When Early Dementia Secretly Changes The Person You Love with Vivian Olodun

Vivian Olodun (0:00)

My mother was hiding the fact that she had dementia.

She was choosing to have conflict with people rather than explaining that she genuinely didn't remember. If you are a caregiver, and especially if you're supporting someone with a cognitive decline disease, it is very humiliating to the person who's going through it.

Jim Fielding (0:21)

This is the sandwich generation. I don't have kids, but you become the parent, you become the caregiver, and you have to make the decision for them. You have to grow up, woman up and man up.

Hi, I'm Jim Fielding. Welcome to Ask for an Answer.

Hello, kind, curious, talented human beings. It is time for another episode of Ask for an Answer with Jim Fielding. You know, I really push myself to find interesting, intelligent, curious, kind guests, and I've nailed it today. I cannot wait for this conversation. Look at her. Vivian, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for being here. I want to tell our audience listening and watching. Vivian and I met through Common Connections in the industry, through a marketing agency. I always do a pre-call with all of my guests. My pre-call with Vivian was hysterical and we just kept going. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't wait to get this on film. It's going to be a great episode. So tell us your story, where you're joining us from, your biography. I never read the biography. So welcome, welcome, welcome.

Vivian Olodun (1:35)

Thank you for having me and thank you listeners for tuning in today. We're going to have a very fun conversation because yes, our pre-call was amazing. My name is Vivian Olodun. I am at Vivian Olo on all the socials and I am a serial entrepreneur. I wrote a book. I have a property management company. I'm even an angel investor for a breast cancer pre-screening device.

The thing that I've been talking about lately is proximity to money. I have a Substack that is called Proximity to Money, where I talk about the importance of learning the lessons with people who have success. It's like would you take health advice or fitness advice from someone who's out of shape? Would you take dating advice from someone who's like had a million and a trillion toxic relationships? No. You need to actively get next to people or pay attention or ask for that support from people that you admire the way that they navigate their financial literacy. I talk about that in hopefully a pretty fun way on my Substack and just on the interwebs. That's what I do.

Jim Fielding (2:43)

I love it. I love, love, love. Yeah. When we did the pre-talk, we were talking about Proximity. We're also talking about generational wealth, which I want to get into. And your, I mean, financial literacy education is so huge. We're also, just to tease the audience, we're going to talk about managing aging parents because we're both managing aging parents and what that looks like.

It's, we're going to talk about seriously, but we also laughed a lot during it. So that, that part.

Vivian Olodun (3:13)

We had to, because there's nowhere where we can get this information. And this is such a trial by fire when you are in a sandwich generation or you become the caregiver for your, for your loved one. For me, a lot of the financial literacy that I knew in theory, you know, came into action this year. You know, I really needed to figure it out.

Jim Fielding (3:34)

Okay. So here's the most important question. Will your mom listen or watch the podcast? Is she at that point?

Vivian Olodun (3:40)

She would listen if I put it in front of her and she would love it. And then she would forget all about it. Okay.

Jim Fielding (3:46)

Okay.

Vivian Olodun (3:47)

My mother has dementia and Alzheimer's. You guys. Okay.

Jim Fielding (3:50)

And my mom, I'm serious, but let's keep it light. Yeah. And my mom has dementia. And so I know, I know she won't listen to it. And by the way, we're going to say up front, we love our mothers very much. And so if at any point it sounds like we don't just remember that we absolutely love our mothers and we are grateful for every day that they're on this earth.

And, but Vivian and I completely bonded over the fact that we're making it up as we go along. Yes, we literally, we're literally learning every day. And yeah. All right. Well, let's start. I want to start more on before we get into aging, I want to go back to the proximity and the wealth and the financial literacy. Like what, what triggered you to think, okay, this is something I need to spend time on and I'm going to help the community with, because I think it's fascinating.