In today's episode of Brave in Business Bec chats to Rita Merienne, whose goal is to equip the sandwich generation with the knowledge and skills to make emotionally healthy and physically healthy transitions to aged care for their loved ones. Rita is passionate about creating a community designed to fill the void in aged care and help people manage their caring responsibilities with more ease.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Rita's deeply personal reason for creating her businesses centering around supporting the aged care sector
• how to market to a cohort that doesn't typically spend time online or social medi
• the ways in which you can educate and talk to an audience that need levels of awareness
• the importance of being an action taker as a small business owner
• the incredible power of reaching out to local celebrities and how to approach them
  
  If you are wanting to get a big dose of courage and feel inspired to move the needle further in your business, then this is the podcast episode for you!
  
  Find Rita Merienne here:
• Rita Merienne Website
• Facebook
• The Carer's Champion Magazine
• Instagram

12. Rita Merienne from Aged Care With Ease - Being Brave and Taking Consistent Action - Transcript

Hi, I'm back McFarland from popular business and popular career. In this podcast, I'll be speaking to entrepreneurs who have overcome adversity, made difficult decisions, challenged the status quo and achieved amazing things in their businesses. Welcome to brave in business. Passionate about easing the transition to aged care for all by filling the void Read and Marion focuses on the emotions of aged care, especially the forgotten carers. Family members who care for their age loved ones from personal experience. Reader knows what it's like to face the challenges of working full time raising a family and caring for an aged loved one. You just can't do it all. Rita engages her audience and authentically delivers information that people need to make the changes they need to improve their lives. Readers goal is to equip the sandwich generation with the knowledge and skills to make emotionally healthy and physically healthy transitions for their loved ones. She provides a sensitive, sensible solutions and a support network. Family members caring for their age, loved ones. It doesn't matter if you're caring for your ageing loved one in your home in their home or a home. It's a difficult and emotional time reader is a published author. Her book, Tough, Tough Times. Tough Decisions, deals with the emotional side of aged care. Being a regular contributor to the horn speaker Ring Guy Post is a recent highlight for Rita, and in 2021 reader published her online magazine, The Carers Champion. This magazine focuses on family members caring for their age. Loved ones. She interviews celebrities such as Maggie Br, Susie Borrow and Tim Ferguson. The Carers champion provides tips and information on products and services for carers. You can contact reader and find out more at www dot reader Marion dot com. Hello, Rita. Thank you so much for joining me on the brave in business podcast. Hi, Bec. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so pleased to be here today. Fantastic. I know we've got some really great stuff to talk about today. So before we kind of dive into all of the juicy stuff, I would love it for you to tell the audience a bit about your business and how it is that you've got to where you are today. Oh, it's been a bit of a journey back, but thanks for asking. I started this in 2014 when I was caring for my dad and it really hit home that it's such an emotional journey and I had no emotional support and if I'm going to be really honest here, I didn't know how to reach out for that support. I'm sure it was there, but I don't I just didn't reach out for it, so I decided I would start. My business. Could age care with these because I wanted everyone to transition to age care with these. I didn't want it to be painful. I didn't want it to be sad. I didn't want to be to be over emotional and I didn't want people to go through the same stuff that I had been through. A lot of things happened while I was caring for dad, but one of the most important things was that I had a meltdown. One day I couldn't move. I stood in that kitchen and I cried and I didn't stop crying. So I knew there had to be something, but I knew there had to be something different. I ended up seeking counselling and getting some help, and the council has told me to sit on the couch to eat chocolate and cry for a month. You name me. And if I sat on a couch for 12, sorry for a month eating chocolate, I would never get off that couch. So instead I journal and I wrote, and out of that came a book, My book. Tough, Tough times. Tough decisions. It was born in three weeks. It was my heart and soul. And then there was a lot of words of wisdom in there. It was how I got through this issue. My sister read it and she said, We have to publish it and that's how aged care with these was born. Over the years, I've done a lot of things public speaking. I've taken the business in different ways. I wanted to create a support network for family members, caring for their age, loved ones and a lot of things worked. Many things didn't work, and now I'm publishing an online magazine that's free online to family members caring for the rage, loved ones fantastic. And that's called the carers champion. That's correct, because that's what I am on the Terrace Champion. You are indeed, so I think it's interesting, though, what you shared, and particularly around the fact that some of the things don't work or haven't worked. And I'm really interested in kind of diving into some of that today. But I just thought we would flag up front just to kind of give the audience a little bit of an understanding around the kinds of challenges that you're facing and the things that you're kind of struggling within your business. And one of those things is that carers aren't really inclined to accept a lot of help, are they? No, they're not. And there's a number of reasons for that. And I think I've been dealing with this well, nine years that I've been doing all this. I think it's a they. I don't have the time for it. Okay, they're really tired. We are an ageing population being cared for by an ageing workforce, so we're living longer, but we're also working longer, so you really don't have the time to go and seek help unless it's shoved right in front of your nose. You don't know what you don't know, and that's across the board for everyone in everyone's business. You don't know what you don't know. So how do you get your audience to know what you're about? And that's the difficult thing. A lot of the times family members can be spouses looking after their age, loved ones as well. You see that a lot of people in the seventies and eighties and they don't have access to the social media or they don't go on social media. They don't go on websites. So how do you get out there in print form? It's very complicated. You need to, and I think this is across the whole sector. And I talked to a lot of people about how do people find you in this sector? Because there's some fantastic services out there that I'm finding out about now that I'm writing about them. But how do people find them? And you know what? It's word of mouth. Uh, it's huge in this sector. They don't. People don't jump online. They don't have the time to jump online and research something in themselves. They're working. They're raising their family. They're looking after their age. Loved one. How do they find time? If they do? It's in the middle of the night, and they just want to leave caring behind them. They want to escape. They don't want to learn about the new incontinence pad for mum. They want to have a bit of fun in their lives, and that has been the biggest challenge. Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing that radar. I think it's really interesting to kind of talk to different business owners about some of those things that they do find challenging and, you know, having gotten to know you over the last sort of 12 to 18 months. It's been really interesting seeing you know, you've got so much passion and there's so much value in what you provide that there is that kind of barrier to entry for people. Just because of the fact that most of these carers, like you, say they don't have the time, they're exhausted. And often what we see with carers or you know, what I've seen through the work that you do is that our carers are so focused on giving that, then they're not in the place of really wanting to turn that around and receive. And it's one of the real things that I guess I'm enjoying watching you in business is kind of navigating that challenge and getting around that and helping the carers to appreciate the fact that they do really need to give some time back to themselves. There's another thing to it as well back. It's all about guilt. People don't want to ask for help because in the day their parents looked after the grandparents, so why can't they do it? But we're under a lot more pressure these days were under a lot of emotional pressure. I suppose we were expected to do. All these things were expected to be politically correct all the time. We have to step up. We have to be taking the kids to all the sports games. Now I can tell you as a child I played a lot of sports, but my parents were not always on the sidelines watching me. Actually, it would be a bonus if they were. They are either working or doing something else. But we put so much more pressure on the families of today that we must connect that we must do this, that you have to get on with everyone, that you have to be nice to everyone all the time. that that creates an added burden as well. I know I felt I had to pull my big girl pants up and just get on with it. Why should I not be able to look after my father? And I thought that pressure immensely. So I get that. That's why I talk a lot about that with carers. But you need to find them. A story comes to mind. When I was doing a talk, I write for a local newspaper called the Horns, Bickering by post, and they asked me to come into a talk for them last year, about this time at a publisher's Meet the Publishers event. And, you know, we could take my books and my care cards, and this lady came up and spoke to me, said, Oh, no, no, I don't need to know any of that. And I said, Okay, I said, You're caring for a loved. I want you to get my mother lives with me And I said, So why don't you need to know about any of this? Oh, well, because I'm not in distress. I can handle it. I can do it all. I don't need your help. Uh, and I thought there lies the issue until people acknowledge they need some help or just not even help. It's just acknowledgement that there's something out there that can give you some tips and advice. And so he was this lady, and when I asked her some more questions, she was actually my ideal client. She was the one that needed me the most. So instead of coming to me when you're overwhelmed, when you're that blithering crying mess in the kitchen like I was, if we get some help in the beginning, so you learn about boundaries. So you learn about all that goodness and how to deal with the emotional side. Then you don't need rescuing from overwhelm. MM. And that's what I'm trying to get across to people. Yeah, it's more about that prevention. It is so tricky, though, but I think it comes down to, you know, the conversation that you and I have had a couple of times about the levels of customer awareness and whether the customer realises that they have a problem. And then if they do realise that they have a problem, whether they know that there is a solution available so I think that, you know, hopefully a lot of the listeners will be able to relate to what you have described because they could be in similar situations with their own audiences, where they are trying to work on some of that prevention stuff or, you know, trying to reach people who may not necessarily realise that they have a problem. So thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. So over the time that we have gotten to know each other, I have really developed a strong sense of admiration here, reader. Which is why I asked you to come on the podcast today. And the reason for that is there are two really, really strong qualities that you demonstrate in your business all the time that I think you know, a lot more business owners could embrace. The first is that you are an action taker and that you don't just learn you implement. And I see this a lot with small business owners, particularly those that are starting out, you know, they want to learn so much. And so they go on this incredible learning journey where they're constantly filling up their bucket full of all this new information, but then they don't do anything with it. And I find that you are really inspirational and also quite motivating for the rest of my community because of the fact that every time you learn something, you go ahead and implement it, so that's the first thing. The second thing, though, that I really have admired and continue to admire about you is your bravery. I have never encountered another business. I know in my time in business who demonstrates the continuous courage that you do, you get an idea and you straight away, go ahead and do something about it, even if that means reaching out to a celebrity or a local personality and asking for them to get involved in your project or going ahead and doing something like starting a magazine. So with all of that in mind, I would love to know from you. What does being brave in business actually mean to you? First of all, thank you very, very much. I am passionate about this and this is why I do what I do. I know I can help people. I'm put on this Earth to help people, and as somebody I know tells all her people all the time. If you don't use your platform, if you don't get out and help the people that need help and you're just a jerk, isn't that right That that is so for me? It's about that's what it's about. Look, I am so passionate about helping people, and I understand what they've been through, and that's why I do what I do. So being brave for me is just trying that little bit harder. I'm 58 years old and I love being 38. I've been through lots of things in my life. I've done many things from the Air Force to work in the public service to lots of things marriage, divorce or the rest of it. I've learned a lot, but I do things because now I just need to do them. I just have this burning need to do stuff. Some might say It's a shiny object syndrome where I see something shining. I have to go for it. That may well be part of that, but I think being brave for me is just believing that I have something really worthwhile, something that I know can help people. And if I don't do everything in my power to help those people, then I'm just a big fat joke. Yeah, I love that reader. And the passion that you have for what you do shines through in what you do every day. So thank you for that. Thank you. So why don't you tell us then? And it might be difficult for you to choose just one thing, but what do you think is the bravest thing that you have done since you started your business? I've got two things. I've got two things. I often think that I'm not good enough. Okay? And so for me, these are the two things that really stood out for me when I published my book. Tough, tough times, Tough decisions. Part of the publishing deal was that they took the book to the Frankfurt International Book Fair. So in 2014, I went to the Frankfurt International Book. There, I booked a 30 minute talk on the stage. In this huge environment, I have warehouses. This international book fair. It's massive. It's just before covid hit. Obviously it was It's this massive thing. There's four big warehouses of book publishers that are there, and then they have different stages for talking. And I got up and gave a talk about my book and that for me it was really brave. It was probably 30 people in the audience and most of them not understanding English. But, hey, we're with and it really set the stage for me knowing that I wanted to be a public speaker. I just wanted to get this out to everyone. So that was That was pretty huge for me. And the other thing was published in the online magazine. This episode was brought to you by the Popular Business Conference. It's all going down here in Canberra at the stunning of All Ohnishi Hotel on the 11th and 12th of March 2022. We have the most incredible speakers travelling in from around Australia, including sues Chadwick, Sarah Jensen, Emma Norris from a Girl in Progress and Jay born from hipster mom. We have surprises galore, and I can promise you that this will be an event that you'll be talking about for a long time to come, and for all the right reasons, tickets are available now at pop your business dot com forward slash conference. I look forward to seeing you there. I am not tech savvy person. As Beck well knows. I struggled a lot with, but that gave me. Actually, all this was Beck's idea to do the magazine as well. So as you know, you I was having an expo. I was going to have a live expo with 100 people coming to it and that nasty little credit covid gotten away again. And Beck. So why don't you do an online magazine? And that was in September. It was going to be quarterly its monthly. And I love it to bits. And what I love is the people coming back to me and saying, Thank you. I never knew about that or the businesses that I'm actually helping to get out there as well. And that's something that is really important for me to helping other business to rise. So there are the two things that I think I've been braised about, fantastic and both, you know, fabulous examples of bravery. I didn't know you when you did the book fair, but I have been around throughout your journey of launching the magazine, and I guess I just want to highlight that, You know, whilst you have been working on that magazine, there's been so many moving parts, but also so many, uh, smaller instances of bravery that you have demonstrated through doing that. And I know so that at the moment you're kind of working on building a community for business owners within your industry to be able to connect to each other, which I think is an incredibly brave thing. And, you know, really, I guess, looks at that abundance mentality rather than a you know, it's sort of like community over competition, which I am a huge panels. But the other thing is, you know, since you launched your magazine, you have had some really phenomenal interviews. You've had Maggie Beer, Tim Ferguson, Susie Barrel. Yeah, that's correct. And the way you do this is just ask the question. My partner heard Maggie beer being interviewed on the radio. He rang me and told me to listen to it. She was writing. She's part of a group that have written a book about dementia, how her grandmother sat down and talked to her grandchild about dementia. So I wrote an email to her area and asked if I could interview her. The important thing is here. She had a need. She needed to get her book out there. She needed to get her product out there, so I fed into that need. And this is, I suppose, my big tip for everyone. If you can give something in return, it works in your favour. When you're being a bit brave, it's not all about take, take, take. It's not all about your business. It's about helping all this. It's about at the end of every interview I do a quarter action for the person I've interviewed for whatever product there is. I included in my service directory in my magazine for free. I give a shout out. I refer back to the other issues. I've just done an interview yesterday with a gentleman about veggie pods, how he's creating these veg iPods. And so I referred in that back to Maggie Beer. So it's about helping others all the time, and I think that's really important. But look, I've got Jane Barnes, Jimmy Barnes wife. She's working at a time to meet the interviewer Jean Kitson, and this is all because I ask if you don't ask, you don't get. I love that such a great lesson. So you are constantly stepping out of your comfort zone. Why do you think that it is so important for business owners to step outside their comfort zone and be brave because our clients are audience change all the time because they are there needs change all the time, because in our world, our environment is changing all the time. And if you remain stagnant, if you just stay in that little box, you're going to miss opportunities. If you don't step outside your comfort zone, you'll never know what's out there. Sure, sometimes it's not great. Sometimes it's really scary, and sometimes it doesn't work. But, oh my goodness, when it does work, it's pure joy. So much so I can really, really relate to that. So at the beginning of today's interview, we touched on the fact that during your business journey, there have been things that just haven't gone to plan things that haven't worked out, and I often see that are business owners are fearful of being brave because of the fact that they're worried about failure and a lot of those failures might be, You know, something goes wrong. Something maybe doesn't pan out like they planned. Or maybe they ask a question and someone says No. Now I would love to know. Have you experienced any failures? And I've got that in inverted commas in your business so far, or has anything not gone to plan? And if so, how did you move through that? How do you at the other end? Oh, big. How long have we got to talk about this? Yes, there has been. I'm not gonna say failures. And I don't want to be thought of as failures. They were stepping stones because without them, I would not be sitting here today. So yes, there were several things you know, And through no fault of my own and some of them, some of it was my fault because I didn't believe enough in myself. We've had this conversation many times. I get caught up in my education. I get caught up in I'm not good enough. But what it is for me. Like I ran several programmes where no one signed up. I ran. I mean, I still think snap that stress cycle is phenomenal. and it's going to come places it really is. But I created a number of programmes that no one bought into that. No one wanted that. I couldn't even get anyone to a workshop when I was giving it away for free. But what happened is I created a lot of documents, a lot of handouts, a lot of blogs to support that and I still use them today. So whilst they weren't successful, it's helping me to be successful in what I'm doing today. So no, there's no failures. There's mistakes, which is a mistake. I think that there's all stepping stones to lead it to us to where we want to go. Yes, getting through it and overcoming it is difficult and I can tell you I've had far too many wines for years of things. But hey, it is what it is we learn through it. I am a spiritual person and I very strongly believe things happen for a reason now, whether I had to teach me how to learn some bit of tech to support those programmes that are now, I now use a lot or whether it was about preparing myself for what's to come to get used to doing things, being comfortable with things, whether it's covid that came along and changed my life totally. So I don't do public speaking events anymore that I've had to learn to go online, that I found out that I've actually got a greater reach when I do go online, what I've got People signed up from the UK Philippines, Korea from my magazine, whereas you know, I wouldn't have had that before. It's about how you look at everything. When I interviewed Tim Ferguson, something really stuck out for me. What I interviewed with him. He's this man in a wheelchair. He was part of the Doug Anthony All Stars, so he had immense fame in the nineties, and then he got M s. And then the network dropped him because they didn't want to see anyone in a wheelchair, and that was really sad and very sad. He learned how to deal with it. He learned to deal with different things. He did a documentary, and in that documentary there's one scene where he's waiting for his carer to come and shower him, and I noticed that and I asked him about that in my interview with him and he said, Look, it's all how you look at it that carer might be saving someone else's life. Uh, so it's all how you look at it. Don't get angry with him because he's not there. Just understand he's going through a rough time and know that I need him. So I really put that into my business as well. I understand that there's something happening to other people all the time. That, yes, they might be crabby with you. Yes, that things might not work out, but something better might just be around the corner. And, yes, I'm a glass three quarters full type of person. Uh, none of this halfway for me, baby. It's all about just looking at the positives in life because there's so much ship out there. But if you get caught up in it, it's no good for you. Good for your business. No good for anyone. Mm, I love that. And it goes to show. Just, you know, it's all about perspective. Whether it is that you are waiting on somebody to come and provide you with care or whether it is that you know, you have put out a programme and no one signed up. I mean, I've been there, too, but, you know, it's it's really looking at that perspective. I'm thinking, OK, you know what if what if I could reframe this and turn it into something positive? You know, what lessons do we have from it? What can I learn from it? What could I do differently next time? Uh, and I really love that about you and in the way that you know. Not only that, you take the lessons from what's going on, but I love the fact that you also share those lessons with our community, uh, and that you let the other people in our community know exactly what's going on. And you know where things haven't gone to plan and what you've learned from it, because to me, that's all about collective learning and the ability for our community to actually grow from each other's mistakes. And I think that's really important. There's so many things that I've picked up from. Our next guest is that I would never have thought of doing. And you know what's wonderful, especially when we're working alone in a business, especially when we're in lockdown. You know, 106 days in lockdown, and you buy yourself here at home and you get that self talk and that self doubt that starts to creep in. But when you reach out to your support network, when you talk to them, you see that someone else is going through the same stuff that you're going through. And I think that's the most important thing, that you can't be positive all the time. You just can't. It doesn't work that way because if you don't have down days, you don't know how good the good days are. And it's really important to be able to share the good days with someone to not just sorry the good days and bad days someone. It's not just about sharing the good things all the time. It's about sharing when things don't go right and how you've learned from them, because when one rises, we all rise. I totally agree. So you have shared a few different tips for our audience today, but I would love to know what advice would you give to other business owners who are holding themselves back because they have some kind of fear. What would you tell them? To really get them moving? If you really believe what you have is amazing. If you really believe what you're doing is going to help someone else, you have to do everything in your power, every single thing in your power to help that person. You have to step outside that comfort zone because it's a pretty wonderful place out there. When you're sitting back in that comfort zone sitting in that fear, it can be overwhelming. But when you step out, there is a sense of freedom. There's a sense of pride. Okay, you've actually done it. Yes, it's scary, but that we all need that little bit of stress, a little bit of adrenaline, our lives to push us a bit further. But when it works, when it works, it's beautiful. When you hear those words, well, you've really helped me made our lives better. That is such a buzz that no being scared, no sitting back will ever do. We'll do is the wrong word that will ever take the place off because you're out there and you're making a difference. If you're passionate about it, be passionate about it. I really agree with that radar. And I think that even what you said just about helping that one person and those words that you receive to me that is the ultimate reward. It's why I do what I do. You know, I would choose that every day of the week. So what is coming up for you in your business? What would you like to tell our audience about? Oh, there's some exciting things happening. I've got the February issue just about put to bed. As they say in the publishing world. I'm just doing the last little bits up on the February issue, and there's some really interesting stories this time. This is wonderful. Business has just started out called the Grand Connection Gifts, and it's about gifts for people in aged care homes. These young girls grandparents were in a home and they wanted to send stuff to the, But there was nothing really available inbox. Kids, you know, most of them got candles in it. You can't have candles in aged care homes. Most of them have got bath salts and bath bombs. Hello. There's no baths, and they wanted a gift that was interactive. So they've developed this box gift with Australian goods that are interactive, like puzzles, word puzzles, games, picture puzzles. They've got little items to make them feel good pictures of the family handwritten note of the family that centred but also a card in an envelope so the recipient can reply and say Thank you for the gift. Isn't that divine? So this is what I love about my business. I find these great little people. Uh, the interview they did with me for the magazine was the first interview they ever did the first PR they ever did, and they were chuffed. And that's just amazing. Since then, I've gone on to refer them to a few. Other businesses might well pick them up as welcoming gifts or so forth. So working collaborations. So that's what I love doing the February magazine going way off track there. But the February magazines coming out on the first of February, and if you go to my website, reach out Marion dot com. You'll find the sign up there. Remember, it's free and always will be free online. Fantastic. That's really great. And where else can people find you? Aside from heading across your website. If people want to find out more about what you're doing, they want to connect with you. Have a chart. Where can they find you on my social media? It's aged. Care with these, um, across all the socials, you'll find me everywhere. Look, check me out on LinkedIn under Rita Marion. Aged care with These are the best place to find me. Fantastic. And we will make sure that we're all of those links in the show notes so that our audience can find you. Thank you so much for being here with me today. It has been absolutely my pleasure in talking to you. And I can't wait to read the February issue. Thank you so much. Beckett has been so much fun. And thank you for helping me to be brave. Yes, I welcome. Thanks, Rita. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the brain in business podcast. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Leave me a rating. Five stars, preferably and a review. You can also join me over on socials at popular beers. If you want to hang out with me and my fabulous community of small business owners, you should definitely think about joining bex business besties. It's an online membership with mastermind vibes and is, honestly my favourite place to hang out on the Internet. You can find out more at pop your business dot com forward slash BBB. I'll see you in the next episode.