Meet Barbara Rose who created her own magazine!

Creative Folk, Entrepreneurs | September 24, 2018

We are on the quest to interview business owners over the age of 60. This week we visit Eaglemont in Victoria Australia and chat with Barbara Rose who developed a magazine dedicated to living, loving and laughing.

Tell me how did you come up with the idea of a magazine? 

I am one of those people who always has a million and one things on her plate, except when I came to Colombia. The extended holiday with my son who is married to a Colombian came to an abrupt end when he got a job in a different city. This resulted in me feeling isolated and trapped. I ended up experiencing clinical depression, which is hard to say considering I’ve always been an optimist. Ah well, that is what four years of intense stress will do for you.

So what did I do? I set up a blog detailing my journey with depression and then when I was feeling more positive, I thought, I should get the websites up that I’ve been talking about but that idea morphed into an I can bring them all together in a magazine idea, which then made me think: I can’t possibly do this on my own.

I needed writers. More than than, I needed experts in their fields. And I found them! I am humbled by the number of people who wanted to be the Expert writers in each category, and those who still wanted to be contributors, even though they couldn’t be the experts.

How did you find these writers?

In the main, they came from SourceBottle which is a website focussed on connecting expert sources with journalists and bloggers. Other writers are people I know.  Also I gained some writers from a couple of Facebook groups that I belong to.

Thanks to this wonderful group of people, I launched Viviamaridi magazine, which is dedicated to living, loving and laughing. Its a good job I believe age is a state of mind, or I would never have embarked on the project. I am now closer to 70 than 60 but that didn’t stop me!! At the heart of the magazine is the core concept of empowerment, something I have always strived to help my clients and students achieve these past decades.

My son once told me that when the Grim Reaper came calling I’d tell him to p— off because I still had too much to do. He was right!

What are some of the most important lessons you have learnt in life? 
Always look on the bright side because no matter how dark things look, they will come good eventually!  My personal motto is “Don’t give in. Don’t give up,” – which has always served me well.  True happiness comes from within.  Be a list maker, it helps with determining what my goals are and what I have to do to achieve them … which I always do.
 
What advice would you give to the younger generation? 
Don’t be a slave to technology! its isolating. Slow down and enjoy life.
 
If you could jump into a time machine what era would you visit and why? 
Easy, I would love to meet Leonardo da Vinci.  The man was an absolute genius who used both sides of his brain, he was both artist and scientist and he bucked the system in order to pursue knowledge. A rebel at heart, at a time when it wasn’t safe to be so.  Yes, my kind of man!.