Habits for Life: Dr Holly Whelan on Health, Longevity, and Success

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Holly Whelan shares her fascinating journey from academia to the corporate world and eventually to entrepreneurship. She discusses her transition from working in the laboratory to managing global brands at Unilever and how her passion for behaviour change and health led her to co-found Habit Partners® and Younger Lives. 

Holly emphasises the importance of sustainable habits, starting a business, and maintaining physical and mental well-being. 

She also touches on her collaboration with major organizations like Movember and Weight Watchers and offers practical advice for older professionals looking to stay healthy and engaged in their work.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Holly’s academic background in Biology and Neuroscience
• Transition from academia to Unilever and managing global brands
• Founding Habit Partners® and Younger Lives
• Importance of sustainable habits for well-being and longevity
• Challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship
• Addressing physical and mental health for aging professionals
• Collaborations with organizations like Movember and Weight Watchers

Resources Mentioned:

• Books: Atomic Habits by James Clear
• People: Dr. Mark Cobain, Seth Godin, Joan (Train With Joan)
• Concepts: Life Age Test, Heart Age, Diabetes Age, behaviour change, habit stacking, behavioural activation

Connect with the Holly:

• Website: Younger Lives Group
• LinkedIn: Holly Whelan, PhD
• Programs:
• Life Age Test
• Heart Age
• Diabetes Age

Exclusive Free Offer:

Life Age

The Life Age test takes about 5 minutes and is anonymous. It’s based on leading-edge research and provides a scientifically validated quick snapshot of how your daily habits affect you—and what you can do to feel your best and ‘years younger’ for life.

Use the magic URL link https://lifeagetest.com/?code=VCJRLCOI
that automatically fills in the access code (valid until August 4, 2024).

Transcript

Nigel Rawlins: 0:38

Ever wondered how, small daily habits can transform your life. I'm speaking with Dr. Holly Whelan, an expert in behavioral change and the co-founder of Habit Partners and Younger Lives. In this episode, Dr. Whelan shares her insights on sustainable health habits, her journey from academia to entrepreneurship and the importance of understanding your health markers. Her unique blend of scientific knowledge and practical advice is perfect for the independent professional seeking to enhance their wellbeing. Join me for actionable tips to boost your health and longevity. Welcome, Holly, to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Could you tell us something about yourself and where you're from?

Holly Whelan: 1:20

Yeah, of course. Hi. My name is Dr. Holly Whelan and I'm the founder of Habit Partners, which is part of the Younger Lives Group. And I'm an expert in behavior change and habits that keep you at your best throughout life.

Nigel Rawlins: 1:33

So tell me, how did you get into this habit stuff? What was the journey there?

Holly Whelan: 1:37

it's very interesting because I started off as a scientist. So I did a biology degree and then I did a neuroscience PhD. And after about three years of doing that I realized that I didn't want a lab based research career. And I changed direction completely and joined a huge multinational company in international marketing. The company was called Unilever. So I spent 20 years plus working at Unilever on consumer brands and the corporate brand and also corporate social responsibility. And it's there when I started to realize, when I was working on marketing, that I wanted to mash up my neuroscience background with my marketing expertise and behavior change, so how can actually you get people to change their behavior. I didn't want to just do it to sell products. I wanted to actually do something to improve people's health. And so that's how I ended up, as my career went on in Unilever, I went from just normal household brands to health brands, and then I ended up working on new business models using behavior change to improve health. So that's how I got into it. And then finally, set up my own business 10 years ago, where I do a mixture of consulting to different charities and organizations to help them create campaigns and programs to improve health through habit change. And also we run some of our own programs as well.

Nigel Rawlins: 2:59

In the corporate environment doing marketing, did you have to learn marketing as you went along or did you do some courses in that?

Holly Whelan: 3:05

There's actually a really funny story about this because, as I said, when I was doing my PhD, I thought I really don't want to be staying in academia, it's fine. So I finished the PhD, but while I was finishing off, I went for some interviews and we have something called the Milk Round In England where I live. And what happens is the big companies come to the universities to interview. So I got an interview with many different companies, but, Unilever, I remember the first round interview and they interviewed me and they said, at the end, that was a great interview, Holly, but I'm going to invite you to the second round, but when you come, can you just make sure you know what marketing is? At that point, I did some research and so I could talk about marketing, but then the reason I joined Unilever versus many other companies was that they ran what was known as the Management Trainee Scheme and what they did is they really trained you up in marketing and they were one of the gold standards in marketing at the time. FMCG marketing was where it was at back in the sort of, 90s when I joined. Now it's digital and social marketing, but at the time, FMCG marketing was the gold standard.

Nigel Rawlins: 4:14

So FMCG marketing, fast moving consumer

Holly Whelan: 4:19

goods, exactly.

Nigel Rawlins: 4:21

There's all sorts of distinctions there, isn't it? Now it's interesting you said, about behavior change, cause when Seth Godin talks about marketing he talks about what change do you want to make, which is what you're offering. So you've got a PhD in neuroscience. So how did you keep that alive? For 20 years whilst you're working, in marketing.

Holly Whelan: 4:40

It's quite interesting, isn't it? Because as you say, what Seth says about what, what change do you want to see or make? I think with marketing it is an element of behavior change because what you're trying to do with marketing is you are raising awareness and you're creating engagement. And those two things are very much part of behavior change. You have to raise awareness. You have to create engagement. Do I want this brand? Am I going to buy it? But after that, so marketing stops. But actually real behavior change goes on. If you're really doing behavior change, you create awareness, you create engagement, but then you have an action, you make sure that you stimulate the action and you stimulate repeated acts of action. So you keep that going and then you look at the impact of that. That's behavior change. And so I think as I was doing marketing, I loved my career in Unilever. It was really great. I did some amazing things. But as time went on, I started to get frustrated because you only go so far. So I was working on a brand called Flora. I think that's across the world, either known as Flora or Bessel, which is a margarine brand. And it's healthier than butter. And there was lots of health claims that we were making. And we really took it seriously. But the issue is that it's quite good for your heart because it reduces cholesterol. And we had the proactive brand, but it's not the only solution to heart health. So it's one tiny subset of healthy eating, the behavior change, which has to happen, not only for that, I'm going to use margarine and replace butter. That's one behavioral strategy, but there's many other behavioral strategies that you can do. So what are you going to eat in your entire diet? Are you going to exercise better? So I started to get frustrated. I wanted to do not just a tiny subset and sell this one brand, but actually look at the entire person, the entire behaviour change and really take it through. Are they actually making these changes? How can we make that happen? So the marketing was absolutely brilliant training in some ways. One thing I would say is, having that FMCG marketing background means that I'm not purely academic in the way that I come at my behavior change. So there's a lot of behavior change academics out there, brilliant people. But they have a very academic sort of almost dry approach and there's a lot of advertising agencies or marketers who say they do behaviour change, but they don't really, they do awareness and engagement. And so I suppose I'd say my niche is I like to mash up the both and actually make sure that you have real behaviour change, science and campaigns, but done in a really engaging way. And if you get that working, then you can really shift the dial, which is exciting.

Nigel Rawlins: 7:22

Yeah. So the interesting thing about having a marketing background is you're actually in a better position to sell your services and sell your consultancy. So let's have a little talk about that. At some point I think you met up with Dr. Mark Cobain and you co founded, was it Habit Partners? So can you tell us what happened there?

Holly Whelan: 7:45

Yeah that's an interesting story. Mark and I met in something which was called the new business unit of Unilever. And this was actually my last role within Unilever. And what it was I, as I said, I was starting to, after a while, starting to feel a bit, itchy. So I was working in big corporate, not big global consumer brands, across the world and all sorts of areas, and then I started, I wanted to change. So I worked on the brand and then I wanted to change again. And they said, we're starting up a new business unit. It was a time when a new CEO had come in and he wanted to look at parallel markets to what Unilever was already working in. Set up a new business unit. It was an intrapreneur sort of setup, so it was trying to get people within the organization to set up new businesses, do things which is going to be parallel and grow in different ways. And so I had come from marketing into that and Mark was actually R& D, Unilever. So he is more of an R& D man. So he has a PhD in psychology and neuroscience. So that was immediate, oh, wow, we agree on this. He was also obsessed about health and wellness business models. So he'd done a lot of work in R& D looking at things like taste preferences, how can we get kids to eat vegetables? Really looking at the mechanisms for behavior change. He'd also done a lot of work in healthy aging, and, behavior change, which needs to be done to get people staying at their best as they get older, staying biologically younger, and so when we met in that unit, we like, wow, you get it. And it was, we always say it's like a very nice sort of marriage because you've got the R& D, and you've got the marketing, but we both understand each other as well, because I have an R& D background. And interestingly, he's a bit of a polymath. He's studied a lot of English and history and he's not just a pure scientist. So that's how we met. And in that unit, we started working on a really brilliant project where we were, trying to look at heart health and set up a new business with the largest heart health charity in the world. I don't think I can say who because it didn't happen in the end, but, it was extremely exciting project. We were, working how to create a really unique private sector, charity sector concept and it was very exciting. In the end it didn't happen, some rather annoying IP and business negotiations which didn't work out, so the organizations couldn't work that out, but at that time, that's when Mark and I went, wow, we got to do this. And so after that, we left the organization set up on our own. So it was, what could we do?

Nigel Rawlins: 10:31

So tell us how that started because you're leaving a corporate job where you're getting a nice salary and it would have been pretty good by then to go out and take the risk and then try and find some clients, which every business has got to have. So how were those first days? How did that start out?

Holly Whelan: 10:48

Yeah. A lot of people said, Oh my God, are you mad? Or you're very brave. I think they were the two things that people said, but I think that I've always been a very values driven person. So I remember one boss saying to me years ago, Oh, the problem with you, Holly, is you always want to do the right thing. And I remember thinking that I don't know if that's the problem, but anyway, It got to the point where I really needed to leave from a personal point of view. And so did Mark, we needed to do something differently. We felt we needed to get more into really changing behavior for health. So I think that we knew we needed to do that. I think the other thing which helped, if I'm honest, is that at the, in the last year of my years at Unilever, I had set up I was A CEO of Behavior Smart Services, which was a hundred percent Unilever owned business. Which was selling behavior change and specifically something called the Heart Age Tool, which mark owns the patent on which was about how to explain your risk of heart disease in a really nice way. So it says, your heart is older than it is. And it was based on, the biological markers. And so I'd, already set that up. I was the CEO, he was the CSO, so Chief Science Officer. And we'd started to get clients. And at that point the new business unit was actually being shut down. As things happen, corporate cycles happen, suddenly that wasn't something they wanted to do anymore. So they said, would you like to come back and work in Unilever proper? And I said, no, I'd rather go and we'd like to take the assets with us. And luckily we managed to negotiate that. So we took HeartAge with us,

Nigel Rawlins: 12:32

That was lucky.

Holly Whelan: 12:33

It was brilliant. And it was a really, it was slightly scary that, that negotiation process wasn't always smooth, but in the end, I think it was worth it. We stuck in there. We took the assets with us. And so that helped us get our first clients because we had something which works was proven. So our first client was the Singapore Heart Federation and University and also Bupa. So we were actually working with those two using HeartAge, to actually improve, explain risk and workplace and actually population health. So that was really interesting and it was an easy segue out.

Nigel Rawlins: 13:10

And I think I'm beginning to realise this now when I talk on the Wisepreneurs podcast, because we're talking to people who might be shifting to self employment, or who already are. And if you are making that shift, it is really handy to have some clients, that you can start with so that you can at least survive. Not like how I jumped out of teaching and had nothing for about a year, which is just crazy. I do not recommend that to anyone. But it's very obvious, there's a pattern that when you do make that shift and when you're obviously a bit older, that you do have some clients to get you going. That was a really smart move actually.

Holly Whelan: 13:46

100%. I agree with you that if you have something that you have and that you can sell, it's much easier and it's still always tougher than you think it's going to be. And one thing I'd say is when you're in a big corporate and you're the big I am and everyone wants to talk to you because you're part of a big corporate which has lots of money, you can feel very, I think, what's the word maybe, too confident or, maybe falsely confident. And then when you're out on your own and it really is just you that's can be quite sobering. And I think it makes you a better person because you're less arrogant because actually really have to be good at what you do. But it's yeah, I it wasn't plain sailing. Not like I had those two clients and then it just took off, it's a struggle, you have to keep going and you have all of those things if you're an entrepreneur. You have your good years and you have your bad years. Been going now 10 years and I'm still not used to the ups and downs. I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to it. It is quite stressful and you just have to keep believing in yourself.

Nigel Rawlins: 14:48

Doesn't it feel better that you don't have to get up and go to a job?

Holly Whelan: 14:52

Oh my God, yeah, also absolutely a hundred percent. I really don't want to go back into the corporate world. I work a lot with massive corporates, being my own boss and being able to choose what I work on and really feel that I'm making the impact that I want to. So that's fantastic.

Nigel Rawlins: 15:09

So you've got habit partners and Younger Lives. So where does the healthy hearts fit in there?

Holly Whelan: 15:14

The reason we called it YoungerLives is because we wanted to talk about the habits which can keep you biologically young. So it's actually, these are the things that if you are to do, then it will keep you younger, you're more likely to have a better quality of life and live longer. So effectively, you're younger. And the heart health tool that I was talking to you about is called Heart Age. And so what it does is you put in your blood pressure, your cholesterol numbers and your age, it will calculate. So is your heart older or younger than you based on your biological factors? And, so as I said, Mark was the original inventor. He had actually worked in the Framingham Risk Study, which is a huge heart health study in North America. And he'd worked there and come up with the heart concept. He'd come back into Unilever and we used heart in association with Flora and tens of millions of people had used it. So we knew it was a very powerful thing. Then we obviously set up Younger Lives and used it with other clients in many organizations. And actually now the NHS, so the National Health Service in the UK uses heart age as part of their health check. Cause it's a very easy way to explain risk. So that's how the name Younger Lives came out. And since then, we've actually created other tools that we have. Diabetes Age, so that actually helps, people understand their risk and how diabetes is aging them. And we also have Life Age, which is actually, you don't need to know any of your clinical numbers. It's just looking at your daily habits and how that's affecting you. Is it keeping you younger or older? And in fact, I'll be offering that to your listeners and for free so they can try that. So that's, that was Younger Lives. And Habit Partners so Habit Partners is a brand name, see, my marketing background's still there. But it's actually the name for our consulting arm. When we work with organizations who want consultancy on behavior change and how that can really drive their business forward. We do that under the Habit Partners name. And that's when we're working with them to build their own campaigns. We do a lot of work with large organizations Movember, AXA, Royal DSM. So large organizations wants to use behavior change principles to drive either their programs or their brands.

Nigel Rawlins: 17:38

Let's go back to the Younger Lives and the Healthy Heart. One of the issues that I have is I'm 68 now, and I'm trying to keep myself as fit and as healthy as possible. So I Work with a lot of women and I'm not too sure if, men's health is obviously the same as women's health. So the issue for me is if we're going to continue working in the things we love doing when we're older, say 60, 70 and 80 years of age, how do we keep our cognitive health? Because we want our brain to keep working, we need our body as well. So what are some of the things we can do? To keep ourselves young. And I'm assuming diabetes knowledge and heart health is going to help inform us a little bit about that.

Holly Whelan: 18:24

I am so passionate about this. I'm now in my mid fifties and I really believe that the body is amazing. And so is the mind. And actually, if you look after it, it really can stay absolutely sharp and fantastic into your 70s, 80s, even 90s now. We see this everywhere. But there's a lot of ageism out there. And the problem with ageism is that, people are discounted. And the worst part of it is that people self internalize that ageism.

Nigel Rawlins: 18:54

Yep.

Holly Whelan: 18:54

And they don't feel they can continue to do things. And actually, one of the reasons I wanted to come on this podcast because I love the idea of Wisepreneurs. I think it's brilliant. We have a lot to offer. But as you say, to have the energy to, continue to do that, you need to stay well, fit and healthy. And that's not just a physical, fit and healthy, but it's also an emotional one. And in the end, unless there can be some unfortunate genetic issues or bad luck that, you might have something, 70 percent of our health is actually down to our lifestyle and our habits. And I always loved the phrase that John Dryden, who was the first poet laureate of England said, he said, first you make your habits and then your habits make you. And I think that is so true and that was back 300 years ago and nothing has changed because the habits that we have day in day out are the things which will make you the person that you are and continue to be. As you say, you are very fit and healthy. You have your walks. We've talked before, you're obviously look after your health. You have some good routines and it's very important. So eating well, and making sure that you exercise and I don't mean crazy exercise. 150 minutes of moderate activity a week isn't very much, actually, if you break it down every day. Don't drink too much, don't smoke. So all the standard things, but how can you build that into daily habits that you enjoy. But not only just the physical side, we do a lot of work with actually Toronto General Hospital and University, who are doing a lot of research into the habits which are which drive quality of life. And they are actually the ones which are probably the most important. So what are the things which are going to drive good quality of life, good, and they load with health. things like, having good social relationships, lots of friends, having a purpose in your life, personally growing all the time. So continuing to work is a big part of that. Another one is roles and responsibilities, making sure you're looking after your family, or maybe community work or things like that are very important. And actually probably the most important is valuing yourself, believing in yourself, looking after your health. So we look at all of those, so when we do our Younger Lives work, we look at all of those habits and how those things work together to keep you at your best, biologically younger, good quality of life. Of course, as part of that, as you get older is you do need to have the habit of keep checking your health. So I think that having a yearly health check, knowing your numbers, knowing your cholesterol, knowing your blood pressure, knowing your blood sugar levels is really important. Because if you can know those and catch them, then either, improve them through lifestyle, but sometimes, taking drugs is required. So if you have a genetic predisposition to having a high cholesterol, which is nothing you can do about, it's better to take a statin every day. That's a habit as well. Very little side effects and will cut your risk of having an event, a heart attack or stroke massively. So in the end, it's these habits. Habits of looking after yourself, habits of, getting yearly checks, habits of taking a medication if you need, and that is what will keep you at your best and really firing on all cylinders.

Nigel Rawlins: 22:30

And that's just being knowledgeable about things. I can tell you now that one of the things I've noticed, even though I get up in the dark and I go walking, and then I do my strength training, and then I sit down for the rest of the day, and what I'm noticing, I'm getting fatter around the middle. Now, I generally don't eat any junk food or anything like that, but I don't know if it's an age thing, and I don't know if other people are finding this, is if you're a knowledge worker, and I'm assuming most office workers are going to suffer from this, you can go to the gym, you can do your exercise in the morning, and then for the rest of your day you sit down, then you sit down on the way home, then you sit down and watch TV, and then maybe you get up. You're going to laugh. My wife gave me some funny looks the other day. Because I've got a rising desk, I've got to keep very smart about how I work because since I've been about 23 I've been into fitness and health and so I've got a desk that can rise. So I was standing for a while and then I bought this under desk treadmill, and that means I can do couple of 25 minutes slow walks whilst I'm at the standing desk and maybe whilst I'm learning something on a thing. And it's unusual. My wife thinks I'm a nut because I do this sort of stuff. But that's what we've got to do, isn't it? You can't do all your fitness and health stuff and then sit on your bum for the rest of the day.

Holly Whelan: 23:45

No, I think what you're saying is so true. The problem is if you're doing, an office job, you are, you know, sedentary a lot of the time. And, the key is, building an activity throughout your day. Exactly as you say. Half an hour in the gym. Yes, it's important, don't get me wrong, strength training is important and I do that too, but actually what's more important is moving throughout the day and actually half an hour per day is nowhere near as much as if you were just walking as your mode of transport, you're just immediately getting much more exercise than if you went to the gym three times a week. So I think you're right. Habit change is deeply personal. And I think that's the thing, the way that I, when I'm talking to clients is that you need to keep moving. And the more activity you can have, it is just generally the better, it really is. So the more you can move the better, cause it keeps you fitter, it keeps you biologically younger, but the way you do that is deeply personal. So if what you do is a standing desk and a treadmill, that sounds fantastic if you like the idea of it. And so I have to say that sounds quite fun. I quite like that, But a lot of people like your wife just goes, are you completely insane? So I've got a lot of friends now who are totally addicted to open water swimming and cold water swimming. And I have to say that sounds like the worst thing in the world to me, but they love it and they swear by it and they will walk to the Lido. I live next to Europe's biggest Lido, which is great. And they walk there and they get in and they swim in the winter in four degrees. And they feel great and that works for them. And they would say, that's the answer. I've got other people who like running, I'm not a massive runner. That works for them. But what happens is, by your own way, you find what works for you. So for me personally, I don't own a car, I live in London, and so I don't need a car. Transport's amazing, I walk everywhere, and that walking is how I stay fit and has always been my way of getting my minutes up. And I also love it for me a bit, it's a way to connect with my environment. I can see what's going on. It makes me happy. I break my day off and so I get a lunchtime, I'll go for a walk. It's a way to get out of the home office as I start getting a bit mental. So yeah, it's, everyone has their own way, but you're right. It is, it's how do you stop the sedentary problem. Because otherwise you are just sitting on your bum all day.

Nigel Rawlins: 26:18

I only noticed it recently, for all the exercise I was doing, I was putting on the fat. And the issue, I guess, guess for everybody who's listening is, there's a good chance if you are self employed and you are working at home, you are sitting a lot. And this is going to affect your long term health. And the thing you said is get your markers, so you're understanding, and get some benchmarking going on. And so how can they introduce this stuff into their life if they're not doing it now?

Holly Whelan: 26:50

Yeah, I think that's right. I think the first thing from a behavior change point of view you have to want to do it. So I think the first thing is, we can sit here and tell people that they should, and that's slightly annoying, isn't it? You don't want someone to tell you to do it. I think the first thing is that you have to want to, and there's lots of reasons how that can happen. You might have a wake up call, you might have a health scare, or you might, be inspired by someone. The life age tests that we have and, I'm offering for people to just take is a way to see how your habits are affecting you. Are they keeping you younger or older? For some people be a nice reassurance they're doing the right thing, or it might be a bit of a wake up call that maybe they should do more so that can actually stimulate, maybe I should make some changes, but once you've made up your mind that you want to. I think the answer is to start small. I think people always, Oh, I'm going to be fit and I'm going to run a marathon. It's just too much, you're just giving yourself, something to fail. And that's not behavior change, that's a wish, right? I want to run a marathon and actually there's nothing wrong with that. If that's your goal, that's fantastic, but you need to break it down. What am I going to do to get there? The way I look at it is like, what can you do? If you want to just start walking, or going to the gym in the morning, what could you do? So firstly, have you got the right walking shoes? Maybe buying a pair of shoes. That's sometimes quite a nice trigger as well. It's you think about, actually, I've got these shoes, I want to use them. So that can work, but only to a certain extent. The next thing you need to do is have the right environment. So say you want to walk before you start work or after you've just got up, a really good tip is putting your exercise clothes next to your bed. And so what you do is you get up, it's there. There's no barrier. You stick that on, stick those shoes on and you go. I spoke to one woman a few weeks ago and she literally, I've never heard this before, she sleeps in her exercise gear, which I thought was a little extreme, but she does it because she's wearing it when she gets up and there's no excuse. And this is something I don't know if you've read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. He talks about something called habit stacking. And what's interesting about that is that once you have one little habit, it could be that the keystone habit is just putting on that exercise gear. Because once you put that exercise gear before you know it you open the door, you're out and you're doing it. So it's like, what is the habit which then stacks from there? And to use a scientific phrase, it's called behavioral activation. Once one thing starts, then things start to load from there because you're doing it you start to feel good. Because it's like you're doing that thing and then if you're doing more exercise, you tend to want to eat a little bit better. And then as time goes on, the ultimate and the thing that we're all aiming for is it becomes part of your identity. And then once it becomes part of your identity, that habit is impossible to break. So I, for instance, I, I'm a walker. it's now part of my identity that I don't have a car. And I walk everywhere. So I don't even think about it. I don't think about hopping in my car. I don't have it because it's just, I'm a walker. And then you start loading on all sorts of things in, in hindsight, Oh that's good for the environment. That's this, that saves me money, but it's not really what's happening. But I think that would be start small, habit stack and do things that you want to don't do things that, because other people tell you to do it, do it cause you enjoy it and then you're more likely to keep going.

Nigel Rawlins: 30:26

Oh, definitely. It's got to be something you love. And look, I did a marathon 44 years ago.

Holly Whelan: 30:33

Wow.

Nigel Rawlins: 30:33

never wanted to do another one. I just remember the end of it. I did a very fast marathon because I was very light in those days. But, I haven't run for many years because I just don't like bouncing around like that anymore. But I was running with some guys who used to do a marathon every year. And they look like really old men. It must have been really wearing them out. But yeah we, we know that running is probably good for you, but the problem when you're older is the potential to get injured. And if you injure yourself or pull a muscle, that's weeks and weeks before you recover because when you're older it takes longer to get better and it can be costly if you go out and, have to see a physiotherapist because they're not cheap and and so you ruin it. So it's better to do something nice and gentle and work your way up. But the other interesting thing too, is if you do look after your health you can be as fit as somebody who's 20 or 30 years younger than you.

Holly Whelan: 31:29

I really agree with you, Nigel. And there is some, I don't know if you've seen the Instagram sensation, Joan Train With Joan. I love this woman. She is such an example of not someone who's always been fit all her life. But someone who decided age 73 to do something. So if you check her out her story is her daughter is a personal trainer. However, she was not into it at all. And age 73, she was seriously overweight. She's Canadian, I think. Really overweight, obese and had type two diabetes, was in a mess and, her daughter was really upset. So I'm like, God, you're going to die. And she was like, I don't care. And then I think, I don't know, there was some light bulb moment. And she decided to start doing something. I think she's now 77 or 78 and my God, she is bench pressing huge amounts and you can see all her muscles. I'm not suggesting that we should all be like Joan, but what I think is amazing about that is that, like you say, you can still be extremely fit and really turn things around. So even if you haven't been as healthy as you'd like. It's not too late. Don't believe that rhetoric. It's not true. You can turn it around and get fit. As I said, the body is incredible and you can not only lose weight and get more energy, but you can get those serious issues like blood sugar markers down. You can effectively reverse type 2 diabetes. You can get your blood pressure right down. And those are the things as we get older, they're the markers that you really do want to keep good. I think that those things just naturally start getting better when you are looking after yourself. Your blood pressure will come down, your blood sugars will be managed. So if you can get to a point where you're just enjoying your lifestyle and it's doing that for you, then you've hit the jackpot, haven't you? Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: 33:27

And we should just explain that it does take a little bit of time for all that to work. It's not going to happen in the first couple of weeks though. Some of it can improve. I must admit, I was on blood pressure medication for about 10 years and then I must have got to a stage with my weight and my fitness that I didn't need them anymore. I haven't had them for years.

Holly Whelan: 33:47

That's fantastic. Yeah, exactly. And it's not overnight. I really agree. And I think that it's getting things in perspective and enjoying what you're doing for you anyway, I think. I think that's the key. So enjoy the habits that you're doing, which will also do you good. And there is absolutely no shame being on medication if you need it. Some people need it. And I'm not one of these people said, Oh, we must never be on medication because that's just simply not true. It keeps a lot of people alive who need to be alive and add to the world. A lot of the men in my family all died aged 50, because we had familial hypercholesterolemia, which is basically genetic high cholesterol, and if they're not on statins, they'd all be dead. But now, they're on statins and, they're living till sort of 80, 90 years old, which couldn't have happened without drugs. So it is everything. It's why you should get your numbers checked as well.

Nigel Rawlins: 34:41

I think men are probably the slowest ones in doing that. They tend not to look after their health, their mental health as well, they don't always look after until it collapse and then they're looking for a quick fix and there isn't one. It's, you've got to take your time and we may have habits, see the whole point about, If you're going to be a Wisepreneur, you want to have your mental capacity when you're 70 and 80 because if you're really interested in what you're doing, you really don't want to stop. It doesn't mean you have to work 60 hours a week. We had on the podcast, Hazel Edwards, who's an author. She's 78 and she's still working, but she said she's cut down her working hours to 35 hours a week.

Holly Whelan: 35:19

Love that. That's fabulous.

Nigel Rawlins: 35:21

that's the thing is, if you are older and you are an expert in your field, you don't want to be working every day. I do client work. Still run a marketing services company. Today I probably spent half an hour sorting out something and something else, but the rest of the day I'm reading, I'm doing the podcast, I'm looking at articles I want to write. I don't want to be doing client work all the time. I get annoyed if I don't get to read and fit my exercise in. So that's the nature of working when you're older is, plus you've also probably got family all my kids, they've all moved off in different directions. So I don't often get to see them. But other people have probably got grandchildren and all sorts of things that demand their attention, which is really good.

Holly Whelan: 36:05

Just wanted to echo what you've just said about working as you get older. If you notice like, a lot of the A list celebrities, that you see Cher or, I don't know, Dolly Parton or, you know, all these people. And they're really quite extraordinary. I mean, okay, they've had a lot of work done, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about energy and, and they love what they do. Because it just gives them meaning. My dad is, you know, 89 this year and he still runs a, a political blog and he loves that. My mother is, in her late 70s, still teaches drama three days a week. And, my mom's actually quite interesting. She's tried to retire twice and can't do it because she's just said, what, I need this in my life. And why would you mean that to suddenly, go to nothing to doing nothing. So I think it's not, I think, work is really important if you, if it brings meaning, as I said, the, it brings you back to those quality of life habits that I was talking to you about, the really important ones. If it brings you meaning and it keeps you personally growing, that keeps you younger, that is absolutely one of the things which matter, but also balance. There's some really interesting things which are going on now, we really need to keep older people in the workforce because as we have an aging population, it's absolutely imperative that we keep older people in the population because we haven't got enough people coming through. Firstly, stop the ageism that people aren't recruiting old people into the workplace, which is one area, but the other area is that for people who are in the workplace, can we give them more flexible working hours, so actually you can have all the things that you're discussing. Unilever, my old employer, is quite interesting. They created a very interesting proposition where people who had worked in Unilever could then leave, but then come back as a consultant, say two to three days a week, but still maintain their pension, which was thought was really excellent. So they didn't lose the expertise. They got two to three days a week, which is what the people wanted. But didn't have to pay full whack. I just thought that was a really creative way, that a corporate was trying to maintain knowledge, but also, keep people happy. So I think, yeah, if you can find the right balance, everything in your life and work, has a very important part. It does keep you young, I think.

Nigel Rawlins: 38:32

I agree. I think, even part time work, even in a supermarket or something like that is worth doing. But, the thing about knowledge workers is that, provided that they've kept themselves up to date and they've really been involved in their industry or in their domain, they're able to earn reasonably good money for one or two days a week, or even a month at a time and then a month off. There's that flexibility, which is, I would hate to see, intelligent people losing their ability to use their knowledge to help other people. And I'd never feel anyone who's older is out of date. If you saw my technical setup and you saw what I do with AI, I'd be surprised if there's anyone, geeks and nerds and stuff like that are going to outperform me, and people like that, but I'd give them a go for their money, but I certainly would like an IT person to come and sort out all the bits of wires I've got everywhere.

Holly Whelan: 39:29

I think that's just agism, all the old people don't understand tech. That's just simply not true. Of course you understand the tech, it's your job and it's your job to know it and you enjoy it. I think this is where, ageism and prejudice is an issue, I think. And then a lot of people even in their forties, much younger than me, or, people I know in their fifties say, Oh I, I'm not very good with tech, I'm a bit old for that. And they take on that sort of ageist sort of rhetoric, internalize it and start playing it back. And it's so annoying because It's simply not true, like you say. It's not that difficult to use this stuff, you just need to keep up to date, as you say.

Nigel Rawlins: 40:08

Oh I think if, again, if you're a professional and you're earning consultancy fees and stuff like that, you can hire the help. I use lots of technical specialists because I run the marketing services company. I've got a guy who I'm just starting to do some work with. He does automations. So I want to automate some of the processes. I don't want to have to do the manual anymore because I'm really bored doing them manually. I want to use the brainy stuff to, get the reports, look at the reports and see what I can do with them and suggest. That's using my brain. But if I had to do the manual work of because I look after a number of websites, I do a monthly report. So I had to look at the statistics, but I've had to do it manually, which is really annoying. So now I'm automating. So, you know, there are some reasonably priced, very smart people out there who can solve all these problems for you, whereas you can keep using your brain, which is what, Wisepreneurs is about. Not trying to do it all yourself.

Holly Whelan: 41:07

Oh God, I love that. And I think that also, since I set up my own business, we've got a very small leans set up because, don't want to have, all the costs of lots of staff because, um, especially as we talked earlier about, the ups and downs of having business, that can be very stressful. Very similar to you I have a really trusted group of affiliates who I know are absolutely brilliant and can do the things that I can't, and you just bring them in and out as you need. And it's wonderful because those people want to work that way as well. Cause they want the flexibility to not work in a corporate. And so once you've got your little gang of people that you can trust and you can trust with your life. It's a wonderful way of working. And yeah, without all the nightmare of having paid staff or all of that, that good stuff, which can be very stressful. And sometimes you don't want that as you get older either.

Nigel Rawlins: 42:00

Now I've done that. I've had an office and had employees and you just have to keep them busy. And then you've got to manage it. It's much, much nicer outsourcing provided you know how to do it properly and you're prepared to pay for it. So let's come back to some of the other things you do, like you work with Movember. So tell us something about that.

Holly Whelan: 42:19

Yeah. Movember is interesting because, I've worked with them since 2017, and, we actually answered a global RFP, a request for a proposal for behaviour change, and they wanted to get into behaviour change and they wanted to understand the behaviours which we should improve men's Health. But it wasn't until, got into Movember that I realized it was an Australian organization. I had no idea. It is definitely an Australian, organization. And, it is all over the world now. Mainly the English speaking world, but not only the English speaking world. It's obviously very huge in Australia, but it's very big in the UK. It's in Canada. It's in, the US and across Europe as well now. That's growing. Yeah, it's a global organization, came out of Australia, and, answered an RFP in 2017 and they wanted to, set up a new health promotion agency. section of the organization, it's a charity. they wanted help to understand the behaviors which really drive men's health. So we were brought in to look at what are the big issues for men? What are the biggest killers of men? And then what are the behaviors which will, mitigate that, make that less likely to happen. So we started there and since then we've done a huge amount of work where we now actually help them understand, when COVID happened, for instance, it's like, this is a pandemic coming, what should we do? So we worked with them to understand the men which were most at risk of the COVID. So we did a big piece of work where we identified that teenage boys were going to be really at risk because we'd looked at previous pandemics that impact would be on mental health. And then that led to a large piece of work saying, what are the behaviors that those teenage boys which are going to be protective. And that led to a large campaign working with YouTube influencers. Cause you can't talk directly to a teenage boy, you need to get someone who they respect to, to encourage certain behaviors. And then we evaluated that. It was firstly run just in the UK, showed that it really worked and showed that we actually did change behaviour, change attitudes and behaviours, got boys to, more likely to have discussions with their friends. And then that was then rolled out across the eight countries in Europe. So that was really interesting. So yeah, we do a lot of that type of work. We were doing, a really interesting piece of work now on a EU big project on prostate cancer screening across Europe and working on that as well. So I love it. I really enjoy it. It's a great organization. They really trying to champion men's health, trying to do it in a way which is scientifically robust, but also in a fun way. They've got a really lovely tone of voice. And, Use a bit of humor to get their messages across, which is also very important for men as well. You've got to talk to men in a way, which is different to women, as you said, right earlier in the podcast men tend to bury their head in the sand a little bit more when it comes to health. They're less preventative. Not all men, I shouldn't say that it's not true, all men. Some men are really preventative in their health but, a lot of them will, not do anything until they have a wake up call. So it's you do need to talk to men in a certain way. And, unfortunately, the healthcare system is quite female in the way that it talks. It talks about your risk and you look after yourself and women tend to respond more to that than men. You have to talk to men using the right language, the right way of taking more control of your health, give them more agency in that, you know. You are strong if you look after yourself, so using that type of language rather than Oh, you might be at risk, you better check yourself out. That's doesn't tend to work so well for men.

Nigel Rawlins: 46:03

And what about Weight Watchers? You also work with them, so is that more female focused?

Holly Whelan: 46:08

It's not just it's not just women, but it is main mainly women. That was using the Life Age Test, so they actually use that across the UK and US. And we looked at how could thinking about your overall health and your habits and habits keeping you younger or older, that is a very important part. Weight management is a huge part of that. So that was interesting working with them. Weight Watchers are really fantastic about habit change, and they really understand that. They're a great organization. It's not just, calorie deficit t. It really is like they understand habits. They create brilliant campaigns and programs around that. And that's why they've been so successful.

Nigel Rawlins: 46:48

Is there something else you would like to talk about

Holly Whelan: 46:51

Yeah, I think we've talked about it's personal, which is really important. I want to say that habit change is really personal. I think we've talked about starting small.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:01

So Holly, how would you like people to connect with you and find you?

Holly Whelan: 47:05

Oh it'd be lovely to connect with people. I'm always interested in new connections. I think LinkedIn is the best way. You can find me on LinkedIn. It's Holly Wheelan, PhD. And you'll see yeah, I'm a founder of Habit Partners.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:17

So I'll put all those in the show notes. And we were also talking about the Life Age, so there's an offer that you're making.

Holly Whelan: 47:24

Yeah, so I just wanted to offer people the opportunity to take the Life Age Test if they wanted to. The life age test is a evidence based tool that gives you a scientifically validated snapshot of how your habits, your daily habits are affecting you and what you can do to improve and feel at your best. If you want to take that I've set up unique access codes for the Wisepreneur community and that's valid until the 4th of August.

Nigel Rawlins: 47:51

2024. So if you're listening to it in a year's time, it's gone. Holly, thank you very much for coming along and joining me.

Holly Whelan: 48:01

Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Nigel.