Transcript
Speaker: So I appreciate your wife saying I am a caregiver and saying, full stop, this is my new job or another part of my role in my life, in your life right now. And by doing that, she took on a more elevated role of love for her entire family. And I implore that everyone takes on that role. It's a beautiful role. It's a loving role and you deserve to be on the caregiving pedestal because it's an honor to be able to be that to someone. And it's an honor for someone to trust in you to be that for them.
Speaker: Well, you made that sound much so lovelier than I did. I said, oh, you're caregiver, fine. I'll get out of your way.
Speaker: Welcome to the Leaders Commute podcast. I'm Jess Villegas. This podcast considers how the experiences that keep resurfacing over the commute of our lives inform our worldview for how to lead others and, more importantly, how we lead ourselves.
Speaker: Its mission is to assist you to transform those experiences from passive compartmentalized episodes into leveraged connections for better thinking and outcomes. to- Today's episode is titled, The Weight of Waiting.
Speaker: caregiving, systems, and learning to love differently. There are some businesses that begin with an idea, but others that begin with an experience that keeps asking questions long after you thought you understood what was happening.
Speaker: Tara Hamburger's journey with Rooted Care Plus began when her grandmother, Nana, was diagnosed with dementia. Tara became a family caregiver, and like millions of others who suddenly find themselves in that role, she began learning things she hadn't known she needed to know.
Speaker: How do you find help? Who do you call? What resources are available? What happens when the person you're caring for needs more than you can provide? And perhaps just as importantly, who is looking after the caregiver?
Speaker: Tara brought something else to those questions. She had taught herself to code. She had worked in healthcare, technology, and consulting. She understood operations and data. And over time, she began combining what she knew professionally with what she was learning personally.
Speaker: But what I found particularly interesting is that even after she created Rooted Care Plus, the learning didn't stop. Tara initially thought she understood who the customer was.
Speaker: Then the market taught her something different. She discovered resources that she hadn't known existed even after years as a caregiver. She learned about area agencies on aging, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, state health agencies, primary care physicians, and the complicated economics surrounding aging in place.
Speaker: Some things worked and some things didn't, but she kept learning. Today, Rooted Care Plus uses an AI companion called Roo to provide caregivers and care recipients with someone, or in this case something, that checks in, listens, helps identify what might be needed, and connects people with the resources they may not even know how to ask for.
Speaker: But as Tara and I talked, our conversation became about something larger than technology. It became about caregiving, systems, weighting, identity, and what happens when ordinary people suddenly find themselves responsible for navigating a world they were never taught how to navigate.
Speaker: And somewhere along the way, it also caused me to reconsider parts of my own family's caregiving journey. Please enjoy.
Speaker: Good afternoon, Tara. How are you doing? I'm well, how about yourself? I'm excited to be here chatting with you. Thanks. We've been trying to get together for a little while. We reached out two or three months ago and we had different things move in front of this discussion. But in the meantime, i was kidding around earlier, but I really meant I think we're probably at least two or three months smarter than the last time we talked. So think this going to be a good discussion. I really appreciate your talk.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. like to set the audience up a little bit on why this relationship with you has been really so compelling for me. We have a mutual colleague, his name is Eric Pradham, and you were on Eric's podcast, The Unfolding Thought, ah relatively early on, or maybe around the middle of his journey there. He's published quite a few conversations, and I listened to it, i really enjoyed And of course, Eric has known my journey, which has touched the subject of caregiving, and so of course,
Speaker: When he and I started talking about it, he would tell me more about you. He gave us the introduction and we went from there. um So the chronology was... For several years, I've been trying to be as good of a supporter as I could for my wife, Leslie, and her taking care of her mom, who did finally pass early in 2025.
Speaker: But I got a firsthand knowledge of the work involved for caregivers, and I thought my part was hard, but her part looked like it was very, very difficult. But I learned a lot from the experience, and I'll expose some of that here today.
Speaker: Besides that, I'd also just coincidentally had just finished a conversation with ah Lisa Berry Blackstock. And Lisa Berry Blackstock is an advocate, a pretty well-renowned independent advocate.
Speaker: And she's not specializing so much in this realm of dementia or caregiving or end of life. It's more around ah people are trying to navigate the health system. They've got significant insurance problems and significant if they health problems. And there's 30 different people that know their piece, but nobody knows it all.
Speaker: And she tries to know it all. and It was particularly helpful to me from my brother's passing in 2022. She came in and really helped us get a lot of clarity about how to navigate that.
Speaker: So all those things happened within about three weeks. I had done that interview. Eric had spoken about you, and I had listened to podcast. so That was the universe screaming, I mean, that we needed to talk. So here we are.
Speaker: Let me say one thing quickly about my journey. I related this on another podcast, but about seven or eight years ago, my mother-in-law, who at the time was 88, moved in with us. We built out the basement for her to accommodate someone of her age. It was designed by my wife very specifically to accommodate her champion's death.
Speaker: So between that and between her dedication to that, and then between me doing less traveling, having the ability to help, all of that together, there were a lot of stakeholders that all got a lot of benefit.
Speaker: She got the benefit of the care. My mother-in-law, my wife got the benefit, although a very hard-fought benefit of all of assisting to take care my mom.
Speaker: And I got the benefit of realizing that apparently the world doesn't revolve around what I think about the whole thing. It revolves around the people that are closest to it. So that's how I'm going to ah treat this as a setup. And I guess what I'd like to do first of all is why don't you at least talk a little bit about yourself and the business and let's maybe get into that and then at some point we can just jump into them a deeper conversation, okay?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to go deep with you, as I like to say, after all these, after these months, you mentioned um Eric connected us, which I think is great. And it started when he started, that's when we started Rooted Care Plus. So he it was one of our first conversations or one of our first podcasts that we did. And we were only,
Speaker: I say two or three months old, very ah young, but very active at the time. So Rooted Care Plus is a company that I built myself. um And it's powered by Roo, which is an AI companion all via text message. And behind the scenes is Rooted Memory, which is it takes...
Speaker: People's empathetic conversations, real conversations, takes that qualitative communication and make it into quantitative data for your area agency on aging, your state health teams and departments, as well as large organizations. But RU is meant to be a companion.
Speaker: It's meant to, and it is a check-in source. ah It's one of those things that it doesn't wait for someone to say, I'm drowning. I need help. What do I do? it says, how are you doing? Is everything okay?
Speaker: How are you feeling today? Because yesterday or last week, it was a little rough. It is meant to be in a capacity of friend. It is AI.
Speaker: And Rue lets people know that this is AI. But then also it's meant to be a guide because I became a family caregiver seven years ago.
Speaker: My Nana was diagnosed with dementia and there were times where I was lost. I was exhausted. i didn't know what I didn't know. And Google, you have to know what you're Googling to get information. Rue is built to help and be an assistant in a sense when you're just transparently sharing. If there's frustration, annoyance, Ru will say maybe respite will help.
Speaker: Or did you know area aging is in your area? It's kind of like what you mentioned a little bit before. There's a lot of things that there's a lot of people involved, but you really don't know all the people that are involved or all the people and things that you need to put in place um unless you're in it. And then sometimes you may miss deadlines or if you don't have the capabilities to understand what a AAA is or respite or whatever it may be, you may just think you're in it by yourself. So RU is meant to be there with the person consistently and provide that guidance without them knowing what they may need or not.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting. The model that you have there, which is obviously going to be much greater than what I'm going to touch here in this moment, is that resource. And my wife got very good at getting on ChatGPT and asking a lot of questions. And then ah that was really her introduction to using ChatGPT.
Speaker: Because it came out about the time things were really getting difficult. And as soon as she got winded up, she could get some help there. She started to use it. And then of course she came to understand is that the quality of what you get is in direct proportion of the quality of the way you inquire within it to get the information. Right.
Speaker: And of course, AI collects the information to get better in its answers. But the AI on this side, for my wife, would have been, she started learning things and making notes and they were asking the question differently.
Speaker: ah And the idea of creating that knowledge base still kind of lives in her head and lives in her memory. it It's a source of satisfaction because she realizes that the work wasn't just helping her get up, helping get down, helping her get dressed. The work was also learning about everything that went around.
Speaker: I thought that was really a substantial thing. Maybe if you could mention ah what some of your stakeholders, some primarily your clients, what do they look like? Yeah, absolutely. So um our clients are range, but we're B2B2C. So we may have area agency on aging and their whole goal is to look after care recipients, seniors to age in place along with their caregivers. So through the Older Americans Act, that's their whole initiative is to make sure people are aging in place and aging in place well. So we tend to partner with them across the U.S. to be able to provide RUE to their care recipients. It may be a senior or it may be their family caregiver to be able to get that emotional support, as well as the caregiver can receive notifications on if things are a little or awry. But then with that AAA, they receive social determinants of health understanding. Is there a financial need? Is there a health need? Is there a transportation need? So we're able to identify and understand that anonymously, as well as just understanding what's going on in the cohort for that state agency. We also work with Department of Health and Human Services throughout the state. um We work currently with the state of Nebraska and we offer RU to their rural tribal communities as well as their frontier communities because we're text-based.
Speaker: We don't require an app or Wi-Fi or anything like that. So we can reach people in the the frontier of their region in Nebraska, ah without them, i don't want to say without them, but Department of Health and Human Services can understand that they have the support that they need in those regions that are far out. And they know when they need to send a care service coordinator out to support Because behind the scenes, we give them distress signals or we give them updates like, okay, this cohort is doing well and they're they're thriving or this cohort may need more assistance. So Roo is able to communicate with our state agencies along those lines. We also work with healthcare care providers. So primary care physicians, they will bring on Rooted Care Plus to be able to look after their patients, in home. And when I say look out, it is just to provide care navigation during those times when they're not at their doctor's appointment. And what that looks like is the cueing, the reminders, the check-ins, the, hey, is everything okay? Did you remember to take X, Y, and Z? And then if there's anything that
Speaker: is shows up as a distress, then the PCP is immediately notified. So we have a human in the loop. We only monitor and identify those distress signals in a summarize state for our care recipients. That goes back to the primary care physician. They update the care plan and they take it from there. So we are pretty much the conduit to allow healthcare care providers to have still that connective tissue outside of the home. So when they do go back to their appointment, they are, one, the patient is more secure in whatever diagnosis they may have because RU helps them calm to a state of stability. versus a state of fear because they know they have rue checking in but also they know that that information in a summarized manner is going back to their primary care physician so nothing gets missed when they go back to their appointment so three um state agencies overall organizations that look after patients and our aging population and primary care physicians So would you consider those like three different revenue streams or channels or how to tell you talk about? Yeah, there are three revenue streams and we learned a lot. So ah we learned a lot as to be able to identify those streams. So when we first launched, of course, I built it based off of my own experience as being a family caregiver. And I lit i had to learn a lot. We launched June of 2025, so we're only a year old, but have been blessed ever since then. And it's just i it just makes me know that this is what I'm meant to do in this phase of my life. But going back a little,
Speaker: We learned a lot last year. So initially when I was going through and understanding the space, um i you know people have gotten us here and I can't say a certain person, it's been people have been open to have conversations with me. doctors, physicians, case managers, people like you, that I have been able to consume so much knowledge and take that to build how we send Root out there into the world. When we first launched, it was going to be direct to customer. When we first launched, we had over 150 caregivers. raise their hand and actively start texting Roo. And I was like, oh this is amazing. They were texting consistently. It was amazing until we were like, it's just $5 a month. They said, oh, no.
Speaker: and So we immediately learned that, okay, that's not going to work. Because one AI in text message was brand new at that point. And so people were engaging and really sharing their feelings, their emotions. But then when you say, hey, use this link,
Speaker: It threw people off. But then also I started realizing why do caregivers have to pay? Because they need help. They need the support now. Why do why do they have to pay $5 a month or $10 or whatever it is? So then I started reaching out for it. I was like, okay, there's got to be a way.
Speaker: So then I went to the U.S. Aging Conference last year, and I learned so much at that conference. U.S. Aging is a national organization that is meant to be an organization for the Area Agency on Aging. That was my first time learning about the AAA.
Speaker: Keep in mind, I've been a caregiver at this point for six years. I did not know what the AAA was. So even me being a founder, creating this tool for other family caregivers, because I know I needed it. I needed someone to check in on me. I needed the resources, but help me find the resources that's related to my situation. I still didn't know about the AAA until I dug deep. And when I dug deep, that's where the the avenue of a revenue source came to be because the Older Americans Act. So I started learning more about the government and the laws and the set-asides and things like that and realized that there's a carve-out for family caregivers.
Speaker: What? Every state has it. And so each state has it. They give it to their AAA. This is perfect. So then I started working with AAAs, talking to them, sharing what we have. But then there's also the thing of this is good. This is good.
Speaker: but does it work? This is interesting. So we went through the pilot phase. So that was the first learning of who are state government agencies that can actually pay for Roo so it could be free for care caregivers. And then after that, i was like, okay,
Speaker: That's just one stream. So what about assisted living and adult day services? Cool. So I went after them. They love it. All conversations have been great, but it comes back to how does this relate to another bed being purchased for the month, for the year, for the quarter? their business and rightfully so. ah So it was one of those, they looked at Rue as a nice to have, not a need to have because our focus were just family caregivers. Because again, that's my experience. I didn't think about, you know, the actual senior, cause I'm like, this is for, so I had to pivot from the assisted living and adult day service angle. ah
Speaker: And then I was like, oh, what about businesses? Like a health insurance went down that path. It's still a path that we can still discover. But we did a test. We did a small test in an adult day service. That test was not successful.
Speaker: It was not successful because I was not there on the ground to share my story and to tell them why it exists, who we are, and to let them know that it is private.
Speaker: that their employer would not see it. So that was there was a little contention on that. So then I had to be like, okay, we're gonna sit this idea to the side. I know it still exists, but there's more work on that vertical.
Speaker: So that was last year. Then I went into, you know, I'm in the the aging and longevity community, learning so much out of Atlanta. There's Ag Tech Connect and all of these other things. um The CMS learned about the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, all the things. I'm like, call me Dr. T at this point. Yeah. I'm learning a lot.
Speaker: And when I learned, I i was connected with ah this doctor in Alabama and ah pitched her, she loved it.
Speaker: And she said, you know, i service as Medicare patients and the state employees. We don't really pay for much. There's reimbursement. And I said, what?
Speaker: What do you mean ah So a whole nother world opened up by people having a conversation. And so I did research and I was like, okay, how is that a pathway? Is that a pathway for Rooted Care Plus and what we offer for Roo? So we provide emotional support, queuing, identification, risk stratification, all the things in the back end, but also the the layer in between a visit.
Speaker: And I said, you know, we need to open it up. It can't just be for family caregivers, because again, we all, it one in four is a family caregiver, will become a family caregiver, used to be a family caregiver, whatever it may be.
Speaker: but there's still not that much support specifically for family caregivers. So in order for me to be able to keep our mission and our objective to support them, I had to find another way to generate stream of revenue and income. And so that's where it became, we have a ah care recipient path and that care recipient path looks after Medicare recipients, And now we have a pathway through Medicaid recipients. So you're looking at seniors. You're looking at those with chronic conditions. You're looking at those that are in our rural frontier regions where through chronic care management and advanced primary care management through Medicare, we are the tooling for primary care physicians to be able to offer support outside of a visit. Okay.
Speaker: where they're able to get that um now service and offering to their patients. And therefore they they bring us on to look after their patients in between those visits.
Speaker: So that's how we got there. i could stop right there, but there's more to it. Yeah, we're going to come back to some of this because i think going to make a full circle. We're still going to be talking about your experiences here. yeah And then I'll let you round out credibility that you built not only personally to do this, but also within the organization that you created.
Speaker: But let me just change this up a little bit. I'll just make a comment here. Because I've spent so many years as a consultant or as an executive, I tend to drop things in the prism of what's going on culturally, what goes on in the business to try and inform the way think.
Speaker: And it strikes me that For new parents, for example, someone invariably says, you know, they give you a manual to learn how to drive a car, they give you leadership training, but they don't tell you how to raise a kid.
Speaker: It's the cultural expression of the fact that the population is getting older and caregivers are more around. And so maybe haven't seen us enter the lexicon that easily, but this is what you're doing. People are saying to you, perhaps,
Speaker: Well, you know, they don't tell you how to do this caregiving stuff and you're trying to solve that. And when I related to your journey of looking at things, I can say to you that, you know, i think I'm a bright guy, but I don't think I knew until I started helping my wife that I ever drew a distinction between the person that was getting the care and the caregiver.
Speaker: And so someone said, i want to talk to about caregiving. I naturally would think about the recipient. Yeah. So it's it's interesting, but they're two completely different things. I even have to remind myself now, as I'm listening to you, you're talking about the caregiver. You're not talking about the person that's being cared for.
Speaker: yeah Not that that doesn't concern you, but that's really kind of what's happening. And what I equate that to is oftentimes if I'm working with a client where they get frozen, is that everything seems like the same problem.
Speaker: Oh, you know, money's kind of difficult. You know, I got, I'm not sure what to do there. Oh, hiring is kind of difficult. I'm not sure what to do there. You strategy seems kind of difficult. Cashflow is interesting and it's kind of difficult.
Speaker: And what ah typically our small business owners and and medium-sized businesses do is, they don't have a way to really differentiate those problems so they can deal with those problems. So it's that's like me saying, well, the problems for the caregiver and the caregivinge are the same and they're not.
Speaker: But at least I'm being thoughtful and I look like I'm trying to do the best I can, but I i can't even distinguish this with the problems. right And it it feels to me like what you're doing is you're saying, look, it's one big bag of...
Speaker: stress and stuff, you're taking part of that bag and trying to organize it into something that's more palatable and digestible. Do do you think that's a fair way to say that? Yeah, that is a fair way to say it. um Because oftentimes when it comes to support care funding behind the support and care tends to be for that care recipient um in the healthcare care world for that patient, you know? um And rightfully so, because they're the ones that need that care.
Speaker: But a lot of times they're, A lot of times, especially our aging population, has a person or two or three. And then what happens is if we keep forgetting them from the care plan, the care coordination, the care navigation, or their whole care team, if we forget them, then they will become...
Speaker: the care recipient, the patient. And then what happens is when we talk about value-based care, if we exclude the ones looking after people that are caring, then we just have a consistent cyclical cycle of people that need care because we're not looking after everybody in that whole care team. ah When it comes to emotionally, those emotions get bottled up, built up, and they turn to physical pains, ailments, chronic conditions. So I think it's our responsibility as building Rooted Care Plus to have the family caregiver be our priority.
Speaker: But also too, we have a multitude of stakeholders. We have the family caregiver, that's how we started, that's our crux, but we have the care recipient.
Speaker: We have our stakeholders, which are the states or the organizations or whatnot. I look at all of those stakeholders as being the overall care team for that caregiver. So even if a grandmother or mom is using RU for care coordination, emotional check-ins, things like that, what happens is that's a quote-unquote patient receiving that care.
Speaker: The family caregiver is calmer. The family caregiver is more aware that their loved one is okay aging in place far away. um Department of Health and Human Services are more confident that they are dispatching people to areas that really, or people that really need it.
Speaker: And or they can go into a home more confident that this person is okay because Rue has shared that. So the patient is number one, the family caregiver.
Speaker: And then from there, everybody else is part of that. We don't exclude anybody, but I have to make sure family caregivers get their shout out all the time. Well, let me ask you this when someone has created revenue opportunity. I mean, you want to, you want your mission to be felt, but you've got to have a way to fund it.
Speaker: Right. Otherwise people sort say, well, you want to make a lot of money. You can't be doing the right thing. Well, that's not true. You got to have revenue to do your thing. But when I think about where I operate and how much I enjoy it, and then I look back over the many years and say, you know, it doesn't surprise me that I enjoy this because it feels like this is what I was going to be doing all my life.
Speaker: Now, I'm not saying I had some hallelujah moment where I had some understanding that other people don't. I think people naturally, if they can gravitate to their particular strengths. There's a book out there called, uh, what to make of a life by Jim Collins. And he talks about things like encodings and encodings are those kinds of things that people migrate to that fulfill things that they're passionate about and that they're good at and that they've created opportunity to have.
Speaker: So many people told me for years that I wondered if I should be a teacher in high school or college. And I'm saying, well, I thought about it, but I think I probably thought it would pay so I didn't do that. But I found a way to teach i throw throughout all my roles and then continue to do that even now.
Speaker: So I guess I'm framing that to set this question up for you. Like throughout your life, what are maybe one or two or three experiences that maybe looking back kind of shape how you think about things now in terms of your caregiving and terms of the business you built.
Speaker: If you don't mind sharing some of that, I think it'd be interesting to know. Yeah, absolutely. um And I wrote that what to make of a life, wrote it down. check back yeah so um Yes, absolutely. I actually reflect on that often.
Speaker: um like at least every quarter. No, just kidding. But I reflect on that often because I i believe in the Lord. It's nothing but the Lord. He's done everything throughout my life to lead me to this exact moment. So in my past, I am a self-taught developer. I taught myself how to code years ago. I used to work at Emory Health Care, and I learned so much. in that role. And I remember getting that job. I built them a custom landing page from scratch because I knew I did not, I didn't graduate from college. I was still in school on and off, but I knew I didn't have the the completed degree yet. And I knew I didn't have that experience to be in that environment. So what I did was did the interview, got the interview, which was great.
Speaker: built them a landing page based off of that conversation in that interview and got that job. So it's something that like the skill something told me like learn how to code, learn how to build. I got the job from doing that skill.
Speaker: I've worked with agencies, marketing agencies. as a ecr developer technologist worked with non-profits across the country probably named one probably worked with them but i was on the strategy but also the builder the operational like how do we make this thing work how do we make it talk how do we get the data out of it that type of thing so that also is a culmination of what i built rue and how i built rue based off of that past experience and people giving me opportunity. I became a consultant and freelancer. I've been there for over nine years at this point. So I've learned how to run a business, do pitches, all those different things, but still use my operational skills to help other organizations and nonprofits have automation, have sales cycles and understand revenue operations, all of that. That's a culmination of me leading Rooted Care Plus and getting to where we are now. We are a year old, 13 month old company and we have a state contract. That is culmination of all of my past experience being in rooms that my skills and my know-how got me there because of the value I brought to helping others within their business. Now I'm helping others externally. Nana was my number one. Nana passed June 15, 2026 this year.
Speaker: She was my ace. I'm the only child. My mom is the only child of my grandmother. So when it came down to her needing help, I helped her or supported her the best way that I could in multitude. We did agent in place. She was in assisted living for two and a half years. things like So my experience was got me to this point to help others.
Speaker: My mom's experience got me to this point to help others. So it's a mix of me always appreciating working with mission-driven companies or organizations, food banks, rescue missions, things like that. I really enjoyed it. I love the tech side of it. I love, you know, seeing the stories and now me building a mission-driven for-profit company, but using my skills to actually build the tool to be able to negotiate and talk to people in rooms to get something out there that helps other people like me is my whole life has been built for this moment.
Speaker: So a lot of what you described there became evident throughout in your career and the jobs that you worked at and the education you had. And I think that's critical, right? And the other birds, the the mission of how you want it to be perceived.
Speaker: So maybe don't mind, I want to push you back even a little further. yeah Were there any sort of personal experiences, not necessarily that they were like those, but even going back into a high school or before high school, anything that you passed away to organize you and was part of what you take contributed to this moment.
Speaker: That's a great question. So I used to be really shy growing up. um I'm the only child. So even around family, go to Tennessee and they were like, Tara, don't talk. I used to be really shy. But I think I used to just be observing. And then, too, I'm the only child. So you get a lot of people. I'm just like, ah.
Speaker: Interestingly enough, right out of high school and um freshman year in college, i used to work at a radio station. i used to work at a radio station for about four years. and a lot of And I've worked in the Atlanta market, worked in the Savannah market, all the things, and I was on air.
Speaker: the which is crazy, the shy, the shy Tara. But when you get me around people, like individually I opened up. ah And I wanna say the experience of being uncomfortable and then turning on to be comfortable has led me to this part from a young age too. Because when the microphone came on, I was on. And my family in Tennessee and Georgia, they'd like, that's Tara.
Speaker: It's like you turn it on. And I use that without having any formal business training or anything like that. didn't go to fancy schools. But Having opportunities to pitch in rooms with boards and now pitch in rooms now for my thing has got me there. So observing and then when it's time to go, it's time to go. So so younger me being that quiet person. And then when I got comfortable, but ah you couldn't shut me up. I would get in trouble all the time. But that was in a closed group. And then younger college, when the mic came on, I was ready. I've had the benefit of us interacting prior to your non-espacity, and my condolences for that.
Speaker: But I mention it also because I know how important that was to your journey and how it was informing you just through some of the conversations that had. And the other thing is it's a significant situation when someone so important in your life represents such a large percentage of that close-knit group. But, I mean, if you were an only child and your mom was an only child,
Speaker: That's quite a challenge you had to face. So again, my condolences. Thank you. Let me come back a little bit to some of my experience with my mother-in-law. She passed early last year.
Speaker: She was 96. And I just want to relate something here because this really caught me by surprise. And I'm going to just relay it. And then I'm going to ask you if either you personally had an experience like this or others have talked to you about this. I'm very curious about this.
Speaker: but As I was trying to be ah good support to the primary caregiver, it wasn't all the hard things I was doing. It was always me waiting around to make sure I would do everything everything that was needed.
Speaker: So, yeah, I started cooking, which I never did much of, you know, and we started cleaning parts of the house I never used to clean before. I used to do it in the easy stuff. And I'd like to read, but I started reading more books than I had before. Then I took up guitar lessons, you know, and then I went for long walks. and But all of it was just to keep some sanity and then trying to watch Leslie manage an extremely difficult situation. She was with us for about eight years on our house, first four years, five years.
Speaker: um It was just what you would picture, extremely challenging thing, a caregiver just through sheer will and love trying to get to the next point and not personally feeling like she was always getting there.
Speaker: For me, she was always getting because she didn't always feel little. And then me just feeling so sad that I couldn't do more. And then a few things started happening. while You know, we would be each other's support.
Speaker: And would tell me about the day and, but you know, when she was always on. And so when it was time for her to head down to the basement to to work with her mom, then I would go start dinner.
Speaker: So that is just to lead up to the following. There was a strange situation, would say about a year and a half before my mother-in-law passed, her name is Geraldine. It seemed like a light switch.
Speaker: One day, my wife and I, without saying the words to each other, just realized that part of our stress was that we were waiting for something to happen. We were waiting for her to pass.
Speaker: We were waiting for someone to come and show up to help us. We were waiting to get an answer. Everything was waiting, just waiting, waiting. We were waiting on things maybe that weren't even important to wait for, but everything was about something's not happening the way we needed to happen.
Speaker: and And then one day we were just talking and i don't know what we talked about, but it was a nice long conversation. We didn't get to have many of those. And then it just seemed like the next day we just stopped waiting.
Speaker: It's like we quit thinking that everything had to come to us. We just thought we're going to do the best we can and we're going to stop waiting. and it wasn't a conscious decision. But the reason I'm making so much of it is in that moment, we had so much release.
Speaker: It almost felt like the last year and a half, even though things were getting more difficult, it was actually easier than the first five years that she was with us. It was almost like a mountain. And the peak of the anxiety and the and almost a complete breakdown, the day before the sunrise the next day, it became almost calm and much more loving. And then we found there's some residual things like mine and Leslie's relationship started improving. and I thought about how to analyze it, but mostly I just realized how just that little shift in thinking made things much easier for us.
Speaker: And I guess, I don't know how common that is. I don't know if it's a grind for most people right to the end and that's how it is, or if maybe other people have experienced that. And I think you'd be in a position to at least have known other stories along those lines.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing your story. And that's ah a very interesting thing for you to put it in the word of waiting. of Are we waiting for this? What's going to happen now? My mom had a huge issue with people calling her back. She just needed answers. And she would contact organizations, but they wouldn't call her back like that. She would be waiting for that. So that would annoy and put more amount on the stress. So my experience, we've gone through multiple phases. We went through multiple phases with Nana, my grandma, aging in place.
Speaker: It was worry of, is she okay? It's like waiting for... a neighbor to call us because she's walked up the street or they saw her one area or Nana's calling me because she's in her car and she can't get to the house or something like that. There was a small stint where my husband and I, we moved to Atlanta for nine months to see if we could help.
Speaker: But she was so ah new in the dementia phase where she was scared, afraid, stubborn, she wanted to be independent, all the things, but then also to get help and support.
Speaker: We can't say, hey, we need help and support. Something has to happen for them to be able to keep her or hold her or do something. So we had to wait that out. We had to wait for a stressful, dangerous, scary thing to happen, or we have to pay money because there's a margin of those that receive care that are on Medicare, um on Medicaid, but have assets.
Speaker: If you have assets, there's a weird middle ground. You know, you have to have a lot of nothing or a lot of a lot. So the ones that are in the middle, which a lot of us are, um do not receive or can get the help that we need in those moments. So it's the it's the stress of...
Speaker: There's a support dangling, but there's really no support. And then we got to breathe a little when we found an amazing assisted living facility for her or community, excuse me, in Atlanta.
Speaker: For two and a half years, we were breathing because we didn't have to worry. We didn't have to wait. We didn't have to wait on anybody else to tell us one thing or it's another, that type of thing.
Speaker: But now it's a financial thing because every year, i mean, they changed hands because again, they need a bed. Rue's nice to have, not a need to have because it is a business. Um, um,
Speaker: it will get more. Like this is, you know, I used to pay rent back in the day. was like, all right, this is. So she has retirement. She's in the middle margins, but you still have to subsidize that. And every year it goes up a substantial amount, especially if they get acquired. So then the final year was, you know,
Speaker: My mom, thankful so much for my mom because everything happened to a reason. We moved Nana in with my mom in Florida, 55 and over community, April of 2025, Nana passed June. So she was home with her daughter.
Speaker: when that happened. So from my mom's perspective, there was a lot. It was sundown and moving to, like moving someone with full on Alzheimer's is a lot. So there's adaption and all the things, but we learned and use resources.
Speaker: The AAA came through, adult day services for dementia um patients, which is amazing. Didn't even know that was a thing. But that sort of respite was able to give my mom a breather, a break Monday through Friday from nine to five, you know that type of thing. So ah during those moments of what do I do? What do I do? And just asking consistently and waiting at the end of the day, at the very tail end, it all just came together. And then towards um the last piece of our journey, She was on hospice in home, doctors and nurses and MRI scans coming to the house. I'm like, oh, this is VIP, which is great. You know, it's crazy to say, but those are things that we had to go. We had to wait through the phases and the process of it. We had to learn it in the midst of stress, in the midst of worry, all of that.
Speaker: So it's something that we don't talk about it enough. We don't talk about what if. We don't talk about what if your your mind goes or what if you can't walk anymore, that type of thing.
Speaker: And so um if anything, if what we can do with Rue is if you have a primary care physician or if you're on Medicaid or Medicare or something and you're using Rue, Rue can guide you through the life phases.
Speaker: So you can start talking about it So you can be prepared before, or you can share with somebody else. So it's one of the, like, we can't solve for everything, but at least I can build something and share something to alleviate even a few from going and waiting like we had to do in that sense.
Speaker: As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, all right, I should put a finer point on the statement because you're helping me realize the waiting you're talking about is just part of the circumstance. It's just by design. There's just lots of things you got to chase down, or lots of things you got to wait on answers for.
Speaker: And so when I said the words that we just stopped waiting, I guess what I was really intending to communicate was that we stopped waiting for things that weren't about my mother-in-law. So for example, they were waiting for when she was in hospice also, waiting for when she would pass, not hoping she would do it quickly, you just knowing that the date was coming.
Speaker: And then the other thing was waiting for the time that Les and I would have the the life that we thought we going to have when we were dating in high school, when we were high school sweethearts and we'd been at it for a while. And now that's a different kind of waiting, right? Because you can manage that. You can say, we're not waiting for something to come. We're just waiting for some life, for the life to change closer to what we had envisioned.
Speaker: But the real waiting of navigating what you had to navigate now comes down to how do you manage that in a highly stressful time? And it's going to touch some of the systems thinking and business work that I've done. But if you think about it this way, if the day is composed of I want to make 10 phone calls and maybe nine of them will call me back and maybe only one.
Speaker: or maybe they'll come to when they said, or maybe they'll show up next week when they're supposed to. And that whole dynamic really feels, there's some friction that happens, which says, i I did this and I'm waiting for a result. I did this, I'm waiting for a result. I did this I'm waiting for a result.
Speaker: And usually you've put a face to it. You know, someone met at a hospital or someone that you met is going to help you. And so when they don't respond, it feels personal because feels like, wait asked you this you haven't done it.
Speaker: And I'll tend to navigate in that when things aren't going well and easily, which more times than not, you're really not trying to navigate people. or You do navigate people because that's all you can do.
Speaker: But you're really just trying to navigate a system. because what is behind them is all their constraints, all the things they have to operate, and all the manuals they look at. Some are more empathic, some are not. But I always felt that it if you thought, listen, I'm kind of working against the system that's difficult,
Speaker: I'm not smart enough, I don't with all to fix the whole thing and elect new people and you know punish people for not doing what they're supposed to do in their organizations. But if I don't take it personally and I say, look, that was Mary Lou that didn't give me the answer i wanted, but Mary Lou's got this whole thing behind her that's keeping her from helping me.
Speaker: I'm only making that point is that, at least for me personally, if I don't personalize the friction or the constraint, then I tend to be more relaxed because then I start saying, I'm not any happier, of course, but at least I can say, we're trying to navigate, not people, we're trying to navigate a system that could use what people doing. And I'm wondering yeah if that's true, would you say that that's how you can see things in your system, systems that you don't do it?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. And I think to go back to a little bit of your waiting statement, but I appreciate how you said waiting. Waiting for something, it's like a worry.
Speaker: And usually the terms of the aging or caregiving community is the grieving of what we used to be, who we used to be, what we used to do. i think waiting is a more positive way that you put it versus like grieving our past life, our past dating relationship. Because then when you take the worry or the weight from it,
Speaker: you You change in the way you love your loved one so you can get back to living your life outside of just waiting for this life cycle to to do what it may do. We have to love mom differently.
Speaker: We have to love dad differently. We have to love our kid differently. Because our expectation, we can't just wait for the life cycle and the journey to go to wit so we can get back to dating. We just have to love and adjust.
Speaker: And I think that's a more beautiful way in us, instead of us saying grieving, because we say there's a grief of your past life and the grief of what you thought you were going to be because now you're a caregiver. That is so dark. Yeah. But i like the I like the reframe of we were waiting for the next phase of this new life so we could get back to it. But now we've released the weight so we can be. I just wanted to say that and because that's a more beautiful way in saying and coming to the emotional, psychological realization that things are different.
Speaker: We are just in a different state of how we love and how we love each other and how we show up. Love it. Perfect. Cool. Now I think you said that better than I said it. I'm going to need to, I wanted to steal that from you. Yeah, absolutely. Please do. Please do. I think I'm going to steal it from myself too because words are are big.
Speaker: And I usually, if I speak or when I speak in a setting and I'm sharing Rue and usually when I speak, it's the the topic of AI.
Speaker: But when people come in the room, I don't talk about AI. AI is the very last thing I talk about. I talk about my story. I talk about um words and how words make people feel. um And when it comes to data, I talk about a cohort. I get everybody in a group and we're writing things down on and on this dissolvable paper. And they come together collectively. Or no, when when they're individually, they can express what they want to express that they were afraid to share or they've been holding on or nobody asks them how they're doing so they can really share how they're feeling.
Speaker: They put it on dissolve of the paper and they feel better because that word being released is how Rue is meant to make people feel. So even with that, so the waiting and the grief is totally...
Speaker: it's It's a different shift because weight seems waiting seems less pressure. Grief seems like, oh, you can't come back from that. You like underground. So um all that to say, going back to the waiting, and navigat we're going to have to navigate systems, whether it's caregiving, whether it's life, whether it's school, work, corporation. It doesn't matter. We're going navigate that.
Speaker: I agree with the same, uh, what you said about words. I gave you now a more elegant view of how I came to become a more support for the system that we were trying to promote here.
Speaker: But there was a lot more points of embarrassment than enlightenment. But that embarrassment came in a discussion that I was having. It was during particularly rough year. And I was a little bit into myself, like saying, well, look at all things I'm doing. You know, nobody appreciates me.
Speaker: maybe you're not getting appreciated, but neither am I. We were going through the whole things. And we were having a conversation. I wasn't at my best. We were having the conversation that she did not need to be hearing from but you know we were going through it.
Speaker: And then finally, she just kind of stopped me and said, look, I understand this is difficult, but I'm a caregiver. And in that moment, i had I had never thought of her as a caregiver. I thought of her as my wife, giving a lot of love to her mom and taking time from me.
Speaker: But when she said, I'm a caregiver, I immediately stopped fighting with her. So I have a favorite phrase where it goes something like, you can't really make a date with enlightenment. When you become enlightened, it's an accident. The best you can do is become accident problem.
Speaker: you know, put yourself in in situations where you can be open to things that will come to you. And everything I've named today in terms of my journey, if I'm any better than I was when I started, it's 10% of every experience I had in the whole situation. And again, this is why I get fascinated.
Speaker: I'm much more empathic thinking about caregivers and the types of things and types of work that going to do. Well, listen, let's do this. i want to circle back because, all we had conversations around the the trail and stuff, right? This is what you've done, this is what you've won, this is well what you're working with. um So tell me, I'm not trying to give you the standard interview question. What I wanna know is how have you thought about understanding that you've had to take a little bit of a crooked journey, learning about one revenue stream versus another, and that's all is gonna come. You're a small business owner and that's just gonna happen.
Speaker: So allowing for all that, where do you think eventually you will end up in terms of what Rue care will look like, you know, in whatever timeframe you're trying to build towards?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. um So I would love Rue to be fully free for any Medicare and Medicaid patient in all 50 states.
Speaker: That is the grand vision. um But I would also love for, there there's there's the users receiving that emotional support, that care, um and them being able to feel like they're not alone, but also to trust that their family is aware that they're okay. So for aging adults,
Speaker: they're more confident with living at home and then the family's more confident with them living. There's a lot of variables to that. But then also too, even if they're in assisted living, then the caregiver can understand that it's okay that they're in assisted living. You've done the best.
Speaker: and you're still doing the best you can. And here's a tip, maybe go to a park, that type of a thing. So they still use Roo in a personal, emotionally connected thing to get them moving, to to get them in life's actions, whatever that may be.
Speaker: Heck, Roo has, I think, has worked with somebody on their resume. Like, it's you know, it's still AI. So whatever the the user wants. um But yes, 50 states, Medicaid and Medicare, ah we're reaching people in the most frontier rural areas because now they have tooling to be able to do so. They don't need to have Wi-Fi to be able to AI.
Speaker: You know, that type of thing. um Another piece of that is we've partnered with another organization for our Nebraska opportunity. And what this company does, it does motion assistive technology within the home. There's no cameras. There's no nothing like that of sorts. But it identifies patterns of of ah care recipient in their home. And it can understand the differences in those patterns. So what happens is it makes Ruth smarter.
Speaker: It makes Ruth smarter and understanding of, okay, this person says they're okay, but they actually haven't gone to the shower at this time. And usually they take a shower because the humidity usually says they take a shower during this time. So now we're able to understand um and inform people their care team that, hey, maybe you should stop by.
Speaker: So we get to people a lot faster in the frontier rural communities, in the marginalized neighborhoods. And this is something that will be in place within the next five years for all 50 states for Medicaid recipients. Because let's be real, frontier rural tribal, they're on Medicaid. And so those are ran by the states. So we can give assistive technology, emotional care, emotional care navigation within the home to support these states to better care for their population. We can do that tomorrow. And that's where I see us within five years, every home.
Speaker: So, Tara, I think we're going to start looking to do a wrap-up here, but I'm wondering, do you find that individuals who are either explicitly or incidentally aware that they're headed to a life of maybe dementia, ah and they're not the caregiver, obviously, they're the individual who...
Speaker: is going to be challenged. And a lot of times when people know things like that, whether they know it instinctively or they enjoy they're told, then they get a little smarter about it because they want to get smarter about But have you found people who are on the platform who look like they're just trying to get themselves ready, who may not be able to continue to use the platform the way it's intended, it'll pass off to a caregiver, but they're using it to self-educate. I'm wondering if that's something that's happening or if you're able to see that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question. um We only really look at things that are stress or distress scenarios. um I cannot say anything related to like dementia, Alzheimer's, or if they're concerned about themselves. But I do see where we have users from 13 months ago and ah when we launched. So with those users 13 months, I can say that their journeys are one or two.
Speaker: it It tends to be they end up having a chronic condition. And they're not on our primary care physician track. They're the ones that just are in it for themselves. Like they are the user, the the quote unquote payer that type of thing. ah So it has shifted from them looking after their loved ones to them also asking questions about themselves and Ru saying, hey, you need to call your doctor, that type of thing. So that has been one scenario. We see that.
Speaker: ah quite a bit over the 13 months. And that usually is because of whatever scenarios, but they consistently are asking rude questions and saying, thank you, things like that. So they do appreciate the sort of support they receive. The next part of that is those that are quote unquote, end of watch.
Speaker: where ah they're the one that they were initially caring for have passed away within the timeframe they've been using Rue. And they are still using Rue because Rue adjusts and adapts to them um when it was already with them, but it doesn't say how's you know Leslie or how is... Lisa, or who whomever, it just makes sure it stays with them.
Speaker: And it allows them to share that grief in whatever capacity it is meant for them. Now, we've had some users with the End of Watch and they said, thank you so much for your help.
Speaker: That was it. And that's fine, too. So those are the two scenarios. I can't say if anyone has been... But I have seen the two. And that is strong, strong data that people still need help no matter what part of the journey they're in. um And to be able to have resources to find to help however they need or just the emotional care.
Speaker: Well, Tara, think that we're going to go ahead and wrap things up. I've really enjoyed the conversation. And the way we'll finish up here is I'm going to invite you is a if there's anything either that we covered or that we haven't covered yet or something we want to communicate to the world that we haven't had chance to go through.
Speaker: And then I'll ah give you a closing thought and then we'll move on to the next adventure. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you. I really appreciate it This time is great conversation. um You mentioned your wife and she pulled you to the side and kind of said, i am a caregiver.
Speaker: i teared up a little during that time because we should say that more. ah Parents, parents, kids, children, loved ones should put that job on their resume.
Speaker: Because if you don't, you don't know what to look for. You don't know who to ask. You don't know what type of questions to ask. So if you don't identify yourself as a caregiver, how can you get help being a caregiver? And we we tend to mix the love of our loved one with this is my job, this is my responsibility, and forget that there's options and care support for us being in this new role because it's different.
Speaker: So I appreciate your wife saying I am a caregiver and saying full stop. this is my new job or another part of my role in my life, in your life right now. And by doing that, she took on a more elevated role of love for her entire family. And I implore that everyone takes on that role. It's a beautiful role. It's a loving role and you deserve to be on the caregiving pedestal because it's an honor to be able to be that to someone. And it's an honor for someone to trust in you to be that for them.
Speaker: Well, you made that sound much so lovelier than I did. I have said, oh, you're a caregiver. Fine. I'll get out of your way. but But thanks for articulating it that way. I think you said that beautifully. and With what I saw happen, I think if Melissa had that on her resume, she could ask any wage that she wanted. Yes, absolutely. Because you learn a lot of stuff.
Speaker: This has been a really great conversation, Tara. And i I'm looking forward to, as your journey evolves, that you get back on and talk about things. If you get a interesting thing happen or something else that you want to communicate, you know, just find a way to do that. I have ah different mediums for trying to get that done.
Speaker: Perfect. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thanks so much, Tara. We'll talk soon. Okay. Okay.
Speaker: What stayed with me from this conversation was something remarkably simple. Before we can navigate a new role, sometimes we have to recognize that we're actually in it. For Tara, caregiving became the experience that brought together years of technology, learning, observation, and problem solving, and ultimately gave direction to Rooted Care Plus.
Speaker: For me, it took my wife saying three words, I'm a caregiver, to begin seeing our own experience differently. Maybe that's the larger lesson. We don't always get to choose the systems we find ourselves navigating, but we can learn to see them more clearly, understand the role we're playing within them, and perhaps find a better way through.
Speaker: The Leaders Commute podcast was produced by Acuity Business Consulting. Acuity demystifies the challenge of transforming talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development.
Speaker: You can catch a new episode every month wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts. Thank you for your thoughtful engagement. And until next time, I'm Jess Villegas, and you have been listening to the Leaders Commute podcast.
