Business Innovators Radio - Jason Smith of Fit in Midlife on Leveraging PR to Elevate His Visibility

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Jason Smith is the founder of Fit in Midlife, where men 40+ come to swap their midlife drift for life-changing strength and energy.He’s been featured in a wide range of publications including GQ, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and yes, even the cover of Men’s Fitness. Add 350k+ followers across TikTok and Instagram into the mix, and you’ve got a man who knows how to cut through the noise and get seen. In this episode of Business Innovators Radio, Jason shares how PR cemented his authority, took his visibility to a whole new level and why staying within his bubble on the socials was ever an option, even though he already had a large audience. If you want to stand out as being in the top 1% of the coaches in your niche, don’t miss this one! You can find Jason at:https://www.instagram.com/fitinmidlifehttps://www.facebook.com/fitinmidlifehttps://www.tiktok.com/@fitinmidlifehttps://linktr.ee/fitinmidlifeSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/jason-smith-of-fit-in-midlife-on-leveraging-pr-to-elevate-his-visibility

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Welcome to Business Innovators Radio. And my guest today is Jason Smith. Jason is the founder of Fit in Midlife. He helps men 40 plus to get fit, to get strong and to find the direction that they crave in their life. So Jason has a whopping 270,000 plus followers on Instagram. And he's also been featured in GQ, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, a whole host of other publications, including being the cover star for men's fitness. And I am excited to talk to him today about his journey into visibility. Thank you for coming on, Jason.

My pleasure, Luana. Great to see you. What I would love for you to share with the audience first is, can you share exactly what you do and who for and why? Okay, yeah. So, well, my name is Jason, Jason Smith. My brand is called Fit in Midlife. And hopefully that kind of explains pretty much what it is that I do. having gone through a fitness transformation myself at the age of 50,

I now help other people who are typically over the age of 45, regain their confidence, their strength, their stamina, their fitness, their self-belief by helping them through coaching and training to improve their body, their self-image, and everything that goes with that. And as a result, change their lives. So I've seen photos of you, Jason, right, of before your fitness journey and afterwards.

And I think it's fair to say that you are absolutely unrecognisable. Yeah. And the odd thing is that the photograph that I used as my before photograph was actually about eight weeks in. So I'd lost a reasonable amount of weight at that point. And it was actually the first time, you know, I was thinking, oh, I'm making some progress. I'll take a photo. I didn't have at that point any idea I'd be going on to do what I now do.

So I didn't kind of deliberately take a record. But even at that stage, you know, compared to where I was, yeah, I would say I am unrecognizable, not just in terms of my appearance, but also in terms of my attitude to life, my zest for life, my energy for life, it's all just completely different and much, much better. Tell us more about that. Like, what has shifted in you since you took that step? Well, I guess when I started, I was in a pretty low point. You know, I was on antidepressants.

I had, you know, physical issues like hypertension and high cholesterol. I was on my way to type two diabetes. And, you know, life just wasn't good. And I didn't feel good about myself at all. That meant that I was not motivated to do much. I was listless. I always felt tired. My son at the time was 10 or younger.

And, you know, what, 10 and 9-year-olds are like, you know, that bundles of energy. And I just felt really bad that I wasn't able to. to spend quality time with him, playing with him, whether that be football in the garden or anything else. And, you know, I was really, really down. And having made this transformation, and very, very quickly, you know, within weeks, I started to feel very different. And I started all of a sudden to feel more, more energy. I started to, because I was doing something good for myself, that gave me a feel-good factor, even though, you know, the results, there's always a lag with the results. So I felt better, which made me think better, and then ultimately that

made me become better. So, yeah, and now, you know, this afternoon, it's a bank holiday, I've been out playing football in the garden with him, and, you know, he's the one who gets tired at rather than me. We do loads of fun things, you know, with this. this summer holiday during the school break. We've been rock climbing. We've been doing things like go ape and ab-sailing. We've been mountain downhill mountain bike riding. None of these things I would ever have even thought of doing before.

And now it's just, you know, yeah, come on, let's go and do something. It's me. You know, it used to be mad, Daddy, can we go and do this? And now it's James, come on, let's go and let's get the bikes out. I books us up for a climbing. And he's like, oh, God. I just sort of sit on my iPad. What a change.

So, you know, at the beginning, when you were feeling, like, low and lacking in energy, how did you motivate yourself then? Because, like, you had to motivate yourself to then get active, to then feel the benefit from that. So how did you motivate yourself when you were feeling that low? Well, and that was really tough because I'd had a fair few attempts to trying to sort myself out. And, you know, the furthest I got maybe was a couple of weeks, something like that.

And then I'd just revert back into wild ways. And I honestly thought, well, this is as good as it gets. You know, this is as good as I'm ever going to feel. And it's all downhill from, for. now on. And I don't know. I have a belief, belief that really weird things happen for a reason and something really weird did happen, which was a guy who I only knew from, from Instagram. You know, we were connected on Instagram. One January, it set a resolution to, you know, to change his life, you know, to stop drinking, to change his diet, to get fit, all of those

kind of things. And one morning, on a Monday morning, he posted this picture, which was a still from the film of The Hobbit. And it had Martin Friedman playing the Hobbit, running through the Shire in Little Earth with a big smile on his face, looking excited and full of energy. And the words, I'm going on an adventure underneath. And for whatever reason, that photo, as I'm just scrolling through, having a coffee one Monday morning, just stopped me in my tracks. And I thought, that's how I want to feel.

That's exactly how I want to feel. And it was a million miles. It was the polar opposite of how I was feeling at that particular time. So I had no kind of route to get to feeling that way. but that just changed everything and so I looked at his name's Dave I looked at Dave's profile

and I saw some of the other things that he'd been doing and he posted this picture because he was going out on his adventure this day and he was doing something that he hadn't done for many years he was going on a bike ride a long bike ride somewhere and and I just thought well why aren't I doing that And I then sat down and thought, well, if I was living with adventure and energy, what are the things that I would do?

And so I wrote a list down. I drew a line down the middle of the page. And I wrote all the things that that person would be doing. I wrote all of the things that that person wouldn't do. So that basically became my guide. but I got so excited because I properly believe now that actually I could be I could be better. I had no idea where things would lead, but I could just feel better. That was what it was all about.

That I could have this energy, this sense of adventure, this sense of fun and enjoy life again. And I kind of knew that fitness was at the heart of that. And therefore, you know, that morning I dug out a pair of old train. from the garage, put them on and I thought, I'm going to go for a run. Now, I wasn't really capable of running, so it was more of a walk. But the key thought thing was, I was out in the countryside, in the Surrey Hills, and essentially I was living that picture. I was now Bilbo Balagans going on my adventure. And it made me feel so good. And that feeling just kept growing and growing. And I have to say as a result of all of that, all of the things that I had to give up

or to limit and all of the things that, you know, better ways of living that I had to start doing by eating more healthily, you know, working out regularly and all of those kind of things. It's actually easy because I thought, well, that's what that person does. So if that person does that, that's what I need to do. And I actually really, really enjoyed it. And, um, felt good. You know, it just, because of where I was previously, it felt so good to be doing something for myself. And regardless of what that something was, it just felt good that I was making a positive change and, you know, making an impact on myself and as an extension of that on my relationship with my wife, my son, and friends and colleagues and everything else. And that's kind of

what kept me going. So I've got built as odd as that, you know, I've got a fourth foot furry creature

with big feet to think. And by now, you're making an impact in front of millions. Like you've got, is it, 270,000

on your Instagram? Yeah. Yeah, you are cover star for men's fitness. Yeah. You're talking to producers about

a potential reality show? Yeah. There is a lot going on. So how did you go then from doing this for yourself, from it being a personal thing and something that created an impact for your family, for your immediate circle, to then casting the net wider

and going, right, I'm going to get visible now, and I'm going to create an impact that's wider, than I could imagine. Like, what prompted you to do that? Well, there were two steps for that. So the first step was, you know, about four months after what I've just described,

we went on a family holiday. It was our first kind of typical British family holiday abroad. We went to, we went to Crete, you know, we had the beach, the swimming pool, all of those things. You know, we hadn't really done that before. and I remember by that point I've made a big difference. I've lost pretty much all of my weight. I was starting to gain some muscle.

And guys started to ask me, what do you do to, how old are you? What do you do to be, to have a body like that, things like that. And so that was the first kind of moment when I thought, hang on a second, you know, this other people are interested in what I've, what I've done. And, you know, not as detailed as I've just shared, but I would kind of give

them an insight as to how I was before and that I've made all these changes very recently. And then I just noticed as I was training that there were a lot of people in my kind of age group who were being trained by, I suppose, you're more typical personal planner who is a lot younger than I am and a lot younger than they are. And I just noticed that there wasn't much rapport, understanding, relationship between the trainer and the client. And it just made me think, wouldn't it be better if people my age were trained by people, you know, my age? And that's why I decided to get qualified as a personal trainer.

But really, only with the incentive of working with people locally and, you know, training people in person and, you know, maybe having 10 or 15 clients to, to, you know, kind of give me an interest, keep me busy, do something that I thought would be good for those people, make you friends, all of those kind of things. And that's how I started. And one day, one of those clients said, why don't you do something on social media? And that's when fit in midlife was born. So I originally went on TikTok, which I was advised to do. despite my protestations of no adults use TikTok. I mean, my son, who's 10 uses TikTok, nobody else does. But I posted two videos, and I got 2,000 followers on the first day,

within the first 24 hours. And I thought, oh, bloody out, you know, this is quite interesting. And then, you know, it kind of went from that. So my intent really was, and always has been and remains, now is to kind of show people in my age group that you don't have to kind of drift your way through midlife the way I was. There is a better way. You can have energy. You can have that spirit of

youth. You can have that spirit of fun and adventure. And fitness is the way of achieving that. And so that's really how it all started. And it snowballed. And it's a good. And to be honest with you, Luana, I had no idea that it would take off to the extent that it did. But obviously, I'm very happy that it did. And, you know, I just kept stepping the fire and, you know, more and more followers kept joining. And yeah, and that creates new opportunities then, which is how I then ended up launching, you know, apps and online coaching that means that I've got a reach all around the world now. Nice. And then around a year ago, you became a client of Dauntless PR.

Yes. So that was you, you know, I mean, I'll just say quickly, since you've joined, you've been in titles like GQ, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, all sorts. And now, of course, men's fitness. Yeah. So what was it that prompted you to think, right, I'm going to get beyond the social bubble now, and I'm going to reach the mainstream.

Well, I started to realize something happened with meta, and it made me realize that I had no control over what I built. You know, they could change their algorithm, they could, if somebody could hack my page, and

it all could disappear, and I thought I need to do things outside of social media. And PR, was a pretty obvious choice. You know, if, what I thought was that if I have a presence outside of social media in the more traditional media, then that's only going to boost my social media and that's been absolutely, absolutely proven. And, you know, I thought, well, as much as social media can reach a lot of people in midlife,

They typically not the type that are picking up their phones every five minutes the way a teenager might. You know, they might look through Instagram and Facebook once a week, let's say. And that means you're fighting bloody hard for their attention. So getting into media that they would also consume seemed like a really great idea. And, you know, as you say, you know, I've been in a number of really great titles. and that has really benefited me across the board. You know, you get the impact from it actually appearing in that media, but it's a ripple effect.

It goes into everything else that you're doing, you know, whether it be your clients and the way that you manage your clients, there's the other social media that you do, and everything else. So the real intent was to kind of, of build my brand outside of the confines of meta and TikTok. That was what I wanted to do. Very smart.

I completely agree with you there because it's like we have absolutely no control on what they decide to do. So any business that's relying on the socials isn't stable. It could all be taken away in a heartbeat. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm completely with you or there. Did you have any doubts or hesitations before you took that decision?

No, not really, because it just, it seemed like a natural extension. So, and, you know, you were spot on with your timing because, you know, you kind of got in touch with me at the time and I was, you know, well primed to have the conversation that we had and to say, Yeah, let's do this because, you know, it was really hot on my radar. So, you know, I was keen, and, you know, the conversation that I had with you just made me even more keen to do it because, you know, you always start off with an idea of what something might look like, what might happen, but you were able to kind of expand beyond my kind of vision and so something much bigger. and, you know, if you look at where I am now and where we are now,

compared to, you know, around this time last year when we were saying, hi, I'm Jason, this is me, kind of thing. It's, you know, wow, it's all I can say. You know, it's really, really, really happened, doesn't it? Can you talk more about that? Can you give us a snapshot into your life and your brand before? and your life and your brand now a year later? I can say that in two words, which is thinking bigger.

So, you know, I was probably quite limited in how I envisaged my brand, myself, my business developing. And now it's completely the opposite, you know. So if somebody were to say to me this time last year, you know, in a year's time, you're going to be thinking about pitching, you know, ideas for a reality TV series to television producers. Don't be so stupid.

Yeah, here I am doing it, that exactly that. And look, you know, it may or may not come off. I'm going to do my utmost to make it come off. But the fact that I'm having these thoughts shows the difference that it's made in terms of my mindset and how I look at the opportunity that's here right now and ahead of me. It's expansion, isn't it? It expands, like, not just your brand, but who you are as a person and the opportunities

that you can create. Absolutely. And there's this saying, isn't the purpose of a goal, isn't to achieve the goal, it's to become the person who can achieve that goal. and I absolutely believe that. And, you know, the personal transformation that I've gone through over the last 12 months has been, you know, it's been pretty significant and very positive. So, you know, it's, and it just adds on to everything else that happened, you know,

which started when the ball first started rolling five and a half years ago. So, yeah. And how have you found the purpose? process. So from, like, when you joined a year ago, how have you found the process of working with Dauntless and getting more visible? Really good, absolutely. And there's a number of reasons for that. You know, one is just in terms of having a process, you know, that is really, really important. So, you know, I'm a coach. I coach people to to lose weight, game muscle, increase their stamina, their endurance, their strength,

whatever it might be. None of that happens overnight. You know, you have to have a process that you follow on a regular basis with consistency and the discipline to do it when you don't want to do it. And so I am a

person who uses and believes the saying focus on the process, not the results. Because if you focus on the process, you will get the results. And so firstly, I now had a process to follow. So if I think about, you know, the kind of checklist that we follow each week, you know, but just a simple thing like the PR Tinder, being able to see what journalists are looking for, what kind of information, what kind of questions they're asking, the kind of people that they're asking, the kind of people that they want you talk to is absolutely brilliant because, you know, I will check that at some point

each afternoon and I will answer, you know, and go back to people that have something that's relevant. But, and that's how it started. But even with that, it can be expansive because reading, you know, a journalist's request about, you know, something that is completely unrelated to what I do, you can think about how it could relate to what I do. You can think about how it could relate to what I do and conversing that into a pitch to another journalist on, you know, it is absolutely relevant to me and their readers. So that has been been really, really wonderful. Having the, you know, the regular clinics, that's been great as well. You know, Catherine's wonderful and has been really, really helpful with, you know, helping me.

draft my first pitches, which gave me a really good insight in terms of how I could then draft more pitches and make them, you know, appropriate and right for the people that I'm targeting. I think there's also the kind of team spirit as well. You know, you, everybody cheers, everybody else's success, which is just a wonderful thing. There's no, you know, you've got other fitness people in that you work with. And, and it's, like Marsing, for example, and, you know, it's great to see him getting in the times or whatever it might be. And not just because, you know, he's getting his success, but it opens your eyes again and proves that it can be done for me. So, well, if Martin can do that, then maybe I can try the telegraph, for example.

And it kind of spurs you on as well as, you know, cheering the other individual. I love that attitude so much, you know, because some people would look at it as a competitive thing, but it's absolutely not like that at all, because we constantly get, like, say somebody goes out there, like, say fitness professional goes out there into the Telegraph, for example, then that journalist will then come back to us and say, who else have you got? Like, they killed it, who else have you got? So it's really important. we're very careful with who we bring in through the doors as well because of that reason.

So just for context, just for context as well to the audience, I will just say that you are on the program where you're supported in doing the work yourself. So you do a portion of the pitching and we do the pitching when it comes to the incomings, which is always led by you. Yes. And the reason, you know, the reason I see that you have had such great results is because it's exactly as you said, you have been consistent. You have done the work when you haven't felt like it. You haven't been too focused on the outcome. You've focused on the process.

And you have just got on with it. And so it has absolutely exploded. And you've got a fantastic attitude as well, Jason. oh thank you but and look you know i'm not um you know kind of teachers pet or anything like that there have been science for whatever reason mostly you know kind of conflicts of time where i have missed things and i you know i've missed the the uh the PR tinder for a day um but you know it's always there it's always there on my on my mind um it took me a while to get into pitching on a regular basis.

That was, but now I am and, you know, anybody that's on the same kind of program and doing get themselves with your support, I would say, look, you know, don't ever get this hot, you know, so you mentioned it right at the start. You know, I'm on the cover of men's fitness. It's a magazine I used to read when I was 18 or 19, which, you know, was the last time I really worked out, you know, prior to starting again at the age of 50. So to be on that front cover, 36, 37 years later is just like, geez, fuck, that's a drink come true. Amazing.

Like, don't you wish that you could go back to your teenage self and tell you? But the key thing is, I sat a pitch to David, the editor, and I didn't hear anything. We didn't hear anything for a week. I sent him a reminder. Didn't hear anything again for another week. And then on the, towards the end of the third week, he replied and said, really interested in this. Let's have a call.

And that's how it all happened. You know, so don't ever lose heart. Don't ever give up. Don't ever, you know, there's plenty of pitches that I sent out that have just disappeared somewhere into the ether. Just live with it. These journalists are busy busy bees. And, you know, just because what yours either hasn't been seen or wasn't right for them at that particular moment in time or, yeah, the journalist was busy finishing, you know, another piece and up against a deadline and didn't really have a chance to do much, just don't give up, you know, just keep, just keep, keep following the process.

Because if you follow the process, you will get the results. And I think, you know, that's, that's all I've done. That's all I've done. And anybody else can do the same. I think something that a lot of people don't realize as well with pitching is that it's not just about getting that booking. So because you've been consistent with it, your name would have been coming up a lot in people's inboxes. So they would have associated you with your topic and you don't know the conversations that people are having in the background. Like journalists are constantly recommending guests to each other.

like they're constantly recommending experts and the opposite as well. So they're constantly in these conversations. Like so you never know. Like Catherine, I were in-house journalist. She gave me an example of, so she writes a lot for parenting outlet. And there was somebody who used to send her really thoughtful pictures all the time. But it wasn't quite a fit for what she needed. And then eventually, because this woman always used to turn up, like with these incredible pitches,

even though they weren't relevant. In the end, she thought, right, do you know what? I'm going to create space for you. And she did, you know, and she did bring her in. But not only that, in the background, whenever somebody was asking for a parenting expert, you know, that she would have been a fit for, she was recommending her, even though she had never, even replying to an email. Yeah, yeah, just, you know, familiarity,

even if it's just that you keep appearing in somebody's inbox, it creates so much opportunity, doesn't that? Completely. And if you are asked for somebody who's in the fitness space, the parenting space, you know, the health space, whatever it might be, then, yeah, you know, if you're familiar to somebody, they're more likely to say, oh yeah, I know Jane or whoever.

That's it. that's it. Familiarity breeds trust and then they want to take a chance on you. Yes, exactly. So. I would say, though, you know, the whole process of me writing pitches and they're not obviously getting feedback from Catherine in particular on the, on the, during, during the process. You know, you do, you go through a learning process with that. You know, you, you, you learn how to make your pitches relevant to the audience that the journalist is writing to or writing for

rather than yourself or, you know, the journalist themselves. And so, yeah, there is a knack to it. And it takes a bit of time to kind of to get used to that. And just kind of, it's the same story. You're just reframing it and making it more appealing as a result. That's it. That's it. And so there are three parts of the strategy as well. There's the incomings, there's the outgoings, and then there's the news jacking, which is another thing.

Yeah. Like you've been scanning the news cycles and you've been tying into what you see there and you've managed to book yourself some great placements through news jacking as well. Yes. Yeah. I mean, quite a few have been, even the men's fitness thing, I was doing that off the back of some publicity about Ralph Vines who'd gone through a fitness transformation for a role in a film called The Return. So we'd gone from, you know, fat cardinal in conclave

to, you know, battled hardened, the warrior, Odysseus in a film called The Return. And that was the topic I wrote to David about the men's fitness editor, saying, look, you know, guys get fit in their older age. It's possible. Many believe they can't, let's do an article about it.

And that's how, so that, that conversation I had with him, that was in around about late April, early May, and we set it for the September issue, which has just, just being published. But it also put him in a state of mind to think about that whole subject, about, fitness transformation at a later point in life. And so he ran Sasha Barron Cohen, you know, the borough actor on the front cover of the August issue, which absolutely exploded, aided by a telegraph journalist who absolutely kind of performed a character of assassination on poor Sasha saying, you know, it's worthless,

you know, women aren't attracted to bodies like that. You're doing it all for you. You know, what a sad way to behave after a divorce, etc., etc. And that just extended the news cycle on the story, on the original story, and it absolutely exploded. It was great for men's fitness, less good for the telegraph journalist who got a lot of negativity headed away. And I was reading the article on Apple News, and I looked at the... sorry, on the telegraph online, and I looked at all the comments. And, you know, there were thousands and thousands of quite, you know, nasty comments aimed at the journalist.

And right at the top, the journalist that said, well, this obviously sparked an interesting debate. Thanks for all the comments. That's what the journalist had responded with. I actually felt a bit sorry for her. And I thought, right, I'm going to write to him and say, you know, like your story, had a lot of interest in it for these reasons. and how about, you know, we kind of readdress things and talk about why guys in their 50s really get fit. You know, it's not just about divorce, chasing women, whatever else, midlife crisis, etc. And she was brilliant.

She responded within 15 minutes, which is, you know, very unusual for journalists. Very unusual. Almost unheard of, I would say. And that's how I ended up news jacking the men's first. fitness cover, the telegraph's article and the telegraph then published my response, which was kind of more about a more sensible reason why why guys over 50 get fit and decide to go

through this kind of transformation. And yeah, it just worked brilliantly. And that in itself, you know, it kind of added to the snowball effect that appears to be happening right now. You know, so I got in such a great. And the story went huge. I mean, I was rolling through my phone and there I saw it, number one on Apple News. Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, that's what happened to me. I was looking to see whether my football team, Austin Villa had signed a new striker or something, and flicking through Apple News and there it was. It was like, wow. So, yeah, so news tracking is very important too. And, you know, if you do it in the right way, it can work really well. It really can, you know.

I mean, given the response her article had created, the fact that Judith came back to me so quickly and so supportively, which I think is maybe because of the way I pitched it too far, you know, it was kind of like, you know, I'll help you out here. it worked really well and yeah yeah so again don't you know look for those opportunities and I didn't know

Judas email address I kind of guessed it because I had other addresses for the telegraph she is not a fitness writer she's a you know a kind of lifestyle opinion writer and so I guessed it got it right got the response

and everything just went from that nice So just before we finish up, what tangible outcomes have you noticed as a direct result of your PR? Tangible. Well, the big one, I guess, is that, you know, what you do in the PR does carry over onto social media, not just in terms of numbers of followers, but it gives you proof. It stands you apart from other people who operate in your space. and so that gives you more credibility and that leads to more leads that leads to more clients so there's been a direct correlation particularly with the telegraph article the men's fitness one is possibly a bit too new but the telegraph article has resorted in me get in a lot of new

a good number of new clients from from the UK which is nice because mostly most of my social media effect followers are in the US, so I'm kind of working US time zones a lot. So to have some people over, in that, you know, a more proper time zone is nice. So yeah, tangible, more clients and therefore, you know, the revenue impact that that presents, the increased credibility of your social media, the increased engagement, etc. But on an intangible level, it's the feeder. It's the feed that I've got in myself, the confidence that I've got in myself now and where this could all lead, you know, you're kind of slowly chipping away at those elements of that, but, you know, what's happened over the last three or four months has kind of, you know, taking a bulldozer to it.

Jason, thank you so much. That has been absolute gold. And as always, it's been a massive pleasure catching up with you. Yeah, likewise, we're on it. I will see you soon. And to everyone listening, I'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters, visit us online at businessinnovatorsradio.com today.