How Trinny Woodall deals with rejection: Learning from failure and feedback

Are you more confident in your work life than in your personal life? Or vice versa? Entrepreneur and beauty & fashion icon Trinny Woodall is aware of where she needs to build her own self-worth. In this chat, Fearne and Trinny explore everything that comes with being the founder and CEO of Trinny London, being brazen enough to back your own ideas to women earning more than their male partners. Plus, Trinny is candid about her business endeavours that went pretty sideways, and explains how to be direct in asking for feedback without fear of rejection. Trinny is also open about the huge moments that changed her life, including her time in rehab and dealing with grief. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains frank chat about suicide, so do take care while listening. In the UK, Samaritans https://www.samaritans.org/ can be contacted on freephone 116 123. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org http://www.befrienders.org/. If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Dita Von Teese https://pod.fo/e/2f6c61 Grace Beverley https://pod.fo/e/24b043 Millie Mackintosh https://pod.fo/e/2a4636 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:28Fearne Cotton?

  Before we start, this episode contains some chat you might find difficult to hear. So do check the show notes if you think that might be you. Hello and a huge welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that meets you wherever you are in your emotional growth. Today, I'm chatting to Trinny Woodall.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Do I regret I took drugs for 10 years? There were circumstances in it I really were horrible, but I actually don't because it gave me such a depth of having to deal with life at an early age, some testing things, that it rounded me up more as a person. So when I got into my 30s, I had a lot of experience to draw on to be resilient. So thereby, I don't regret that. It happened and I should draw upon it.

• 1:15Fearne Cotton?

  How are you enjoying your summer so far, you lovely lot? We're in the summer holidays, kids are off, the juggle is real. I feel like I've already done all of Time Out in the first week they've been off school, God help me. We've done the aquarium. We're off to a, we're off to a museum where there are planes with my parents next week. So we'll see how that goes down. One kid excited, one not fast, but you can't win them all. But I think we are, we're sort of one step away in my house from getting the egg boxes out to try and just make shit out of egg boxes. Because how? How do we keep more screens? How? For six weeks? It's so hard. I mean, we're not going to, is the key. What we need to do is give ourselves a break because sometimes you've got to let them

• 2:00Fearne Cotton?

  go on the PS5 so you can like have a wee and clean the kitchen. So it's balance, isn't it? It's a bit of everything. But I hope your summer is okay so far. If you are perhaps having a little moment to yourself while the kids are on screens, or if you haven't got kids, you're just out having a nice walk in the sunshine, maybe, or maybe you're on your way to work, whatever you're up to, I think this chat will accompany you greatly. I loved every minute of this conversation. And by the way, this was one of the chats where I'm a real nerd and I have my notebook that I carry with me everywhere. It's got all of my notes in for each episode. I've never done this before, but I went rogue

• 2:42Fearne Cotton?

  and I ditched my notepad halfway through because Trinny gets me doing something quite physical. We'll get to this bit. So I put my notepad down and I didn't pick it back up again. And I think I might try and do that more often, just like I'm such a control freak. I need to let go more often. So we go rogue on this one, guys. So let's talk about Trinny, who I think obviously so many of us grew up with on TV shows like What Not To Wear, and obviously who's gone on to have an absolutely huge career in fashion and beauty. But behind all of that incredible glamour, she's experienced some real lows. My gosh, it's given her the opportunity to learn so much about herself, about being an entrepreneur and about connecting with people too. We talked about women earning

• 3:24Fearne Cotton?

  more than their partner in marriages, and if you are obviously in a heterosexual partnership. And that was a really fascinating chat and one that I've certainly not had before on this podcast. We also talked about successfully pitching your big ideas to other people, which can feel cringey and scary and you can feel completely unsure of yourself. That was a real good bit of the chat. And we do get on to talking about losing her husband to suicide, which was a really emotional part. It was a moment where sort of time seemed to stop when we were chatting about that. It was, I really appreciated talking about it because it's not bloody easy. Also, Trinny does an impromptu physical energetic

• 4:08Fearne Cotton?

  exercise, which I alluded to a moment ago, to get yourself somewhere comfy if you can so you can join in with us.

• 4:17Speaker 03

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• 4:32Speaker 04

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• 5:04Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 5:07Fearne Cotton?

  And this is Boots Off.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 5:18Fearne Cotton?

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 5:28Fearne Cotton?

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 5:33Fearne Cotton?

  Listen every Thursday, just search for Boots Off.

• 5:40Fearne Cotton?

  Right, let's do it. Here's the show.

• 6:05Fearne Cotton?

  Shall we unofficially start the thing? We've already kind of started because we're just going to continue in that vein.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I love this.

• 6:13Fearne Cotton?

  Hey, thanks. I love it. We've both worn blue today. Because I was like, fucking hell, what am I going to wear to interview Trinny? This is a nightmare. Obviously, colour blocking had to be involved, so I'm wearing a two-piece matching suit. But fails to iron it, so the clown trousers are a little bit creased.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Okay, well, it looks like it's purposeful.

• 6:29Fearne Cotton?

  Does it? Okay, we're going with it because it was one of those mornings where it was just a shit show in my house where kids wouldn't put shoes on. I was just.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  You just wanted the colour to take you through the day.

• 6:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and it is, it is. I love this. We've got like, we've got three piece in blue.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  We are three piecing in blue. I haven't worn this for ages and I thought I want to wear a colour that feels good because I just had a long few days and I just wanted to, you know, the colour that will carry you through the day. So this is a little, I see, but it's nice.

• 6:54Fearne Cotton?

  I love it. My favourite videos of yours are when you're in your wardrobe and you're picking out stuff. And one thing that you are brilliant at is keeping things for a very long time that you know you will use again and again, but in a different way.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:07Fearne Cotton?

  You're just always like, let's throw this skirt on that I've had for a thousand years, but I'm going to wear it as a hat.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:11Fearne Cotton?

  Just gonna mix it up.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  I like to read that bit.

• 7:15Fearne Cotton?

  This is my favourite. I love your videos. Um, I've wanted to interview you for a very long time because you have lived a life, a life of chapters as well, where you can see there are these, and I think a life well-lived is definitely one where there's been defining chapters that you move through and that you learn from and that you reinvent and do something completely different. When you sit here today and look back at your, I mean, I'm going to call it a roller coaster. We probably all feel like we've had a bit of a roller coaster. But when you look back at your life, how do you feel?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  I feel everything is, lots of people always would say to me, the art of reinvention, and I would counteract and say it's about the evolution. So I think there's a really big difference between reinventing yourself because I've done quite different careers. I've traded commodities. I've done telly. I was a writer. I've done books. And now I run a business. So they're all very different and yet every little bit that I've had along the way as experience or disaster got me to here.

• 8:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  So I feel everything is getting me to now.

• 8:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And I do look at life like that. There was time in my life when I stopped looking back and I made that conscious decision to not look back. So.

• 8:30Fearne Cotton?

  I guess the word reinvent also. It sort of assumes that you're ditching your whole self to become, and you're not. Like you say, you're evolving from what you've learned from and, you know, I've.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Everything you've done, like you personally, is to do with where you're at now. The ability to interview people is because of your experience in the past.

• 8:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  You know, so it's all, it's all building up something.

• 8:53Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I mean, it's all very exciting. I mean, it's obviously there's challenges with all of these different iterations of your life and your career. Have any of those moments of evolution felt like you were doing it for survival? Cause I certainly feel like that in parts of my career, it's like, I am, I am evolving. And I'm gonna, like a butterfly, hopefully, come out of this and I have to, like, this is survival. I mean, sometimes it's not, and it's like, oh, I'm going off on a tangent, how interesting. Sometimes I think it's survival. Have you felt like that?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  So many times, I could need more than fingers and toes. I mean, times where it's financial survival.

• 9:29Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Times where it's emotional survival, times where it's geographical survival. You know, leaving a place because I'm thinking this is, life is not going well, I have to kind of change. But all of them, and I think probably the one consistent one is financial of just, you know, doing a certain career, getting to a stage of earning a certain amount, then having changes in one's life. I went also through phases where I was sole breadwinner with my partner. So the responsibility of myself, my extended family, my partner, and then the weight of that as well. So, you know, then it's sort of, do I do something because I just want to do it? Or do I have to do exactly what I'm still doing?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Because it's a way that I can know that at the end of the day, I can pay those bills.

• 10:17Fearne Cotton?

  So a really interesting subject, that one, that doesn't really get talked about ever, is where the female is the breadwinner in a relationship. And it feels treacherous to talk about perhaps, um, in so many different ways, whether it's.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Why treacherous?

• 10:33Fearne Cotton?

  I think because, I, well, I think it's not talked about at all.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:37Fearne Cotton?

  And I think it's.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  So let's talk about it.

• 10:38Fearne Cotton?

  Partly because. It feels icky to talk about money, especially as a woman. And I'm not necessarily saying that I feel like that, I just think generally that might be the feeling.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:49Fearne Cotton?

  And I think perhaps it's also seen as kind of, I don't know, we wouldn't be taking a feminist stance if we were to say, I'm finding this really hard, or there should be another way. I don't know. It just feels all very murky and tricky. And it's quite new. Cause if I look at my parents, or certainly my grandparents, my nans didn't work. They were kind of told.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:10Fearne Cotton?

  You're not working, you know, you're staying at home to look after the children. These sort of newer generations are the first lot with that different modality. And often the woman is still doing the line share of housework or childcare or whatever. So the imbalance perhaps feels bigger.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 11:30Fearne Cotton?

  What's your experience of it? How do you feel about it?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Where do I start?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  I think it doesn't matter who's the main breadwinner, as long as there is in some ways an equality, a responsibility, if you have kids, a responsibility for the kids, a parenting, of looking after the home. And that's exactly what you're saying, is when there isn't the equality is when it's an issue. And it can work equally the other way, that some, a man can go out to work really hard and the woman will feel like being ignored, whatever. And he's feeling the stress of work. I mean, it's, it's a really difficult one, as you say, to navigate. But I can only speak from my experience. So I had a period when I was, you know, my husband earned more money than me. And then that evolved. And then he also wasn't always well. So there was sort of added things in there.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And I think the biggest challenge for me was when Lila was four and I had stopped working in England. Because we'd done What Not To Wear and we'd done a show for ITV. And then it was like contracts not being renewed, you know, that thing of, well, I get there, it's August, it's like, it's that renewal time, renewal of anything. And that, that sense of will I still have a contract? So we sort of felt what we might be offered might not be what we want to do. And what the work we were offered then was out of England. But it meant for a lot of the year, I left London on a Sunday and came back on a Friday. So there were two things. One was I wasn't there for Lila so much. And I looked at it that she was younger and she had Johnny and she had Jenny who helped us look after Lila.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And I look back at that time and I think, what did Lila lose out by my saying, okay, I'm not going to change my job to stay in the UK? Because my only decision was the one where I could keep the life we had if I went to do that job. And that was the decision I made. I could have made a different decision, say, well, downsize, we'll do this, we'll do that. Further down the road, I had to for other things, but at that time, that was my thought. And then I think it was it was just at certain times, even in that it's quite challenging because you then, I am a control freak. So I'm wanting to know what's going on at home and is everything okay? And and then also trying to keep that focus on what I was doing, which was filming in India or Israel.

• 13:48Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Poland or wherever I happen to be. So that was challenging, but sometimes I think you find no alternative. So you go with what you've got to do. And if you question it too much, that's even harder because you might be opening a can of worms.

• 14:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  You just think, I'll go with what I know I can do. I'll go with the skill set I know I have and you keep things chugging along.

• 14:09Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And also, I think like when we get to these crossroads, when there's big decisions and it impacts the family, all our careers or whatever. You can always end up in a place of guilt if you like, you overthink it, like you say, oh, God, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Or how has it impacted my child? Or sometimes it feels like there's no good option.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:28Fearne Cotton?

  You've just got to do, got to go with your gut, I guess. It's instinct, isn't it?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I I I find, and I don't know why this is, but in my personal life, I try not to do should, would, could.

• 14:40Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  But in my work life, I sometimes find it more challenging. So when as CEO, I'm making decisions and we do things and stuff happens and I go, I wish we, and I find, don't say that, because it's like you can't go back on the past. And it also demoralizes a team. So you've got to think, all right, what can we do? So, you know, my emails a few years ago, I wish we'd done, you know, I thought, how is that ever going to fucking help anyone?

• 15:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  And so what, how else can I change my language? So that we can think of, all right, let's not repeat this or let's think of something else. But in personal life.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  I I think I learnt very early on, there can be harsh consequences to things. So when you've made the decision and you've taken that path, you've taken that path.

• 15:28Fearne Cotton?

  How interesting. I would say I'm probably the exact opposite. Like at work, I'm kind of like, yeah, like I'll just make a decision and then I won't think about it too much. And things go wrong all the time, as you know, it's part of all of it. And some of it's really challenging, but you sort of get over it. But in my personal life, I lose sleep over so many decisions I've made or things that I've could have done differently and that I find so much more challenging.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  So how are brains working differently if we do that? What do you think that says about both of us, Pearl?

• 16:00Fearne Cotton?

  I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm sort of intrigued. I think a lot of it probably comes from what you learn in childhood, like most of our sort of how our personalities are informed and our set of values or whatever it might be. I guess it's so many tiny incremental variations of life that lead you to that place. But I don't know. I think.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I think it's about self-worth and trust.

• 16:23Fearne Cotton?

  Do you think?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I think when our self-worth is in a great place, that applies to our personal life. Because then we value our love for ourselves and therefore how people treat us in their life and decisions we make. So I think that's very my personal life.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  And with work, my wouldn't should could comes from trust, trust of the team, trust they're making the right decision, trust I'm making the right decision. It's more about trust. They're just two. So if in my personal life, I have times of questioning, it's about my self-worth. And in work, it's about trust. That's how I separate now.

• 17:02Fearne Cotton?

  So I need to let that one really digest for me because I totally get that. I totally get that. And I think when you, especially when you look at the work bit, when you love what you do and you so desperately want it to be perfect, if I'm talking from my perspective, I want things to go really bloody well. It's hard to trust because you've got to let go, relinquish control, let other people do things and hope for the best some of the time. And that is a tricky one. Do you feel, where where does your sense of, I guess in your work life and your personal life, your sense of. Confidence come from in what you're doing and those decisions you're making.

• 17:44Fearne Cotton?

  Like you say, you know, maybe you learned a lot of these lessons early on in life and you understood there'd be consequences to things in your actual life. Are there any moments in particular that stand out, maybe in your early years where you thought that was a lesson I really didn't want to learn, but I had to. And it's given you the resilience, the drive, the confidence.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  I think when you have an idea for something, so I had an idea of something before I started Twenty London in 98. Susanna and I were doing a column in The Telegraph and the internet came about and there wasn't even e-comm, but I loved it. I'd always loved tech. I'd had my first Apple in 84, right? I'd been obsessed. And so I said, Susanna, we want to do something online because I think everyone's going to go online. We need to do stuff. So I did for a weekend, this fast I was doing in this AVM bottle and it was this red powder. And I think because I just wanted clarity and somebody said, if you have a good idea, to have two days where you just have this fast and your brain will become clearer. All right.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  So after day two, my brain was fried and I felt shit.

• 18:50Fearne Cotton?

  You felt hungry, emoting.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  But day three, yeah, day three, I had clarity. So I wrote down what I felt the idea was and I shared it with Susanna. And then we went off to see Cable and Wireless, which is a now defunct company, but they were a company who had done some promotion with The Horse Whisperer, which had a CD-ROM, CD-ROM, let's take back to those days.

• 19:09Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, floppy disk.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, which had something to do with e-comm and not e-comm, but just online. I think they had a site online and anyway, but I just thought they're the people who know stuff. I mean, that was how embryonic it was. So we went to see this one, we said, we wanted to, you know, have a destination online. Women call it Ready2, have all these different, you know, cooking area, beauty area, clothing area, everything. And she said, what money are you wanting to raise? I said, 500,000. Susanna kicked me hard under the table because this was not in the script. And, um, and she said, why the fuck do you ask? And I said, well, I just had to have a number out of my head. So then two weeks later, we get an email, I think there were emails by then, and she said, you, you did not ask the right amount. We're going to, we think it's 650,000 pounds you need.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Um, and, um, you know, I was like, what do you want in return? She said, well, we want the logo of Cable and Wireless on, on the website. So then we started a business from that and then we raised money. And it was a time called dot com boom. It was when everybody was making money. So it was a time when you'd go to, there would used to be this red herring conference. So Michael from Calm was talking about it. I was talking, it was really early cowboy days. So very quickly, we hired sixty people and I thought, I'm not, I don't know how to run a business, so I'll hire a CEO. I don't know how to market this thing. So I'll, you know, so literally Suzanne and I were the founders. I worked crazy at it. Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Uh, in a, in a intense overworking way. I'd call Suzanne around at eight thirty, she'd just had a baby and say, where are you? And she'd say, I'm breastfeeding. And I said, well, when are you coming in? You know, there wasn't even, well, how is the baby? You know, it was very, all my attention was on this, but I did hire in these people thinking I'm not qualified to do this. I sort of have an intuitive idea. And within eighteen months, maybe two years, we had to close a business and Suzanne was going off having another baby. And I had to close a business. And I remember sitting now in this tiny office because we'd had to give up the lease. I had to let everyone go. I'd wanted to give them all three months salary. They were really great set of girls and I sat there in this office feeling really low, thinking what the fuck is next, you know?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  And I went off to a retreat in Arizona called Cottonwood, which is a rehab, but they do retreats for afterwards when you're just doing work on yourself and you're in recovery. And it was, it's called an inner path workshop. So it was about getting to know yourself, looking at your fears and all that stuff. And I remember doing this cacti walk through a bit of the garden. Looking out at the desert and I had that moment of saying, I don't necessarily, a higher power is that concept of something that is stronger than you. And I just said, whatever's going to come is come, but let me be open to whatever is going to come. So I'm open. I'm not trying to write the script. I'm surrendering because it's, you know, this last six months has been hell. And I came back to England and Susanna and I about nine months before I'd done Pilot for the BBC.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  And then they called up, so will you do the show about two weeks after? So but that moment had really made me question all these things about how much do you trust your intuition around something versus thinking, I'm not professional at this. So somebody else should do things. So when I started Trinny London nine years ago, I mean, 10 years ago, I had the idea, but we launched seven a bit years ago. I did the opposite of what I did then. So I thought, I'm not going to hire any big cheese yet. I need to learn as I go. I can't have somebody also come in with a really good business frame, but too early decide the trajectory of the business. When I think I've spent many, many years building up a knowledge of women around the world. I'm using all of that to build this business, to deliver something I think people need.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  So I've got to trust my gut.

• 22:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  And I have this big thing, the difference between intuition and instinct. So if I think of instinct for me, it's, you know, step away from the stove, it's hot.

• 22:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  And it's generally for me a stepping back. It's like, you know, whereas intuition is something is hitting you in your stomach and it will guide you forward. So I nearly think one is more positive than the other. You know, in in instinct can be protective, you know, you run down the street and there's a car coming at you, you know, you instinct to pick it out of its way. But intuition is more interesting and it's when we really value our intuition. So in those early days of Trinny London, I had to really value and say, Trinny, you know, know that you know women in this way, know that you, you know, stick to remembering this. And moments when I felt, will anyone ever get the idea? You know, I saw lots of people to raise money once I kind of got to a certain stage.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  And I saw 250 people and one did, you know, so just that when you, it's like being a an actress where you're continuously turned down for a role. So you've got to leave the role, you know, you've got to leave and think how much of it was. The fact is a shit idea, how much of it was that they're just looking for something else. How much of it was that maybe they saw some people this morning. And in fact, they never want to invest in this area anyway. So I had to really try and objectively judge why somebody had rejected me.

• 24:07Fearne Cotton?

  That's so hard, though, because especially when it's happened on multiple occasions. To not lose confidence in your idea, I don't know how.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  You go through, you you never, it's similar to me to when I was trying to have Lila. Because I had IVF and I never gave up, but I never thought I'd get pregnant. So I sat in this little in-between space, you know, where I, it keeps you going. It's called the keep it going space.

• 24:32Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm, I like that. I mean, is that just part of your personality? Because I don't think everyone's like that. I think a lot of people would go, I give up now, I can't take it anymore. This is soul destroying in either of those situations.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  There were times early in my life when I did want to give up, for sure. I think when I got clean at twenty six, I'd lived a lot of life. A lot of life, you know, and I'd really had some situations where I just felt, you know, I've seen a lot. So that was an opportunity to start over. And I think that starting over did help me to decide what do I actually want from life? Do I want a life? What do I want from that life? You know, versus the alternatives. And I had quite a few friends around me who died at that time. My six closest friends over two years died. So it was a real thing, I could be there or I could be having a life.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  So I think when I think of that in-between zone, maybe it was started to be built then. You know, because I was always before then feeling I was walking on on quicksand. And then I started to build a little brick and I stood on that and build another little brick and stood on that.

• 25:43Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, that is true resilience, because I think even, you know, losing six friends in two years is overwhelmingly bleak. And you could either go, I am gonna feel so grateful that I am simply alive. And, you know, like that, it's such a sort of strange cliched reaction to death. You know, I've lost friends over the years and you do feel utterly horrendous, yet weirdly buoyed by the idea that you're alive. And that you should actually really remember that, rather than just coasting through life. But I think when you've lost multiple people, whether it's friends, family members. In a, in sort of close proximity, you could either really sink in that and go,

• 26:26Fearne Cotton?

  I'm now terrified, what if I die and get that real acute anxiety that it's coming for you? Or grab life by the balls and go for it.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:35Fearne Cotton?

  And again, is that just, that's your personality? That's who you are?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  I think it always needs reinforcement, Fern. I think you've got to feed it because you can have it. So I think that gave me the understanding to have it. But then when I've had blue moments or moments of, I have to get to a certain stage where I think, hmm, I don't want to go on like this. And then I think, okay, what have I got to learn now? So when I was in that stage of feeling total rejection of people, I then had this fantastic man who did guided meditations with me and very specific ones and.

• 27:09Fearne Cotton?

  Like visualizations? Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  So, so he did these visualizations of, one of them was that I was, you know, a globe and I was sitting on a chair above the globe, but I was looking at all the packages going all around the world. So I thought of that BA we fly to, you know, as a visual and I, and I did that. And then I did this other one a lot, which was just for energy. And we'll do it, shall we do it together?

• 27:35Fearne Cotton?

  Okay, we'll do it together and we'll do it. Fuck yes. Come on. I need, I need this today.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Okay, all right. So, okay, so we're gonna do this together and everyone who's listening.

• 27:42Fearne Cotton?

  Why are we taking our jewelry off? Is that a thing?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Just because I've got, I feel I'm aware like this with the mic.

• 27:46Fearne Cotton?

  It's not like ruining our chi or something, no.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  No, that's, I don't even know what chi is. So no, we won't ruin it. All right. So, um, this is something where it's about energy.

• 27:56Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  So you can keep your eyes closed or you can open them, but I, I quite like things. But you're just gonna start, keep your, start with your eyes open, whoever's down the end of it. And you've got something the size maybe of a small football.

• 28:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  In your hands and it's in front of you. So in front of your ribs, you put your hands out and, um, and you just feel around that ball with your hands. So you go to the top and bottom of it, you go to the sides of it. So you feel in, in front of you is this circular ball and just sort of go around it with your hands. And now you can close your eyes and still feel that ball and feel that that ball is a golden orb and really feel.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Nearly the heat coming off it as you just put your hands around it. And feel the light coming from it and it's really getting stronger and stronger and even just feel the end of your fingertips. And feel is there even a tiny tingle because you can feel that light so strongly. And you keep going around this ball and you feel the energy of that ball.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  And then you're going to open your eyes and you're going to. Thrust it in your heart.

• 29:09Fearne Cotton?

  I'll actually scare the shit out of you.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Thrust it in your heart, feel that energy, go in your body. Okay, so, so I would do that. I do that, I do that, sitting in my car, going to an investor meeting, feeling shattered and thinking, can I get, will I get anywhere? But it really helped me to, to have that feeling and, and now when I, because I think energy. Is something I physically feel a lot, so when I don't have it, I feel I don't have it.

• 29:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  But when I feel it, so now I can feel in my fingers, I really feel my energy and then you can take your fingers together. So take them like they're touching each other. And you can feel in between. There is a sort of energy and then it's about how far out you can get. Where you still feel that sense of the energy. And sometimes if you close your eyes, it's easier. And just really focus on that energy. Because that's what's making you alert and vibrant and alive and giving you that positivity and making you feel I can do it. You know, having that energy, so sometimes just having that awareness of. How full of energy we are physically and we just need to get it, wake again.

• 30:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think it, I mean, I certainly sense that because I spend a lot of time doing this, you know, one on one with people.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Fearne Cotton?

  And so much of that is about energy, it's so little to do with what I'm saying, what the other person's saying. It's some sort of energetic transference that's going on that either feels really great and cool or. And it, you know, not just in this circumstance, it might be with friends or people that are in your circle that make you feel great or don't. And I think having that awareness, that actually. Links perfectly to that whole intuitive feeling that we need to work from. Because it's all about that and the energy of going, this is the right thing for me. This is not the right thing for me and trusting yourself, trusting yourself.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  And these people who should be in my life more, these are people I have to let go of. Because I think that's also that, you know, I would, I sometimes have been very occasionally around people. Because you and I both will have a lot of people come into our life.

• 31:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Come and say hi or give a hug. I love that because I feel there's a lot of times where they need some energy from, from that encounter. So I will hug them to, so we can get some energy.

• 31:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  You know, it's just like I, I, you can, you know, when you sense somebody needs energy.

• 31:31Fearne Cotton?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  And there's other times when I feel an energy coming towards me and I think, mm. So I kind of used to do this thing years ago with Susanna and I when we toured, we had a lot of people who, and I would brush off.

• 31:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  You know, brush off that energy and then wash my hands of salt when I got home.

• 31:48Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  You know, just little things of just cleansing the energy.

• 31:52Fearne Cotton?

  Little rituals.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:54Fearne Cotton?

  Because otherwise this is a lot, it's a lot to go home and take all that home with you, whatever it is. If it's meetings or.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:00Fearne Cotton?

  You know, and you go and do these events and you've got queues of women who will desperately want to hear advice from you or just, yeah, be near you, give you a hug. That's a lot.

• 32:11Speaker 06

  Because you didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? You'd be, how do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this and do it at a price point no one else is doing it?

• 32:20Speaker 07

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• 32:24Speaker 04

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• 32:56Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  And I'm Marco Burchella.

• 32:59Fearne Cotton?

  And this is Boots Off.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  We are friends who have spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 33:11Fearne Cotton?

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 33:20Fearne Cotton?

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 33:25Fearne Cotton?

  Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.

• 33:33Fearne Cotton?

  When we think specifically again about these meetings that you're going to and you're wanting to start your business, you will not give up, you've got this idea and you're jolly well doing it, whether people are going to be backing you or not, and you keep going to these meetings, would you say also, starting a business in that era of your life, would you have applied ageism to any of the rejection you got, sexism to any of the rejection you got?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  It's so easy that we could say yes, because I think today that any of those are still possible, and in the future they will be possible.

• 34:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  It's about who you bring in the room, as in the part of me I bring in the room. So do they see my age or my sex before they see what I'm trying to talk to them about? So I've always felt, I haven't felt there isn't a class ceiling, but I felt I never bring myself in as a woman. I come in as a person and I'm telling you an idea, but there's certain ways that I want to bring somebody into the world of what I want to create, which are very feminine. And if you're in a very masculine environment, there's a different way they need to see what it is you're doing. So sometimes I would write afterwards if I got rejection, I would say, can you just tell me why you didn't invest?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  And sometimes they'd throw me about something, which is just a throw her off. And other times they were candid and it was very helpful, because I then had to look at... Was this person, somebody who just, you know, one or two said to me, it's great, you should do it for fifteen year olds. Because women over thirty five won't go online. I was like, sorry.

• 35:07Speaker 08

  Really? You just said that?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  That's hilarious. That was hilarious. But that, you know, so I had a few things like that. So I would leave that meeting and think, they don't know what they're talking about, but that's fine, because I believe in this thing. So then, then that's kind of a clear one. Then there's slightly unclear ones where they might say something else and you'd think, okay, is there a point? So with certain times, I would go and I'd say, we're gonna do this and this, and I'm gonna do that and that at the same time. And there's a linear way, I think, a more masculine energy approaches concepts. And there's a bring you into the world of, which is a more feminine thing, like bring you into my home, show you everything. So. I then, in, you know, one of these, I thought, okay, maybe I just, they couldn't follow it.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Not because they're stupid, they're smart people, but just the way I told what I was gonna do. So the next time I went, I said, you know, I'm gonna do this. When I've done this, we have the options of A and B, but I'm gonna do that. You know, and it was this linear way of describing how the business would grow. And then it was like I had a different audience. So there were things I had to learn about. You know, people at the beginning have a great, a lot of people pitched to me now. I do this thing called elevator pitch. Yeah, I love it. And it's sort of when somebody feels they want to just tell you everything all at once. But the order is something they're just used to saying it that way. But in fact, so sometimes when those ladies do the elevator pitch.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  And I think they didn't do themselves justice. So I say, okay, tell me about the business. And I say, okay, pitch me again. Because they just, you know, sometimes we get so used to this is the way we tell a story. We need just a fresh set of eyes and thinking, how can I represent the story? It's still the same thing at the end of the day, they want to do, make or a service they want to offer. But how you let somebody else know about it and the words you use. Is really important.

• 36:55Fearne Cotton?

  It is. And I love that you're doing that because there's so many women out there who've got bloody great ideas that don't know where to start with getting that idea out there, how to have that level of autonomy in life, to start their own business, run their own business, be forging their own path. It's really, really important. And like you're saying, you know, I went on Grace Beverley's podcast recently to talk about Happy Place and all the stuff we're trying to do there. And we got into this discussion about how the business model, just generally, is a very masculine energy forward moving thing where it's just, there's no stopping and it can be like hustle, it can be aggressive, you know, it's, it's really full on. And actually, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 37:37Fearne Cotton?

  And I don't believe that it has to be particularly quick. I'm not looking for Happy Place to be like the biggest wellbeing thing in the world. I just want it to keep going. I just want to have the opportunity to keep incrementally growing and try new things, which feels like more of a feminine energy way of doing business.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:57Fearne Cotton?

  But it's really tricky because it is harsh and that hustle culture mentality. And also I think when you're looking at just actually being a woman and running a business, all of the other stuff going on in your life, whether it is, might not be, but child rearing or menstrual cycles or menopause, none of that is brought into the conversation of running a business. And it's a very different thing, running a business as a woman than it would be for a man. How, how are you navigating that? Or is that something you consciously think about when running Trinny London?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  I think I'm quite masculine. So when I listen to you, I think if you're growing a business, you're growing a business. There's different ways to grow a business. You can have a different expectation, a different ambition for the business. I think ambitions can be financial, ambitions can be passion led, ambitions can be, I need to prove.

• 38:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  I think there's three or four different ways where ambitious, and it can be a combination of all of them.

• 38:56Fearne Cotton?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  So I think that a man's sense of success might be, that would be really A B to say financially led, because I think it's a passion to succeed, whereas a woman's passion is a passion to move the dial. You know, there's, so that I think there's, is that a more feminine energy than a male? So I definitely think, in, in some ways I have a very feminine energy, but I think how I look at the concept of. You know, if you want to build a business. And if I look at the stats, so I'm going to give you some stats.

• 39:30Fearne Cotton?

  Go on, I'll have a stat.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Just to see where are we at with this. So there's a hundred people who start a business. And they go for investment. Two women will get investment and ninety eight men. All right. So first of all, that is probably because there's only seventeen percent of women who are on the other side of the table. Saying whether they'll give you their money or not. So that's kind of already a little bit tricky. And that as that falls off, so somebody gets to build a business and they build it to a certain size and another size. Those numbers dramatically go down. So there's in fact only eighty seven women in the UK doing over fifty million pounds a year.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Now fifty million pounds a year is a lot of money, but there are many, many businesses doing that. So that probably is a sort of. Maybe if we're lucky, an eight percent ratio. I don't know.

• 40:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Right. So there's in it definitely being the mum, all of that. Then there is menstrual cycle and.

• 40:29Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Menopause. I don't have either. So I don't have either. So that's been removed from me.

• 40:36Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  And so it's not something that I probably consider.

• 40:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  In my realm of things, but I did a lot of research on menopause because I went in to menopause at forty five. Cause I'd done sixteen IVF and I wasn't told until I saw an endocrinologist that actually, you know, I had twelve eggs a year. Was be the normal cycle, but I'd probably had about fifty eggs a year removed from me through IVF. So I just depleted.

• 41:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  You know, quicker as it were. Just going back to that sense of what we want from a business, if we build a business. I think there's a little element of, and I think this word ambition is really interesting. And I've been thinking about a lot because I have something I'm doing in October, which is to do with ambition. And it's about how much is it a dirty word?

• 41:24Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  And how much is it actually something, if you live in America?

• 41:28Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's the greatest celebration, yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  And sometimes people just can't stop talking, all right? But they will celebrate and be enthusiastic and build up other people. It's a, that's why I, whenever I go to America, that's probably, it like fills my tank of that.

• 41:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  And so I come back thinking, anything is possible. Now, the difference in America is everyone will say yes, and then one person will do something, okay? But there's an enthusiasm.

• 41:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  All right, versus here, it's ninety nine people saying no, but then that one person will say yes, and then they will carry it out.

• 41:57Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Which one is better? I can't say which one is better, but which one gives me a lot of joy is that environment of anything is possible. And when you, when you place somebody in that environment, anything is possible, then they don't have to make those decisions about, do I do it for passion or for money or for my self-worth or, you know, it's just like.

• 42:19Fearne Cotton?

  They just try it.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  They just try it and they, they work for it. But, but one thing I do know that stops businesses working, because I've come across this, and I've even, I've, I've been in a situation twice myself, is we can be growing something, it could be tiny, you could have just made your first business of menstrual pants, all right?

• 42:36Fearne Cotton?

  I need those, yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  And, um, and you're doing it all yourself, et cetera. But it's, you're hitting some tough obstacles. So you think, oh, I love the idea also of doing something with paper cups. So let me just start my side hustle, all right? And so you, you sort of create a few more spinning plates, because you'll think this one's not pushing through totally. So let me just take some energy, because I've got lots of energy, and put it there, because I've got a, I've got a bit of a barricade here. And there's the single-mindedness that you do need if you want to build a business. And if we. Deviate too much. And that's where I think it maybe is a more feminine trait.

• 43:16Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  A little bit.

• 43:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Um, to deviate a bit of just sort of thinking, you know, let's, because we want to kind of continuously have this passion for something.

• 43:24Fearne Cotton?

  And create.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  And create. Creative energy. So, yes, about creation. So, and we could have endless creation, but my mum, who was a stay at home mum, also started lots of little things. So she had the top, we lived in Germany, she had task force, the Townness Advisory Service Corporation, and she would help people who'd moved to Frankfurt.

• 43:44Fearne Cotton?

  I love this.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Find a school and whatever.

• 43:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  She did it. She had the stationery printed. She had it for about nine months.

• 43:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, she was the concierge.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  And then she, yeah, but she had it nine months and then it filtered out.

• 43:53Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  She had fake antiques.

• 43:56Fearne Cotton?

  Fake.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  She had it for a year, you know, like, like, you know, looking like old antiques, but you know, what do they call them, big, whatever, you know, um. Reproduction furniture, reproduction furniture, all right. And there was cards printed, she had a card, had it for about a year. Maybe a year and a half. We have a lot of that furniture still dotted amongst them. So, you know, my mother was a great starter, but when she came across some frustrations, then she'd just stop and then, you know, we'd find things. So when I started and I was wanting to be an entrepreneur, my first entrepreneurial thing was I was sixteen at school and I started this hair business called Boes Unlimited. So, very keen, lots of hair bows, Princess Diana was all the rage, she wore these hair bows. And so we,

• 44:39Speaker 02

  you know, I did it with this partner and we got fabric from markets in Berwick Street, which were really, they had stalls outside at this time, this is in the eighties. And then we found sewers, I didn't know how to sew, we found these brilliant women to sew and we did a template and then we went up to Fortebello, which then was a very cheap market and we bought beautiful reproduction brooches for one pound each and then we charged eighteen pounds a bow. So we had good markups.

• 45:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Sold them to Harvey Nichols, you know, walked the streets, loved it.

• 45:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  But then Katie wanted to go off and do her bath plug invention and become an artist. So.

• 45:11Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  At seventeen and a half, it stopped.

• 45:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  But it gave me the bug of, I loved that.

• 45:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  So then I went off and I did what I felt I should do, which my dad was in business, I'm the one, youngest of six kids, but I had no qualifications for it and I was unbelievably shit at school.

• 45:25Fearne Cotton?

  Same.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Hardly, hardly any O levels. And hardly any, it was something I always, we can't say this again or things, because I always would push Lila that you have to get what I can.

• 45:34Fearne Cotton?

  I know, my kids are like, in the bit where they need to do the homework.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I might not have been truthful. You know, but now she's twenty one, it's okay to think, but you know, there was moments where I said, Lila, you have to.

• 45:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  So, so that was terrible for me. So then I, I went into the arse end of commodity trading, because my dad was in the city. Hated it, hated it. Me and fifty six men, sixty men, I was appalling at it. Selling Anglo American funds, it was, there was a film out, I call it Trading Places Commodities Film. I thought it'd be glamorous and fun. It was just shit sales work.

• 46:03Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Okay, calling up strangers and trying to get them to invest. I mean, talking to them about the markets, I hated it so much.

• 46:08Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  So I did quite a few of that. Then I did another business. So I'd got to know all these traders. This is just about repeating my mother's, getting back there is a point of the story, right? So then I do, I notice all my male friends at this time only have one sock. You know, the sock, second sock disappears, yeah. So I found this business of another friend called Socket to You, right? And this sold socks. So I went and there was down the Thames, there was a factory called Barter. It's an Eastern European factory and they made socks. Fantastic. Went and did a deal with them. I got navy socks, black socks and brown socks, short and long. You know, and I got really pretty girlfriends who were in between um school and uni. To go around with these big baskets onto the trading floors, short skirts, hello darling.

• 46:51Fearne Cotton?

  I love it.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  And they sold so many socks. I mean, like, we, it was doing really, really well.

• 46:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  For about three months, did, I thought, oh my god, this is cash flow. And then the socks started to fall apart. So the glue went, the dye went. They were just appallingly, I, I learnt a lot about.

• 47:08Fearne Cotton?

  About making socks.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  No, I learnt nothing about it. No, I learnt about, no, about, um, you know, when you want to really check, like when I do formulations now, I'm so like, have we checked, have we checked? Pilling, have we checked, you know, everything. So you, you, my brain has gone this morning. Anyway. Um, so that business then, many years later, like my mother's restoration furniture. I found those goddamn socks in every garage, in every nook and cranny of every place. So it put me off, you know, that sense of.

• 47:34Fearne Cotton?

  Change it to sock puppets, like there's another business plan coming out of it.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  There was another business now that called Mission Impossible. Which was a business that like a concierge service.

• 47:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  I was following my mother in this.

• 47:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  The socks were the reproduction furniture. Task International became Mission Impossible. It was a concierge service in London, like this one now called.

• 47:52Fearne Cotton?

  So great.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  That this guy does, that you would have heard of. Anyway, there's this concierge service now. So I did this, but you know, I printed the stationery. It's very important when you start a business then. It was to print stationery because it made you feel it was real.

• 48:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, absolutely. It's black and white.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Look, I have a card.

• 48:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  You know, so now.

• 48:07Fearne Cotton?

  These cars, bring them back.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, bring them back. Some people have, actually. I went to Founders Forum, which is a tech conference last week. And the amount of people have business cards.

• 48:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, so eighties. I love it.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were really heavy, heavy techie guys.

• 48:18Fearne Cotton?

  It's great.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  They, it's a novelty to them. That's why they do it.

• 48:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  So, so the thing of starting and having a focus and thinking, what's my end goal? So you have to have lots of failures.

• 48:31Fearne Cotton?

  Do you have to be obsessional? And also, is there ever a time when you should give up?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Because I think. That's such a good question.

• 48:40Fearne Cotton?

  Because if, if you've been to three hundred investment meetings and you are turned away again and again. Is there a point where, I don't know, you work, you look at the data and you think this is actually now not worth my while? Or do you just always stick to your guns and keep ploughing forward?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  I think you have to listen to what's happening. So at the time that I went out fundraising, I'd had a bit of money because I'd sold my clothes and so I had a bit of cash. I'd done an SEIS. It's a scheme where you can raise a hundred fifty grand. So for a year and a half, I invested that in prototypes and formulation stuff. So I was starting to get women in my bathroom and putting makeup on them. And so when I was going to investors and I think, oh, this is terrible idea. I then would have one of those sessions and the women would say, this is such a great idea. When are you making it? And it gave me that hope that even though these guys didn't believe. These women were my customer and they were saying, I love this idea.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  So that gave me such faith that that's when I had to kind of be, because sometimes we're a child in our, you know, we're quite childlike in our sort of, we go there and it's like asking daddy on the, you know, but, but, but we have to, we have to really embrace what we don't realise we already know. And that's a self worth thing of like, Trinny, know that you know women, know that you've travelled the world, meeting women and you know when they're feeling a bit weird, you know what can feel them better. You know, sometimes outside in can be a way of healing so they can get to the inside and look at themselves in the mirror and feel, okay, what do I need to look at now? It just gives somebody that next step.

• 50:14Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my god, without a doubt, we just talked to Dieter Von Tees about that, like having a, and almost what's a uniform for her, where, you know, the hair is a certain way and the makeup is a certain way. And although I'm not like as distinct with what I look like, if I didn't have clothes I felt good in or makeup on or do my hair in a way that makes me feel good, which might not suit other people, I don't know how, I, I wouldn't be able to pull myself out of the house to have a conversation. I need, and I think, again, that can seem like frivolous for women, that this is something that we obsess over or whatever. But I think if it makes you feel good, like you say, start on the outside, then do the inside bit once you're able to leave the house because you actually feel all right about yourself.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  I love, and I don't want anyone to take this wrong when he's listening, but I love studying women. So when I, people always say, oh, I'm sure you're judging how somebody's dressing. I never judge it, I observe it, I'm fascinated now. Because I always used to think, if I look at how somebody dresses, I will be able to a little bit know what's going on inside.

• 51:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  By little things they do, by, you know, some people, by how much makeup they still wear when their skin is good. I know they probably had acne at one stage and they're still just covering up. You know, I know if somebody tenses themselves that they feel uncomfortableness with their body in some ways. So you just sense these things and then you can kind of figure out a few things.

• 51:33Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  And. I went to something this weekend, which was a real mix of people in it. But there were some people in it who were unbelievably high powered women in the UK in different things, in sort of civil service and and and business. And I find it really interesting when I see people who have become very successful, but sometimes you never know their name, what they're like and how they bring themselves to table in a social environment, for example, you know. So somebody who we'd all expect to see severe and whatever was this fabulously glamorous. And I just find that I love observing it. I really love observing it and just seeing what what brings us together.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  But I do think that we need to, you know, a sign of looking out for yourself is a sign of loving yourself.

• 52:22Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, of course.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  And, you know, you can do all the psychology work on yourself, but this element of, you know, like, a lot of people say, oh, training up, you know, so people from who maybe don't buy skincare or don't whatever, and skincare is most of our business now. But people will say, oh, you do botox or, you know, why, you know, you therefore don't use skincare. I'm like, let me tell you why, let me tell you about the ingredients and the ritual. Then there's lots of women who bought skincare when they were maybe they're fifty and they were in their twenties and skincare couldn't do what it does now because you can get things smaller molecule sizes, you can do things, you can do amazing things, or you can do clinical trials and see skin change. So it's so different from when my mother, for every problem, gave me Pond's cream. My mother had great skin, I had acne, Pond's cream.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  I just burnt myself in Portugal in the sun, Pond's cream, you know, it was like that was the only solution because she had no concept.

• 53:12Fearne Cotton?

  It's the only one, yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Literally, that was it.

• 53:14Fearne Cotton?

  But I think you're so right as well in the treating yourself nicely. I can even look back over my own life and go, I'll pull out old pictures from times I know that I was not feeling good mentally.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Fearne Cotton?

  And I found one picture a while back where it was a New Year's party, this is years and years and years ago, and I know I was not feeling good about myself. And I had covered every inch of my body. I had a dress on, leggings, socks with the leggings, shoes, a cardigan over the dress, and I was just trying to hide. And I think, actually, when you start properly looking after yourself, that is such a sign that you've got self compassion, you're forgiving of yourself, you like yourself, you want to treat yourself well.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:56Fearne Cotton?

  Most of the time, I think, for women, we're Taught to constantly take care of everybody else, make sure everyone else is, you know, treat them. We feel really good about giving people gifts or treating people nicely. And then we are awful to ourselves, awful to ourselves. So all those little moments of ritual or buying yourself a little treat. It's all really important to show that you like yourself, you give a shit about yourself. Would you say you like yourself today?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:23Fearne Cotton?

  When do you think you got, you landed on that?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Probably, I'd like to say, when I was turning fifty, a friend of mine said, when you turn fifty, you won't worry what people think.

• 54:35Fearne Cotton?

  Alright.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  And I turned fifty, but that year was a really tough year because some stuff happened in my life and it was tough. So at the end of fifty-one, I thought, she was right, actually, looking back now. I don't worry what people think. And then turning sixty, I thought, I know what I don't want. And knowing what you don't want is incredibly helpful.

• 54:58Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  It really just cuts a lot of the shit out. So I think I started loving myself probably, I, fully after fifty-one. I think before then, there were things where there was, there was a lot of stuff always going on. So I wasn't always loving myself.

• 55:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  But I think that consistency of knowing myself, knowing my limitations, knowing, knowing myself. You know, we call this loving ourselves, but knowing ourselves, it goes hand in hand with it.

• 55:31Fearne Cotton?

  Do you think you can fully love yourself and still have regrets?

• 55:35Speaker 02

  I think going back to earlier, it's that wouldn't shouldn't could.

• 55:39Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  So do I regret that I didn't do more for my ex-husband to stop him killing himself? No, because there was nothing I could have done.

• 55:49Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  So it's like to ponder on the regret of somebody who kills himself. It can take you into the darkest hole, but you can also know when somebody who is in that situation, switches off, and that is their path. And nobody can get. In, okay. So that I had to learn. And I think there's some, there's two fabulous charities who I know who, you know, look at that. It's the biggest case of men dying under fifty.

• 56:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I know.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  So it's something that that is, when things happen in your life like that. Do I regret, I took drugs for ten years. There were circumstances in it, I really were horrible, but I, I actually don't because it gave me such a depth of having to deal with life at an early age, some testing things, that it rounded me up more as a person. So when I got into, you know, my thirties, I had a lot of experience to draw on to be resilient. So thereby I don't regret that. It happened and I should draw upon it.

• 56:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I guess maybe it's the other way around. Like if you stop regretting things, you'll actually end up quite liking yourself because

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Very, yeah.

• 57:06Fearne Cotton?

  You realise that it all, like we said at the start of this chat, it all leads you to where you are today. And what, and it informs how you see the world, how you move through it.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Little things I regret a lot. I shouldn't have taken an earlier flight. I should have got the car, you know, three minutes ago. I should have hired a car. Why am I, why am I taking the car up to bloody, this weekend I sort of was five hours on the M one in a crash. I was like, I should have taken the train, you know, I mean, that I do every bloody day. Yeah, but I do them all the time, all right. And then I, I go, stop it, Trinity. It's like, you're in the bloody car, you can't go back or forward.

• 57:38Fearne Cotton?

  Nothing you can do about it.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Nothing I can do about it.

• 57:40Fearne Cotton?

  How do we feel about sort of forgiveness? Because I think, and I'm talking about within your own decisions in life. Cause there's, we, I think you can still free yourself of regret, but find it very hard to forgive yourself for certain things. I've certainly found that. And actually, the more self forgiveness I can cultivate, I'm much more forgiving to other people. I don't always land on that, but I think that one feels really tricky when we know we've fucked up. Or we know we've said something a bit stupid, or we've acted from a place of fear. And then we've, you know, been mean to somebody else. It's really hard to forgive yourself.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  I think a path to forgiving yourself is how quickly you let the other person know that you spoke too harshly or did something.

• 58:24Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  You know, and that's, that's a part, that is a part of forgiving yourself because I've had circumstance, whether it's with my daughter or at work where I've been tough or I've been, you know, just like

• 58:37Speaker 02

  and then I've, you know, said maybe I was really tough in that meeting, you know. I mean what I said, but I said it really inappropriately or, you know, just it's, it's how quickly you own your error. Is that relationship of knowledge with yourself. And then once you do that, because what happens is when I do anything like that, I am racked by guilt immediately. I have that bad feeling in my tummy. I've got that sort of, you know, you know, when you haven't done the right thing. You know that feeling, your, your body will tell you straight away. And then all you want to do is not have that feeling. So it's like, if I don't have that feeling, my self-worth will return because that is eating away at my self-worth. So then I need to repair the damage.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  You know, and sometimes that can take time because you want to have instant repair and you can't. It takes time. It takes people saying, okay. But it's going to take me time. And you have to then wait at somebody else's patience and that can ever weigh your self-worth because you're waiting for somebody else to feel better about it.

• 59:34Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  So all those things make you think next time, maybe not to behave that way, but that self-worth comes with how we repair it.

• 59:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I agree. I've got pretty good with my kids doing that. Like if I snap or

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:50Fearne Cotton?

  Say something regrettable, I'm quite quick to go. Mum's knackered, sorry about that. And then they actually now have learned to do the same, which is great. It's really harder with adult interactions to have that sort of humbling notion of like, I've got to go and say sorry. It's so cringy. I've done it and it feels good. I had one situation with someone where we'd fallen out and then we had this amazing moment. I thought I'm going to step forward first and just apologize for my part. It was both of us in a bad place. And actually it was one of the most beautiful interactions I've ever had with a human and it's made us so much closer and we had, you know, we were racked, both of us with that feeling of ickiness and this is not good. And then the relief was, it was absolutely instant.

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• 1:01:17Speaker 08

  Help I Sexed My Boss is the podcast where manners meets mayhem. I'm William Hanson. I'm Jordan North. And together we take on the hilarious challenges of modern life. William's the arbiter of etiquette. And Jordan's the chaotic yin to my perfectly polished yang. So if you want laugh-out-loud stories and brutally honest moments, then you'll love Help I Sexed My Boss. Watch and listen every Tuesday and Friday. On YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Just search Sexed. Be warned, it's a bit rude.

• 1:01:51Fearne Cotton?

  When it comes to parenting, and especially parenting a daughter, what have you felt passionate about teaching her? Or, you know, because obviously as a parent, you have to let them make their own mistakes, and that's incredibly hard. But what have you felt like this she needs to know this?

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  I sometimes look and don't know how I parented, all right? Because I, there's certain little things which are important. So to be polite to other people, et cetera, et cetera. And Lila is super polite. She, you know, as a teenager, she was not always polite to me, but you know, she's but super polite. So I think, okay, somewhere that. I just think it's you can get through a lot in life. And sometimes I'm not a polite person, by the way, I can be quite loof or people think I'm I'm I'm. Because I'm shy inherently, I can seem cold, you know, so people don't get the gist straight away. So with her, there is a difference with Lila because she and lots of people who might have children who were sixteen when it was Covid. Yeah.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  All right, they weren't going out, there wasn't this kind of go out, go out madness. There wasn't that what time you're going to be in. So I had always said to Lila two main, I just give her philosophies, all right. Yeah. One philosophy I gave her is don't be drawn into drama. All right, just don't be drawn into drama. If somebody else. I need to hear this. If somebody else is gossiping, because I used to be when I was much younger. I would use it as a currency to get myself worth up that people would want to hear what I had to say because I might know something. All right, and I did that when I was using, that was my currency. All right, oh, I'd know, oh, talk about, oh, I know that, you know. And when I was in rehab, it was a thing I, the many things happen in life, and I felt terrible about that.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  That I'd use this currency of knowledge on people just to be in the room because I'd been very lonely at boarding school. I went really, really young and I found it very difficult to make friends. So this was my currency, that they would then acknowledge me and see me and, you know, until I was fifteen and I was making over girlfriends. And then that was my currency. Yeah. But there was this time when I had that through, and so it became something I really disliked gossip. I just find it so destructive. And so I would, you know, Lila once was for a day or, I don't know, not long, but she had somebody bullying her. And I said, Don, you have to go up to her and you have to say, are you okay? And she's going to say, what are you, and she's saying, and you need to go back to them and say,

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  because you're being so mean that there must be something going on with you, so can I help you? Which is really difficult to get a child to say. Yeah. Because she was. Maybe eleven at the time, but she did say it. And then it obviously, you know, bully is the most vulnerable person in the world. It kind of diffused it. But with her, she isn't a gossipy girl. So that that that thing to me as a value in life is to not be gossipy. Because I just see when I'm in environments where um maybe mum's a gossipy, it pervades to the kids. So things, there's so many things we inherently do, which will pass on down, which we're not teaching them, they just see.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  And the thing is, the things kids most learn is what they see, not what they're told.

• 1:05:02Fearne Cotton?

  And it's scary, that thought, because we all do stuff, because we're humans, that we think, oh shit, I was. You know, grouchy, like whatever it is, or I or I had a tantrum as an adult, or whatever it is, and you know you're doing, you know, you're doing it. It's the worst.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Or there's longer term things. There's sort of, you're making decisions and you might. They might know you haven't made a decision on something yet, and they're observing how long it takes you to make decisions or, you know, just.

• 1:05:27Fearne Cotton?

  It's the subtle things.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so so I always also said to Lila, but she didn't have the COVID thing, that's what I came back to. I said, just go home when you're tired, because the biggest thing to me is her dad was an addict who died in a way of addiction. I have been an addict. And I, your biggest fear is that, you know, and her s- her brother, they're both like, do not like people really who do drugs.

• 1:05:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  So they, you know, having that go home when you're tired moment. Because Lila, being an only child, although her brother's ten years older, only children like their own space of it. So when she's tired, there isn't that thing of keeping up with your sisters. Like I was the youngest, I wanted to keep up with all my siblings, you know, I wanted to be the one out. Even if I was tired, I'd stay up because I wouldn't want to miss out on anything, you know, as a youngest child. Don't know anyone listening, but the youngest child, certainly you don't want to miss out on anything. Lila doesn't have that. And interestingly, and it's a pro and con. She doesn't have to fight for her place in the family.

• 1:06:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Because she is the only one. Zach is like, you know, Zach and we have also a somebody we call a brother, Ezra, and who sort of, you know, we helped bring up a bit, but as much as ten years older than Zach as well. But so they've been like her two nights in Chime, they would never, you know, they'd be sweet to her. She has them in here. I'm showing the palm of my hand, okay? So that, so it is that difference. What you try and teach them by saying it, which is what I think they least are going to do. What you practise, which has negative and positive consequences because of, you know, you might repetitively do things like I'm tough to travel with, you know.

• 1:07:02Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  So, so whenever we go on holiday, my stepson and Lila, I have this really good girlfriend of mine who doesn't have any kids. She isn't married. My age and I think they call us the puff princesses or something when we travel because we're just on a mission, you know, if something goes wrong, we're like on a mission.

• 1:07:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  And they just, they just say, okay, we're all going now and let them, let them have their moment, you know, let them change the hotel room, let them, you know, change the ticket, let them try whatever.

• 1:07:26Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, my stepkids would often try and miss the first day of me going anywhere. Because I'm a nightmare for the first twenty four hours because it's, it's a new environment. I don't know how, like, how did the windows lock? Like, I'm freaking out about everything.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:38Fearne Cotton?

  And then after twenty four hours, I'm on holiday. The first day is absolutely shit.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Fearne Cotton?

  And then in terms of parenting, how do you navigate grief as a parent? Because that you're going through it. You, you want to try and, you can't protect a child from grief. It's there and it's going to be there forever in some shape or form. But you know that you want them to go through it in the smoothest way possible. How do you approach that? It's not something you can even prepare for.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  I think grief is not a smooth path.

• 1:08:07Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's, um, it's different because both of Johnny's, Lila was eleven and Zach was twenty one. And so you have an awareness of quite a lot. But the concept of what death is, is different at twenty one from eleven. So when I, when I um, heard about Lila's dad, Lila was at school.

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  And my first challenge was, how can I even tell her? How can I say the words to tell her? And so my sister was a friend of a woman called Julia Samuel, who wrote an amazing book, you know, grief works and this two show, she's fantastic. And Julia came round to our house. And I just said, I need some words.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  And so she said, you're gonna tell her he had a heart attack in his head. Wow. Okay, and it was just sort of, so. She came back from school and came upstairs and immediately felt, you know, um. Why am I going upstairs? I've just come back. I usually go down to the kitchen and get something to eat. And Zach was in the bedroom and we sort of lay her on the bed and we told her and she screamed really loudly. And there were quite a few people in the house and it was like an animal scream. And then. Twenty minutes later, she's downstairs getting a snack. You know, so. Children's absorption of what has happened is that there's that gut, you know. She really loved it. This thing is just, you know, and she can't quite understand it.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  But she knows that he's not coming back in some daily way. And then there's, you know, why in the moving forward to. We had a cremation, so then there's a real awareness. There's a lot of people saying, I'm so sorry about your dad, Lila. So she's sort of. Manic a little, you know, she was sort of running around with her friends.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  And then. There was a memorial. Only ten days after that and there were like twelve hundred people in the church. Lila got up and read if. But she didn't read it, she said it with nothing, you know, and didn't cry.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  And it wasn't that she was being strong, it was different points. So I'm looking at her and just seeing her say the words. I'm just like. Feeling very emotional. And everyone in the church is being very emotional. But Lila is, you know, but then how she behaves afterwards is that sort of running around. So there's that. She, I know she can't be still with it. So grief, a lot of grief is about. Letting yourself be still. To let in your feelings, not so much that they overwhelm you so much, but just so you release some of the sadness of what's happened. And it's the balance of what you can handle that day or what you can't. So with Lila. That changes, you know, how Zach went straight away and did therapy. He had a really nice counselor.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  And any child who has a traumatic death in their parents, it's a PTSD.

• 1:11:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  So he had from week one, somebody he spoke to who took him on a journey. So in a way, Zach, I think, processed the death of Johnny the most healthily because he was. Whereas his mum, myself and Lila all navigated our way. So when we speak about Johnny now and it's ten years later. You know, it's Zach and I would chat and Lila would chat a bit and we'll chat about Johnny. And he's always in conversation. And there's a part of me that wanted to go back, like your thing of controlling. You want to control, you know, so there was some things being written about Johnny. And there were all these sort of, you know, conspiracy theory things. And I just called up, I knew somebody who was in it.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  And I said, please, just can you not write something?

• 1:11:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  And can you not write that he fell off a building? Can you not write that he committed suicide? I just, you know, when you want to control what cannot be controlled. Because ultimately, then I, then I wanted her not to have access to the news when she was at school. So I asked the school to turn off her computer. You know, little things that you want to do to protect your child. But then Julia was also, you know, very much, you've got to, kids need to know the truth.

• 1:12:16Fearne Cotton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  As soon as they can emotionally take it. You know, because otherwise you start to paint a narrative that isn't correct. And it's important that you've, you know, the truth. Because then you have to deal with the consequence of the truth. But it is a journey.

• 1:12:33Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  You know, and all you want to do, like you know, as a parent, is you want to just protect your child totally.

• 1:12:38Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  And you have to also let them feel things. So it's a continual journey, you know. And at some stage, Lila might want to go and chat to somebody. And then, you know, she left school and she was a little bit anxious. So she did this really good tapping.

• 1:12:55Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  As a therapy and tapping such, you know, I even think maybe I need to do some tapping. You know, because I'm very good at moving on and just not burying, but I will slightly. If I've got the bandwidth to feel, you know, like if I'm in the car and I listen to some music and I'm by myself. I'll have a moment of just having that release, having some tears, feeling just a, you know. There's moments when I really miss Johnny and the more years go by, the more I only remember the good things. Which then makes you miss somebody more.

• 1:13:25Fearne Cotton?

  Course.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  You know, whereas at the time, there were lots of challenges.

• 1:13:29Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  So it's it's such a process, it's not linear.

• 1:13:32Fearne Cotton?

  No, no, no. And I think you're so right, you know, I I sort of do the same if I've lost anyone. It's in the moment. Have I got the capacity to actually properly acknowledge that this has happened? I mean, obviously, it's, you don't have that option in your situation, but I can just go not not looking at it, don't want to look at it. But A catches up with you and also is in your body, like it's it's grief is in you. And I think that's why tapping is really great, or like even listening to you talk about how. Your daughter was sort of running around, that's maybe her own physical way of like, she's trying to.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Release it.

• 1:14:07Fearne Cotton?

  Move it on and and get it out and it's probably slightly more intuitive as a kid because you just go with what feels right. But it's, um, yeah, you know, as you say, it's not linear. It's not a process that any of us are in complete control of and. It's day at a time as well, I think, just sort of how you feel on that day and finding those little ways to. Release it and feel it when you've, you know, got the bandwidth to do it. But I think for anyone that is going through loss, especially when there's a kid involved. It is so helpful to hear other people's stories and how other people have gone through it. Because I'm imagining it's an incredibly lonely place to be.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  I think it's, um, I went to, there's a very good charity, um, called James's Place and it's for.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Um, set up for for men to try and help them before that moment.

• 1:15:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  You know, and there's a very short window, you know, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem, suicide. And there's this very short window where you can still hear, you know, as the person who's in that zone. So they have different things they do because you you'll go online, you might click Good Samaritans, but you can also see James's Place and then you. You have to fill in the form. Part of me thinks, should you fill in the form? It should be easy to fill in the form because it's like, it's got to be instant and. They do this thing with you, because I think what happens is you lose the sense. You wind the movie forward to paint a future where you think it's better without you in it. And that's what allows you to give yourself permission. So how can you catch somebody in that moment?

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  So they do this sort of card game where they kind of play out two scenarios.

• 1:15:50Fearne Cotton?

  Wow.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  So you make this decision and then this. So it's they sort of play out the future of their life, but by weirdly using these visual cards. It does capture some people to think, okay, actually, I'm not going to do decision A.

• 1:16:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  You know, and I think that's. There is, I don't know how we got to this, but there is that um that window.

• 1:16:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  I can't remember how we got to this this thing.

• 1:16:17Fearne Cotton?

  No, but it's important, because if there's people out there who have been there mentally or fear someone else in their life is in that place mentally, then you you know, you you want resources. You want help, you want somebody that understands and that can talk to you about it in a way that feels relevant.

• 1:16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Fearne Cotton?

  Rather than, you know, not taking it seriously.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  I know what it was. I know what it was.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Because I, you know, went to meetings and I know the power of a group.

• 1:16:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  I went to a lunch recently for people who had supported this charity and everyone there had lost somebody through suicide. And there was something good to be together, because you could say things you can't say in front of your friends who haven't gone through exactly the same.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  But there was something really difficult about being there too, because it brought home. It's it's very, you know, I'll have lots of women on Instagram, Facebook, be in touch who've gone through something similar. And I think it's it is good to be able to always find your tribe who um know how you feel without you having to say stuff. And, you know, it is important if you feel you're listening and you haven't found your tribe for whatever it might be. It's you as soon as you just have somebody else who knows what you're going through, it makes all the difference, everything.

• 1:17:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it does. And thank you for talking about it, because I know it's not easy to go over it again and again and. I do think there is so much power in knowing other people have been through darkness and tough stuff. And showing that, you know, you can, you're not gonna get over it ever entirely. But to be able to have a future where you can sit and laugh and have happy times and make new memories. I think for people to know that's possible, it's really important.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  What I would say is that when I look at the two of them, I see the best side of Johnny. So when we talk about the joy, you know, we must remember joy in life. It's really important when, when traumatic things happen to hold on to that joy. So when I've, and Lila and Zach have the best sense of humour. I sometimes have a shitty sense of humour. I sometimes have a good sense of humour because I'll just do stupid things, people. And I just don't have any, um, I don't give a shit, you know, I sort of don't give a shit. So I don't care. So through that, people find it amusing and I just, it's just whatever, it's my characteristic, nerdy, weird, whatever. But Lila and Zach would take the piss out of me for being serious sometimes. I was only kidding. It's always kids do it to kind of, they, they wanna get away with something. So they're like, well, I was only kidding. And you were like, well, that was a really nice way of showing it.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  And they were in fact being a C U N T, you know, but they'll use that excuse. But also I, I realise I have to, you know, if Johnny was in the room, he'd say, come on, Trinny, just laugh about it, you know. And it's this reminder. So I do feel like when there's a fly in my room, it's Johnny. When there's like, it's a time of year when there shouldn't be a fly in my bedroom. Cause there aren't really flies in my house, all right. And there's this fly buzzing around by the mirror. I'm thinking, what the fuck is it I'm supposed to be doing? Like, there's some thing come to annoy me to remind me of something. So whenever I see it, there was a fly yesterday, that's why I say this. But there's a fly like once a month, all right, this, I hardly ever appears.

• 1:19:19Fearne Cotton?

  It's the same guy.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  It's Johnny.

• 1:19:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  I just know it and it's, so I have to check myself and think, okay, what are, what should I not be taking so seriously?

• 1:19:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Or what is it I'm, I'm not being aware of that I should be aware of? Just resets a bit.

• 1:19:31Fearne Cotton?

  I love that, not taking it also seriously, because I think all of us, you know, I've definitely got a propensity to do that. And just to take everything so seriously and tie myself in knots. And it's just, sometimes it just doesn't need to be that way. When we're looking at joy and knowing how important it is, where would you say your happy place is? It could be figuratively or existentially, however you would see it. Where is your happy place?

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Um, probably doing something with Lila that we both love. So we both love to ski. She is fearless, which scares me. She will. She is really fearless. And so we both love speed and we both love the wind in our hair and that feeling. And she loves it. So I love she loves it. She's not a sporty girl. Okay. She was always like, never good at sports. And I was never good at sports either. And, um, you know, she has like three hands. I mean, she's got, her coordination is really shit. So it's like, but we love, because it's a singular thing racing and it's not in the team and you just go down the mountain. So I love that. And I have a little place in the mountains.

• 1:20:34Fearne Cotton?

  Gorgeous.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Which I, it would be really gorgeous if I could go there, but at the moment I'm still paying off the mortgage and I seem to be renting it out to pay off the mortgage, but not going.

• 1:20:43Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  So it's now 23 years later. I spent 10 years hardly going there, but the mortgage will be paid off by next year. So then it's been a position where I can actually be there more. But it's a very small village in France. And when I go on holiday, I never go on holiday to be sociable. I go on holiday to get away from

• 1:21:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  lots of people. So I love that. I love mountains. I love sea as well, but I, there's something very, um, spiritual for me about mountains. And I feel they have this energy. Oh, I, sea does too, because I can lie on the sea and feel

• 1:21:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  um, and I have this really nice CEO coach. He's great at, he's a sort of, he actually started as a yoga and then he went to work at this big company in America for coaching board levels and whatever. And so we have conversations every two weeks just about style of management, how I'm doing things, you know, just not specific business, but more where I'm at in how I'm doing stuff. But he says, you need to be on the water, Trinny. You need to have a bath. You know, he has this sense, you need to have a bath here, dirty girl. But he has this sense of when it will send to me. And it, very interesting because I've only met him once because we do it by Zoom. But he sort of intuitively knows if I'm out of balance, he said, why don't you not have a bath?

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  No, not, I have a shower every day. And so he says, get in a bath with some magnesium and just be still.

• 1:22:04Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it's hard, isn't it?

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  So I have a bath once a month, but this weekend I had three baths. I went to stay somewhere and they only had a bath. And I had, I had like four baths, actually.

• 1:22:12Fearne Cotton?

  Dreamy.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Cold baths, because it was so hot, but it was really nice.

• 1:22:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it is. And it forces you to stop, which is no.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, because a shower is continual movement.

• 1:22:21Fearne Cotton?

  I'm in and out. Goodbye. Um, here, here, here's to baths, because they are a very happy place to be. And help us all to relax when we're properly stressed out. Trinny, what a joy to talk to you today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your stories and for championing women in business and for helping so many people. Get that first foot on the ladder. It's really beautiful. Thank you, Trinny. Bloody hell, it was a roller coaster, that wasn't it? In the best possible way. I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I felt deeply emotional and I learned a hell of a lot. Trinny, what a woman, what a woman. She's what I want to do. I want to go for dinner with Trinny. I'm putting that out there.

• 1:23:05Fearne Cotton?

  So I can get more wisdom from her and just have a good old goss and potentially get some makeup tips. By the way, I mentioned the chat with Dieter Von Tees. I hope you've already listened to that one, but if you haven't, you really need to, because it will pick up on that conversation about dressing the part to make yourself feel more powerful. So look, we're going to be back here next week, but in the meantime, a huge thanks to Trinny, to the producer, Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios and to you, you're bloody gorgeous.

• 1:24:00Speaker 06

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• 1:24:42Speaker 08

  Help I Sexed My Boss is the podcast where manners meets mayhem. I'm William Hanson. I'm Jordan North. And together we take on the hilarious challenges of modern life. William's the arbiter of etiquette. And Jordan's the chaotic yin to my perfectly polished yang. So if you want laugh out loud stories and brutally honest moments, then you'll love Help I Sexed My Boss. Watch and listen every Tuesday and Friday. On YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Just search Sexed It. Be warned, it's a bit rude.