Liz Earle MBE | Aging Powerfully - Purpose & Reinventing Success | Extraordinary Life Stories

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0:39Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. I think midlife and later is a very challenging time for women. I think we're marginalised in healthcare, we're underfunded, under-researched, not well understood physically, we're not small men. Who is Lizelle? Right now she is a very recent number one Sunday Times best-selling author, latest book, How to Age. But before that, and I think the lead-up to that, is serial entrepreneur, brand founder in skincare, the Lizelle Beauty Company.

1:23but I sold that back in 2010. There's so much to unravel there and to almost thank you for, there's a role model piece there. What are you finding most interesting about the longevity side of things within the wellness sector? It's not so much about age span, it's about health span. So yes we're living longer, when you look statistically, you know if you look at women for example our average age in the UK might be say 83 years, but our health span is declining. So our health span as women is around 70 years and that means being in pain, being immobile, losing our cognitive function. Well I don't really want to end the last 12 to 15 years of my life like that.

1:59Anti-aging, you know, I hate that term. We're all aging. If you're not aging you're not living. So for me it's about pro-aging. Everything I do and everything I talk about and the way I want women particularly to think about aging is pro-aging. We want to live well, we want to live longer, we want it to be positive.

2:27Liz Earle, welcome. Thank you. You know how much I've been looking forward to this conversation. It's been a long time coming, so thank you for having me. Here we are. Thank you. Who is Liz Earle? Depends what day you ask me. Right now, she is a very recent number one Sunday Times bestselling author, latest book, How to Age. but before that and I think the lead up to that is serial entrepreneur brand founder probably best known for making face cream that was my biggest journey in skincare the Lizelle Beauty company but I sold that back in 2010 but it's got so big it's kind of surpassed almost a lot of other things but I have a humanitarian charity I've been a founding member of regenerative farming I advocate for menopause for health for women in midlife I encourage and advocate for older women particularly and I guess that's my generation you know I'm in my 60s now and for me it's looking after the sisterhood in the broadest sense whether that's from business or wellness or education it's a dad to two daughters there's so much to unravel there and to almost thank you for there's a role model piece there oh thanks and can we bring the entrepreneurial piece up because it feels like you were ahead of your time you know in context of uh less than two percent vc funding goes to female founders and i just want to i want to take you back to that kind of lizelle beauty journey but of course then became quite multifaceted yeah and any any experiences you had where you did feel like there was almost sort of a male chauvinistic um you know or whether there was more of a glass ceiling in it where because that lack of self-belief and backing yourself is also something I've noticed that certain women have got where did you sit with that it's really interesting isn't it so my background I began actually as a writer as a journalist writing about beauty and well-being before well-being was a thing I mean this is going back 40 years or so and from there for writing for magazines I went into publishing I was on the launch show of this morning, the big daytime TV show in the UK, which I just kind of fell into.

4:34A lot of my journey in life and in business has been doors opening and just being kind of very forward going and going, yeah, okay, let's go through here and see what happens. And it was when I was doing all of that that in fact my great friend at the time who had been working in the beauty industry said, listen, women know you. They know you from TV, from your writing. They trust you. You know about beauty. Let's do a skincare brand. And to be really honest with you, I thought at the time that's way too commercial for me I'm a researcher a writer I don't want to become game keener turned poacher so it's not for me and she said don't worry it'll be a side hustle be fine so anyway famous last words it ended up totally taking over everything we built literally from the team of the two of us into what became one of Britain's leading biggest independent beauty brands before we sold it.

5:22And it just took off. And for me, it kind of took me away from my early passions. But boy, did I learn so much from that journey. But I guess I'm not the classic entrepreneur in that sense, because I didn't set out to have a best selling skincare line. That was not my driving goal. When it was presented to me as an opportunity, as I say, that door opened, and it was like, great, let's go, let's see where we go with this. And let's go global. And let's, you know, develop lots of different brands and line extensions. We launched on QVC on home shopping at a time when nobody was really doing that.

5:56We had really expensive upmarket boutiques like Brands and South Malton Street. And I remember the beauty director at Vogue saying, how come you can be on QVC Shopping Channel as the biggest brand and be bought by A-listers at Brands, you know, fashion store? So I think we were one of the first kind of multi-platform brands and we also really invented a new category called mastige which is the bringing together of mass market because before we were there really you went to a supermarket and you bought stuff off the shelf you know ponds and ole and the big brands or you went to a department store and you had to approach a counter and go up to one of the big sort of legacy brands sure so yeah so we we kind of brought we democratized if you like skincare which is quite fun looking back on that Now at McDonald's, a McDouble is$2.50, so you can get your gym gains on.

6:47Or just get lunch for only$2.50. Get more value on the under$3 menu. Limit time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla. Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. and you put your name on it so it's interesting that there is a side hustle but actually did that in any way mean that part of you really wanted to make sure it succeeded i think it just felt like the obvious thing at the time because my name was known and we played around with lots of different ideas and in the end we just kept coming back to Liz Hill and it was it's an interesting thing because when you are a brand founder and your name is on the tin there are pros and cons you know we used to turn up to meetings together and my my friend and business partner Kim and I we were equal partners in the business but we would walk into a meeting I would be the one who would be sat down she would be asked for the coffee you know it was assumed that she was like the sidekick and you know because when when it is you're when you're very forward-facing but you also get all the flack I was just going to say and on social media now especially you have to be quite brave because everybody assumes that you are behind every decision you're behind every you know delayed parcel or error and and yeah it's you you really are very visible and i'm not sure would i recommend it to brand founders starting out i think you you have to be brave to do it to be honest good advice do you do any mentoring do you do it like giving back piece because we last saw each other at a center of social justice which is very much part of giving back how can we help well i sit on the board now and and i love it and And justice, social justice has always been a strong thread for me.

8:38So when I exited from the Lizzo Beauty Company, the first thing I did was use a chunk of that money to set up a humanitarian charity, Live Twice. And that is basically about giving back. It's about opportunity to others living twice, because I think in life so many of us could have taken wrong turns. And, you know, for the grace of God go many of us. So I think giving people opportunity, whether that's opportunity for education or rehabilitation or welfare or working in developing countries or working in the UK with people who are less advantaged is hugely rewarding. So I love that whole aspect of fighting for the underdog.

9:16I think I do have a strong sense of justice running through me. And, you know, I advocate and campaign on lots of different issues from gender inequality in health care, for example. to obviously being female and having a lot of inequality and issues that we fight on lots of different levels. You lit up then there was some serious passion that came for you. I love having a platform that can advocate and hopefully bring about change because that's the point isn't it and I think as we go through life you have to think what is it for why am I here and when I'm writing about wellness and well-being now a lot of what comes through that is purpose because purpose is such a motivator and it's the elixir of life it's it's the tonic it's what gets us up in the morning and I think I don't want to end my life and look back and think well what was all that about you know why was I here did it matter that I was here did I did I make a difference to anybody and it doesn't matter whether it's to one person or a million people I think we will have an obligation when we're here to to you know lift others as we rise and to to leave a beneficial footprint behind i love that the conversation we had when we first sat down where i brought my daughters in yeah to the conversation and that role model piece now i just want to say to you that's that's how i see you but there's someone there that's got so much lived experience and has used your purpose and also stayed relevant you know you've just just written another book which is one of the reasons why we couldn't film until now i know super busy is i'm almost answering the question that I'm asking you here that purpose that fulfills you is that where the energy comes from because you just feel like I feel like there's so much energy in you I feel very fortunate because I love what I do I'm passionate about it and I love podcasting and when I do my podcasts I am talking one-to-one like we are here with world-class leading experts usually academics and medics and people at the forefront of their research particularly into healthcare and that's such a privileged position to be in to have these these great brains you know one-to-one for an hour and you know you can't fail but be infused by that and then translate that information and bring it into everyday life in a way that is not complicated and can actually be understood because they say it takes about 17 years to go from the lab say from bench work to the bedside where it's actually being used in practice well you know I'm literally about to turn 63 I haven't got 17 years to wait before we can find out those amazing life-changing things that are going to make me feel more energised and more energetic.

11:49So I guess I'm quite hungry for information and I want to go and grab as much as I can. And then once you know it and have it, it just bubbles up within me. I just feel that I have to share it. And there's a longevity piece there. Now, your enthusiasm is infectious. So I like that because there's a selfish element actually there. I want to know. I want to because it benefits me. and then of course that relentless drive shares it yeah so in context of longevity which is another um place we met through Jim Mellon's longevity forum where you were doing a talk and Jim's been on this program I find him fascinating to talk with what what are you finding most interesting about the longevity side of things within the wellness sector well for me I mean I talked to a lot of longevity researchers and it's not so much about age span it's about health span So yes, we're living longer.

12:42When you look statistically, if you look at women, for example, our average age in the UK might be, say, 83 years, which sounds quite good, and that's getting pushed out. But our health span is declining. So our health span as women is around 70 years. So we can expect 12 or 13 years in poor health. And that means being in pain, being immobile, losing our cognitive function. Well, I don't really want to end the last 12 to 15 years of my life like that. so my focus is on health span living well for longer it's not about living longer it's about living better and finding ways that we can do that and i think what's really exciting me at the moment is the emphasis on mitochondrial research because every longevity researcher i talk to and gerontologist and medical sort of advocate is saying it really comes down to mitochondria these little tiny organelles in our cells virtually every cell of the body has these mitochondria and they control everything they control our energy cycle our atp our brain energy our body energy and our dna repair and if we can hack into our mitochondria then we are literally hacking into our basic cellular biology which is enabling us to thrive and ward off degenerative disease and dysfunction and thrive in later life and that is incredibly empowering to think that we can do this it's fascinating listening to you something that scares me and and again i keep bringing my two daughters into play but to reference that for context the amount of uh women that don't embrace aging and fight it and have all sorts of procedures and we could name so many different things that in any way uh are fighting aging whereas you embrace it and well up to a point yes i mean i'm you know i'm still going to use my skincare and you know and put some lipstick on but i think it's you know you're fighting a losing game if you if you it's not about looking younger for longer and if you actually go back to our cellular level if your cells start to behave in a younger way that's all your cells that includes skin cells so for example the simple act of looking at daylight first thing in the morning is going to prime your mitochondria into producing anti-inflammatory chemicals and uh and you know things like nitric oxide that can protect the skin and actually signal fibroblasts to make more collagen and elastin so you're going to get that natural glow anyway so it's about chasing health and cellular health which is then automatically going to make your skin glow make your hair grow thicker and your nails be stronger so you're kind of creating your own beauty from within and I think that's where it all stems from I've always believed that beauty is a two-way approach I've always written about food nutrition nutrition we we build skin cells by giving them the best ingredients and the the beauty piece is just the icing on the cake really you gave an example there that the morning daylight's free not necessarily always in england yeah in the context of uh we don't get much sun but actually the the wavelengths that i'm talking about things like red and near infrared light that is up before uv so before that even the sun is high in the sky we're benefiting from these ultraviolet wavelengths and near infrared far infrared similar to the red light you find in red light face masks it's not as strong but you know we get that for free when the sun is coming up which is why early morning is so important we also get it at sunset and if you can't get outside just open a window you know brush your teeth in front of an open window it's really simple little hacks like that that can move the needle on the dial yeah i love that i mean people will be watching you now if they're not listening they can see you just said you're 63 and people are going to be thinking how do you look so good and is there a morning routine is that is that any sort of non-negotiable element because there's probably different things you do but are there certain things that you would say well I would absolutely always do this uh my morning routine starts the night before so it's about prioritizing sleep you know I used to think that sleep was just passive you just flop into bed actually it was all about you know let's be driven and let's make sure we start late and we get that deadline finish that piece of work now I know that that's not that's the hustle culture entrepreneur that you used to be right so there's a maturity that's come from yeah and I love that with age because you know with age there is maturity and wisdom and that sense of having to pace yourself because you know that you can take a breath and and step back and even now I say to my small publishing team you know did you get a good night's sleep and and if you didn't then you better go home and catch up because I don't want you making poor decisions on my watch you know sleep is an absolute business asset and we need to prioritize it, move it up your to-do list.

17:16But we do that by making sure that we get to bed at a reasonable time. We are having a good sleep hygiene routine. We're not doom scrolling endlessly at night. Please don't sleep with your phone beside the bed because I defy anybody not to wake up and look at it. And then you are instantly drawn into the scroll, the WhatsApps, the emails. I've just checked the toxic newsfeed and you haven't even woken up you haven't even come to but actually more importantly the light signals that are given off from our screens that shortwave blue light is spiking things like cortisol it's not setting our brain up in the right way so I say to my kids and to everybody I work with and anybody who'll listen frankly sky before screens so before you if you can just get a digital alarm clock one that doesn't tick so doesn't keep you awake but don't wake up with your phone get up either go outside or open your window and have that sky that real daylight before you put your contact lenses in before your glasses and just take a moment to pause breathe and then rehydrate so the first thing I do absolutely I have a water filter jug in my bathroom filtered water pinch of sea salt so rebalancing my electrolytes getting that little spurt of energy before I reach for the coffee before it's the caffeine fix before anything else because we've been in bed for hours we haven't been drinking through the night like we do normally during the day of course we wake up we're dehydrated we need to re-energize and our cells need that cellular energy with a few little minerals added maybe you're using electrolytes or that sea salt just to help that energy exchange within the cells and that's why we get more energized and then you crack on with the day zootopia 2 has come home to disney plus let's go get ready for We're going to crack this case and prove we're the greatest partners of all time.

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19:41Apply today and earn a welcome offer of$1 ,500 cash back after you spend$50 ,000 in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership. Terms apply. Learn more at go.amex.com. So interesting. This is a slightly unfair question. um but and i'll relate it to my own daughters but of course i know you we just talked about gcse's right now and so on five kids so the the unbelievable popularity around sephora and the skincare now in young girls like my girls were getting excited about going to westfield and going to you know the sephora if you like rather than the clothes shops they're buying all the skincare stuff yeah but they're doing exactly what you just said you know however bad that sounds on me as a as a parent managing that whole use of the phone going into the evening they're doing that are they well we're switching it off we're we're trying to manage it so you you you rather than take the device away and then take the control it's like right keep your phone i'm trusting you to not go on it late and not be using that and so my my point being i'm not sure if they are but i know tons of kids that are where i'm going with it is this is such a invaluable from the queen of wellness and skincare knowledge if you like it's like if you're trying to to make your skin look good at a time when you're getting breakouts and so on they're doing exactly what you just said to not do there have been studies looking at the impact of this shortwave blue light on skin and disrupting the skin's own microbiome we're all very used to the fact that we have our own gut internal microbiome but the skin has its own microbiome and it runs on light we have light receptors in the skin and we disrupt that and you know looking at things like the rise in periodical dermatitis and acne for example you know if you want clearer skin do not sit with your phone like this particularly after dark because your skin like the rest of the body has a circadian rhythm and we have evolved to get up with the sun be active and produce all our cortisol and our dopamine and our hormones and everything to get on with the day the minute the sun goes down and it's dark we need to be winding down you know we need to be producing melatonin to improve our sleep we need to be just calming everything letting our body regulate and repair and that includes our skin so if your girls want glowing skin one of the fundamentals would be to encourage a good night's sleep and come off their screens a bit earlier wish me luck it's it's so frustrating because it feels like there's a culture and maybe we could bring social media into this because and i'm going to bring your podcast in as a force for good knowledge information coming from lived experience and the amazing people you get to meet yeah and then share but the um the sort of quick fix if you like that social media makes out that you can do shortcuts you can get rich quick you can just put this cream on and then you'll glow like lizelle well actually the reality is there's all these things you're you're not doing your exercise you're not getting the sunlight i'm not just talking about my girls yeah and then they're getting frustrated yeah because they're not putting the work in it's about consistency you know consistency matters more actually i think than intensity so you know i do a bit of gym most days it might be a you know a fast walk or just a few weights or something and even if it's only five or 10 minutes you know it is that consistency the body loves consistency it loves routine it runs as I say on this 24-hour biological clock and that affects every cellular process in the body so if we want to set ourselves up to succeed in the best way possible whether that's mentally physically emotionally we need to work with our own body's biology and not fight it and doing those small routines the body's a creature of habit it loves routines it loves a sleep routine you know I try and get up at the same time every day even at weekends and it doesn't work to think well I'll really you know stress all week and I'll stay up late and then I'll have a couple of really great lions at the weekend and play catch-up it doesn't work like that no so even though it's really refreshing to hear you say that well even though I love a lion it's like I'm still at the weekend getting up at the same time and going out and get some daylight I might then make a cup of tea and you know grab a pile of papers or whatever and go back to bed and do some reading but I'm awake and I'm up I'm not just letting myself stay asleep until you know 10 11 o 'clock I'm the same as that actually so I wake up the same time mindset habit built but I can slow the pace down at the weekend but I still end up working and doing stuff entrepreneur right you never switch off and you know when you do something you love that that's also the passion isn't it doesn't feel like work I mean it is work obviously because there are deadlines and you have pressures and problems and you have to solve those things but I think we're very fortunate if we are doing things that that really light that spark what is your favorite thing to do is that you're so multifaceted but what is the thing that lights you up the most uh well I mean it's cheesy isn't it but I love spending time with my family I mean that is just like you know to hug everybody is just irreplaceable but outside of that I love the research I love going down a rabbit hole and put me down a mitochondrial rabbit hole any day and I'm happy as a clam and and it's just so fascinating because I'm not a medic and I'm not an academic I'm not a scientist but I have access to people who are and I think one of the things that I do hopefully reasonably well is communicate so I can go in and talk to these people and say listen you're going to have to explain this really simply to me because I need to understand this so I can then communicate it and I think maybe that works because I'm not talking a scientific language I'm trying to make things simple and accessible for every day you know there is complex science behind why we should go out and look at daylight but I can break it down and say just open the window because it'll make you feel better but that makes it relatable that so if a scientist or a professor potentially tried to explain the benefits of what you just articulated where they could lose me whereas you you make it feel real you make me visualize it but then i i can take that into my own practice if i'm not already doing it i might do it tomorrow well i hope so i think you know one of the great joys of my work and particularly with social media you know social media has pros and cons and and you know it can be it's a difficult beast to tame and I wouldn't say that I tamed it at all but I think getting direct messages and comments from women who say you have saved my life you have changed my life and that was because I did a lot of the early work on menopause you know this is going back 10 years when people even shied away even I shied away of using the word menopause I didn't want to be associated with it because it felt like I was slipping into decrepitude and frailty and I I didn't associate with that.

26:25But the more I researched it and the more I realised the healthcare injustice and the poor information for women and how they were being so let down by unfortunately the medical profession as was then. It's getting a little bit better now. I just felt that I had to become a champion for it and that did change a lot of real women's lives. With your background in skincare, how do you feel about the industry of anti-ageing? Anti-ageing, you know, I hate that term. Interestingly, even though I had a skincare brand, we never used it. I just felt instinctively it was wrong. Anti is very negative. And we're all ageing.

26:58If you're not ageing, you're not living. So for me, it's about pro-ageing. Everything I do and everything I talk about and the way I want women particularly to think about ageing is pro-ageing. We want to live well. We want to live longer. We want it to be positive. And I'd love to start up a pro-ageing revolution, a real manifesto here for midlife women. you lit up then the passion came out what would you say is your greatest achievement and i'm going to remove family from that because of course yeah because just listening to them the campaigning awareness mbe exited entrepreneur they're certainly a best-selling author what would you say is the greatest achievement i think it probably is talking about hormonal health and menopause and health in the broader sense inspiring women that it's not downhill you know i can sit here with you and genuinely say in my 60s I'm fitter stronger healthier happier than any other decade in my life definitely in my 40s and 50s and why can't that upward trajectory continue you know we've been sold the narrative which is wrong everything in a way that women have been told about aging is wrong it's not downhill that's not an inevitable decline if we know what to do and women should be celebrated we should be surrounding ourselves with strong role models your girls need strong, inspirational women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s.

28:21I mean, I look to people like Martha Stewart, who's in her mid 80s and reinventing herself and working with, you know, rappers and comedy shows in the US and thinking, well, this is phenomenal. You know, I used to watch you baking cakes, you know, 30 years ago and look at that evolution. And, you know, she looks amazing, too. But I think more importantly, she's she's also giving back. I mean, I think that spell in prison probably was quite a good thing, actually, in hindsight. Not that I'd like to go there, obviously. You mentioned the word evolution there. AI. How has that impacted all the different, because, of course, with research, which is clearly a passion of yours, and people like Jim Mellon, who I get to speak to, I met him last week, and just some of the advancements there.

29:04But in your sphere of influence and the people you're talking to, where are the advancements being made there that are going to help in the future? I think the medical use of AI is phenomenal. I was at a lecture actually only last night at the Royal College of Medicine looking at diagnostically what will happen and the role of doctors and medics. And that they will not be replaced, but they will definitely be able to work better for their patients. They will have more access to information. we will be able to feed in more personalized data which as long as it's carefully controlled and regulated that's obviously the key thing isn't it how much of our personal information do we feel safe enough to give away but certainly for me as a researcher it's a great way of enhancing the accuracy of my research because I can feed in all these meta-analysis and I can say come up with a summary and you know who's the key researcher you know in Japan or Russia or wherever that I might not have heard of that's looking at this and then bring that into the mix so i think ai it's a tool isn't it and it depends how well you can use it and if you can interrogate ai and ask it the right questions i think it can be phenomenal for increasing your scope of research and your and your pool of knowledge but you have to know what to ask it and it gets stuff wrong you know you have to know enough about your subject to go hang on a minute you know whoever claude or whoever you are this is just not true and then it'll go oh yes okay no you're right let's look at that study instead yeah in my own microclimate i've had that you know it could be researching you and i've i've done my research and i'm thinking well actually i know what else might i not know and it throws something up i'm like i'm pretty sure that's oh yeah no you're right you're like i could imagine that i throw something you know that's not me no you know that that that could happen yeah i don't No, I mean, whether it will ever get to a point of being, you know, totally trusted, I don't know.

30:57But I think, and it opens up sources for creativity and can inspire you to look perhaps further afield where you haven't considered looking. Yeah, that's true. So much of what you've done, I could call anyone watching, listening, could say has been very successful. With the maturity perspective you've got here now, how would you describe success? Expedia and Visit Scotland invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland. The sweep of wild coastlines, quiet locks and untamed landscapes. Fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land. Come experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave.

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32:14See full terms at MintMobile.com. Oh, gosh. How would you describe success? I mean, for me, I mean, there are all the obvious benchmarks, you know, being number one as a bestseller or getting an MBA or winning awards or whatever. But I think fundamentally, you know, you have to be successful in that you feel that it's a job well done. You know, you think, yeah, I did that. And I actually did that to the best of my ability. And I enjoyed the process. It was a successful endeavour to do. And other people seemed to enjoy it and get something out of it too. And that's the sign of success, more than the kind of the awards and the accolades.

32:52What have you not done? There's so many things you've done. And I don't know if you had a chance to think about this. I imagine you probably have. Where there's the books recently finished. You come up for some air. And then there's something that still drives you, you still want to achieve. Well, I've kind of chosen a genre that's continually evolving. which is stimulating as well right it is very stimulating but it means the job is never done no but you like that i do because it's always the next thing and it's going to hopefully keep me gainfully employed for quite a long time because i never intend to retire you're a long time that's the serial entrepreneur in you yeah sure and in terms of that giving back piece we touched on earlier and i'm now flipping it back to the kind of younger version of yourself my girls aspirational entrepreneurs that look at you as that role model what advice would you give to someone that's setting out in business doesn't have to necessarily be in the wellness and the beauty side of things but just the journey you've been on the lessons you've learned what advice would you give i think don't chase success you know you have to chase what is driving you you have to chase what you want to achieve in the sense of creating a product or making a difference and making that the best it can be you know for example when i was running the beauty company we were never kind of financially driven we weren't doing it for the money we were financially aware but that that wasn't the goal we wanted to have really happy customers and to make a difference to people's skin and I think that that is that that is the same it's chasing making a difference making an impact and I think just take it slowly you know there is you mentioned earlier about everything being now being really quick and you know if my rule actually because I get asked to do things and make a quick decision and to do things quickly and I will always take a breath and say well ultimately you know if it has to be now then it has to be no because I haven't had a chance to think about it and and you know good decisions are at least slept on so you go through that whole you know brain processing which is a very real thing but also you need to be able to sense check stuff that's not to say the instinct isn't right too I think gut instincts that's a balance isn't it between tapping into your gut instinct which will instantly tell you of something You get that visceral feeling if it's right or wrong.

35:09But I think ultimately, you know, we do need to make more considerate decisions and also not be in a rush. You know, one of my other mottos is crawl, walk, run, because you have to spend a lot of time crawling on the ground. You know, if you have to build it slow, if you're going to build it strong and be there for the long term. I'm not interested in just quick fixes, just flitting in and out, because what's the point? you know i prefer permanence and and that kind of stability and building strong foundations and i think that's perhaps something that social media and business school these days doesn't really encourage it's how quickly can we turn this you know is this going to be a quick hustle you know how quickly can we exit you know what's the exit strategy when you're actually reviewing a pitch document they're telling you what the exit is it's like well hold on a minute you haven't even created it you know it's invaluable advice that and we touched on it though that you just i'm so glad you brought that up because that role model piece saying that it takes effort and be prepared to slog this out and although perhaps not the best advice of it's going to be long long days not enough sleep and so on but if you're in that measure it but yes and you have to be driven be aware and it has to be something that you're completely passionate about and be prepared to put the work in because this whole instagram look at my view over dubai marina and i'm making money money is it real there's that i've rented for three hours and then i go back to you know but it's stopping the some of the entrepreneurs that are not prepared to work in because they already feel like a failure because it's taking too long but if you've got the purpose behind it and the passion well it depends what you what your end objective is isn't it you know what is taking too long and i think to have a legacy to be a legacy brand is something perhaps that we should be encouraging more people to think about and i think maybe in the uk and in the us we are encouraged to exit quickly whereas if you look in some of the European countries they tend to be more family led firms that are thinking about the next generation and passing it down and that is perhaps something that we need to get back to if we want to have more permanence in our field I love that you just brought up the word legacy and that's how I wanted to end oh good there's I've used this term multifaceted uh which is how I see you there's different chapters of your life they've dovetailed into the and a lot of them overlap but if you had a legacy play that was going to be described in x amount of years time as what you've done what you've shaped what would that be like i hope i've made a difference to real women's lives particularly in later life i think midlife and later is a very challenging time for women i think we're marginalized in health care we're underfunded under-researched not well understood physically we're not small men you know we are chromosomally different skeletally different our hormone pathways our pain pathways our fat distribution everything is different even my heart is a different shape from yours you know which is why so many more women are disadvantaged when they have a heart attack because they're misdiagnosed so I think to be able to educate and empower older women to stand up for themselves and to understand that being fit healthy strong vital is attractive and confident boosting and it's not just about chasing youth and blemish free skin.

38:21I think that would be my amazing legacy if I could achieve that. I told you I was looking forward to speaking with you. And I've loved it. I don't want to end. I hope you've enjoyed this because I found it fascinating. I really have. Thank you. Thank you.

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