Sarah Ann Macklin | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:13Sarah-Ann, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. Tell me, who is Sarah Ann Macklin? Gosh, that's a really big question to open an interview with, isn't it? Still figuring that one out. Not real. I think sometimes giving an understanding of yourself is so hard because I've really, I don't know, I've really kind of changed direction. I've been someone who's fluxed through my entire life that's never followed a linear path at all. And I think at the moment, you know, I'm currently writing my book And I'm just even through this process learning so much more about who I am and my journey to date.

0:51So but I think if I had to sum it up, I am someone who is very curious. I'm a seeker and I'm someone who is very passionate about extending ethical, empowering health knowledge via storytelling. I've been listening and watching countless podcasts of you probably the last week now it's fascinating and as you say yeah your your life journey is multifaceted yeah you know for your years sat there now you got started so young let's go back to that you know you were you were traveling and spending a huge amount of time on your own from the age of sort of 15 16 yeah professional model yeah tell me about that it's very interesting going into something so young having so much kind of autonomy, but also not autonomy at the same time, I guess, about your life, because you're kind of being told what to do and where to go, but you have to grow up very quickly.

1:46So I just came from, you know, a small place near Portsmouth, got spotted when I was 15. What, like walking down the street and someone just... Well, I went to a pop festival. I won tickets to a pop festival. For my first time, I actually went out with my friend, kind of a big group of us, and I got a tap-tap on the shoulder from some of the biggest agencies in the UK thinking that that was probably a hoax and then realizing it was actually real. Went to London and then literally got a Polaroid picture taken of me that day, signed a contract, went to a casting that day with a Polaroid picture on my hand because this was before digital came out.

2:21How long ago we're going back. And yeah, signed a job that day and the rest was history. Did you embrace it? Because I guess my question really is, did you know at that age what you wanted to do was there was there ideas forming in your head of what you'd like to do or was this actually I can do this I was a confident child but an unconfident child at the same time I was a really curious kid but I didn't enjoy school because unbeknownst me I was dyslexic so I went through my school having a great social life and being you know wanting to connect with lots of people which now I realize is a big strength of mine but I only focused on my weaknesses that you know I was in bottom sets and my school reports were like she's such a frustrating child you know she doesn't get the most simplest of tasks but then she gets these like extraordinary answers that are very hard I mean now you look at that school report and very quickly know that someone's neurodivergent but I think when I was it's frightening how much that happened hugely especially for a girl that goes on to get a first yeah at university yeah yeah there's a science degree right I mean you were not you know thick yeah you were made to feel it I was completely made to feel it I mean the fact that getting that getting that scroll on stage for a first-class nutritional science, you know, and scoring like one of the highest grades on my biochemistry exams for me was more of an accolade, more to me than walking any runway in the world.

3:40You know, when I did all opening lots of shows in London and gracing kind of covers of magazines, like to me it was, yes, it was amazing that I, and I feel so grateful that I got to experience that, but working and getting that first for me actually was kind of a proof to myself that I could do it because yeah I was basically told my entirety of school life that I wasn't smart and when you're told that as a child and you don't understand why it really does kind of mess with your mind and your confidence drops you know like thinking that I would be public speaking would would never have been a thing thinking that I could even write a book would never have been a thing so you know I really had to kind of build my own resilience and the interesting thing about modeling that a lot of people try to open up the question to me is like what's the most catastrophic thing that's happening in modelling days they want to know about all of the hard moments and as much as there was hard moments modelling I always say saved my life because being signed and being I guess looked at as something that was who was successful and had success and had achieved a lot at young age for me was never something that I thought was graspable or achievable when I was at school being in the lower sets and not knowing how I was going to be able to go to university all of those things like struggling to get a C in maths because you know my brain would just disconnect from what was going on in the room because I wasn't processing it and how I should be because I didn't understand my mind back then so you know modeling kind of did save my life I mean it caused me you know burnout as well at the same time but I think it was from the pressure of knowing that this was something that I thought that I was only ever going to be successful in so I pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.

5:21It's a common trait with you isn't it you're seeking knowledge all the time which actually makes you really interesting to talk with and to listen to because you've got the lived experience going back to the modeling days the resilience you must have built up pushing yourself out of your comfort zone dealing with judgment dealing with rejection to then have that burnout that's lived experience you know the physical symptoms you have but also the mindset side of things what got you through that to then want to learn to now help others yeah there's so much there it's almost like if I tipped you upside down it's just what would come out I'd almost like to ask you that now actually in context of of all the things you've learned all the things that have kind of formed a jigsaw puzzle that's still got lots of pieces that are coming together what is the sort of most standout advice you could almost give me that you can you sort of learn from your own lived experience marrying that to professional knowledge I guess it's what I'm thinking out about myself now 10 years down the line is I came from a very self-critical place I came from never feeling good enough and I think if we actually flip that script I ask you do you feel good enough I'm sure there's going to be things that one you're English so you'd be incredibly um maybe overwhelmed with that question and kind of go well yeah but you know I think there's things I struggle with and things that I'm good at you'd probably be very balanced and I guess for me you know I struggled with that balance for such a long time but I think especially as a society who are English we really struggle to like ourselves and to even love ourselves because that can have a very narcissistic quality but it's not actually knowing that you're good enough for me is has been the most underrated formula of health because when we have that acceptance with ourselves and we understand who we are we make better decisions for our health we make better work decisions, better relationship decisions.

7:11But we're never told to cultivate that. So for me, all of my understanding came from what I'm not good at and focusing on my weaknesses, as opposed to understanding what my strengths were, and focusing on that and cultivating an acceptance for the things that maybe I wasn't good at and the things that I was good at. And that for me has been the most underrated conversation in health, because when we go from a place of self-criticism rather than a place of self-compassion, everything in our physiology changes you know our mindset drives our health behaviors it increases our metabolism or it decreases our metabolism it increases our stress hormones like our cortisol and our adrenaline and so when we're looking at society now and health we're in this like very interesting paradigm where we have a huge rise of mental health conditions anxiety depression and that all comes from you know environmental societal pressures but on the flip side we also have an obesity epidemic as well.

8:06And when we kind of marry these two things together, no one's ever talking about, well, where is this coming from? And I really personally believe that it's coming from a place that we're all feeling that we need to do better, strive better, be better. And we can feel quite defeatist in that journey. The whole social media sort of things is against us with that as well, right? There's just sort of judgment and doom scrolling and comparison. You know, that's something that now is a massive part of society. You had it in the modeling days. yeah we could all say we've had it in the entrepreneur world he's doing better than I am she's just got this gig that I wanted and so on yeah I think we're always fighting that I've always struggled with the negative voices it's the whole watering the weeds instead of the flowers absolutely it's very much as you say an English thing as well I think and I think you know where I come from a lot now is understanding you know there's this the antidote that I talk about um is self-kindness which relates very much to self-compassion and so what I always struggled with that is that you hear a lot of people go, well, come from a positive mindset.

9:03It's really hard to get to a compassionate mindset or a positive mindset. And so that's where compassion comes in because it connects you to three things, which is common humanity that everyone's struggling. So I'm sure on your entrepreneurial journeys, if you're a solo founder, you will never ever see other people's struggles. You only just kind of look at it as your own. And actually, when you maybe get in a room full of founders and you can connect to them and they all go, actually, you know I've lost this deal I haven't raised this investment or this went incredibly wrong you start connecting to other people's hardships which allow you to have a more acceptance for yourself and also automatically go oh my gosh it's not just me other people are struggling so that's a huge thing self-kindness like would you treat yourself the way you would a friend hardly anyone ever does that how often do you cook a really good meal for yourself probably hardly ever but how often would you do that for your partner or a friend or your family someone that you love probably all the time so kind of flipping that script and speaking to yourself as you would a friend what advice would you give to a friend in that moment is something that can be really powerful i love that not enough people are doing that and you know there's a confidence thing there as well loving yourself to love others if you like which i think again you know americans do that a lot better than the british right um but i think if you were if you were someone that's feeling shackled feeling locked up feeling um that huge pressure of being judged and compared so just not doing anything what small steps can someone do to start seeing the benefits of that because it's habit forming isn't it so what are those initial steps that someone could do that's locked up first of all one of the most powerful things that I was told by Guy Winch who came on the show who did one of the biggest TED talks of all time of how to deal with a broken heart this doesn't apply if you just want a broken heart but it basically means that that inner critic I did want something one day where I wrote down every time it was in my mind and I was overwhelmed by how much that came in and I do a lot with this with patients especially if they have you know a really poor relationship with food is that I kind of give that inner critic a name and I say let's name that inner critic because you've got to distance yourself from that name because that isn't you that's kind of a former version of you telling you you're not good enough so give that a name and actually acknowledge how many times that is coming into your mind because you don't acknowledge it and you don't use that time to reflect then it's just going to be continuously there and you're never going to dissociate from it so writing it down is a really really good kind of powerful way and then giving it a name so one of I always remember one client once called it rain because it felt so heavy and so she would always acknowledge when rain came into her mind and so that's a really really powerful way and then you flip the script which is what I said when you speak to it as a friend and you say okay so this is what this this person is telling me this friend is telling me do I believe it what advice would I give them and so you're basically kind of taking your own emotion out of it and looking at from a third person that's great sort of perspective to look in exactly break it up give it a name and then actually evaluate and then make make decisions that move you forward I love that another thing I'm picking up on is is community it was potentially very lonely very driven but lonely uh Sarah Ann through the sort of late teens into early 20s you know turning up to all sorts of very high profile modeling gigs but on your own managing yourself and and I think probably quite lonely at school as well misunderstood to then now flourishing as an entrepreneur you know you've got your live well be well podcast the public speaking and the business I want to know that sort of transition of when you ultimately started to build that community realize the strength the power of it and how much of that might have been driven from not having that when you were younger?

12:45I think everything's been driven from what I haven't, what I never managed to kind of have or what I lacked and didn't know. You know, I remember the loneliness epidemic is spoken about loads now. But when all of my friends were, you know, 18 to 21 going to university, I was in an apartment in New York on my own with no one around me. And, you know, for me, I couldn't connect to talking about anything that I was struggling with because I felt I was from a place of privilege because I was given this amazing opportunity. So you just kind of had to be quiet and get on with it. And so kind of that disconnection of thinking, well, I can't say that I'm struggling because I have to be really appreciative.

13:23You can still hold those two things at the same time. And so especially even going back to university and figuring out dyslexic and the whole journey, it felt like a legally blonde moment, if you've ever seen it, when I went back to school. I've got two daughters. I've watched it a couple of times. And having that moment where I was like, do I belong here? You know, I didn't feel like I fitted in that in that space either, because I'd had this quite incredible life journey before. And then I was kind of plumped back as a mature student in London going back to school. And I felt, you know, where do I belong?

13:53And so my big mission when I came out of that was to build a community to support this, because for me, human connection was one of the biggest missing pieces of health that I struggled with. But if we go back this was 12 years ago so like this conversation wasn't around back then so trying to build a community and connect with house was was quite a hard hard gig to start with so i actually started it as a not-for-profit because for me the the the the beauty of it was not the money side was actually kind of the impact side for me and i was very impact driven um therapy for you as well right actually thinking about it a lot of what you're doing is trying to join up community seek you know you're naturally curious bring people together but actually helping yourself It was the hugest thing.

14:36So the self-criticism and the low self-worth that I came from, one of the biggest things to build your self-worth, if you ever have a very low self-worth, is giving back. So unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that for me, building a charitable organization was giving back. It was also connecting to common humanity, like seeing all of these other people struggle helped me because I didn't feel so isolated. So without me having any kind of understanding that that's what I was doing, I was building my own self-worth through a charitable initiative. I love that. I love that. There's something coming through now where that entrepreneur, almost the sort of Insta versus reality.

15:14So 12 years ago, there wasn't really any Instagram, right? So you were building that in the natural way to now harness social media. You use it really well. You use it as a force for good. You can get a bad rep if you are doom scrolling and not necessarily creating. You are not only creating, you're putting out positive, informative, educational information. I want to know this sort of journey went on from almost lucking out on giving back became something that I actually realized was really powerful so making that a business if you like yeah because a lot of people follow their passion but don't make money out of it yeah I want to know how you managed to do that not so much about making the money but you're flourishing in that so in sort of making a living out of it but also waking up every day doing what you love and learning all the time so I want to kind of know how long the days are you know are there sort of stresses together because you're you're an epitome of contentment not in an arrogant way at all but there's there's a lot that goes into building up personal brand and finding out where you want to go in what direction i want to know how that's been for you it has been an incredibly hard long journey i have to say um i have been building this for a very long time and and i didn't go into this with like one clear outcome for me i've had to really understand that it's about the journey and not the destination.

16:30So lots of dead ends and lots of, which is important for people to know, right? Because they'll see you now. And it's like, you know, amazing. I've listened to probably six of your podcasts in the last beautiful days. I've listened to you and Mo Gowda. It's like, but there's a whole culmination of journey. It's all about the journey. And I think, do you know what? You said something really earlier when we can kind of always look at our competitors. And I have, I always have set my bar very, very high. And so I also look, I would always look up to the top of the people in my field. And I want to try and get there.

17:00And now I've seen that I'm starting to get there. But it's been such a long journey to get there. I mean, the amount of times where I thought, oh, my God, in two months, this might not even be a company because I don't even know if I'm going to be able to make cash flow. Or, you know, having to strip my team all the way back and go back to a very, very, like, tiny lean team with me working all through the night. Changing the business, extending the business, like knowing if I was going to run a charity or a profit company. And I wanted impact, but I needed to make revenue. like all of these things I found really really difficult how to become authentic and build a brand but keep to my values and not go into the algorithm like all of these things I found really distracted yeah and I found it really difficult as a solo founder because I didn't come from you know a business an MBA I didn't kind of have an entrepreneurial group around me so I had to really seek that and I think one of the biggest things that I found is and you'll hate to say this all the time but it is literally consistency and making sure that I am very diligent and dedicated and I think that's probably the only reason why I've managed to kind of keep everything running and going is because actually at the bottom of all of it if you're not building a company that means massive amounts to you and that you have a real drive for you're not going to keep the consistency going it doesn't matter how many times you read before our work week or hear any entrepreneur talking about their morning routine and so you have to be so hyper dedicated to what you're doing and you have to believe in it more than anyone else to get that message out there.

18:27I think if you have that, there is no philosophy to getting it right. You have to just keep knowing and refining your message more and more every day until you know that actually this is the moment and you start just seeing it happen. That's brilliant. I can see you come alive when you say that. I want to keep that almost progressive conversation going to the future. So you mentioned you've got your book coming out. And if you had a North Star, if you had a kind of and I don't want to put a timeline on it because you know you probably make things happen really quickly but where would you like you know your your kind of businesses to be like because there's a marriage of different things there's the podcast there's the community there's the people can come to you to actually have advice and to be a client but where would you like to be what would be the kind of epitome you can get to in business I think for me being a woman in this space being a woman in science there's not I mean there's lots of incredible women scientists but with an outspoken with an out facing brand they're very limited I find myself kind of being surrounded by a lot of male voices in this build and so for me I want to be I would love to be one of the most respected women and bring a lot of women with me you know not be the only one I I don't see my mission as it just being about me I see this about elevating this message as much as I can back to giving back yeah notice that you you champion another women's podcast when you start your own.

19:50I don't know anyone else that does that. Yeah, I think it's really important. I think we're also, this is something that I've found out recently being in LA where I'm wanting to spend a lot more time in America and kind of try and bring some of the work that I do over there. And something I found really interesting over there is people champion one another very well. And I find it very difficult in the UK that we don't champion each other as much. We kind of, we see this as a very solo journey and we look at it in silos and I think the impact that we're wanting to make is make change right that's kind of my biggest that's my why my why is to help others it's to create impact it's to create influence in the right direction and like you can never do that on your own I've the biggest part to my journey actually that when bringing it back is the people that have helped me to get that I've definitely not done this on my own I couldn't have done this without mentors in my life people who have influenced me people have helped me, who've opened doors for me.

20:44And yeah, you have to be a curious person to kind of allow these moments to happen, but you will never build anything on your own. Everything is about other people helping you. And I think we could learn a lot, maybe sometimes from the people on the other side of the ocean where they really do want to open doors and help you. And I think that's so important to any company, any brand or any message. It's like, it's not just one person's mission. I believe that it's kind of all of us. That's brilliant. I love that. Makes you a real role model actually and you've taken the bits that you do like and and and if you don't if you don't like and you can position yourself because you know mentioned america and their their attitude you know if that's where you feel you belong you're gonna you're gonna ultimately gravitate to that you know and i can see that that's where you're gonna ultimately flourish and talking about i guess legacy i mentioned a minute ago i've got two daughters 13 and 15 growing up navigating this this world that's now hard it is hard and i want to bring nutrition into it because and i want to marry that to mindset because you know it is such a distracting world now you go to the supermarket and you've got all the the sort of attractive sweets and chocolates as you go to the checkout and my girls are asking to pick them up they just put them in the trolley and it's just you know we're ultimately surrounded by it and my girls know no different and then it's when they're eating it they're having far too much sugar yes they're doing exercise yes they're doing hobbies that keep them fit but I'm the one trying to say to them how bad it is for them they're not going to listen to me I'm not so listen to you either but you come from a different place you come from a place of knowledge and experience and lived experience you know what can be said to a teenager let alone anyone that's so distracted with this not really knowing how bad these processed foods are and trying to change that diet that ultimately is going to benefit their lifestyle yeah I guess and their hormones and their mood and their mental health.

22:33I mean, I said it very early, you know, we're in a mental health epidemic and an obesity epidemic. And, you know, there's a big conversation I have with Dr. Chris Palmer, who talks about, you know, the rise of mental health actually being a metabolic issue. And you can kind of see that kind of quite starkly, actually, when you look at the stats. And I think something that, I mean, there's obviously many other things, there's loneliness and so on and so forth that goes with that. But, you know, I think like the power of food was kind of my entry into this entire world. You know, for me, it fundamentally started me on my journey to understanding.

23:06I think the hardest thing that I see now in this society with the food, especially with kind of the younger generation, is that like 75 % of our supermarkets are packed of ultra-processed foods. And the problem with this is that it's clever. We can see very quickly, you know, that certain sweets are ultra-processed, but there's a lot of healthy foods, and I say that in quotations if we're looking at this on a video, that of market is healthy and branded as healthy. So even for somebody who has a lot of smart and intellect behind them could go, oh, that's healthy. So I'm going to buy that. It's still very ultra processed.

23:39It's probably exactly the same as buying sweets. And so I think this is where it becomes extremely hard to navigate. But the problem that I really see is that we are full of an obesogenic environment, too many ultra processed foods in our shelves, not enough of fresh fruit and vegetables. But then the other side of it is this convenience that's hugely linked to it so like the quick the grab the go the less time for ourselves and so then you also have this other flip side of the longevity culture that's kind of really really spiraling especially in the entrepreneurial space in the San Fran all of that the kind of brew science side of it that I can see and yes it can have its its kind of you know advantages but I think the problem that we're missing out on is that this huge gap of getting people back to the fundamentals of food cooking, getting people kind of empowered for what they're doing.

24:28So what I would say is to anyone of that age is getting people back into the kitchen, getting them using their hand, getting them cooking, understanding food. It's stimulating creativity, right? It's going back to being naturally curious. It's really important. And I think, you know, when you're using that food, when you're cooking with it and become familiar with it, a lot of children are leaving home now without understanding how to cook meals, understanding how to mix different varieties of foods together. And diversity is the biggest, biggest thing that you can do for your gut microbiome and basically your overall health when it comes to nutrition and diet so it's trying to get kids excited about food trying to make it you know not this laborious task they've got to eat their fruits and vegetables like getting spices and herbs and things that really like light their you know taste buds up and get them excited set them tasks for it and I think that's what's really key because the problem is these kids are going onto social media, hearing a plethora of nutritional myths.

25:22And you also see a rise in, you know, orthorexia, people that are becoming scared of certain foods because it's not going to make them healthy or not going to make them look young. And so we've become kind of over complicated in our food space and very reductionist. So for me, it's about like getting the kids like into the farms, into the country, holding foods again, cooking with them, becoming creative. That's where I think like so much work needs to happen with food and nutrition. Totally. It makes it real as well. And talking about that, to personalise it to you, the amount of knowledge that you now have through your own experimentation and the amount of people that you've interviewed.

25:58The sprout man was fascinating. Who knew, right? Who knew that I could talk about sprouts for an hour. It was brilliant. And I was like, I'll stop this in a minute. I've probably got enough out of this. This was yesterday. Yeah. And it just kept me in. And I watched an hour and 10 minutes of sprouts, right? Yeah. You've got all of that in you as knowledge. What do you eat in a typical day? You've got a busy entrepreneur, travel. So I want to know how you kind of prioritize it. And someone watching, well, it's not practical for me to do that. Actually, what does Sarah do? Yeah. So first of all, I'm not perfect.

26:31And I think sometimes when I go out for dinner, people go, whoa, I didn't think you were going to order that. And I go, I'm human. I'm not this like walking picture of health all the time. Because I think so much about food and nutrition comes from like the joy of food that it brings. for me I'm a pescatarian I have been for 15 years that was from a decision that was told to me by gastroenterologists to not have meat so that's a very like health specific reason why I don't have meat but for me I'm about you know I exercise a lot that's really important for my mental health and so I try to combine that with you know I have good supplements I have lots of vitamin D I have lots of creatine.

27:11I have a really good strong protein breakfast to kind of stabilize my... What would that be? What would that protein breakfast be? I either have like an omelette, I have eggs with loads of veggies in, spices and herbs. Sometimes I have like lots of Greek yogurt and berries and chia seeds and all the magic that goes on top. Sometimes it's just really easy for me to just chuck things in a bowl. And I mean, I should be sitting down and being mindful, but being an entrepreneur, sometimes you don't have that time so that's what i do i have the greek yogurt with all sorts of berries and fruits and nuts and my powder it's quick i do have a really bad habit of walking around with the bowl so do i and i know from writing a book talking about this it's not what i should be doing but sometimes it's the mixing i get it yeah but is there there's a lot of um stuff i'm consuming now and you've touched on it already in sort of what i've been listening and watching with you and where it's how you eat and it's being mindful so eating the omelet is one thing is it's nutritious yeah but how you eat it how much you chew how long you take a really interesting study 100 so this is something that really got my mind into the antidote that i talk a lot about which is self-kindness so there was this really interesting study from alia crumb she's one of my kind of people i very much look up to in the scientific field at stanford and she wanted to understand about how much our mindset infects our food choices and our metabolism.

28:30So she did this really interesting study where she took two sets of groups and she randomized them. So it meant that, you know, it was a completely randomized trial, which is one of the gold standard methods of science. So when we look at trials, we want to see that there are CTs. So this one was, so she put them into two separate groups and she said to one group, I want you to have this type of food. And she gave it exactly the same to the other group. She then gave them their food. They left. She drew their blood and she said, come back next week. They came back next week before they gave them the same round of food in the same setting, in the same environment.

29:05She said to them, okay, you've got from the blood results, you've got this thing called the FTO gene, which means that you're predisposed to obesity. They didn't have it, but they were told that they had it. And they sat down and ate the same meal again. She said to the other group, oh, do you know what? Really good news. You don't have the FTO gene so you metabolize food very very well and you don't have a predisposition to obesity. After they both ate the same meal in the same setting the ones that were told that they had this FTO gene metabolized the exactly same meal completely differently.

29:38Their hunger hormone grenoline dropped so they metabolically hormonally changed their hunger hormones. This is physical. Just from what they were told. So you can imagine now everyone going to get their DNA tests and being told these things that, oh, you do have a predisposition to obesity or you do have a predisposition to Alzheimer's. How do you think that affects our physiology? It has a massive impact. And she took the same group and she did it again in endurance exercise where she made them run on the treadmill. And the next time they came back, she said to one group, oh, you have this gene that actually you're not great at endurance exercises.

30:16and the other group she said you have a gene that is great for endurance exercises and the one that was good for endurance exercise overcame the pb from last week and the ones that didn't came off the treadmill earlier have a lower um vo2 max had a lower lung capacity so it physically affected them and how they were exercising just from knowing that they didn't have this endurance gene but the thing is neither of them did so the mindset is huge that's massive It's massive. And that's why for me, this conversation around, you know, all the food and health and how we see ourselves is so fundamental.

30:52Right at the beginning of this conversation, we mentioned confidence. You said you sort of at times being confident or not. If you bring that into mindset, if you bring that into that example, there's clearly a huge amount we can influence by that self-talk in our heads. And that girl that was going out on a runway at 16 with all the cameras flashing and all sorts of, I guess, judgment and so on. I want to know how you built that confidence and how someone that, dare I say, because if you can get that confidence going, which is probably momentum, you can achieve so much. And this is where I think clearly that turns into a physical manifestation.

31:31It does, yeah. I want to know how you've overcome rejection, negative comments, failures. So many things. If I summed you up with that word resilience, which is overused, but you epitomise it, right? I want to know how Sarah and all times of her life has sort of kept going and just treated as an obstacle and built that confidence. I think it's one of those things that you have to go through it. Don't be scared of failure. Failure is growth. Failure is feedback. and I say that really easily but trust me I've had every single rejection given to me I've had the smart side that I'm not smart enough that I'm not intelligent enough that I'm not good enough I've also then had the look side I'm not tall enough I'm not thin enough I'm not short enough I'm not big enough I mean I've had every I know every inch of my body and how every single part looks you know I've been rejected more times than the average person has you know sometimes 18 times a day so I've been kind of stripped from every angle and I think at first you know it completely wiped me out for me I found that very very hard and then also being put in certain social situations like never feeling that I can maybe came from the right school or the right background all of these things always played on my mind but actually ultimately when everything is stripped from you and you kind of know every single negative comment that could come your way sooner or later you've got to have the belief in yourself because if you don't have that belief in yourself no one else is going to and so if you can actually start accepting and believing in yourself and something that you really really do truly believe in and for me I came from a world of fashion and creative and somehow went into the world of science which couldn't have been more on the opposing end with everyone in my life telling me you were making the worst decision of your life and I actually ultimately had to have self-belief I had to ultimately believe that something within me was telling me that I was going in the right direction, even though my school grades were telling me that that was the worst thing I could ever do.

33:28And that led me on my own journey. And so what I would say is that you have to break through your own disbelief and self-belief to have that confidence. And I would lean too much on other people's thoughts and opinions of me to guide me. So easy to do that, right? It's so easy to do that. You stuck to your passion and your purpose. You wanted to get that. So there's a key moment that stood out for me as well, listening and watching previously, was a lecturer put the whole thing into your head about potentially have you thought about you might have dyslexia now There are countless examples. I've got particularly from a neurodiverse point of view where People are so misunderstood and the direction they they could have gone in could have been really downward spiral It could have been you know some of these people have gone into trouble with the law because they don't fit into society And that's almost a separate conversation, but to have the right advice at such a crucial time that allowed you to start to make sense of who you were and you could argue at quite a mature age right you know imagine if that could happen younger and how different it can be but then you know your journey is your journey but i want to know just how important that was for you because that seemed to be like a light bulb and it got the curiosity going not in self-doubt but actually what does this mean and how does this affect me and what can i do about it and how much of that experience with that lecture do you think now has influenced you wanting to mentor and give back everything because that was the first moment when i talked about this word a lot i had compassion for myself i understood myself is there something really profound and something really incredible when somebody sees you when you can't see it in yourself there's something so powerful about someone saying i see this of you and this believing in you and and this is and this is amazing and you and someone describing your brain and these years of frustration all of a sudden going oh my gosh that's my brain and I think you know that the irony of you know kind of said like your journey into this I mean the amount of times I've given up I went I went the reason why I had that assessment is because I went to drop out of school after six weeks I went in and said I'm not my typical thing I'm not good enough I'm not smart enough and she just looked at me my lecturer and my professor and she was like what are you talking about and I was like look I really shouldn't be here I made the worst decision you know that was there's been so many moments when I've wanted to give up and you know she pulled me aside and she said I think you are smart but I think you're really neurodivergent and I want to take you on an assessment and I had no idea what that meant it's like somebody speaking Chinese to me I was like I don't what does what does that mean and you know she sat me through this two and a half hour assessment and when she fed back how my brain worked it was this moment that I actually had compassion for myself for the first time in my life where I first time in your life first time ever.

36:13It's because somebody like explained to me how I was actually feeling. I didn't have the words or the understanding. I guess I'd lived in a place of frustration and that's where a lot of my drive and then going, oh my gosh, that's how, that is me. Have you considered what might have been if that conversation had not happened? Yeah. I think like I would have probably gone back to full-time modeling. I would have probably... But you hated it at that point and it made you ill, physically ill. It's weird. I didn't hate it. I just felt very disconnected. I just didn't. I wasn't using my mind in a way that I wanted.

36:51I was such a curious person. And I felt very lucky that I'd built to such a kind of a big career. But I felt very empty. And I had this really... It wasn't stimulating the whole package, right? stimulating my mind and I felt this hyper disconnect where everyone would say how well I was doing and I find it really hard to respond because I knew I was doing well but I just didn't have this like fire in me and I didn't know what that was so I was trying to seek what that was um and so I think if she didn't do that I would have never you know I may have never believed in myself I would never have known I was dyslexic I you know I could have ended up just carrying on doing what I was doing and I don't know I had another breakdown I just don't know it makes you wonder how many people have been so misunderstood in fact it's out there isn't it there are many many people are coming out now with this this this you know we were talking earlier about how many entrepreneurs are neurodivergent well how many people do you think sits here that are neurodivergent it's becoming very clear to me because I think and by default yes that's opposite me are neurodivergent yeah and by default they're sitting there because in some way or other they've been extraordinary or they are being successful, but have had a very muddled journey to get there, which again, you know, you can, and that relates to me as well.

38:05So it's not just, it's, you know, my journey has been all sorts of misunderstood and not understanding. So actually these conversations, particularly this one, not being deliberately flattering, I, you know, I got another 50 questions in another two hours, which we don't have. But tell us to wrap up when your book comes out because I can't wait to read that. It's going to be out the beginning of next year. Oh, we've got to wait a bit. We've got to wait. The publishing world is quite a long one, but you know, it's, um, I know it's going to be amazing. It's been one of the, I think, you know, apart from getting that scroll, it's been such for me an extraordinary experience.

38:40I never thought I'd write a book. I didn't think I was capable of it. And now I realize that actually it's becoming much more of a strength of mine because it's storytelling, you know, and the whole world is influenced, impacted by stories. It's the biggest thing that I learned from studying health. You know, I can have all the knowledge in my mind, but if I can't give that to somebody in a story that can impact their behavioural change, nothing's going to ever change. So story for me is the ultimate kind of biohack with health that you've got to, you know... Is that relatability? Because I buy into that, you know, examples of and...

39:13Yeah, authenticity. Yeah, you've got to take someone on a journey, you know, because otherwise, why would somebody want to change something about themselves? If they're not emotionally connected to it, then it's just going to go over their heads. So stories is like the biggest impact you can do on anyone, I think. I'm going to ask one of the 50 questions, and then we must finish. You have a lot of people that will come to you wanting help. Clearly client confidentiality. But I'm interested if you've got a pattern there of what the kind of number one help is needed from clients. and whether that starts as might be nutrition and you realize it's a mindset thing I just wonder whether you've pieced that together yeah I marry nutrition and mindset together very very closely for me that's fundamental you know for years I went and saw you know patients came and saw me on Harley Street and they would come in with all of these things that are wanting to change and I would start with what why why they're wanting to change this because fundamentally you can give anyone a food plan it's very very easy you can kind of say this is how you change your diet and this is how you overhaul it I can guarantee you in three months they'll be back in your seat because something's not worked and so for me understanding the psychology and the mindset behind that is my first step into any progression of behavioral change and people have a very large assessment form when they come and see me and I won't see them unless they fill it out and the irony of them filling that out the amount of revelations that happen in those first two hours of that person seeing me because they've gone to this place within themselves with this form which they didn't expect and so they actually come to me with the answers in that first consultation which to me is the power you know they're answering it themselves and it's not food isn't always the answer you know food is definitely a vertical towards better health it has so much impact and influence but for me if the mindset is not in the correct in the correct way or people don't know why they're wanting to change or that aren't real understanding and that yearn for it then there won't be an impact.

41:07I think that's fascinating. That's a huge lesson and takeaway for me out of this is that story you gave earlier of being able to literally be told something and neither of them be true to then have physical effects that carry on. That's huge. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today. I hope you've enjoyed it. I've loved it. I've loved it. I've learned so much. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.