year).
Our best and most popular articles and travel deals are now distributed by email every day [sign up here], with only a selection of our stories making it to Facebook. And our new homepage is the place we really want you to go – many times a day if we can tempt you there! Check it out at startsat60.com.
Make sure you’ve signed up for Starts at 60. Facebook is not our primary channel anymore.
And there’s other team members we need to point to too.
Our Bloggers
We know how important it is to share real peoples’ stories of happiness and challenge in their sixties and beyond. So our team includes a dedicated yet casual group of 400+ Starts at 60 bloggers who write amazing stories from the true voice of 60. We publish three blogs per day, stories that you all love! We’re so grateful to all the bloggers who contribute. [If you’re interested in blogging write to us on [email protected]].
Our Meetups Hosts
Our “Startsat60.club meetups” grew out of the passion of local communities. When the year began we held about 30 events each month. But by this December I am please to report that they have become a massive project with nearly 100 events around the country every month led by amazing volunteer community meetup hosts. From next month we rebadge these “Community and Travel Buddies Meetups” helping over-60s who might be nervous about travelling alone to find someone and build friendship for travelling in larger groups or pairs. [Interested in hosting a meetup? Email us on [email protected]].
Our Advertisers and Sponsors
You’d be mortified how many companies simply don’t want to have you (the older generations) as a customer or even worse, don’t want to promote to you a “better offer” as they might disrupt their very loyal, profitable customers who are over 60 and they don’t want to give a better deal to.
To get to where we are we’ve battled this issue and a millennial-focussed advertising market to attract “sponsors” that really respect you and want you to respect them for their desire to support you (by supporting us). They’re crucial to our ability to do what we do and for their support we are very grateful. Many thanks must go to companies like Westpac, St.George, Industry Superfunds, Harlequin, Anglicare, Souvenaid and many more. We wouldn’t be here without them. [Want to advertise? Email us on [email protected]].
We ask you to remember this when you see an advertiser on our site and applaud them for choosing to support Starts at 60.
We’re helping you normalise the changes that come with being sixty and change with them
This week, we took a snap poll of Starts at 60 community members on how they felt about Christmas. More than most said they felt “underwhelmed” or “saddened” in the lead up to Christmas this year. Many felt it was a less significant day than it used to be for them. No need to put up a large tree now the kids have all grown up. No need to cook a formal Christmas meal for the family as they are in different corners of the world. No family or alternative people they love nearby to share the day with.
Perhaps it’s a reflection of age and society – with the people we love being busier than ever. Maybe it’s individual – and reflective of how isolated people get as they get older and relationships become fractured or de-prioritised or just not possible to service in some families. Or perhaps it’s just the media – and our desire to have a loud and negative view of the world rather than change things to improve our situation quietly like we could before social media.
Nonetheless, it’s important to notice that Christmas at 60 simply isn’t what it used to be at a younger age, in a different era.
Most important to us is your ability to compare and find solutions. When you know others around you feel the same way you hopefully feel a little less isolated and a little more normal – important in a changing world.
So as we say at Starts at 60, “it’s your turn” so I hope you find a way to get the most out of your Christmas this year and overcome any sadness from it being quieter, or simpler than in previous years.
Congratulations if you made it to the end and thanks for your interest in what we do. I’m thrilled to be building Starts at 60 and Travel at 60 for you. Thanks for your support as a community; and for the support of our team.
I wish you a very merry Christmas!
Tell me today what this year has changed for you and how you reflect upon Christmas?
Warmest regards
Rebecca
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