S1 Episode 4 - Making the Menopause Business As Usual with Sharon MacArthur

In this conversation, Sharon MacArthur, known as Miss Menopause, shares her journey from a senior leader in a FTSE 100 company to becoming an advocate for menopause awareness in the workplace. She discusses the challenges of overcoming ignorance and resistance regarding menopause, the importance of education and community support, and the business implications of menopause. Sharon emphasizes the need for a cultural shift in how menopause is perceived and managed, advocating for better education and resources for both individuals and businesses. She also highlights the role of celebrities in raising awareness and expresses her aspirations for a future where menopause is recognized as a normal part of life.

 Miss Menopause was formed over 7 years ago because of a lack of information about menopause in the workplace. Sharon works face to face and online with companies.

She spends time in manufacturing, which is still predominantly dominated by men. Initially reluctant, some of her most profound feedback has been from men who’ve said, ”It’s the best thing I’ve done in a long time.” 

Workplaces are starting to understand that menopause is an issue which impacts everyone. 

Sharon has appeared on BBC Breakfast, ITN News, Channel 5, Victoria Derbyshire and is a regular on BBC Radio .

Contact Sharon on 07793291409

sharon@missmenopause.co.uk

Insta @hearmeroarhere

Facebook Hear Me Roar

YouTube @hearmeroarhere

Get in touch: hearmeroarhere@gmail.com or via our website hearmeroarhere.com

Transcript

Hear Me Roar (00:00)

Well, here we are again. Yep. And you were talking about my cleavage. I was talking about your cleavage because I think you've got a few Kit Kats stored down there. Kit Kat storage area. I think it is. It's a rather handsome cleavage she's got going on here today. just make me feel like the world's looking at my tits now. Well, you've got a handsome pair. I'm going to wear a polo neck for the next one.

⁓ I hope I'm not around when you're wearing that and a hot flush comes along. ⁓ no. ⁓ God, that would be a nightmare. It would be a nightmare. You wouldn't be able to strip it off fast enough, would you? I know. You wouldn't no And talking about menopause symptoms, who have we got today? We've got Sharon MacArthur, AKA Miss Menopause. So she has a business where she educates employers and

and their staff about supporting people with menopause in the workplace. Ladies with menopause, not people, because it doesn't happen to men. No, although actually some men do try, do say it happens to them as well. The male menopause is becoming a bit of a thing. Is it? Yeah. I thought that was just- Yeah, just swat that away.

Sorry boys. This is ours. It's only ours. Yeah, you can't have it. Hands off. Anyway, so she formed Miss Menopause seven years ago because of a lack of information about menopause in the workplace. she works face to face and online with companies. She spends time in manufacturing, which is still predominantly dominated by men.

And she says that initially reluctant, some of our most profound feedback has been from men who've said, it's the best thing I've done in a long time. So that's quite interesting. Especially as I just totally dissed men. I'm so sorry. Now, because men need to understand about the menopause to be able to support women who are not necessarily women that are in their lives, but women that they work with.

You know, they need to gain an understanding and sympathy of that. Yeah, they do. And what Sharon says is that workplaces are starting to understand that menopause is an issue which impacts everyone. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, so Sharon's appeared on BBC Breakfast, ITN News, Channel 5.

Sharon's a regular on BBC Radio. So you can find her at Miss Menopause.co.uk.

Right, let's go and meet her.

Hear Me Roar (03:19)

Hi Sharon, your posh day title is Sharon MacArthur but you're also known online as Miss Menopause so very lovely to meet you. Now you've got a business where you work with employers to help support their staff who are going through perimenopause and the menopause but what we want to know is

Sharon MacArthur (03:21)

Hello?

It is.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you too.

Hear Me Roar (03:49)

How did you get there? Where did you start from? What did you do before you were Miss Menopause?

Sharon MacArthur (03:55)

Wow.

Well, I'd have to spend all day to tell you the whole story, but I'll cut it down to a little potted history. So probably the thing of note was I used to be a senior leader in a FTSE 100 company.

Hear Me Roar (04:02)

Ha ha ha!

Sharon MacArthur (04:09)

and I was there for 14 years and I used to be accountable for millions of pounds worth of revenue So when I left I set up my first business I'm the woman with the crazy business name which is Red Handbag and I set up as a leadership confidence coach primarily working with women in business to really help women leaders become

more confident in their own abilities. And that's because I see ⁓ men and women coming from two different directions. So men are often telling themselves how great they are.

when maybe they're not quite so great and women are the opposite telling themselves how rubbish they are when they're much better than they think they are. So what I'm saying is try to meet the same in the middle but coming off and from different directions. So I'd set up that business, it was going really well and then I began to get some weird and wonderful things happening to me. So I had a week of what I could only describe as agoraphobia where I was terrified to leave the house. Now anybody who knows me knows I'm not very shy or

Hear Me Roar (04:49)

Very true.

Sharon MacArthur (05:11)

retiring and that was quite an unusual thing for me but I literally thought I just can't go out the house I felt so so scared and thankfully that passed after about a week and then I would have episodes where I was really ridiculously tired where I'd have to go and lie down in the afternoon and have kind of a nana nap a secret nana nap on the settee and somebody one of my good friends said to me at one point Sharon do you not think you're menopausal and that all I can tell you both I was outraged I was like how dare you

think I could be menopausal because I had this misguided idea that whatever that you know whatever menopause was it wouldn't happen to me and that's because I don't have children it's my body was my body my choice I knew about the age of 14 I didn't fancy being a mother so I had this idea in my head that whatever whatever that menopause thing was whatever it was ⁓ it wouldn't happen to me because I hadn't shaken up my hormones through pregnancy it wouldn't occur.

How utterly ignorant and incorrect was I? So there was a couple of catalysts that led me to set up this menopause. One, I spent a day with 60 doctors trying to understand what they were learning about menopause and sadly I found that it wasn't a great deal. And then I did a mental health first aid course, this is about nine, 10 years ago now, and I realised that menopause wasn't part of the agenda of those courses, even though was a two day course. So in January 2018,

Hear Me Roar (06:26)

you

Sharon MacArthur (06:41)

⁓2018

as an angry menopausal woman I set up Miss Menopause. So I'm not a medical person, I don't pretend or profess to be, but my mission is just to make menopause business as usual. So I'm in fact a rubbish business woman because one day I hope to be made redundant. I actually, well the thing is that would tell me that menopause just was business as usual and that's truly my ambition. It's kind of sad really in a way.

Hear Me Roar (07:07)

Mm.

Sharon MacArthur (07:11)

that you know a service like mine needs to exist because we should just all have been educated about this from an early age but sadly I would call it a void of ignorance there's out there at the minute there's a massive void of ignorance still and I guess that's why I set up Miss Menopause to try and you know close this void so we can just make menopause business as usual

Hear Me Roar (07:24)

Yeah.

Yeah. So you gave up a salary and a regular income to take this leap of faith. How did that feel? And did it soon take off? So you felt more comfortable about this new change?

Sharon MacArthur (07:41)

Mm-hmm.

Well, I'll tell you an interesting story. So I had a bit of a mentor at the time. It was a woman and she was a CEO of a large housing association. And I remember saying, I've got this thing, this thing on my mind. ⁓

Hear Me Roar (07:59)

Mm-hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (08:08)

And I think it's a thing, but I'm not really sure. And this woman said to me, Sharon, I don't know why you're even pursuing that, because who would want to listen or be involved or pay for that kind of service? So now with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I believe I'm a genius. What can I say? So when I first set up, there was a handful of people in the country in 2018, January 2018, who were even doing anything about menopause.

many times I felt like you know the the King's new clothes story where the little boy says you've got no clothes on I felt very much like the little boy where I could see something that maybe others couldn't see and it took quite a lot of time it took at least 18 months to gain any kind of traction in those early days for anyone to even take notice of why is this crazy woman standing up on stages and talking about this thing menopause no one's ever mentioned that before nobody's really talking about that thing you know what

Hear Me Roar (08:43)

Yeah.

you

Sharon MacArthur (09:08)

what is this all about? But now obviously with my tongue firmly in my cheek as I say I believe I'm a genius.

Hear Me Roar (09:15)

Did you get a lot of resistance

then?

Sharon MacArthur (09:19)

It was almost, wasn't really resistance per se, it was ignorance. So what I really had to do in those early days was not only educate myself to enable me to set up this service in the first place, but I always say with some things you have to educate and communicate before you can offer that service. So you have to help people understand why there might be a need.

for the thing that you have before you can offer them the thing you have. So I spent those first almost 18 months slogging around asking to speak on stages, asking to go along to networking events and present what it was that I was talking about, why it was important, why it impacts individuals, why it impacts businesses. Because obviously all the work that I do is in the business world and you have to be able to speak business language. And business language is

Hear Me Roar (09:46)

Hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (10:16)

does this make me more money? Is this going to enhance my profits? Ultimately, that's really what you know, because who cares about anything that isn't going to make them more money or be more profitable in the long run. So ultimately, it's about being able to convert what you're doing into business language. you know, whether we like it or not, the world is mostly run by white middle aged men. It still mostly is. So you have to be able to communicate at a level which engages anybody and everybody.

Hear Me Roar (10:28)

Mm-hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (10:46)

in the business world to get them to understand, okay, now I understand why I should maybe invest in that service because I can see that it will enhance the bottom line and either make me more profitable ultimately because that's what business is about. That's the machine of business.

Hear Me Roar (10:55)

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I guess if they don't see it as an issue in the first place, the first hurdle you have to get over is getting them to actually acknowledge that the menopause does need to be recognised.

Sharon MacArthur (11:14)

Yes.

Yes,

You have to educate, so I say it's an education piece with some things that you have to be prepared that nobody had thought about this thing, it was hiding in plain sight, nobody had ever mentioned it, and that's because if you think about it, really, guess women of kind of my age,

Hear Me Roar (11:19)

Yeah.

Sharon MacArthur (11:35)

to a certain extent, you know, I'm coming up to be 57, are almost pioneers in the workplace because if I look at my mother's generation and my grandmother's generation, so my grandma and her generation, they didn't really work at all. They did work, but it was housework and that wasn't even, you know, looked at as a thing. So they were stay at home, mothers, wives, and they ran the house, the household. So in my mother's generation, you would often find that in her day, women either didn't work or they worked part time.

Hear Me Roar (11:48)

No. Yeah.

Sharon MacArthur (12:05)

they weren't working full time in the workplace like we all have to do. So I often say, I'm not being disparaging about my mom and my grandma, but if they had a bad day in their generations, all they had to worry about perhaps was would the boil the tatties over for the tea?

Hear Me Roar (12:05)

Mm-hmm.

No, no.

Sharon MacArthur (12:23)

But I mean, everybody else now in the 21st century, if you think about it, because of things like the credit crisis, because everything's so expensive these days, if most households have two humans that can go to work, they often need to go to work full time to enable you to run your house and afford the things that you need, often just as basic things. So it's a totally different mindset. And so if you'd asked my mom and grandma

Hear Me Roar (12:37)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Sharon MacArthur (12:50)

they would have gone ee pet in our day we just got on with it so I do think we've got this I'm gonna say horrible legacy where a lot of women think well I should just have to get on with it but my mom and grandma could not be parachuted in the 21st century and do what women have to do today they just couldn't do it because that there that is a supercomputer

Hear Me Roar (12:55)

Yeah.

No.

Sharon MacArthur (13:13)

and most people have one. So we're constantly being bombarded with information. We've been told over the years, women, you can have it all. You can be mothers. You can be the CEO of this. You can do everything. We can't really do everything because it's going to kill us. So we can't really, we know or try.

Hear Me Roar (13:14)

Mm.

Sharon MacArthur (13:32)

start trying and then we hear about burnout, mental health issues and all these things. So what I say about menopause is there's no right or wrong on how you might choose to manage your menopause. There's only what's right for you but doing nothing shouldn't be one of them.

Hear Me Roar (13:48)

Do you not think that attitudes now are starting to change? Cause I'm pretty sure my boys, I've got two boys in their twenties, actually learnt about it at school, you know, as part of the, did yours? I don't know, but they, but... They certainly knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the menopause. Yeah, well, my son, when I very, very quickly in a hurry, removed my coat in the car.

Sharon MacArthur (14:16)

Mm. Whipped it off.

Hear Me Roar (14:17)

I ⁓ would have stripped naked if

I could, but my son, he was sat in the back and he just shouted, menopause! But weirdly enough, weirdly, my daughter, she doesn't wanna know. I've tried to talk to her about it. Well. Is that because she knows it's coming her way? Yeah, I mean, it's not because she's prudish, because goodness knows I know far more about her than any human being should.

Sharon MacArthur (14:23)

Well, do you know what?

Right, she wants it to be a surprise, surprise.

Ha ha!

Hear Me Roar (14:45)

But she's a bit la la la not listening when it comes to it. She's 25, so.

Sharon MacArthur (14:47)

Uh-huh. And that's okay.

So I

do think, if Sharon was for president, what I would say is I would do two things. I'd do one immediately, and the first thing I'd do immediately, because I don't know why this doesn't happen, I would strongly suggest or make doctors have to advertise their specialisms. Because I don't know if many people know that doctors only learn electively on subjects that they're interested in once they have qualified. So many, many doctors may not have learned about

Hear Me Roar (15:14)

Mm-hmm

Sharon MacArthur (15:21)

menopause some of them will have so wouldn't it be brilliant if if through the NHS that it would it would be an edict that tomorrow everybody who had a specialism

in their knowledge had to advertise that at their doctor's practice. So if for example you wanted to speak to somebody who had a menopause specialism. You would know because it would be there in plain sight But they don't seem to advertise their specialism. So one little tip is,

when you go to your doctor's practice or try and make an appointment, ask who in this practice has a specialism in X. So it would be menopause, because that's what we're talking about today. But that's a little tip that you could use for anything. So I think that would be the first quick.

Hear Me Roar (15:57)

Mm.

Sharon MacArthur (16:05)

easy win that you could make. I think the second thing was if every young person in the land was taught about menopause, but not just about menopause in terms of the biology of menopause, which often it's taught in biology, even things like periods and reproduction is taught in a very like a medical way almost. But I think because if you think about it, women are having children statistically later in life, we know that's a statistical trend. So you could be a young person who was living

at home with your menopausal mother. So I wouldn't want children just to be taught about the biology of menopause. I'd want them, I'd want it to have a longer tail where maybe when they were 15, 16, they're being taught about the impact of menopause in a deeper level conversation, because it might mean that you could understand why your mother's now turned into a hell beast.

and you now understand that what you may be observing is your mother is entering into menopause and wouldn't that be brilliant because you're aging with hormones as a young person.

You know, your mother might be in this, you know, reaching menopause, perimenopause. Wouldn't it be much better all around if young people, whoever they were, whatever gender, were just taught about menopause in that way? And the final thing I'd like to see, there's talk about this, and apparently there's about seven in the country, which is, that's like nothing at all. But if there was a health hub, a women's health hub in every town and city in the land, wouldn't that be brilliant? That you could go to know

Hear Me Roar (17:08)

Mm.

Yeah.

Sharon MacArthur (17:38)

specialists if you had you know problems with periods endometriosis, polycystic ovaries, if you wanted a coil fitting, if you wanted to talk about pregnancy, if you wanted to talk about menopause, wouldn't that be brilliant if we could go to a health hub that was set up with specialists who who specialized in women's health and I think if we could do those things then this would be business as usual.

Hear Me Roar (17:52)

Yeah

Yeah.

it's true. I don't think I'm imagining it, but I'm sure I've heard about menopause cafes being set up in various places. Is that something you've come across where women get together and they just, obviously it's not medical, but it's just a chance to get together with women going through the same thing as you and being able to chat about how they're feeling. So, you know, it's not just the medical symptoms, is it? It's also, it's what's going on up, you know, up in your head.

Sharon MacArthur (18:14)

There are.

No.

Yeah.

I

think they're an absolutely brilliant idea. And I mean, it's one of the reasons I set up my Facebook group when I set up Miss Menopause. So although my work is in business, I wanted to have a community page where people could go to do just that. Because one of the saddest things women say to me on a daily basis is, Sharon, I felt I was the only one going through Menopause. So.

Hear Me Roar (18:54)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get that a lot. Yeah, we get that on our

pages, don't we?

Sharon MacArthur (18:58)

Yeah,

so what I want women of the world to understand is I'm going to say this. You are in the least exclusive club on the planet. We're now going to call it the 100 % club. rather than feeling like shame and worry and anxiety, I want us to flip that statistic on its head and to appreciate that every single reproducing female on the planet.

Hear Me Roar (19:06)

Yeah.

you

Sharon MacArthur (19:22)

will go through menopause. In other words, their fertility will end usually no later than 55. Okay, there's exceptions, but usually for most. So I want us to take strength and power from appreciating that you are in the least exclusive club on the planet. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. So over the years, although this might my page, it's a closed group, rather than a page. It's amassed over 10 and a half thousand women in that group.

Hear Me Roar (19:31)

you

Sharon MacArthur (19:52)

It's a safe place for women to hang out where you can be anonymous, where you can ask questions, or you can be a lurker and just realize that, the thing is with menopause, it's so unique to everybody. There is no one size fits all. And that's what makes it really difficult and really energy sapping

Hear Me Roar (20:06)

No.

Sharon MacArthur (20:09)

So I always say I've decided the christen menopausal women is live living experiments because what works for you might never work for me and vice versa.

Hear Me Roar (20:17)

how do you go about helping women in work with menopause symptoms and how do you help their employers? What are they putting in place for them?

Sharon MacArthur (20:17)

Yep.

You see what I...

Well, it's a great question. So at the heart of everything that I talk about is clear accountabilities. And I think what's really important is when you're working in a business is that it's clear from day one who is accountable for what and when.

So what I always say from a business point of view, absolutely if you run a business and you are a manager or a leader in your business, you have an element of duty of care. You have an element of duty of care. But I always say to those in the room who are non-managers, because my sessions are suitable for everybody to come,

one of the biggest accountabilities I think should sit with me, the individual. So what I'm saying is unless it becomes an equal act of partnership where both individuals join in together equally,

It's never going to work. So it's really, really important that both individuals in that relationship understand they have an equal part to play in it. So as my line manager, you could be offering me the most incredible things, but if I'm sitting there smoking a cigar and doing nothing about it, it's never really gonna work and vice versa.

But remember, I'm going back to business acumen and I'm going to be back to what matters in a business while it's being more profitable. So you've got to ask yourself, if you run a business or work in a business and you have authority in that business, why would you not offer reasonable adjustments to people if it was going to be better all around for you and for them? And the brilliant news is, when I'm talking about menopause is, the brilliant news is, we're not reinventing the wheel and we're not starting from scratch. So I think a lot

of

people think, ⁓ menopause it's a terrifying brand new subject it's something magical that we've got to do maybe we've got to get unicorns and glitters got to come out and we've got to make some special things. So the brilliant thing is with menopause is we're not reinventing the wheel and we're not starting from scratch so most of the things you may need in your business if you're a business owner listening to this you've already got you've already got them. So an example I will give you is the disclosure of pregnancy.

we've got some really sound processes and policies and employment law written around disclosure of pregnancy. So if somebody came to you in your business and disclosed a pregnancy, what might you do? Well, you might give me a car parking space nearer the office if you thought that was appropriate. You may do a workstation assessment and I might end up with some equipment like a foot rest or a desk fan. You may enable me to have time off for appointments. So what I'm saying to managers and leaders of the world is this, all you have

to do is now look in your small reasonable adjustment toolkit which I know you have for many other things and then flip and apply what's in there to menopause.

So rather than thinking, my goodness, it's like terrifying, it's a brand new subject. You're probably doing, you'll have done, I'm sure many people out there, lots of work around mental health and wellbeing, quite rightly so. So again, what sort of conversations are you having around mental health and wellbeing? So if you think about it, the number one symptom that's been reported to me over these years has been anxiety.

So we've got to stop putting things in little boxes and little silos, because you might have mental health here, menopause is there. We need to show people what's the same, not what's different. So if somebody's telling you they're anxious at work, the root cause could be menopause. So the symptom, yes, yes.

Hear Me Roar (24:00)

Yes, because anxiety is a symptom of menopause.

It can be, can't it?

Sharon MacArthur (24:05)

Absolutely

and like you say it's number one closely followed by things like brain fog which gives you anxiety and makes you think you've yeah absolutely so what I'm saying is in a business all you're seeing are the symptoms of what's occurring in your people. Your job is to help to understand what is the root cause

Hear Me Roar (24:10)

which absolutely gives you anxiety.

Sharon MacArthur (24:22)

every single person on the planet will be impacted by menopause, either seen or unseen, directly or indirectly. And I guess that's why I still remain so ultimately passionate about the subject of menopause, because I don't believe this information can harm anybody, but I truly believe it can help absolutely everybody and some of the most, yeah, go on.

Hear Me Roar (24:44)

So

Sharon I was just going to ask and bearing all that in mind, what successes have you had? What have you done? And you've just felt so proud that you did that.

Sharon MacArthur (24:57)

Well, I'll tell you this story.

So I got this, I'm going to call it spectacular feedback about six months ago. And I've had this three times in the last seven years. So it may have happened, but these, these are the times I've been told about it. So I was going on and on and on and on about don't do nothing if this is negatively impacting you. Now I'm going to say lots of women in the world I'm imagining are putting themselves at the bottom of the list. They're looking after their families. They're running households.

They're going to work, they're trying to do it all. So what you tend to find is I hear lots of women saying, you know, I'm just getting on with it, I'll get to that at some point. But what my message is, don't do nothing if it's negatively impacting the quality of your life. So like many women, this one woman had come to a session and had some health niggles but had put them to the back of her mind like a lot of us do. But because of my session at the end of it, she felt so highly motivated that yes, I've got these niggles, I wanna do something. I wanna do something about

it. So I was told that she went to a doctor and she was diagnosed as having womb cancer. She's now in remission and she asked her business if they would pass this on because she believes that coming to a session which was all about menopause has saved her life.

Hear Me Roar (25:58)

my god.

Wow. That is a huge thing to be proud of.

Sharon MacArthur (26:14)

So yeah,

and that's the thing. It's about, I always say, it's most likely, if you're in and around your 40s and you're starting to note some weird and wonderful things happening to your mind, to your body, often both at the same time, it's most likely to be menopause, but it just might not be. It just might not be. And the person who needs to know their body best of all is who? Well, of course it's you. So if something isn't right for you and your body,

then you need to do something about that.

I think

find it really interesting that the terminology people use is they go, I'm through that, I'm through that. What they mean is their periods have ended and they are through that. But the thing is your symptoms may last from forever. know, the range of symptoms is you might have none, as in zero, to forever. And you don't know on that continuum where you will be. No one can tell you that and you don't know that of yourself.

Hear Me Roar (27:07)

Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. I know. I've

had women in their 80s telling me they're still getting hot flushes. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Got that to look forward to then. Yay! Yay! ha ha. It's so great to be a woman. Menopause is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Sharon MacArthur (27:17)

Yes, 90s I've had. So the biggest gift. Yeah, well, yeah, let's put the flags out. ⁓ isn't it? I'm coming. Well, I'm coming back as an indoor cat. Just saying ⁓ that.

keeps on, it is, I say that all the time, it truly is.

Hear Me Roar (27:40)

Do you think celebrities have helped or hindered the menopause cause in that way?

Sharon MacArthur (27:47)

I would

say it.

Certainly, I have to say certainly helped because it's raised the profile. There's programs being made which I'm sure would never have been made if those celebrities weren't there, talking about it. And again, what I always love to hear is stories. I love to hear individual stories and celebrities are individuals, they're people too. So why would we not want to hear those stories? I do think where it's a bit disconcerting is a number of celebrities may have a seat at the table in places like government, but they've never worked in a business. And obviously that's the place.

Hear Me Roar (27:52)

Hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (28:18)

that I

that I go to, I'm working in businesses. So I think it's really important that if we're making policies that we get the right people around the table who have some ,you know, stuff to bring from experience, who have maybe business acumen. So what I'd say is I'm not a big fan of necessarily having celebrities around the table where you're making important changes in policies or having discussions that affect the workplace.

And obviously you have changes of government. So one government says black, the other one says white, did the brakes go on? It's it starts stop. So, you know, I would just like to make sure that anything that we do in government or anything where we're making policies and changes has the right people around the table who bring the right expertise at the right time.

Hear Me Roar (29:02)

It's a very good point. is a very good point. ⁓ So you're saying, you said at the beginning that you'd like to see yourself being made redundant, so to speak, as in businesses wouldn't be needing you because it would all be in place anyway. If that ever came to be, what do you see yourself doing then? If your business is no longer needed?

Sharon MacArthur (29:14)

Mmm.

⁓

I'm also very interested in financial well-being. I think that's a really important subject. So an example I'll give you, I was in an awards dinner a couple of weeks ago and I think it's really interesting.

Hear Me Roar (29:30)

Mm-hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (29:37)

and again I'm going to talk about women and finance. So we know there's a gender pay gap, we know that still exists, but we also know that there's a pension pay gap because women take time off to have children, they're often working part time still at times, so there's a gap in those elements.

Hear Me Roar (29:46)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (29:57)

So it's really interesting to me that companies are providing a pension or we're saying you need to have one, but we're not helping people join the dots so they understand what the point or the purpose of a pension might be. And if they're putting a token amount of money into a pension and thinking, I've got one, that's what

Hear Me Roar (30:10)

Yeah

Sharon MacArthur (30:14)

I need. Just having one won't be the answer. Having one that is valuable to you will be the answer. So we have to make people, especially young people, understand at an early age.

Hear Me Roar (30:20)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sharon MacArthur (30:27)

to get

them to join the dots so this young woman might be in danger of getting, and go, no, I've got a pension, it's all good, but getting to near-pensionable age when it's kind of too late and thinking, I wish I'd known that then, because I could have put more into it, or are there ways of generating income that could give me a better lifestyle when I retire? But no one's having those conversations.

Hear Me Roar (30:46)

So you've

got a career for when you are, when you do become redundant, you can just flip to being a financial advisor.

Sharon MacArthur (30:52)

Possibly. Well,

Imagine for all those young people who now have a pension because they're auto-enrolled or they're being told they need to, but they're possibly not putting enough away.

Hear Me Roar (31:03)

Mm.

Sharon MacArthur (31:05)

into a pension. anyway. So yes, I've got other strings to my bow or I could just take it easy, couldn't I? ⁓

Hear Me Roar (31:07)

Yeah. Yeah.

You could. You could.

Which kind of brings us on to our last question, which is while you're taking it easy away on your retirement cruise, sipping a few cocktails, what would be a cocktail that represents you,

Sharon MacArthur (31:17)

Okay. ⁓

Yes. Yes.

Well, I was like fascinated by this question when you said, have a think about it. So I think I would invent something called the Geordie Ginger thing.

and it would probably have vodka in it and lime in it as well as ginger, so the name says. And why have I called it that? Because I guess I'm proud to be a Geordie and I'm proud to represent the Northeast.

So I think, you know, to be a Geordie Ginger thing as a cocktail would be really, would be really special. And ginger, to add a bit of spice. vodka, lime, ginger, and the spicy bit with the ginger, because you know, Miss Menopause is never boring. I might be lots of things, but I'd like to think I'm just not boring.

Hear Me Roar (32:07)

So we've got vodka, lime.

Nope, you're definitely not boring,

And it's called the Geordie Ginger thing. I'm just writing this down. She's writing them all down. Because I'm going to make it. The Geordie Ginger thing. Ginger. Marvelous. That's fantastic, Sharon. Well, thank you very much for talking to us. We really have thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and chatting to you and getting to know you a little bit better.

Sharon MacArthur (32:24)

The Geordie Ginger thing?

The Geordie Ginger thing. Yeah, do it. Vodka, lime, ginger.

Hear Me Roar (32:48)

⁓ You're a scrapper, aren't you? You're somebody that saw something that needed doing and you've gone out and done it. Yeah, which we really admire. Which is very inspirational, seeing something and going out and doing it. Thank you very much for inspiring us today. It's been great talking to you. Thanks.

Sharon MacArthur (32:48)

Me too.

Hahaha! ⁓

Yes! Aww.

Yeah.

Aww, thanks for having me!