Ep 10 with Trinny Woodall: How Do We Prove That Success Has No Expiration Date?

0:11My guest today has a true passion in fashion and beauty. Having first made her mark on TV screens, transforming wardrobes and boosting confidence, she has since taken her expertise to build a multi-million pound beauty empire, changing the way women approach makeup and skincare. She is renowned for being the ultimate champion of women feeling their best. Please welcome to the podcast, Trini Whittle. Well, thanks so much for being here. Hello, darling. I'm so excited to see you. I feel like when we bump into each other, it's always so fleeting. It's at this morning a lot of the time and I'm like, see you in the, we have a little catch up.

0:50But it's so nice to actually talk to you about you, about business, about you aside from TV. Because there is, your story, it's almost like part of your story only just began when you launched your own business and your own world. So I want to dive into that. But first of all, I start every episode in learning about the Trini that I guess we don't all know. The Trini that we know is the Trini that we met on TV years ago. But who was the Trini before then? That's how far back you go. Take me all the way back. All the way back. The Trini as a child was the youngest of six kids from two marriages.

1:35Six children. And never felt hugely close to my mum or dad. So my mum, we had sort of different, you know, like my dad and my oldest sister were really close because it was that second marriage but first daughter. Almost like the glue. And then my brother was a bit lost in between. And then I was, when I was younger, I was a little bit unwell for a while. I had some low blood count. And so I was taken out of school a little bit, but I also went to school very early. I went to a boarding school very early. So I'd say when I look back now, I didn't have the most usual childhood. I went to boarding school at six and a half.

2:19I didn't see my parents hugely. And in the holidays, I'd see them. But half term, I maybe stayed with my grandparents in Hove. And Hove then was not Hove now. It was full of everybody was over the age of 75 and they all played bowls at the King Alfred Center. And I lived this life of sort of grandparent life with much older people. So it was weird. And I found it challenging at school to make friends because I moved a bit. And because I was sick, I was then taken out of school. and then my mum overcompensated a little bit for my being ill. So she would sort of make excuses for me and then I resented her for making excuses for me because I then felt perhaps, you know, my brother and sister would then feel I was more spoiled.

3:19So then I rebelled against all of that, you know. So that whole sort of, you know, we all have elements of these as we grow up. And then I, we moved around to, I lived in England and France and Germany. And then I, at 11, went, or at sort of, at nine, I went to Germany and I had, came out of school, went to a local school in Germany. And my brother and sister went at boarding school. So I just saw them in the holidays and felt a bit of a single child. And then I went to a boarding school at 10 and a half in England where my sister was. and I did a year and then really struggled to make friends and then I was so behind in work and not very able and they said, you have to stay down a year.

4:10And I remember the torture I felt, Rochelle, of staying down a year. I think, my God, I've got to start all over again trying to make friends. So I'd say up to 11 or 12, I don't remember life being really fun. You know, I just don't. It was just life. But it wasn't exciting memories. It wasn't painful, but it wasn't exciting memories. And then probably 12, 13, struggling still, really bad at school and always like 27 out of 28 in the class. and then my mum said to me or my parents said to me, if you go to, if you come in the top 10, you can go and visit your godmother in New York. And I was 14 and I came third.

5:00And I think from that moment, I remember this moment really specifically in my life, but from that moment, I think it was this sense of there's a big wide world out there and New York seems to be this incredibly exciting element of it, even though I knew nothing about New York. But when I went there, lots of tiny things happened, which then affected my life later. That's so interesting. So I had very bad acne at the time. I had it from as soon as I reached puberty and got my period. Which is so hard. It's just like everyone would talk to my spots. And I'd really, you know, when somebody's looking at you, they'd be like, yeah, like that.

5:45And I'd always sit with my finger in front or I'd have my hand on my chin. And I'd think, how much of my face could I cover when I'm talking to people? But I was very self-conscious. So when I was in New York, I'd saved up all my pocket money. And I went with my godmother to this department store, which isn't there anymore, called Lord & Taylor. and at the end this is 78 right all right you weren't born yet were you 89 okay thanks this is 78 so I walk in and I see at the end Clinique all right and this is like what's Clinique it had only launched about three years I don't know it launched 69 I think but and I went and there was this three-step program my My mother had literally, my mother gave me Pond's cream for every single significant event on my skin.

6:38You've got to spot Pond's cream. I'm obsessed with it. Astral and Pond's cream. Astral, yeah. That's what I remember. At least Pond's cream smelled better. So I then was given the three steps. I remember spending all my pocket money on the bar of soap, the toner, which is like paint stripper. Yeah. They put me straight on number four, salicylic acid. and the dramatically different moisturized lotion, which is going to give you spots, whatever, you know. But this was a routine. And I went back and I remember, I literally remember now the smell of the box that came in and that lovely printed, they had this pink and green printed pattern.

7:19Yeah. And it all came in that. And it was so treasured. It was in my suitcase. It was the most special thing. So that happened to me, which is my wake up called skincare. care and the other thing that happened to me which is another part is I was quite innocent then but I I was quite innocent then but I went with my godmother she said um we have to do something fun for you so I'm going to get my friend Myrna to think of something because she has girls your age so Myrna lived this quite entitled life on the Upper East Side and she never got up for midday and she always wore big picture hats and white gloves and you know it's a very old-fashioned picture and she said all right darling we're gonna take you to this new club or this club that's been going and we'll just go and see and Rodney can maybe get us in so she had this big maroon old silver cloud Rolls Royce which in New York at that time was quite a big deal so we go in this Rolls Royce and we pull up outside Studio 54 this is so which is just at time you've got sort of Mick Jagger in there with Bianca Jagger on a horse and you've got this whole world of this.

8:31And how old are you? I'm 14. This is so funny. I'm 14 all right and I've dressed up to the nines and I'm you know so I walk in this place and there was Mick Jagger was there that night and there were you know I looked around there and I was literally my mouth was on the floor and I saw things I'd never seen in my life before and I smelt things I'd never smelt in my life before so I saw men kissing right I'd never seen men kissing and they had it was in this old theater and there's a kind of upstairs bit so I went on the upstairs bits and I looked down and I was like and Myrna sweet Myrna when we are pulled up there's this queue around the block and people would literally dress in cellophane naked to get in the club and and you know she just pulled up in this car this car was everything anyway and then Rodney who was her lovely man who drove her around New York, got out, opened the door.

9:21She came up, big picture hat. And, you know, the doorman goes, good evening, madam. How are you? You know, she'd never been there before, but it was just for the drama. And that's how we got in. But so we go in and I'm looking around and, and I'm just like, and then I smell this weird smell, which is pot, but I didn't know this smell. Well, you wouldn't. And it is a very unique smell. Very unique smell. So I was like this smell. And then I think after about half an hour, Mona realized that my mother would fucking kill her, okay, for having taken me to this place. So she then said, we're going.

9:56But I left and I was like, my God, life can be this. All right. Life can be this mad, insane fashion craziness. And it was like, oh. And I had been at this tiny British boarding school on and off since I was six and a half with no exposure to anything. and I'd never lived in London and it was like oh my god and I think it switched something on in me which then led me in different directions but yeah so that's my early life but and I suppose if you're like like you say you're you've been told you need to go down a year you've moved from different countries you don't find it easy to make make friends you're one of six I suppose they're really formative years of figuring out who you are and the insecurity of the acne and hiding.

10:43Yeah, I think I didn't figure out who I was until I was 28. I'm still figuring out. Yeah. I'm still figuring out. But like it's that, we're testing all the time then. We're testing what do we like, how does this feel? You know, it's like your mother says, don't touch the fire, it will burn you. You have to touch the oven, you know. Yeah. So there's all that testing. And there's also, I knew what made me feel lonely and unhappy. Right. as well. What was that? Feeling lonely because when my brother and sister were at boarding school and I was at this day school in Germany I remember feeling lonely and I remember not feeling I fit in and because I went to a couple of different schools with different types of people so when I was in Germany we were at an international school it was an American system they didn't do history and geography they did social studies I didn't understand what it was so I felt an outsider looking in and I think I felt a few times when I grew up this outsider looking in.

11:39When I was at school in England, not so many people lived out of England. So it was a novelty. So it just, it took me time always to find myself and find my tribe. And it was probably then by 15. And also I had a sister, four years older, really glamorous, gorgeous, Wiggle. And she was loved by everyone. And I felt spotty and ugly in her shadow. A little. You know, I had that feeling of it. It's hard with sisters. Can be hard with sisters. And she, when she was at this boarding school that I then went to until I was 16, there was a thing then where you would, I don't know if you remember this before, it sounds so weird now, you would crush and pash on people.

12:24Right, tell me, I need to know what this is. Okay, so crushing and pashing was that you would have somebody, this is the 70s, all right, but you have somebody in an older year and they would look out for you and they would bring you sweets in the evening and you'd give them nice writing paper because that was your kind of exchange commodity then at school. And you'd write them letters saying, oh, you're fabulous and all this kind of stuff. And if somebody else in your year group had crushed on them. On your person. Yeah, they had to ask permission. If you crushed on them first, you'd say, I want to crush on them, can I crush on them?

12:57And you'd go, no, you can't. And then it would like cause friction or yes, you can. And then the next stage up was to pash on somebody, which was like a bigger commitment of this kind of friendship with an older girl at school. It was quite sweet, but many, many, many of my friends crushed and pashed on my sister. Right, got you. And did they have to ask your permission because she's your sister? No, she was just my sister. But it was just, you know, she was really, and she was the cool girl. She led the food strike at school. You know, she was the one who got in. She was the girl. She was the girl.

13:29And so probably it was difficult because I was really shy then that once she left and I was 14 or 15, then I found my place in that school and therefore my place in life a bit. And then I just flourished a bit. And then I found my friendship group and then I sort of, then suddenly I was a cool girl at school a bit. But it took me until that point at 15 to feel that I had any significance or contribution to life. That's so interesting. And I suppose it's like you say, maybe it's that sort of glimmer and that glint of like the other life. Yeah, there was. The studio of 54. And having your stepping out of the shadow a little bit.

14:16And wherever it is in life, we all have to do that at some point, don't we? Well, okay, I'm going to step into my own power a little bit. and at 15 you probably don't really realize what that is you have no idea that's yeah I guess what that was yeah how you burst onto our tv screens and there's obviously a big gap between being 15 and to us knowing you so before it's so interesting all these stories about your insecurities and you being so unsure of yourself because your role was then making sure everyone else felt so secure you You know, you were, to me now, you seem that that could have actually never been your past, which is why I love these conversations.

14:58What happened in between? When did you find that kind of that creative flair and that passion for styling and everything else in between before we knew who you were? I think I found it at boarding school at six and a half because I didn't go, lots of people at Exeots on half term would go home and I didn't always go home and there were just a few of us who didn't. So we would, and we had to wear a school uniform all week apart from on a Saturday afternoon and a Sunday. Right. So we had a few home clothes. So it was about how can we make those things feel cool. She was just fabulous, all right.

15:33On a Saturday. I know. Stepping out like pale. Wow. I mean, my God. And then what we would do to our skirt. It was so, so strict, this school. But it gave me, then I would be the one who would, you know, I would pierce girls' ears with the thing you use to unfreeze the car. You know, a lot of people come up to me now. They go, look at where that fucking hole is, really. You know, but I used to be the one who would do the beauty treatments and everything. So I kind of loved it. I found that purpose very, very early on of let me shift you and let me use what we've got in front of us to try and create something.

16:09So that started so early. Then when I was sort of 18, wasn't good enough to go to uni. So I went straight to work and I worked in a physical commodities trading house. I wanted to slightly be in finance because my dad was. Didn't work out at all. Entered also drug scene in London. So I was sort of grappling, trying to be this person I didn't fit in with, which was doing business because I, you know, trading, hated it. Really hated it. Sort of went, you know, went on the tube with the Financial Times on the outside and the Daily Mail on the inside. That was me. I was like, I mean, the whole sense of pretending to be something so in conflict.

16:45so I did it and then I was using and I did a couple of other jobs as well flitted around always felt somebody would find me out the next day and and always felt I never had the right to be there but would still do it so that what we call imposter syndrome now I totally appreciate that sense and also layered on that was using and and my main drug of choice was coke so just ups and downs so then at 26 it all crashed in like a house of cards and I felt I'd lived a thousand and lives and I spent a year going to rehab so I went to a primary rehab and a secondary rehab in Western Supermare for eight months working in an old people's home and going to secondary care which was a real I open up living off eight eight pounds a week which all went on cigarettes um so that reset me and it did a couple of things.

17:37Was there a particular moment in that time like you say you're using and there's that kind of cycle of. I think there's a rock bottom for anyone who goes through addiction and that rock bottom can be an incredibly physical one you can be losing your home on the street totally fucked it can be one where you just feel such a flatness about your life and you have these moments of clarity where you think where did my joie de vivre go where did my passion for anything totally go and I had been in up to that time passion when you met me you would think I was quite a cool kid but inside I was just this squirmy set of worms inside my tummy the whole time you know and I think that when you make that choice and I tried a few times stopped using drugs and I had stopped for a bit and then started again and when you discover you You know, I went to some NA meetings and then I knew there was a solution.

18:41So when you use, when you know there's a solution, it's shitty using. When you use and you just have no sense of there's another way, you don't feel guilt. You might feel guilt because of how you behave or who you fuck over or just how you are in your life. You just lose a moral compass in a way. Using makes you lose slightly a moral compass. And you just don't know who you are. So then you discover a bit of recovery. You then decide to use again. And then that using is fucked. It's fucked. You're just trying to get back to zero. And I suppose it, for me, you said before that the thing that makes you the most unhappy is feeling lonely.

19:24But I can imagine whilst using that is a very lonely place to be. It depends what you use. It depends what you use. I think there's people who use and they're using something which isolates them. Right. You know, so if people use heroin, they might do it with other people, but it's an isolating. There's sort of sociable using where you can be with a whole load of people, feel very lonely. And then there's kind of, in a way, that's the difference between uppers and downers. Yes. Okay. Got you. So I was always the person who wanted to be with lots of people having a blast. So what would amplify that was cocaine.

20:02and it got to a stage where it just didn't do it anymore. So instead of kind of being at zero and getting to 20, you will be at minus 20 just trying to get to zero. And then I just woke up one morning, and I'd been with four friends,

20:19and we had always made these packs of tomorrow we will stop, tomorrow we will stop. And I woke up the next morning, and I still wanted to stop. And it was the first time that I'd had that feeling of not waking up thinking, oh, well, you know, whatever, that was last night's idea. So I called somebody and I said, please, can you try and get me in a rehab? Because I have this window where I think I will be committed and then it might go and I don't trust myself. And I got into a rehab really quickly. And so I spent altogether a year between primary and secondary. And then when I came back to London, what happens in rehab now is not what happened then.

20:56It was quite judging then. It was an element of you were bad will make you good and recover. At the rehabilitation centre? A little. I think it's very different now. I think it's very unjudging and it's not shaming. Yes. But there is an element where you kind of come out with this burden of responsibility of your behaviour and try. Almost if you're here nor to you, we're going to. A little. Yeah. And then you have NA, which I went to for, you know, 20 years, which helps you to know you're not on your own, to be able to share what you're going through. But I came out of that rehab with like a raw onion, you know, that had had every single bit of protective laying stripped off because that's what you do in rehab.

21:47You break somebody down in a way to build them back up. and I remember going down a street and I had a panic attack. I'd never had a fucking panic attack. I was like, don't mess with me. And I was so vulnerable. But it was the only way I was going to discover who I was because I didn't know. I had no idea. And I think sometimes we go through life and we can be 50 and not know who we are. But I think it was such a wake-up call to me that I spent a year like that and then from 28, 29, then I was like, okay, what do I want to do? I don't want to do this. What am I going to do that makes me happy?

22:22I did a column in The Telegraph for five years. From that, I got TV. And then I did books and TV. And then my career took off. And then each year of that career, I was really knowing what I could do, Rochelle. So I kind of, you know, by the time I did a book, I thought, I know I can do a book. By the time I was doing the column, I thought, I can write a column. And then by the time two million people were reading it I thought we can do a TV show we have an audience and by the time we did the show on BBC two and there were three million people watching we could move to BBC one and get you know seven million people watching so that progression from then it was really now I know what I can do right so from that moment that changed and do you think I just I'm a believer in everything happening at the right time yeah do you think that sort of like consistency and you staying on the right track was just what you needed?

23:22I think I had had such a erratic start. You know, it had been so, I'd experienced a lot of things. And I had, they say that when you start using is when you emotionally stop growing all right so I started at sort of 16 17 so when I got clean at 26 emotionally I was probably like a 16 year old but I'd also lived a life you know I'd really felt I'd experienced so much in life I was tired by life and I was only 26 but lots of people I speak to when they get in recovery feel that feeling and so when I then had this opportunity to be given a fresh start I had to catch up emotionally yes you know so I really had to have that sort of self growth but also those few years until I was 30 helped me catch up so by the time I was 30 I was then 30 I did have a belief in myself I did have a sense of what I could achieve and I did have a sense of my worth because I'd kind of accelerated all those years where you might have to process that into a very extreme 10-year period yeah yeah of course it's it's it's honestly so interesting because it's such a part of that you're very open about but it's such a part of your journey that you could for various reasons because it might feel triggering or it is a time that you a position that you'd never want to be in again that you could shy away from but it is a big part of your story.

24:59I think it's so important if you go through things, and I think I've done this, especially in the last 10 years with social media, to share how life really is. Because there's so much out there of this mirage of this perfect life. And I think there are a lot of people who go through addiction and grapple with it. And I think it's really important that you can share your story because it might help somebody else. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So. I mean, we have to talk about the TV career because. It was such an era of. It was it was like nothing we'd ever seen before in the terms of you of expert led content, which is now what everybody aspires to do is that expert-led content.

25:57But bringing stylists to the forefront, helping viewers to feel what they aspire to feel, you doing that, that must have been for you really self-rewarding, I suppose. At the same time as it being a job and something that you were passionate about, I suppose for you, did you take a lot from that? I as it evolved I loved it more because what we started with was a show that all that had been on was a closed show which was a show with Jeff Banks a really great show and it was about fashion generally they did live shows as well but there wasn't this intimate get to know a woman what makes her tick moment there wasn't this intimacy and we had this intimacy and we had it through some mechanics which now you wouldn't do where the husband say yes put the camera in my wife's bedroom as she gets changed you know it's like are you kidding me um and there was this intimacy too where we had this box and people would go in and we'd we'd kind of say to them let's talk about how you feel about your body that's what I remember um and Susanna and I got in that box a lot with them uh so they wouldn't feel on their own and the women we met were always in some kind of transition and I think what was interesting about the show is it was quite an emotional show it was quite a um a show of drama and before and after and evolution and for the time in which it was set it worked really well and where it evolved to and what I found very interesting is people tend to discover you in a lane and they want you to stay in that lane great you know this from things but they just want you to be in that lane that's how they got to know you so So if you change, no, you can't change because they sort of own what you are in that role.

27:47So there was this role of Susanna and I of doing the show. And then we moved to ITV and we did a show called Undress, which was around couples who distanced themselves. And the first one we did was this couple in Aberdeen and they had sort of fallen out of love. And he was actually somebody with sort of undiagnosed autism. One of his kids had Asperger's. And through the evolution of it, it was about could we get them back together? And it was a much more emotional show. And there were bits in it where we didn't have the mirror thing, but we got a curtain and we got them to undress. And then they had a tiny camera and they would just highlight parts of the other person's body to talk about their love for them.

28:28And I loved making that show so much. And it was the show which some people love and other people like why are they becoming psychologists? you know and the thing is I felt yeah I felt probably there isn't there are many people who have maybe dressed quite a few thousand women and got to know women quite well and I think that that's why we could do it and then when we stopped doing telly in England so about 12 years later we were there was a fatigue and there was got one everyone coming in we took a show to Cannes and MIPCOM bought is it's like a tv conference and they um we our agent said look 12 countries have bought the show and I thought they just bought the right to the show but they said no they want you to go and make that show so we ended up going from the UK because it's like we need to earn money we both are the main breadwinners we have mortgages to pay and we went to many countries making this show which was a variation but actually an even bigger evolution of the show we'd done in England.

29:33And it was a show I loved making because we got to know people. And whether I was in India and I was doing a Hindi woman or a Muslim woman, or I was in Poland, or I was in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Australia or Scandinavia or America, wherever it was, all the time, we're meeting so many different women. And it's what gave me the idea of Trinity London. And even though they're all different, whether they're a tall Dutch girl or a petite Hindi woman in India, or, you know, somebody who's come out of a war conflict in Israel, they had the same feelings emotionally as women about their relationship with their bodies, about their relationship with themselves.

30:18And I learned so much doing that show. And we did the show over four years. Susanna and I traveled nine months of the year. We both had young kids. It was really challenging. But it was amazing to get a sense of when do women feel challenged? When do they need, you know, how do you help people evolve to the next stage of their life? Whether they're, you know, I had a girl who was very, had very bad body dysmorphia, anorexia, and she had looked at me for years thinking I was this skinny, amazing girl. And we had this moment where, and she was also in the army in in uh the netherlands weirdly but she was really really thin and so i said okay how who do you think has a bigger thigh and she said i do and i said okay so we've got a tape measure we put it around her thigh and then you know i undid it but let her see that i hadn't moved my fingers i put it around mine and there was you know i couldn't even get it halfway around and she looked and it was so interesting when you deal with somebody with body dysmorphia because She looked and she was like, that can't be true.

31:26Do it again. So I did it again. Then I did my arm. We did literally every part of the body. And she was faced with a sense of my eyes have been deceiving me. You know, I am much smaller than Trini. I've looked at Trini as this person. And those moments, and there were tons of moments where we had some very extreme people. I had an Orthodox Jewish guy who was gay and just wanted to come out. And he came out on the show in Jerusalem. You know, it's a heavy duty thing for that to happen. Big deals. I had a woman of color in Australia who had been so abused as a woman and had worn black all her life because of this abuse.

32:10And, you know, we got to a place where in the end she walks down a catwalk in this canary yellow dress and celebrates who she is as a woman. and on her back are these lashings of where her husband had whipped her, you know. And just moments where you really think, my God, that I could be a part of that person's journey. Well, they trust you. They trust me. But just to be a part of a journey of somebody evolving, to be on that journey with them is amazing. So I love doing that. I really love doing that show. But it was also really challenging to do because Lida was growing up and I had a few complications at home and stuff.

32:49So in the end, all those thoughts I had around makeup and how women felt, then all got transmitted ultimately to when I want to build this company, what do I want to be able to give women and do for women? Was from that, was from those years of going round. Well, let's talk about Trinity London because what you've done is just phenomenal. It really, really is. And what I love that I know that you're so vocal about is that women get to a certain age and it's my biggest bugbear. And I don't know if it's something that society puts on us where we think by this age we should have achieved X and by this age we should have achieved that.

33:30And one thing I'm not going to do in my 50s or my late 40s is start a business because I probably should have done that years ago because perhaps I'm too old to think about that now. and I can't bear it and I'm I'm the I'm the big biggest advocate for pivoting at any time I as you said before when people think that you're not supposed to do something that I think it holds a mirror up to people when you change and they like you in a certain position because that's you you do this and that's where you are but you then say actually I'm gonna go after this yeah because this is what lights me up people get a little bit confused and I really I learned that from my mum at a really young age she'd had this kind of she did mobile hairdressing she works in boots ironically which is now it's where I sell my baby brand so I'm like it's really full circle for us as a family and she'd work all different sort of perfume counters and give testers and then she also had a shampoo and set salon on the side that I used to have to side hustle sweep hair and she used to make me go and wash old ladies hair which I absolutely fucking hated I'm like old scalps were not for me um but she'd make me because those lovely ladies used to sew the sequins on my dance uniforms at the weekend so she was like trying to pull it all together and then when me and my sister were kind of pretty self-sufficient she was like I want to be a paramedic and randomly went to school and then was a paramedic until she retired so I've always been around that like why not let's give it a go and I know that's something that you well you really really believe in and I love how kind of vocal and how passionate you are about that outwardly I think you've got to there's a few things I believe for me to be true one is that we can give ourselves ceilings and other people can try and give us ceilings but if we don't give ourselves a ceiling there's less chance there'll be one so when we look at women versus men in the job place there's definitely a lot of um bias but also i've never seen myself as a woman i see myself as a person and i think that when i've gone through things i've brought this person into the room so whether it was trying to raise money for trinity london when two percent of businesses that are funded are for women but i just brought this person in the room and it's do you get my idea or do you not get my idea and retrospective I can look back and think my god so few women's ventures are invested in and why the fuck is that you know it's crazy because there's some incredible ideas out there but it is what is right now but I I don't choose to see it as I'm a woman doing that and the same with age because I only ever think about my age when it's my birthday and Oh, my God, I can't believe how great you look for your age.

36:31And it's something I can even sometimes do. And, you know, when I say to people, it's just, can you, like, I think it was actually, was it Ryan? Or it was on this morning. And I was, I think when I turned 60 and Ryan went, I can't believe what you look like for your age, Trini. And I went, Ryan, can you just say I can't believe what you look like? Yeah. and not put for your age because you're contextualizing that you're having to anchor me to an age and I don't feel age is relevant because I can, okay, I'm going to give an example of something where I think how age and leaning into what our age is can be detrimental.

37:13Okay. All right. About 30 years ago, I am at the Royal Geographical Society and I'm listening to a lecture by this guy who's just come to England, hardly speaks English, Deepak Chopra. And he's talking about the relativity of time. And he gives an example of these five guys in South Africa who were in a mine and the mine has collapsed and they're stuck there. And one of them has a watch and four of them don't have a watch. And so when they're, you know, working out how long have they been there, this guy decides to tell them that only half the time has gone by. All right. So if they said, how long we've been here he goes five hours they've in fact been there 10 hours but he's just thinking what I'll do is I'll just tell them it's half the time because then we might you know they won't feel how desperate it is but he was the only one who actually knew and they were there I think seven or eight days before they were discovered and generally there's a thing you can't live without water for x number of days but they were at the maximum of that whatever that was and the only person who died was the guy with the watch.

38:19Okay, the other survived. And it was about our perception of time. Yeah. And I think there's so much in our sense of what our body can do with us, our sense of what opportunity there is there. And if we contextualize it by society's sense of what you should be doing at a certain age, you close down opportunities for yourself. So I choose to not think about age, Um, and when it's confronted with me, I had a girlfriend who sent me an email and she was talking about, you really should get your pension sorted and whatever. You can't put everything into this company. You know, it was early on. And I was like, well, this is my life.

39:02I will. I'm placing my bets here. And she said, but you might only have 25 good summers left. And I sent an email back to her and I went, really, just check what you just sent me because that's insanity or insanity, crazy. And I just looked at this and I actually literally pinned it as a postcard and I gave it to her for her next birthday saying, honey, it's time to change your attitude. but it's so so I do I really believe that um I I was uh I love people who tell me stories of at any age they start something so if it's somebody at 20 who starts something that you think you'd only do when you're 40 it's as exciting as a I was uh skiing last week my birthday because I love skiing adrenaline junkie and I'm talking about it uh just I'm doing a little um film just saying it's so amazing skiing it really brings me this life and this woman leaves a comment saying when I was 60 I took up skiing and now I'm 70 and I love it and I thought that's amazing because that's something where it's a really challenging sport and my god you did that you know and there were other people you know saying oh you know I'm in my 50s friends have had accidents I'm in my 60s I think I should stop and I just kept sending them this woman's post just saying look yeah never you know if your knee is fucked and you've got to have a new one sorry i'm sorry so much then that's um then that's thing but it's just i don't know there is something around mind over matter and the limitations that you put on yourself and also like you say if you've not got that if everybody else wants to give you a ceiling don't if you have one for yourself there won't be one and you know that's that's the beauty of it let's talk about trinity london and how that was born because I'm so interested in because a lot of similarities with me and my story going from tv into the world of business which you've basically been running a business this whole time without realizing there's lots of elements of the like before life that you that you use now but I kind of want to know how the start looked for you how it was born when did that brainwave happen and how did you put it into practice what was the first step you made Brainwave was probably when I was still doing that show abroad and I was thinking women are very confused by makeup and they don't know what suits them.

41:24And I would, we'd always have like a different brand. We'd have, in Poland, we had Ignot. In Israel, we had MAC. In Australia, we'd have whatever brand it was. And they would provide makeup artists and they'd all do the same thing. They'd do the red lip of the season. And I'd be like, everyone's different here. You know, she's got caramel skin with a black hair and a green eye and she's got a blonde hair with a blue eye and whatever. What are you doing? So we sort of would then have to say, I think, what is the mathematical sum? Because I quite like mathematical sums in an Alain de Bouton kind of way of how you can give somebody a formula which would work.

41:58So I think the formulation of what then became matched to me and looking your skin, hair and eye to know the palette of what you see came from that. Then there was also women talking about, oh, I just, you know, using brushes and tools and powders. I'm not confident. So how can I give women confidence? I can make it cream based. And so the idea started coming out. And then I, the hardest thing for anybody is when you jump ship from having a salary and the security of something that pays your mortgage, and if you're a single parent, which I was then looking after and bringing up your child versus the unknown of a not consistent salary and not knowing when it would take off.

42:37That's the hardest thing is when do you jump ship? So I knew I had to bring down my expenses. And then I knew that I couldn't afford to live in my house and I'd have to rent it out. And then I knew that I needed this early sum of money to help me. So I then thought I've got so many clothes from doing fashion columns, etc. And I did this big sale and I went on Emily's list. And I literally didn't give a shit who came to my house because I'm renting it out. And I had like 3 ,000 people in my house for four days. and a really sweet friend of mine helped me price everything. And I remember my sister worked the till and I just sold whatever I could sell.

43:16And I'd watch this guy on social media, Gary Vienacek, who is a quite laddy man, but he talks about entrepreneurship and he says, you know, everyone has something in their house they can sell. It might be you've got a pair of trainers, you know, but all of this stuff can give you this little pot, which can help you have the freedom to make the choice you want to make to be the entrepreneur you want to be. But you've got to start somewhere. And whether you're living in a council house with just one cool thing, fucking sell it. How ambitious are you? What are you prepared to let go of for the potential gain in your future?

43:52So to an outside world, I lived in an entitled life, but I'd worked 30 years to buy a house that I couldn't afford, but I loved it. So I thought I won. I wanted to walk my daughter to school, which was around the corner. I have this kind of dream of what it should look like. That you were working hard for. Working hard for. And then in the end, at one stage, I realized I have to let go of that dream, of that perfect house near my daughter's school, all this kind of stuff, in order to pursue this dream, which is the bigger dream. And that was probably the hardest thing to, I think, leading up to making a decision, Rochelle, is the hardest thing.

44:26It's when you go through the most pain emotionally. Once you make the decision, it's just about actioning it. And then it's a release in a way. So once I made a decision, I have to sell the house. You know, I'd spent years looking at this house, buying it, getting loans out to do it up. You know, it was such a project. And I just thought, actually, I've lived in it two years, but I cannot afford to live and it's got to go. So that was the hardest thing. And then I rented a little cottage in Fulham and then I started the business. And I, in the end, there were 18 of us in this little rental. And by that stage, I moved in with my partner and, you know, grew the business.

45:04But that transition, I knew I just had to do. And there were moments when it was really challenging. And there's a lot to question, isn't there? Should I be, you know, this is something that I want to do, but is this silly? Should I be selling my house? Should I be making this real personal change as well as professional change? I think that's quite a hard thing to get. Well, there never is any balance, but get that kind of levels out. And it's also what people expect you should do. So my daughter was at that time 10 and then she lost her father. And it would be a time when one direction could be get a stable job, make the home really stable for Lila, et cetera, et cetera.

45:47For both of you. For both of us. And then there was this other path which was full of unknowns and opportunity. And I took that other path. It took me, you know, when... Which you know could lead to that stability. Yeah. But it was going to be a journey. And also, and this is such a challenging thing, Rochelle, as a mother, but when you have to ask yourself what you give up in your life for the sake of giving to your child what you think your child will benefit from, but ultimately might compromise how good and inspiring a mother you can be because of the obligation to lean into that. So what I mean by that is if I had gone down the path of saying, okay, I'll sell the house, I'll put some money in the bank, I'll buy a little flat, I'll go and get a job, it would have fundamentally changed me.

46:44And it would have changed the person I am in bringing up Lila. and it would have also

46:55said a lot about let's do something that's safe and I believe we should encourage our children to be fearless and brave and it was something where I was going to have to be quite brave and there was going to be moments when it would affect Lila because you know I work very hard there's only me and the challenge in that. But I also knew. And now when I look at back and, you know, I did this podcast last week with Lila. And we had interviewed Lila four years ago and then we interviewed her again today. And it was things about what you think about what your mum does, all that kind of stuff where you kind of you and I would just cringe.

47:39But it was interesting what she said because it made me think, by her answers I thought I made the right decision you know and it was only listening I listened to it yesterday because we actually got it in edit to go out next week and because you still as a mother you doubt that sense of have I done the right thing always you know it is and so I just listened to her and I just thought no it's what she's learnt from my journey will help her in hers and that's the most important thing absolutely that and I think it's holding on to that in the moments that it feels really uncomfortable and it's not.

48:14But the best things come out of not feeling comfortable, right? And that we know, but it's so hard to lean into that at the time when there's a house on the line and everything else. So personally, that journey was quite the, like the preempting what could come was quite the journey. How about, you touched on before about raising money and we know how hard that can be. And obviously, we have to acknowledge the fact that we are privileged in who we, that we know the side of the business that we can bring, i.e. the marketing, you know, having that sort of accessibility, which is a privilege in one hand, but then equally, they're only going to buy it once.

48:56And if it isn't good, if it doesn't live up to it, you're not going to get that repeat customer, are you? The product has to speak for itself. So how did the beginning look in terms of raising the money, getting the first product out? What was your role? I can imagine the role we were saying actually, who was I talking to the other day? And we were saying, actually, the role CEO or head of is actually the most unsexy role, particularly at the start, because everything happens and everything happens on your watch. What did you do? Was it the creative that inspired you more? Was it the fight or was it the whole picture?

49:30It's sort of everything. I'd start a business in 99. And I'd raised 7 million in six weeks or eight weeks. It was the beginning of dot-com boom. Within two years, I'd had to close the business. And from that time in 99, and it was before even e-commerce was online, but I had this idea for a female portal. And I got funding from cable and wireless and then a US bank. Within two years, there was dot-com bust and I had to close a business. I had to make redundant 60 people. I'd hired a lot of people who I felt were qualified in roles that I didn't know how to do and that had formulated the direction of the business we went into which is a little bit my not trusting even though I don't have experience here I intuitively think I know what somebody's looking for what my experience is in women yeah and I didn't listen to it enough and also it circumstances made it challenging so what I learned from that is when I started in London, I started with very, you know, a very small team where they, a lot of them were out of university, but they were just raw, fabulous talent people.

50:35How many people were we talking at the start? Two. Right. You know, I had somebody who did social media and I had somebody who was project managing organization. Then I got in somebody who ultimately came in in a sort of CFO role and we built the business plan together and we looked at how are we going to prove revenue. So I did it on the only simplistic one. I had then 160 ,000 followers. And I said, it will be if I say that 3 % of people buy the product who follow me on social, that's literally how I built out my one year plan. And then when I looked at the three and five year plan, five year plan.

51:10And these are on your own social numbers, not Trillilander. It's my own social numbers. Right, got you. So that's literally how I built it. And then I looked at products and I knew what product I wanted to develop. And so I started making things in my bathroom and I made formulas and I mixed together I had tons of things in my bathroom it's like a sort of pharmacy but I thought I wanted to do a foundation that's not a foundation so I want vitamin c in it so I've took vitamin c drops and everything and then I sent it off to a place in Italy and I said this is what I put in it can you replicate that formulation so then we started always with the texture in the formula and then I would send them a combination of colors that I'd mixed up in my bathroom so that's how these hybrids these skincare powered formulas that we have like BFF, how they originated.

51:52And then I was looking at new technology. And I said, I want something that's a white cream. And is it possible pigment can break and then it can become a color. And then I found a technology that did that. And then we use that technology. And each time I was learning from zero, but, you know, I like learning. So innovation. And innovation. So I then understood and learned about formulations. And then I worked with a very sweet guy who was a designer and I said I want stackable pots and we had to get that to a prototype of what became the stack and you know I based it on I'd had Muji pots which I stuck together with cello tape and I said but I want them airtight you want each one has to be a pot they have to snap if it drops it mustn't totally fall apart you know the things must stay together but you must easily be able to open them with your hand and snap them and stuff so we did 13 prototypes to get it exactly right.

52:45So everything was a learning curve. And then I had done in England, you can do something called an EIS, which is Entrepreneurial Initiative Scheme, and it helps you raise money and anyone who invests then gets tax back. So you can do something on SEIS, which is a smaller round, and you can raise up to 150 ,000 pounds. And then if somebody is a high tax earner, and I just looked at who I knew at the school gate, who I thought was in a good job, And I asked them and one of them happened to be in the beauty business and she looked at my idea and she said, you know, of the five things you're doing, they're all in the future three years of what beauty should be.

53:24So it was personalization, portability, cream based product, etc. So she then put in 100 grand. So then with that, I then started to get my formulation. So it was very and then I did the sale and I raised some more money. and then I finally got to a place where by that stage there were four or five of us right and then we raised money with Unileave Ventures after I'd seen 250 I approached 250 people for investment and I got one investment so there were a lot of people who would say love what you're doing but it should be done for 20 year olds because no woman over 35 is going to go online and do your personalization okay yeah but I got lots of things like that and it was really challenging because it makes you say is my idea the right idea it really makes you challenge it but then there's the other sort of there's like two devils on the shoulder the other one that's like you'll see yeah it was like it was like I know I just got to find the person who gets it and then I was in a meeting and there were two women and one guy who was the lead investor but unlike the other body language where I'd been in some meetings with eight men and they'd sat with and just for people who are listening here you know there's that kind of classic man's position of the leg over in defense position the arms back behind their head leaning back like this listening to me looking very interesting yeah really that was that was sarcastic and i remember the woman who i'd gone in with who's this woman who was in beauty and she'd come with me to a couple of meetings and after said they're not going to invest and i went why should i've studied body language and then we went to this meeting and there was a guy in the middle like this normally but the women were like this i mean If they could get out of their chair and jump across the table, they would have done.

55:03And I sat in that meeting and I thought, they're going to invest. I knew they're going to invest. You do. I knew. Well, you really knew. I sat through that many at that point. Yeah, and by this stage, I started doing manifestation as I drove in my car to the meeting. And I was doing little, you know, bringing the energy of, you know, I was doing visioning. I had this very sweet man and he helped me do this visioning of closing my eyes and feeling packaging. It's going across the world of Trini London products and just imagining it to be true that it could be successful. Because when you go to a ton of situations where you're rejected, you can live in that sense it's never going to work.

55:41And then that's a message you're reinforcing to yourself. So I wanted to counteract it. So by him doing this, it gave me that sense of let me believe it's possible, really imagine it's possible. And I remember going to that meeting and I'd done this in my little car driving there. and you know like packages going across and the globe and there I'm standing on the globe and these packages and I was looking at women's expressions and they go oh my god and we got the investment and so then that allowed me to build a team and then build the algorithm and as a CEO I you know had my CFO and he would do financials but I also because of my commodity trading know a bit about balance sheets and financials but MPD marketing tech I love and I personalized journeys and algorithms I fucking love so all that stuff um I love so now we're 250 people so it's slightly different um we have how many years after seven years we have 1.6 million customers in 180 countries I mean so it's it's grown it's grown just and we are 84 % women which I love it I love it's so it's so wonderful to hear and I can see you talk about everything we've touched on everything so far but the way that your face shines so differently when you talk about Trinity London it lights you up but it is so nice so so nice to see and I think what's interesting is like this and obviously we know with successes comes challenges and we get that And it's not always up, up, up.

57:18There'll be amazing days and followed by what fire are we going to put out today and what mess are we mopping up? Like, we understand that. But I think what is clear and I think whilst you're doing this and this is your life, you're very, very big on supporting women in business. And kind of that education piece. I love that you, the BBC maestro, I think is brilliant. I think that's such a, Joan Malone was on and I know that she's got BBC Maestro too. And I think it's so, so brilliant to have that tangible advice for people because it isn't, it's almost like there's an element of gatekeeping in this world and I'm so against it.

57:58I can't bear it. I'm like, we can all, there's enough food on the table for everybody. There is so that. Right. And that gatekeeping element. I don't know if that's something that actually, that men are so much better at being very like, you've got to meet with this person, connect with that. But there's that element of if I give to you, it might take from me. I think that is so some narrative that we have to think, how can we change it? It's so important to change it because I have never, ever felt that ever. All right. And I think, why have I never felt it?

58:34Maybe people gave me opportunities and believed in me who were women. And that meant so much to me. Yeah. And it really, you know, I mentor a few women in business and some are more challenging than others. And some are just, you know, I have a few meetings with them and they're just on with it. And they just ask a few bits of advice and others I feel really need more. And sometimes I think, can I fit it in? And I might say I can do 15 minutes this week. Get your questions ready and we'll go through it. But I know it's so important to do. I know that when I'm on social and I'm talking about, you know, people come to my channel for a lot of different things, for dressing, for my talk about being fit, for supplements, for everything.

59:21And I would never, ever not mention somebody else who I thought might do it better than me or might have an opinion which is worth going to and looking out. And I'd never think to myself, oh, might take my followers. I don't give a shit. It's like, how can I actually come to you with what I feel I've discovering, which is brilliant, and put you in touch? And we do these things called elevator pitches, which started out where people get in the elevator with me. And this whole concept, when you raise money, is in 30 seconds, tell me about the idea. And it came from people pitching for films. All right.

59:59And the studio exec would say, come in the elevator with me and just tell me what it is. and you've got to have given the synopsis, not between my next meeting, in that going up the five stories, you've got to get me hooked. And it's a very interesting way that you can take your whole big sense of what you're going to do and you have to succinctly put it into something tiny to get it across. Because ultimately when you're marketing, you know, we have for Trini London, rethink your routine, all right? You have Nike, just do it. How do you encapsulate what you are as a business? So these women, it's really helped them to think because a lot of them really practice this 30 second pitch.

1:00:39But I know even doing that, if they're going out for fundraising, it's going to help them to clearly state what they do. And even the prepping for this little elevator pitch, they do it. And then they do the elevator pitch and then we give links to their whatever product they're doing. And it's really fun to do. And then on International Women's Day or that week, we're going to have them in. and we're going to have members of our team that they can do a panel with where you know let's talk about social media marketing let's talk about building out a balance sheet let's talk about you know how you do performance marketing let's talk and so that they can learn from the experience that our team have to help them build up their team and I love this um you know circle no of course and it's a constant and that growing community and having that you know and that reward like you say some weeks you think I've really not got time but those 15 minutes that gives you a feeling like no other right that we did um with listeners the other day we had 25 on a zoom for ladies who launch and it was so nice watching them all connect and they were and now I've seen that they're all in the comments underneath and they're chatting about how they can do it and it's just like yes this is what it's supposed to be yeah um right I want to do our rocket round now which is essentially quick fire which for us I think might be hard my girl we'll try I'll try let's try let's do this the first one is what are the non-negotiables for launching a business perseverance

1:02:14working weekends

1:02:19a sense of humour I've got to say because it's like It can be really tough and you've just got to think. You're in the trenches. You've got to laugh. In the trenches, yeah. Yeah. I love that. We've not had those yet. When did you first realize that you truly launched? With Trini London, what was that? I think there's two moments. When I realized we truly launched versus when I realized we were successful. They're two different things. So when I realized we truly launched is anyone who started a new business knows the ping of Shopify. on their phone and we launched and it was the day of launch we're sitting around the dining room table there's um 18 of us around the table and I remember we heard a ping and I thought oh my god somebody's fourth and it was ping ping ping ping ping ping and I was oh my god people actually get it and they're buying it was such a feeling that you because you you know I'd spent seven years working on this project and just the people actually bought it it's incredible yeah so that was a moment of thinking we've launched and then the other moment was probably when um there was an article in Forbes magazine about the business and um and and it was a really great article and I just thought my god Forbes magazine are writing about me look at me um and uh and yeah and what they wrote was was true so I had to look at it and think yeah we've done that and it's marrying the two isn't it this is a really lovely article and it's all right yeah yeah exactly so what do people usually seek your advice and help for uh if somebody comes up to me in the street they might say because they just had me say am I doing the right makeup for my skin here and I they might say my skin's really dry what moisturizer should i use and i look and say you need an exfoliant it's always 80 percent of the time um as opposed to when i do what not to wear people come up in the street and say does this suit me okay or i'll be in a shop and they'll say trini they'll just come i'll say should i buy this trini you know as if as if they knew me really well and i always feel i know people really well because i think what social media does is create and intimacy, which I love, where women feel very easy to come up and talk to you.

1:04:43And I really like that. I don't want people to feel, you know, sometimes I'll get a little DM saying, I saw you stay and I wanted to come up and say something. I was like, you should have come up and say something. Yeah. You know, yeah. It makes your day as well too. Yeah, exactly. Which brand do you wish that you'd founded?

1:05:05None. Love it. I knew you were going to say that. I love that. Because Trini London was waiting to happen. That was your dream? Yeah. Good. If you could choose one female figure as a mentor, past or present, who would that be? There's two. One is Anya Heinemart because she is phenomenal at a creative evolution. And every time I see something each year, I think, what a great idea. At the moment, she does this pop-up shop in Ponce Street in London, and she's done one on retro travel. I've seen ice creams. Yeah, on retro travel, and I'm like, wow. But she's also a huge giver-backer. She supports this thing in Grosvenor Square where you have all the people who have died, and it's a rose to remember them, and it's done for a cancer charity.

1:05:57But so she gives back a lot. She raises money a lot. She has married somebody who already had some children, and she had children with them. So she brought up some, you know, children from her husband and her own children and she grew a global business. So, and she's an amazingly warm woman, unbelievably warm woman. So I really admire her. Another one who was my mentor for a year was Chrissy Rucker from The White Company because I won this Entrepreneur of the Year with NatWest and one of the things was that Chrissy would mentor me for a year with her CEO. and she's very quiet Chrissy. Anya is sort of like this and Chrissy's very quiet and clever.

1:06:41You know, she's not, here I am, you know. And it was so interesting. They're very different people. So yeah, those are two women. Love it, love. If you could trade one of your current skills for a superpower that would help your business, what would it be and why? it's so funny this because we have some guests that are like i don't want to give up anything can i gain something though um i just say i wouldn't trade i mean there's nothing yeah i would say i wouldn't trade because i what would i want to give up so i can gain something else but what do you have in abundance that you could have a little less of because you're plentiful that you could give a little away to have something can i give something i don't like Yeah, if you want.

1:07:28Okay, so what I could do is I could give away being so much in the weeds. Because when you're a CEO and I'm 10 years into the business, you need to be looking there and your team are looking in the weeds. And you need to not be too much in the weeds with them. Because otherwise they're looking out for you to strategically grow that business globally. And if you're too much in the weeds, you won't look at bigger picture. So that's my biggest challenge is getting myself out the weeds and bigger picture. Which is hard to switch off. It's not about switching off. It's about changing priority. Yeah.

1:08:03It's not switching off. But do you find it hard to give up the control of the weeds? Yes. And then also you need to empower your team. And if you keep coming in. So I learned something really, this is such a good thing. I'm just going to share it because I learned it recently. And I always love to share something I've recently learned. when you're a founder and you grow and you've got lots of people who are there from the beginning and stuff which I still have people whenever you say something they'll believe they have to do it that it might not be just a suggestion because you're the founder and and when they started with you they might have been quite junior and now they might run teams of five or ten people but there's that still that relationship which started at that stage so they will listen in a certain way.

1:08:45So my head of talent sent this thing to me and said, Trini, think about this. And I think it's very important. We always try and grow as a founder. And she said, okay, there's three ways of giving feedback. One is one person's opinion. Okay. So it's OPO. So OPO is when you just say, this is what I think. They don't have to take that opinion of sorts, just one person's opinion, but you have the freedom to put it out there. And they could say, I don't agree. I'm going to do this. It's fine. Then there's strong suggestion, which is somebody is presenting something to you and you go, I think you should consider this.

1:09:26And if they say, well, actually, fine, but I'm going to do this. And if it didn't work out, they need to come back and they need to describe why they did it. But you're not going to say, it's not the next one, which is mandate, which is we're doing this. And as a CEO, there's moments where you'll say, we're doing this. You're not going to question it. We're doing it. But the problem is that as a founder, when you get to a bigger stage, people think all of the things you might say are a mandate. And you need to let them know some of them, they're just an opinion. So now, so I started practicing it last week.

1:10:02All right. So I was in my weekly trade meeting and I explained to what I was doing so whenever I came up with something I said this is strong suggestion or this is one person's opinion so I contextualize it because I want them to learn with me what I mean when I say something don't stop making your own decisions because this is an IPO yeah yes this is an IPO you're so right because when you are in that position everyone does think that that's what you've got anything you suggest I'll say that that's you and that's final yeah yeah Well, you can float opinions. Yeah. But it not be. You could be like somebody else.

1:10:39And then I also moved where I sat because I always sat at the end of the table. Right. So I've now moved just to any chair that's free. Because I used to sit in this position, which was very, it's me, I'm the founder. And now I just did that. And it's very interesting, the dynamic. And then I said to them all, don't always look to me with your answer. This is a weekly trade meeting. You're telling everyone in the room. Yeah. And so it's a big one to move forward on that. It's constantly learning, isn't it? Yeah, it's constantly trying new things. And that's leading though, right? I ask every guest before we wrap up every week to leave a tip.

1:11:17I mean, that was like an amazing tip. But something tangible for somebody starting. So someone starting and looking to launch and thinking, okay, this is my year, I'm going for it. I've listened to this today. Trini's inspired me. What would be one piece of advice you would give to a lady looking to launch? I'd say that I'm going to give three bits of advice. One is, but these are things that really help me. You never know what's behind the closed door because I think there are moments in an entrepreneurial journey or a journey where you're transitioning from one thing to the next where you doubt yourself.

1:11:54And you can wind the movie forward so you can take away the sense of what the opportunity is in front of you. so remind yourself that you don't know what's behind the closed door so don't make that a narrative that feels negative just say I don't know and leave it at the I don't know bit instead of oh because this and this and this this is not going to happen so that's one thing I really think is important the other thing is that you don't know how much you know because when we start something there's something that we will know so profoundly more than anyone else and there'll be moments when we can doubt it so when I started and everyone said you should do it for a younger audience you should do it for this I had this intuitive sense this is for this woman who's 35 plus this is what I want to do for her and I knew that better than anyone else I met because I'd met 5 ,000 of these women I'd done more market research in person than anyone else in the room and I knew to be true that this was something.

1:12:56So I had to hold on to that. And it might be I didn't know how to do the three-year business plan or I didn't know how to do the OKRs or I didn't know and understand fully an EBITDA, but I knew that, the other stuff I could learn. So it's know what you know. Yes. And the last one is something my ex-husband always said, but I still know to be true, which is 99 % of everything you worry about never happens. And we can put so much energy into worry. and it's to look back at your every single time you worried you could spend two weeks doing a worry journal all right and just write down worry about this I'm worried about this and then look back at the week and think how much that actually happened yeah you're so right and that there is very hard to snap out of I've got a life coach and she says to me she's her name's Dior and she's fabulous exactly and she is fabulous yeah she says that you have to and it's so true and I've got so much better at this since she breaks it down for me so kind of artificially she says it's is it fact or is it feeling and it and i will give such like such a kind of like explicit example i'm like no one is fact because what he said he said no no no that's still feeling because what he said you've taken it as a way where's the person next to you this isn't this is we aren't at neutral baseline because somebody else's opinion could be different so that again is feeling and she does it so much till I'm like gosh nothing is nothing is that nothing that I've actually worried about this week is fact all of it is even what I've made up when my eyes have shut and I've got a time with my own thoughts yeah or it's just something that I've pictured myself in a hypothetical situation in the future that hasn't hasn't happened so yeah you're so right it's a fact over feeling always very good and lastly before i let you go a nosy question i like to find out we all know that you're a lady who launched but i like to know how you spend your lunch hour when you're a lady who lunches where are you on a normal day at trinity london where are you what are you doing what are you eating i am in a meeting because i don't stop for lunch i noticed that because your breakfast is over there and i said do you want it now and you're Like, no, we've got to get to the next thing.

1:15:13And I just will have my lovely woman, who's my rock, come in and say, Trini, what do you want for lunch? And I'll go lay on chicken and rice, or I'll go bone broth with that green salad from M &S, and then whatever meeting I'm in, she'll bring it in to me, and I will just continue my day. I don't, once I'm in the office, I don't stop. Stop. I actually don't stop, no. So you're a grazer. No, not a grazer. I will have the worst manners, too, because I will, like. Like this. And some people I know, look at how I shovel the food in my mouth. I'm not a grazer, no. But yeah, that's my lunch. It's not always glamorous.

1:15:52It's not always glamorous. I don't, I probably go out for lunch once every couple of months where I've got a business meeting, but I'll try. I try not to have external meeting outside from the office during the day because it takes too much out of the day. Okay. I've loved this. Thank you so much. Honestly, it's so nice to actually get to sit down and talk to someone that I see so much. But you never have time to do this. No. Imagine we'd fall off air on this morning. There'll be no time left. Yeah. Thank you. That was so nice. Thank you for having me.

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