Ep. 91 How To Reinvent Yourself After A Setback With Trinny Woodall

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1:16I think it's fair to say that Trini Woodall is an absolute icon of British fashion and beauty. She's built her beauty and skincare brand Trini London from a kitchen table idea into a behemoth beauty business worth hundreds of millions. But to say it's been a journey to get to this point is an understatement. Trini has had to pick herself up and start anew over and over again, experiencing heartbreaking loss and personal struggles along the way. Her career is one of many chapters and a true lesson in becoming fearless. I cannot thank her enough for being so frank and candid and honest about her journey in this episode.

1:49There was a huge amount to learn from what she said and it just made me think so much about the power of reinvention. Before we get into the episode, if you could just go to the podcast on Spotify and give us a rating. You can choose the rating, but let's be honest, a higher rating really helps us get amazing guests. I know it's not probably something that you think about following and rating the podcast, but it makes a huge difference to what we're able to do. So thank you so much, and I hope you really enjoy the episode.

2:16Thank you so much for joining me. Lovely to be here. I ask everyone at the beginning of the episode whether at the moment you feel like you are more working hard or hardly working. I'm never hardly working. as a rule or as a tendency? As a tendency. My mind is always buzzing. I might on holiday be hardly working, but in London, I would always be working. Just going into the city for one day, even if it's at a weekend, whatever it might be, that's when I'll literally be WhatsAppping my work phone constantly for a stream of consciousness. So I'd like to start with a little bit of insight into your early life.

2:56I'd love to know what you were like while growing up. Shy, insecure, not many friends, lonely. I was the youngest of six kids, but three in one marriage, and they went to boarding school. I went to boarding school very early, like six and a half, but then I came back and they were still at boarding school. So I had like a couple of years abroad with my parents between prep school and big school. And I remember feeling that time I was at an American school, day school, hideous. And I felt lonely. I just have that underlying feeling. Yeah. So until I was about 14, I didn't feel great. Really? And how do you think that informed the next few years from 14?

3:46Because I very much relate to that in the way that I always say that I think I was like just a really painfully insecure kind of early teenager and I don't think you necessarily would have known it if you knew me but I really think that informed a lot of what I then became as kind of late teenager early 20s what was the turning point there I think probably a different trajectory and a different era so the turning point for me was three years maybe of finding myself and realizing that I could be one of the cool kids. You know, that feeling of just suddenly realizing people see you as a bit of the cool kid, but you had felt for 14 years, incredibly uncool.

4:27And then the turning point for me was I went on holiday in South Africa and I met this boy and I came back and he started writing to me at school. And I went to a boarding school, an old-fashioned girls boarding school. And so you would crush on girls in older years to say you liked them. You know, it was this very innocent thing that they would then bring you crunchy bars and give you nice stationery. And my sister was four years older than me. And when I first went to school, I was 10 and then I stayed down a year. So, you know, you struggle to make the friends and then you stay down a year.

5:04And then I had a few years when she was there and she was incredibly popular and hated by the teachers. So the teachers then hated me and the kids expected me to be like my sister. So it was like a tough thing. So when she left and I turned 15 and I met this boy on holiday, everything came together because then I was suddenly in the school play, the main part, but there was a boy writing to me, which wasn't happening to lots of girls. All my crushes would bring me the postcards from the boy and we'd read them together on the lawn. You know, it was like so different from text, WhatsApp, email, but it was just this excitement and I felt I remember I could literally now I remember so little about my childhood but I can remember sitting on that lawn feeling confident that first moment perhaps in your life when you realize you are living in yourself and beyond that point how did you bring that confidence I know it all went tits up then I mean I had three years of good and not two years of having that feeling and then I became an addict.

6:09So that was like 10 years of fucked upness. Yeah. And is that something that you've really concentrated on getting back, like this underlying sense of self? You have to go back and think. I always feel is confidence, whether it's built on quicksand or solid bricks, and there's a fundamental difference. So at that time, it was built on a sort of amount of energy, but energy can be very thin. All right. So it was built on this kind of projection of energy. If I was on a, you know, the fast lane track and then I let the fast lane track take off too much. So I came to London. I was like, I did a sixth form in London and six form in London was a really, you know, I'd been like, I had been since six and a half with that two year break.

6:56I've been at boarding school, single sex girls, boarding schools till I was 16. So then I come to London, my parents aren't there. I live with my sister. And I go to a local, you know, I go to a school in London for two years, but I hardly go to school. I just have fun. I'm a Deb. You know, there used to be a thing called Deb then. I was Deb of the year. And I had this enchanting, entitled life. But then at 18, my dad was in a very tricky, more tricky financial situation. And all my friends were thinking, I'll wait till somebody asked me to marry them. It was that kind of era. And I went to work.

7:29I had actually worked when I was 17 on Saturdays in a deli to earn pocket money because I didn't really get pocket money for my family. So there was this difference as well of, you know, then sort of wanting to get into life slowly, not thinking about going to university because my parents were not parents who had an ambition for their kids. They never instilled in us an ambition. But my dad had been somebody who'd done really well early in his life and then later in his life made a few bad business mistakes. So interesting role models. I had a mom who never worked, so I didn't get from that. And she had never an interest in fashion or beauty or anything.

8:05And if I had a spot, she would just not know what to do with it because she always had good skin. So it was like, from my mother, I didn't ever learn anything. So like 19, I'm working, but I'm thinking, what am I going to do? I'm trying different things. I'm really, I'm that sort of pretending to be something I'm not was so there. Like what I was putting out, like what you said earlier about people wouldn't know that you were feeling like that because they'd just see this confident grace. That was me probably. There was this, oh, because people will describe me then as this person who was cool and confident and I was just crushed inside.

8:40And that happened till I was 26. No, and I can imagine that's like there's an extra layer of kind of pressure on there that even if you don't necessarily acknowledge it, there's a difference between how you present on the exterior and how you feel inside. And that also, I can imagine, makes it a lot harder to even address how you feel inside. Because if you are the friend that is cool and confident and, you know, whether outgoing or going to cool things or whatever it might be, you probably feel like there's not really a place for you to be like, by the way, guys, I feel like shit. Or you don't know.

9:15It's like, you know what you're, you sort of know what you're not, but you don't know what you are inside. Whereas on the outside, people think they know what you are. I think many people listening can identify with that feeling of just not fitting inside yourself yet. There's a point in which we click, you know, and I've had points in my life where I really clicked and then I've sort of come apart and then clicked again. And that's, I suppose, in the last years that doesn't happen at all. I know exactly who I am. I know what I want. I know what I don't want. You know, I don't worry what people think and the relief in life of not worrying what I wish I could bring from what I've learned in my life to women I meet in their 20s is how you can not worry what people think because we live in a world today where it's very easy to worry about what people think about you oh no absolutely and we're receiving more opinions than we ever have on exactly what people think about us like it used to be you know when you talk about a superpower and you'd be like oh I wish I could read someone's mind like i don't need to read someone's mind they have a keyboard that's so fucking true that is really well said and i just think that it's exactly that like we are not programmed to take in that amount of information nor was it ever necessary because if you didn't like someone you would likely not be around them whereas the way that social media has changed that landscape is you know you may well well people clearly follow people that they don't necessarily like or whatever it might be.

10:42Whereas in day-to-day life, if you didn't like someone, why would you spend time hanging out with them? And so... But I think you can now... It's interesting because in the last couple of days, something happened on my social media, which made me look at this whole scenario because I'd never been, and trolled is too strong a word even, but I'd never had, there's a community on my social media, which is really, really supportive and full of fantastic women, all different ages, but very supportive of each other. And then I did one post, which then had all these people come out and then I addressed it.

11:19And then it was like, you know, three and a half thousand comments yesterday on, on this, uh, on this, uh, scenario. And it was really, really interesting, but I, in it, because there were people who made judgments on things and usually I don't have much of it. And so I just ignore it totally. I let it sit there and the community that follows me will actually answer. So I don't even need to say anything. But I felt I got home and I had this people, I had done this thing. I'll tell you what it is. I know we're winding the movie forward, but I just found it interesting. I did this little closet confessions on sheer, how to wear sheer, and it was challenging.

11:57It's that thing of challenging yourself. So you want to, I like to continuously challenge my belief systems. There's some I lean into and I just know emphatically, but there's others that I want to challenge. So it was about wearing sheer. And what was really interesting, this whole scenario is if I look at Kanye and his wife and I look at sheer, I think, what the fuck are you doing to that woman? And it makes me really angry. But when I was looking at sheer with the Zara sheer stuff they did, I thought it's interesting for me to see what this is like as a concept. So I tried on all these things and I was excited because I, in the privacy of my own home I loved what this get this feeling this gave me it wasn't Kanye West's wife moment but it was just this feeling of let's try something that challenges me and I just the end of the thing was try something that challenges you that's a concept so then from it there were lots of you know mutton dresses lots of things like that and lots of comments on my body not all positive and I got home and I'd seen that thing up in the morning, you know, that it had gone up the show thing, but I just hadn't looked at it because I had a really busy day.

13:03I got home, there were like 700 comments or something. So I looked through it and I thought, oh my God, that's so weird, you know. So I did some stories and I just said, look, I've just got home. I just read these stories and I'm really quite shocked. You know, I was really quite shocked and it's, you know, my thought in life is when somebody writes things that are negative, in the last few years, my feeling has always been have compassion. What are they going through that they would do that? Because you can't feel good about yourself to do that. And I remember going back, Grace, to those years when I was insecure.

13:38And I'd be the one who would, this is why I really hate gossip, I'd be the one who would always know something about someone because it gave me a feeling of self-worth to be able to be somebody saying I'm married a lot and I go yeah I'm married is feeling this right now and they go how do you know and I'll you know you just you felt it gave you some some uh confidence not ammunition it's the wrong word but you know some credibility to just know something because I didn't feel knowledgeable I felt ill-educated I was shitty at school so it was just if we can't have academic knowledge let me have knowledge of people and when I got clean I stopped that I couldn't bear you know you do things when you when you go to treatment you really have to look at yourself and that was the thing I looked at and I thought I don't want to be that person I don't want to be that person that in order to feel better about myself I have to climb on a pile of shit and do something like that yeah and I do think there's a lot of truth in the hurt people hurt people kind of aspect.

14:39You have a very short, succinct way of saying things. No one has ever said that to you before. No, but you do. You're synopsing my five-minute waffle into that, which is great. No, maybe just like for like, because I couldn't speak for hours about anything and say absolutely nothing. No, but you said good stuff. You've spoken a little bit and you've said really good stuff. So I would challenge yourself on that one. Thank you. But I do think as well that you have an extra layer of compassion from that when you have been the hurt person who hurt someone because when you've been that person you've said do you know what the only time in my life I wanted to bring someone else down was when I felt terrible about myself yeah and once you would understand that from a point of view of having been in that position then you can have this compassion but also this greater understanding of like why would someone say that about me or why would someone feel so inclined to comment on my body like in on a public forum when yeah it doesn't affect them nor is it something that they should ever even care about and I think that that level of kind of okay well I've been there and I never felt good when I was the person doing that so being able to kind of understand it from that like firsthand point of view I can imagine is helpful with that compassion yeah it's and also I love myself so it doesn't for a second I think is this community that I love so much changing a bit so that saddened me that little moment but then after I then the next day I was I'd share my exercise I do with somebody and I we do it together and we do like the few hundred people around the world and we've done it since COVID and I love that thing so I just at the beginning of that said a little bit and then when there were so many it just it rebalanced the view you know and I just it it just I thought okay I just why do I even I don't need to give it any more oxygen or you can have your your view on it and you can be like this is my view appreciate that you've said that I'm actually quite disappointed about that um let's leave this here you know you've got a strong no I know I was I was I was actually please go and follow somebody you can do this with but just it's not making you happy follow me please unfollow me that was actually what I said which I think is a great piece of advice for a lot of people um which I think go and shit somewhere else yeah and I also think that like for that person like I often think about the fact that you know if my content makes you feel so unhappy that you feel so inclined to say something like that let's for both of our well-being.

17:12Let's move on. I'm irrelevant enough that you won't see me if you unfollow me. So I will disappear off the face of the earth. So really enjoy. The algorithm is going to cancel me, so don't worry about it. Yeah. And I'd like to speak about your kind of first experiences of work and moving into the working world, because what you've done over your career is so incredibly impressive, but it's also very multifaceted. I'd love to speak about that time you said that you've you know you originally started working at a deli and then you you were in london and you kind of started your first experience of work how did you how did you find that experience hustling i was a hustler actually if i look back it's a word that didn't exist then but i love it because it describes so well how i was so my first proper job i got i was at a party and I had quite a few friends and this person who ran a hotel said I've got a restaurant that's not doing well will you invite all your friends there because it would then be you know kind of what happens now and so I went back and my dad said go back and turn actually this is good advice my dad but he said go back turned into a job just turned into a job so they didn't have PR for this hotel It was a part of a bigger group.

18:30And so it was a Savoy group and it owned the Barclay and Clarages and the Connaught, but it was the Barclay, this hotel. So I then went back and he was a really lovely Italian hotel, you know, the head of the hotel. And he was much more interested in a car that he ran, an old vintage car in races than in running the hotel. He's quite a quirky person. And he was friends of a lot of my Italian friends. I had lots of foreign friends. So I went back and I said, Stefano, give me a job. I'll do the PR for the hotel. And he goes, we have PR at the Savoy, does everything. I said, I know, but I'll just do the bring in the cool people PR, but pay me a salary.

19:06So we agreed a sort of three month contract, see how it went. And then I got 12 girls who'd worked at, who'd been with me at Queensgate and they came to the hotel and we set up in a suite and we created this Barkley buttery club. So I did some negotiations and I went to a friend of mine who supplied salmon and caviar to Annabelle's and he really wanted to supply it to the Savoy group. So I went to meet him and I said, look, I'll get you into the F &B guy. You give me the Annabelle's mailing list. so this exchange took place all right and um luckily annabelle's changed hands now so i could tell the story uh so the exchange took place and uh i had this list and so i remember the list had 12 000 people on it so these 10 12 girls we had olivati typewriters all right with that fucking round ball and we had these cards we had put in the card type out their name type out their membership number tick it off a list it was like it took us a week to do these sent them out and everyone in the hotel didn't quite like me because I was like I hadn't come up to the hotel and I was like who is this girl she's just like fishing for it you know just like it was a bad vibe and who are these 12 girls getting room service doing the same it was not on and it was a bit crazy and precocious but we then sent them out and and there was a secretary who really didn't want me to be there so after three or four days we got nothing and I was like fuck but she'd sent them out perfectly by second class post.

20:39So they didn't get it for five days then. And Stefano kept saying to me, you know, we heard nothing yet. We heard nothing yet. And I was like, you know, sort of like Kevin Costner, Field of Freemes, let it come. We will build it, let it come. But nothing was happening. The phone wasn't ringing. And then I remember on the Friday, the phone rang and the phone rang off the hook for people because we'd said, come for supper for£13.50. and they were you know it was it was a um sent to a lot of the annabelle's mailing list was very different from the one today so it was more old-fashioned british people outside of in the countryside you know coming into town and so it was fully booked within two days totally fully booked and i remember he came down and i remember members of the like the banqueting manager came down the head of the concierge came down because they were coming down to see this empty restaurant totally full.

21:28So I slowly nudged my way into respect. And then that was just like, that was a good moment. Then I was off to job. So it was like, but I was hustling. I didn't know how to do anything. It was just, how can I make myself look good? How can I, you know, do a deal that would make me look good and do what needs to be done? And I didn't know where to start, but you just, in situations like that, and that I think you and I would have in common is that, okay, we start somewhere so if we start here that will take us to there and then we get to there and then another bit of our world opens up and then we get to that so it was like that for a few years and obviously you were then offered a job deservingly so you clearly brought in a lot because I was also not that well at the time as well I was kind of being a bit partyish right yeah so it was that mix it was a mix in my life then of doing things that were fun and felt you know there was a wedding of um a royal wedding and i managed to get the ica on the mall and and and have tables outside and so the whole of the savoy and the barclay and connell people could sit outside and watch over the mall the royal wedding it was like cool you know a cool thing to do yeah so there were things like that that i felt good about and i could say and then i just you know thought i want to be in the city and then i was going job here for a year a job there for a year, not quite landing it, you know, doing, just not quite landing it.

22:52And then in the end, I had to sort of think, I don't think I want to be in finance, then had a year out and then came back and thought, now what do I really want to do? And I was a very different person suddenly at 26. And so when you kind of came to this realization that, oh, I don't want to do what I've been doing for the past few years, or at least what I've been chasing as well, I think there's like a real recentering moment we need where you realize that you're chasing something that you have this kind of niggling feeling where you're like is the thing I'm even putting a huge amount of effort into achieving even the thing I want to achieve.

23:26And why is it what's what's driven me to that so you know I wanted my dad to notice me and impress me and be impressed so I thought I should go in the city you know so I sort of went in the city and I went to be an assistant in a commodities trading house because I thought let me be in the city and it was quite a cool thing then now it's just let me be in tech but the let me be in tech thing let me be an entrepreneur then was let me be in the city as a girl especially because I was like one girl and 64 men so that was the thing you wanted to try and get into but I wasn't getting into it in the best way so it was never it's like you're then you're square you know square pegging in a round hole all the time but pushing to try and make it fit and so what did you realize that you wanted to do or at least kind of enjoyed in the day to day?

24:11What I did in my off duty moments from six and a half, which was, you know, dress my girlfriends, they'd come into my bathroom, they'd look at the makeup I was using, all those incredibly girly things. I love doing. And I love doing it when I had hardly any money. And I was having to kind of get things from Miss Selfridge and putting nice buttons on and buying cheap makeup and mixing it together. And I would have friends in all different, you know, some people were in a good job, some people didn't have a job. So it was always how can we make things look great, even if we're on a tight budget.

24:47So that was my niche. You know, I didn't have a family allowance. I wasn't earning a big salary. So how could I actually look like I was put together, but not really on very much? So talk to me about your transition into journalism. Having started that, I mean, after at this point, you've hustled in your kind of PR role, you've gone through a finance role, you've had a kind of moment where you think, it's probably not actually what I want to be doing or maybe doing it for the wrong reasons. Tell me about your transition into journalism, how it came about, what the motivations were behind it and kind of when you decided that that was the next step.

25:25It was what was out there for a woman at the time to make informed choices. And there wasn't much out there. Now we have so many places we can go to make informed choices. We can look on social. We can look at a digital magazine. We don't really look at newspapers. We can follow an influencer. We can look at out of home. We can see an ad on a YouTube break. Those are kind of our friends. But then it was Vogue or newspaper or it was a Saturday newspaper for sure. And there was a Saturday newspaper that had a big page three of their weekend section that they needed to fill and an editor had changed.

26:06And I'd had this idea of having a, here's a theme and here's three different places you can get it from, kind of high end, mid and high street. And high street then was not Zara. High street then was Cook High, M &S, mid was Agnes B and high end was still all the high ends that are around today. So it was, that was the idea. So I remember getting, you know, getting little pictures, putting them on. So creating a page of a newspaper and then taking it around to different papers. And none of them got it. But Susanna, who I did it with, had worked on the Telegraph writing about women's cricket. She was going out with somebody at the time who was in cricket.

26:50And this guy liked her. And he said, OK, I'm going to give you a shot. You can do it for a month. And we did it. And it just got instant traction. We would have, you know, a few thousand letters a week of people writing in. It had two million people reading it every week. Wow. So it then from that, it was a platform. Now, if you have a newspaper column, the platform wouldn't be like it would be the equivalent of having Instagram or TikTok page that grew quickly. So it did. And we just then from that got, actually, I did an online business first, really early, too early. I was obsessed with tech from 98.

27:29I wanted to be online. I thought this is so exciting. There was not even e-com. and I just thought I want a destination. It's a way that people around the world can look at something at the same time. That was what got to me and that is something that we don't consider anything else in our life today but that was so magical when everything was so localized. You know, even though life is international, it was localized. You just looked at what was in your country, in your newspapers, in your magazines and now there are no borders for things like that at all. You'll follow somebody in New York or in Mexico or in Sydney just because you like what they talk about.

28:07So that was a big change. And then, you know, from that we got TV and then I had 10 years of TV. So from that passion, so I think it was that crux for me was when I said, I'm not going to do what I think I should do. I'm going to do what I love. And that moment that you wake up and you make that decision was like the moment I woke up and thought, I don't want to do drugs again. It was that dawning realization. and it happened in a different way. So the drugs one was a rock bottom, but this one was, I've gone through all this work for a year. I went to rehab for six months. I went to halfway house for six months, you know, I, this is the time to make some changes.

28:45It's very rare in your twenties. You can just be, have everything so ripped away that you can make any choice. And oddly, when I look at my life, like when I started Trini London, it was a similar moment, not in addiction, but a similar moment that things were being ripped away from me. My daughter lost her dad. I knew I'd have to move out of my home. It was like that moment in which what it is, is you have nothing to lose. And when we have too much to lose, we find it far harder to take risky decisions. It's so true. And I think that the, I've probably only had one moment like this, but I remember at that point, people kept saying to me and they didn't know the extent of how bad the situation was.

29:29But they kept saying to me, like, what's the worst that could happen? And I knew the worst was about to happen. And I, at that point, because it happened over a few months, I got so comfortable with the fact that the worst was going to happen. But I remember thinking at that point, I almost got this idea of relief at the idea that the worst was going to happen and I was going to be able to start again. Like it was kind of, okay, that's, yeah. Yeah. And I think that ever since that point, I've not necessarily become comfortable with that because of course it's not comfortable at all. And I'm sure if were it to happen again, I'd have another breakdown.

30:10But I do think that. It's sort of bring it on so we can get it behind us. Exactly. I was kind of almost at the point where I was just like, just like get it over with. Like get it over with. I can start again. I can do what I need to do. We can go to the next level, all of this. And I think that what you're describing in terms of this pivot moment of kind of my whole life has been redefined for me. It's been redefined. It's been pivoted. You've redefined it or it's been redefined for you? Two very different things? Yeah, two very different things. And I think different ones happen to different people.

30:47So it might be, you know, something external that happens that you absolutely can't fight. And it might be something that, you know, you've had a part in kind of doing. But being able to see that point as a point of reinvention, I think is so powerful and also so reassuring to an extent. the idea that then rock bottom or something being pulled out from under view or whatever is horrible but it's an opportunity and i think you've been so candid about exactly what you were able to turn that into and we can all see what you've turned that into which i think is incredibly inspiring to watch, but also to hear the story behind it.

31:37I think it really kind of solidifies just how much you've been able to kind of take an opportunity that could have been seen as the end point. And at this point where you suddenly get thrust into the limelight and you're kind of suddenly this like queen of fashion this authority figure within an area that you've always been obsessed with how did that feel and how did that change your life in the day-to-day so first I'll say queen of fashion no queens of dressing yes so fashion is luxury high-end fashion editors Anna Wintour, that whole thing. I was never that ever. And I would never wish to. It wasn't even going back to when I was, you know, eight thinking on the outside looking in.

32:29I looked at it and I thought, so happy not to be a part of that. And we challenged that a bit. So, you know, one week in the column, we might have things we like and things we don't like. So that I think what's cemented our reputation is we talked about what was shit and what was great. And not just just it's lovely because we could and we had this column that was objective we had a male editor who was like do what the fuck you you know he was great so we would have this plastic brooch I'd seen somebody had showed me from Chanel for 700 pounds I mean now this is like 3 ,000 pounds it was literally Bakelite and I said dear Karl Lagerfeld how can you charge so much for this you know I know you want to be but so we did stuff like that so you know obviously lots of people didn't like us.

33:13There was a lovely fashion editor of The Telegraph and she was a very, she was a doyen and she couldn't, she found we were like a sort of barnacle on her shoe. She found it quite irritating because there were moments where people say, oh, do Trini and Suzanne, I work with you. And she'll go, no, they have their own bit. It was like this separation. And I liked that we were for the woman in the street because I feel that fashion can be very excluding and fashion can make you feel very judged so for me it was about how can you dress for you and then that's what in a way our whole sort of brand became because it was about how do you dress for you what not to wear was a show that was even though people look at it and think that could never be a show of today the heart of that show was somebody who wanted to move forward in their life and at the beginning it was somebody else nominated them so that was the really challenging part of it so they weren't saying i need help their husband or sister was saying they need help.

34:11I mean, really judgy when we look at that sort of thing I mentioned earlier of being sort of slightly trolled. There was that sense that, you know, the husband would come to say, yes, do put a secret camera in their bedroom, you know, in my bedroom. And it was, you know, the stuff that we did. But then moments in that, and I think that's where I always felt we really had integrity. We had this 360 mirror, which was this notorious thing that you get into at some stage of the show you need you know shows need that moment and Suzanne and I would always get in there with them or you know we'd always try and make it easier for them to challenge something by really always identifying never you are this and you must change but like I feel you know just bringing somebody on a journey where it's easier for them to break through and think where do they want to get to you know what do they have to let go of so there was at the end of each of those shows that sense of as opposed to there was a show called 10 years younger which was all about plastic surgery there was another show at the time called the swan which was like it was it was the kind of show it's an american makeover show and i used to watch a show and with this dramatic music and at the end the children wouldn't recognize their mothers and they would scream and run away and you just thought and you filmed that it's so funny i think about it a lot the whole era of what were the, there were some that I like super size versus super skinny and some of the shows that you watch back and you're like oh my god, I spent my childhood addicted to those shows watching this show being like oh yeah, good point and how did that then affect you know, how did these then affect I know, yeah and when you look back at that time, is there anything that you would have changed about that?

35:50No, not a thing for that time, it was exactly right totally right yeah and then in a way it then people came to do it so we there hadn't been anything on tv that was that and then we did it and we did it on bbc2 bbc1 and then itv and then the market flooded with people doing it so got kwan came and these other people came so then it was instead of just us doing it it was tons of people doing it and then you know there's a stage where it's time for you to leave the stage and the other people to be the central role and then you've got to find your next thing. Yeah.

36:55Post a job for free and get started today. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think. With Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. And so let's talk about that, finding your next thing. Finding your next thing.

37:34Always a challenge. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to speak about that on its own before we even come to what the decision was of the next thing. How in these points have you been able to be so in touch with yourself and be like, what is it that I want to do next? And why do I want to do that? And having that conviction. because I think you never have the idea at the end of one thing you have the idea when you're still in something else and sometimes and I have to really I have some people close in my life who are in that second stage at the beginning of their career so they've kind of had something and then they're starting again I support them with advice when they ask for it on business plans and what they're doing and then suddenly both both of them I see one of them is also writing off script one's also doing this and I'm saying well what's going on in that main work that you're doing that because you've got to see which horse am I going to ride because you can't ride both horses because otherwise you won't get anywhere so with I didn't get to the end of what not to wear and books and that stuff and think okay what am I going to do now the idea had brewed since I remember I had I have an agent still but he's more of a friend and he said I I remember in 2002, you telling me this idea.

38:54So I forgot how early I had the idea for Trinity London, because I didn't then start it properly until 2017, or 16 years later. But I had this concept of portability and makeup and cream base that was brewing for years. And then when I did all these shows, I would always look at these women and think, what frustrated them? It was like I was doing this, there was 3 ,000 women I was doing research on over five years who were all telling me the same thing about when they hit this place of not knowing what to do or frustration or what they found challenging when they went to choose makeup. And then I was also very involved in makeovers and making women up and taking over from a makeup artist and saying, no, please do this.

39:35Don't just put the red lip on of the season. So there was, I was obsessed with it. Susanna was more about how they felt and I was more about how, how does it all come together? and probably then it was three years before I stopped doing that that I was thinking this is actually this other thing is what I want to do so it was there already and then I'm thinking about it but I'm thinking you know when you have an entrepreneurial idea and I have said this for so you might want to cut that because I said I'm on the podcast but I believe it strongly we we protect it inside our head and we can hold on that it will be this amazing thing we can wind it forward.

40:13We can dream what it will be. We can do internal manifestation if you choose to call it that. And it's safe to never fail because you've never started it. So it sits there and you talk about it at drinks parties and you, you know, you kind of, you try and live in it, but you're not really living in it because you're not taking one single step together. So it's when you take it out of your head, when you put it on the table, when you then are open to other people saying, I think it's great, but I don't think that bit's right. You know, are you strong enough to protect the integrity of what the idea is, but also open minded enough to think, is there anyone in the room here whose voice I respect enough that if they give me some initial advice and I'm going to go, yeah, I'm actually, I'm going to slightly mold that now because I've got that lovely bit of advice as opposed to, I always think that if you get people in too early and when I did that business in 99 I got very senior people in early because I felt I'm not qualified to understand then it was hard coding it wasn't it wasn't you know the coding we have today so I thought I know nothing about tech so I'll get ahead of tech and then and so I got these very senior people in early so they all had their sense of what they felt the business should be when I hadn't fully formulated aspects of that business so if you've got to trust that you're a great entrepreneur and I didn't know yet then if I would be or wouldn't be.

41:33You have this point by when you're feeling insecure, you then think, okay, they probably know better. Let's do it. And then when you've been through that and it's failed, you so know what you will do entirely differently. So I had the idea, but I thought it's not going to be that I'm going to raise money. Also, I raised seven and a half million in six, seven weeks. It was a very different time. It's four dot-com bubble burst and it was now a different time. So I had to really think about it. And then And then I was put in a situation where everything fell away so I could do it. It was like it was taken from me.

42:11So I had that window open. So I thought, I've got to do it now. How did you trust that that idea would hold, especially when I can imagine there was an underlying, not necessarily a doubt, but you'd started one business before and it hadn't gone the way you'd expected. And so I can imagine that when starting another one and having this kind of internal conviction, but being like, you know, I can understand why someone would say, you know, didn't you say this last time? That's what I always think. Quite far apart. So that one was 99, the other was 2013 or 2010 when I started. Difference two, I was with Susanna when I started the first one and I wanted to do it and she came on the ride.

42:57So there was a different way we approached that business. and when you start something by yourself you control exactly how much you put into and the energy you put into doing it without the the unbalancing by being as a team you know team can work Susanna and I doing tv doing books doing columns phenomenal partnership doing a business very different ideas so when i started and i knew it was just me that was a good thing because i knew whatever i put in is what was going to be there i i so that there's a there's a positive side to that you only have yourself to rely on so therefore you know how far you can push so that was one thing and then i i had the idea and you know i knew when we were in our in our owning ourselves like we know this is the best idea out there you know you felt that with your business this is the best idea that's what ultimately gets people to invest in us if we have outside investors or gets people to be convinced to take our product if we're self-starting and just getting one, you know, going one deal to the next.

43:59But I had that feeling. But then somebody outside who I didn't really know, but worked in the beauty industry in a, um, she works from Intel, the biggest research company in the world for beauty. And so I just wanted to sense check because I didn't actually know the industry from a professional perspective, from getting prototypes made, from going to start to build my sampling, all that stuff. Like when you went into yours, I don't think you knew how to sew. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You knew what you wanted. You knew the aesthetic, you knew the front end, but actually the mechanics of production line, et cetera, et cetera, you just maybe it wasn't your bag.

44:39Absolutely. Do you like it, please? Yeah, yeah. You're bummed. So I then said to her, you know, I want to do makeup that's portable. well, I want it to be premium. I want to be queen-based. I want to do personalization online. I want it to be DTC. And she said, that's interesting. And then she went away. She's a very methodical woman. And she went in the database and she was looking at five-year projects. She came back and she was going to do an EIS, SEIS scheme into a brewery company. And she said, of the five trends in the next five years, you have the five. I want to invest in you. And that moment was the first time ever somebody professional who I also didn't really know.

45:18It was like a friend saying, it's great. It was somebody I didn't really know who had no bias to being flattering to say it was a good idea. And that made me think, yeah, it's a good idea. I can do it. And so how did you take those steps of even getting to the point that you, you know, had a product that you were excited to sell? It's six degrees of separation. We have a finite amount of people in our lives that we know. and those people know people who know people. So go six steps and you could be nearly anywhere, wherever you start. All right. So I do believe that in life very much so. And my dad, who started with sort of nothing, that's how he made his life.

46:03And my grandfather, who'd started in the shipyards in Glasgow, building boats, ran British steel during the war in England. So, you know, I knew that generationally there had been this little thing in our family where people had just had no contacts whatsoever, none, but they had just had a nose and they'd had a sense. So I knew I had a nose and I knew that I could talk to people. You've got to have the gift of the gab. You know, no entrepreneur doesn't have a gift of the gab, unless they're a techie entrepreneur and they're coming from the coding background and then they have a front man to be the gift of the gab, right?

46:38So you just think, who do I know? So I literally got out my address book and I didn't know anyone in manufacturing of, you know, beauty products, but I knew Jane. So I said, Jane, do you know somebody I can talk to? And then she said yes. And then, and then it's literally, it's about sending out every day, a hundred emails and maybe three come back every single day. It's not that many, probably it's sending 20 emails, three come back. And from that you've got now 40 email. It's literally a numbers game on every single thing I did, it was a numbers game. So, you know, I want to get this made. I need a CAD.

47:12I need a prototype of it. I've got my design. I need to put it into a CAD. I don't know how to use a CAD. I need to find somebody who uses a CAD. That's the simple thing. Who uses a CAD? You know, I found somebody who used a CAD and then sending it and then it comes back and then it's the most appalling prototype and I'm like in tears. 11, you know, you've been, it's like, will it ever be what I want it to be in that beautiful image. And then 11 later it is. So, and each time that you move forward, you don't realize how much incrementally each time you're moving forward and learning and learning.

47:41And you just, you're absorbing all the time and you're getting this knowledge and, you know, it feeds. And so your world opens up to opportunity. And if you put, to me, it is 1000%. I usually get up at 10. I'm going to get up at eight. I'm going to get up at seven it is it's what you put in is what you get out it's never good luck there might be a lucky moment but if you're not putting in and if you're not the person who thinks well I've got to hang over today I'll wake up we'll do it at 11 you know that doesn't work you will never get to where you want to get to if that is your attitude and I think what you've said there as well about the like speed of the feedback loop once you start gathering momentum it's so important because I do think that you know it ties in with the if you have an idea it's only an idea until you've actually done something about it and you know even just starting telling people about like the minimum viable product version of it or get gathering opinions taking surveys whatever it might be you'll just do it I do think that like there's a lot of there's a lot of data out there on how much we need to gather evidence that we can do things and I think that when it comes to entrepreneurship having the just art aspect leads you so quickly to just like small bits of evidence that you can do the next thing because if you were looking at yourself now back then when you were thinking i don't even know who to talk to i've got this terrible sample i don't know how to get it to this point let alone you know like the formula the packaging and all of these different things it would feel impossible to get to where you are now whereas the difference between those things is evidence building, a quick feedback loop and just momentum.

49:23And also sending emails that are very easy for people to send back on. So I would send emails like, I would say, dear whatever, you know, I'm trying to start this business. I'm looking for somebody, you know, who knows about packaging or knows about this, knows about this, or is a good accountant, but would do something for a share or whatever. so if any if you can do any of these can you just send me back the one you can do and just you know copy in the person you're going to interview introduce me to so it's only going to take you one email like how can I make this so easy for you to respond to me and and then you know then from that I did so it was setting it up so you need to make it so easy for somebody to help you you know and I think that's something I really learned yeah I think that's a great piece of feedback for all walks of life as well.

50:15It's the same with the manager. It's the same with everything. If you position things in a way that they need to then do some work to be able to come to the conclusion that you want them to come to, it's not the right thing. And I think that's really, really valuable in all different kind of scenarios. Did you take funding early on for the business? I took SEIS from that woman and from my daughter's godfather. And then I used that to do prototypes, to do packaging, to start to look at the business plan, to start to build the Excel spreadsheet, to do some projections. And I actually did it. I had no sense of who would buy.

50:51So I did a 3 % conversion of my social media following as my benchmark with a sort of projected growth of my social media following. And I built the figures out for five years. So I literally, Actually, that was my sort of, I didn't know another way that one could believe it to be true for me, not for the outside investors, because at the time there were people going out with crazy projections. And I just thought, let me do what I know to be true, because then I can have a safety around this is what I need to raise at this stage. So I then ran out of, I'd raised$120 ,000 and then I ran out of that in the prototypes and everything.

51:30And I was in this house, I had a mortgage. which couldn't afford to pay it. I wasn't getting any income anymore. Very small residue income. Because when you do telly, you get a residue in books, you get residue. You get royalties. And they were getting lower. So I then had lots of, I had a shitload of clothes. So I opened up my house. There's something called Emily's List. And I just said, I'm doing a sale of my clothes. And at this stage, I knew I was going to rent out my house. So I didn't have that sense. If I don't want people to come into my home, I don't know. I didn't give a shit. I got eight of my friends to come and help me.

52:02And for like five days, we did the sale and raised a certain amount. And then I did one again. So I raised in total 60 grand. And that kept me going. Until then, I was ready to go up to funding. And then I sent 250 funding. Hi, it's me. This is what I want to do. I got back about 50 responses. I went to see about 49. didn't I? And I got one that invested. And I'm sure that at the beginning, or this is very much an assumption, but I'm sure there would have been someone out there or a company out there who would have happily been like, you know, she's known, she's got a social media following. Let's just put in, let's put in millions.

52:51It's going to be huge. No, absolutely not. Because what I was wanting to do was not thought to be good at the time. So this is a different time in social, a little bit different than social. But the parameters of investment then, you had like Casper mattresses, which was about phenomenal growth every year, but no EBITDA whatsoever. So they were not making money and they were spending to grow with nothing. It was also a one-time purchase, but there was a lot of those kind of companies around. And Airbnb was just starting different kind of – but all those really big ones we looked at were just entirely meta-driven.

53:38So we were coming in saying we want to get this person and we really like this market that's this sort of woman who's like a grown woman knows what she wants. and they were, you know, the personalization you're doing online will appeal to 15 to 20 year olds. Literally, you should do it for 15 to 20 year olds and change the price of your product, change what they look like, change everything because they liked our tech. The idea of this personalization, the idea that we have this unique way of looking at, you know, you have a blue eye, you have peaches and cream skin, which you like to be more tanned.

54:11You wear a foundation, which is a bit too dark for you because you don't like to be pale and you have blonde hair, but you would be peach you'd be peach and cream light but if you put that in you get what suits you and that that wasn't around so they really like that tech but they kept saying to me do that tech but do it for the gen z right and i was like i don't think that's the person actually that i want to get because they are going to go the next week to another product i want somebody who they could be 25 they could be 70 but they they sort of like i now know what i want i spent you know a year's choosing, but I know what I want.

54:47And they didn't get it. So I had a lot of people who I thought you've got to see the idea because it's great. I had a lot of people and I think it's better now, but I actually don't because we still have this thing that 2 % of businesses are female founded or invested in. It's still the gender gap is wider than nearly any other industry apart from, I don't know, what's an entirely male business. I don't know. so there's always an analogy i have and it's gone out my head and so that was challenging and i would always be asked in um a business meeting how are you going to protect your downside not how are you going to maximize your upside i'd be asked questions which should i knew i would say would you ask a man that and i hated to be the woman say would you ask a man that but it just this is where i also gave a shit but didn't give a shit because in a meeting if i felt that it was that i would instead of being really polite thing let me just do everything i can to make them invest I would be quite aggressive.

55:41And they probably thought we just don't need that person. But I just thought I don't want to be with somebody who's going to be so judgy because I'm a woman. I don't even want that person to be an investor in me. I want the person to be invested in me because they see an idea that's amazing and they have an entrepreneur behind it, they rate. And that's nothing to do with age, gender or anything. Yeah. And I didn't ask that to devalue the effort that it would have taken to get to that point. I'm more asked because I think it's such a great example of taking what you need at the time and proving the idea as you go from point to point.

56:14It's like, well, this is another question. This is what you raise when and how much you dilute and at what stage. So there is definitely in the industry that women at the beginning of careers dilute more than men. I mean, there is an industry you can look at it and you can see how bad that dilution has been for some women. and there's also people who hold on don't want to dilute and they stop the growth of their business so there is this moment where you have to think am I here seeing what could be phenomenal growth and do I have the momentum for me to grow or do I want to be self-starting always self-funding so the self-funding journey is one journey and there are businesses in the UK that have done a self-funding journey that are much more heritage businesses like the white company huge business self-funded the family and 100 there are certain businesses like that it's quite unusual in businesses that grow fast to ever be 100 owned by a founder because you need that money to accelerate the growth you look at charlotte tilbury she was phenomenal at not diluting much but still diluted for that speedy growth yeah and then you could look at other businesses in the beauty sector where maybe they've they've held on to that idea that they don't want an investor and they want to self-start but you just see them never nudging beyond 10 million revenue and there is this you know i'm starting something with some other women where we want to there's 50 women who are doing over 50 million a year in revenue and we want to help 50 women get past 10 million year in revenue because that point it's like if you're at zero and you start and those first years you get to one and you're like we passed one that's incredible and then you get to six and you're like amazing all of these have hurdles but that past 10 80 of those businesses won't get past 10 million revenue a year and past 50 2 all right so those people you had 100 at the gate two of them are going to get past the 50 so how can you help those women what do you need to know to go past You need to know when or when not to take money.

58:20If you're wanting that growth, you need to know what's going to propel the growth in the market you're in today and what would take me there. You want to also know personally, how quickly do I want to grow? Do I want to turn this into a family business, which I slowly grow and self-fund and, you know, I'm on my journey. I'd love to talk about the decision to aim for women generally over 35. Is that what you've quantified it at? I quantify it differently. And I think what I feel now is when you start a business, you start, I've always had this, a woman's attitude. So we gave it an age when I launched, which is over 35.

59:00And now I look at it and I think it's actually not because we have a lot of mothers and daughters and those daughters are in their 20s. And I think, what is it? And then I have girls in their very early 20s who are not that very late millennial who still wears a lot of makeup. whatever they're quite I don't want to do that shit and I'm growing out of glossier and that girl buys into us so I look at why does that girl buy into us and what she's still flaky she's still going to something else but she there's certain things where she wants to look in her makeup bag and look at her skincare wall and have curated that herself and found that herself and be that mini micro influence to her friends and show this is a really good Sunday Riley or Trini London an exfoliant or you know whatever it might be and they then feel they want to really learn what that so I love that quite young 20s because they do a lot of research on product and then I find people in 30s can be a mix it can be people who want things that are efficient now because they've got other things in their life and then you've got people who are millennials who've just turned 40 and they were the first generation since the 60s where in their 20s they were we are the center of the universe and we know everything 30s felt the same they hit 40 and maybe a few of them starting a family or there's had been that first serious change in their life and they then think I'm ready to listen to some more advice whereas I've always been the one to give the advice There's that slight change.

1:00:36So it's more this attitude of a woman that I'm interested in than a physical age, because I think we all age differently and we all look for different things at different times. Right. I think that's really, really important because I think that we do often think about business demographic purely as like age, salary, you know, gender, etc. Whereas, I mean, I think about this a lot for Tala and I think about the fact that it's not just that she's, you know, 25 to 34 and it's not just that she wears active wear. It's that she refuses to be uncomfortable. It's that she wants her cost per wear to be lower.

1:01:14Like she's happy to invest a little bit more, but she's, you know, she's not buying loads of designer and she just wants to be able to wear those every day of the week. It's like she's a high performer who wants high performing things. And I think about that a lot more than I used to because I used to be like, no, do you know what? Everyone within this bracket I want to reach. And actually it's just not the case. It's not. And it's, you know, there'll be people who, there'll be people who always buy skincare. Skincare is 40 % of our business now. And they will want it because they'll put it on their skin, it will feel good, and then they'll smell it.

1:01:50And then the words that come out of their mouth are, God, that's an amazing product. And they haven't thought at all whether it contains horseshit or really active ingredients. so you know those people go on their lovely journey and go after the brands that i know white labeling and just you know they have got to a fine art those beautiful textures and smells great but they won't change the skin you'll feel you'll feel different because you're the feeling the sensorial aspect is is really important when you put on skincare but i wanted to build skincare that was what will it actually do what's the problem here what will it do how will I reduce your oiliness?

1:02:26How will I make your pores smaller? How will I stop you having that 10 day pre period breakout and make it a gentle two day one? You know, how can I do those things? So it's then developing those products to do that and taking longer. You know, I don't react to a marketing thing. They brought out that, let me bring out that. I might take three years to develop a formulation because we do it from scratch in our lab. But I know that once you've found that, it will, you know, we'll have like 60 % retention on that product, which is quite high. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's incredible. And what would you say the biggest inflection points of the business growth have been?

1:03:04When you build up a team that you build up people at the very beginning who come with passion and excitement, and they might have initial qualifications, But you sense that that person is a person who's going to bring the culture you want to your team and really, really go for it. And at the beginning, you want people like that because you want people who fuel your entrepreneurship and are there with you and allow you to still fine tune your proposition and come with passion about being involved in the journey. And that is to me the best, you know, you look, you've been, you and I've been there.

1:03:51We look around the table, the size of this table now, and there's like eight people around the table and where we know what all of them are doing. We know what's on their laptop. We know everything. And then you go one set up from that and you've lost that first family of your business. And it's like saying goodbye to your children when they leave home. It's tough. And then that next tranche is you get in a few more people, you bring them also into it. They might bring some different skills. And then you think, okay, let's get somebody to, let's make a department. So far, there is no department.

1:04:22You know, there's just like the team. People. People. And there, we had this home in, I'd rented out my house and then I'd rented this sort of cottage in Fulham. And I then live with my boyfriend. So I remember we want to test everything out. So we wanted to have customers to see what they thought of things. So we did appointments in my bedroom with two makeup artists. So every day, there'd be like three or four people waiting on the stairs at any one time to go to an appointment. Then downstairs, there were like 10 people around the dining room table. There were two people who sat in the kitchen, very tiny kitchen at the sort of bar.

1:04:57Then there were four people in my very small sitting room, which was open plan to the dining room. Then I generally had my meetings in the loo. Seriously, I remember my bank manager. I remember the life insurance person I had to get, I had the meeting in the loo. At loo, it was a bathroom, but it was tiny. It's where I did my videos. And then there was this tiny back bedroom and people would have to book it because it was so small and MPD were there one morning and then it was something else in the art. It was insane, but it was crazy, but it was so, it fostered that sense of the heart of what the brand was.

1:05:30And we saw these women coming in every day because when you're a DC brand, you want to see the physical manifestation of your brand in people because it fuels your team to see the impact they have. Whereas when everything is a transaction, you know, it's from a warehouse to there and you might then see people on social using it, but you don't physically have people saying, God, I love it. This is why I love it. So we will get the social media, two girls to go in there and film it and then get that feeling of what it felt to put on the product so we could put it on the feed because we didn't have that yet.

1:06:02So I love that time. But I love the time we're in now. And then you grow and then you realize they need people to lead them. They need a team lead. And then you start to get in people. And then this year we had another shift, which was we got to a certain point and now we really want to lean in. We want to grow a bit more retail. We want to do this. So we then got people in. So I went from actually having a small C-suite to having in the last month, a big senior executive team. So there's eight people in that team and there's an MD and there's me as a CEO. And that structure now means that I can look at each department and area and they have a lead and they also have somebody really experienced now who they're going to learn a lot more from.

1:06:46And so then you're going to be teaching the team who've grown up with you great skill sets from people who are coming in from other businesses, but coming into a business that really knows what it wants and adapting their skill set to fit in your business as opposed to trying to make you be like that other business, which you don't want. Yes, no, absolutely. And before we finish, I'd like to cover some areas of advice, because I think that you're very good at it. And I would like to first ask, what would you say that the best way, you've talked about your development of confidence over time, and kind of your sense of self.

1:07:26and it feels like you very much now earned this kind of fearlessness towards what you're doing. I'd love to know what you think the biggest kind of ways you've built that fearlessness are over time. An element has to come from having things happen to you in your life which are totally beyond your control and having to pick up the pieces and start over because then what's the worst that can happen has happened. The worst that could happen was my daughter's father died and that happened. And it was my biggest fear. So once you've been through a moment like that, that can have a huge impact. But there have been times before that in my life, before that ever happened, where I would live in fear.

1:08:19You know, when you work in journalism and when you work in TV, every year you think, will my contract be renewed? So you have these moments where you just have to think. And I suppose before that, I did have somebody, you have people who come into your life and they give you one little nugget of advice, you take it. So one nugget advice was 99 % of everything you worry about never happens. And I had that as a mantra and it happened I said this before but it really helped me that to know that because you then think how much time we spend worrying when we could be spending that time just being productive and getting on with some more things and just so it so when my brain started to be the worry brain I'm very good also and this is from rehab of separating out your thoughts from you and I think the biggest thing of anything we can do is to say is this a thought or is this me and that if it's me it's not loud so we can also then say but what happens if we have a good thought well that's great this thing that is your thoughts which isn't you is giving you a good thought lucky take it run with it it's still not you in my mind sometimes it's a good part of it's a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing and I see it as it can be a raven on my shoulder that's doing this and talking into my ear and I just have to say shut the fuck up you know and so knowing that can then help you get on with stuff because those things draw us away from our goal and make us think maybe we make the wrong decision is this the wrong thing don't you know we just do that and it's like no and then the other thing i would say is what a really brilliant bit of advice i was given building a business is from day one think of it as a global business and this is nothing to do grace with manifesting or whatever else people might feel is let me live in it or whatever i feel probably i've subconsciously done what people consider today as manifestation but believe it's possible that belief that it's possible belief that somebody out there will like your service or your product because you wouldn't if you're not a stupid girl you wouldn't have come up with a good idea that's a bad idea you know yeah it's like when do you know a good idea is a bad idea is when it just doesn't resonate with anyone you talk to about it and you ask objective people who aren't your best friends and they go I love that idea you ask a target market like you say about that research and they go yes when can I get it and remember it's like you have to hold on to those moments.

1:10:45So when you're having moments of a lack of faith in yourself, which we can get, is you have to hold. And what I used to do is I used to screen grab positive things I was sent, like somebody will come back to me and say, that was such a great idea. I'm really into talking to you and I screen grab it. And then when I was feeling a bit like, have I done the right idea? Is this right? I would go to those that I had in my, you know, I file everything on my phone meticulously, but under my photos, I have lots of different things, but one is what in a way I call affirmations, but it's just people I don't know very well coming back to me and saying why they believed in something and just thinking that's what's out there, not the thought inside my head.

1:11:24No, well, I think that's a very good piece of advice and I think that's the perfect place to end. Thank you so much. You've been incredible. And I feel like a lot of people will be learning a lot.

1:11:41So before we be thinking back, the balance is first. All right, well stop All right, that is okay But we are trying to