Trinny Woodall Its Very Hard To Process

I think you've got to think, how would I feel at 60 if I hadn't tried?

That's the first question I ask myself.

How would I feel that I might have let myself down, that I maybe didn't reach my full potential,

that maybe at 50 I was thinking, even though I've done so much in my life, in my mind,

I hadn't reached the place of what I wanted to be as a person doing what I was doing.

Hi, I'm Jess Rowe, and this is the Jess Rowe Big Talk Show, a podcast that skips

the small talk and goes big and deep.

From love to loss and everything in between, I want to show you a different side of people

who seem to have it all together in these raw and honest conversations about the things

that matter.

I don't know about you, but I really crave connected conversations, so I'm going to dig

deep to give you a new window into the souls of the people we're curious to get to know

and understand.

There might be tears as well as laughter as we celebrate the real-life flaws and vulnerabilities

that make us human.

Trinny Woodall is the queen of makeovers.

She's an English fashion expert, TV presenter, author and mum.

She's also the founder and CEO of Trinny London.

I first fell in love with Trinny watching her and her bestie Susanna in What Not To

Wear.

She's one of the biggest TV reality shows of the 2000s.

Trinny is now head of a make-up empire, a business that she started in her 50s.

I was beyond excited to meet her.

There is so much to talk about, including how you can reinvent yourself time and time

again.

Oh my goodness, Trinny!

Hello, darling.

I just adore you.

I could say I'm part of your Trinny tribe.

I'm wearing sequins in your honour.

Oh, thank you.

It looks gorgeous.

She's wearing a red art dress in a most beautiful, would we call it the blue that Anna Wintour's

fakery in The Devil Wears Prada is.

It's cerulean blue and you, darling, are wearing the high street version.

I remember that line.

It's such a good line, but it is this blue, but it has sparkles in it.

Just the fit is good.

We're talking about the shoulder pad in it to give breadth and shoulder because you're

very up and down your frame and it's good.

Honestly, a dream come true because I watched you on the telly like so many other women

in the 2000s and were just because I adore clothes.

I love the transformative power of clothes and what they can do for us, for our mood.

And you really captured that so beautifully.

I mean, it was a show which was emotional, but also was about that physical moment.

And I think I learned so much on that show because we started in England and it was a

British woman, which I understood well.

We then went to Europe and we did that show.

It was picked up and I thought they just wanted to buy the format.

But we went to 12 countries and made the show, one of which was Australia and India and Poland

and Israel and America and Scandinavia.

And I realized it's a worldwide thing around women giving them permission to stand out

a bit more, allowing them to just want to be their best, not feel embarrassed by it

and also give them tools to find out what it could be.

Because so many women just think, I don't know how to do it, you know.

And also it takes time.

And I think also why you resonate with so many women is that you keep reinventing yourself.

You do.

I call it an evolution.

I think a reinvention is when you disregard your past.

And I think everything in my past has helped me for the present.

So, you know, making over thousands of women helped me to build up what Trinity London would be.

So to me, I see it as the evolution.

But others, it's a totally different question.

I'd see it as a reinvention.

And the thing is, you've been through so much evolution, though, reading so much about your story.

I mean, you describe it as riches to rags to riches again.

It's a little bit of a roller coaster.

And I think that if you have a life that's always easy, maybe you don't identify so much with other people.

You know, we have to go through things and have shared experiences to then empathize and understand what somebody might be going through.

And I think when you meet a lot of women, like you meet a lot of people in your career and I meet a lot of women,

so you hear a lot of stories of people's lives and you hold that on.

It goes in your bank of knowledge.

And when you go through those things yourself as well and you share them honestly,

because I think it's really important to share it, you know, because then it makes another woman sitting there isolated feeling she's the only one think,

I'm not the only one, you know, thinking this thought.

And that's the thing.

None of us are alone.

But when we go through those tough times, it feels like it's just me.

So let's talk about some of those times.

And you went to boarding school when you were, what, six and a half?

Yeah, I did. I did.

It's kind of it is a bit of a mystery, because only when I was about 35, 40 did I realize that at the time,

because my parents always said they were living abroad.

So I went to boarding school that they lived down the road for the first year.

Weird. But anyway, they sent me to boarding school.

It was like the 60s. It was the thing that they knew themselves.

So they did what they knew themselves.

And it meant that and this is not to be a little poor me, but it meant that when they did move abroad, I didn't see them.

You know, I was there weekends.

I sometimes went to stay with my grandparents in Hove, lovely old people's residency home in a whole town.

Not many sparkles there.

No, no. And a fantastic grandmother, but quite a severe Scottish woman.

So that was not the happiest time of my life.

And I was the youngest of six children.

My dad married twice.

And then I stopped at about 10.

And I did an American school for a year.

My parents, by the way, lived in Germany.

And I felt very separate from the people there because they were mainly international students.

But I just didn't feel a part of them.

And then I went back to England and then I went to the boarding school my sister went to.

And I spent a year trying to really desperately make friends and connect again and kind of, you know, find friendship groups.

And then they wrote to my parents sometimes saying, we don't think she's clever enough to go up a year.

So we're going to keep down another year.

And I had to start all over.

And then it was an era where you never spoke to anyone in the year below.

You know, it's like never.

You looked up to women. Not cool.

So I think that was one of the two unhappiest times in my life, a feeling that I couldn't figure out who I was.

You know, and I and I then only when I was about 15 and my sister had left the school,

she was four years old and she was incredibly naughty and popular and fabulous and sexy.

And, you know, everyone loved her.

And at my school, you used to pass on people and crush on people.

It was like a girls boarding school thing.

You would give them sweets and your stationery and say, can I crush on you?

And it was like an older sister thing.

It was there was nothing sexual about it.

But everyone wanted to crush on my sister.

And so when she left, I love my sister dearly, but it allowed me to kind of discover a little bit who I was.

Well, there was space for you to be you.

A little bit, yeah.

And also another thing that I found interesting, you had acne.

I mean, I had terrible acne.

Oh, so I never now think of myself as having good skin because there's always a part of me

or feeling attractive that feels like that.

Yeah, that teenager and young woman.

It was sort of I'd talk with my hands over my mouth and try and sort of hide it.

I had very long hair to cover mine.

And then because I had a 13 to 30 and going on dates, I would like a restaurant with a down lighter.

Forget it. I literally somebody said, can we go to this restaurant for dinner?

I go, no, but can we go to this one?

Because I knew the light was softer with my first boyfriend.

I'd sort of like go to sleep and then put on my makeup again before I woke up because I had really, really bad skin.

I didn't want them to see it.

I mean, the makeup was probably appalling, but it was just that such self-consciousness around spots.

I remember doing that, too, and lying there looking like, oh, I've just wake up in the bathroom.

And yet my sister, my daughter, who's 18, you know, she doesn't care so much,

which I find so profoundly freeing of her generation.

It's like I've got spots.

And I was like, you should clean your skin for you.

And she said, you worry about them more than I do, mummy.

And I have to take that step back and say, darling, I think it's because I'm bringing my history of how I felt to you,

which is not your history.

And I do say that to her occasionally when I remember.

And she'll just wear these star things on her face.

They're like yellow stars full of salicylic acid, way too strong.

But I can't, you know, some of her skin care routine, she really listens to and uses my products.

But other times she just goes down a rabbit hole.

And so when we travel and she's got a bad spot, she'll have stars on her face and she'll not care.

And I just think, great.

I think, as you say, that is really quite wonderful that young women are sort of embracing that as opposed to thinking I've got to hide behind.

Yeah, there's less.

I mean, on some levels in social media, there's a harsher judgment of other people on to people.

But I find my daughter is less judging on herself than I was at her age.

Yeah.

What sort of mum are you?

I've been a few different mums.

So when Lila was very young, I was a main breadwinner and I left London on a Sunday and I came back on a Friday.

And I did that for seven months of the year for three years.

So that was really tough when she was sort of three to six.

And I needed to because it was kind of the only job I knew.

And I could have found a job in England, but nobody was offering the work.

So I just had to go where the work was.

And so her father went through phases where he was well and then not so well.

So in that phase, he was well and he had her a bit during the week.

And then I come back and I'll have her.

And through that, since Lila's birth, there's been another sort of parental figure in her life, which is Jenny.

And Jenny came to be my maternity nurse because when I had Lila, I worked up to two weeks before I had her.

And then I worked from two weeks after I had her.

And so she was the constant, you know, 50 year old woman then.

She's now 70, Jenny.

And then when Lila's father died, she became Lila's other parent, you know, because before that,

Lila had a father who was sometimes a full on father and sometimes was an absent father.

She had me that was a mother and she had Jenny, which was kind of like a grandmother figure,

because my mother developed Alzheimer's, so she wasn't so present as Lila grew up.

And then when Johnny died, it's like Jenny was the mum and I was the dad mum, you know.

So I think as a result, she's grown up with that kind of unconditional, profound loving.

I know what your favourite food is.

I know what your favourite colour is, everything, which is Jenny.

And then she's grown up with I will drop everything for you, but I also have a life and I have to go out and earn money.

So we have a life and she knows that she is the centre of my life and Lila knows that.

And sometimes she'll prove it to me because she'll come up and be like this in my face.

And I'm putting my hand three inches away and say, mummy, mummy.

And I'm in the middle of a podcast or an interview or you know, when we were in Covid, she just come and go, mummy.

And I go, Lila, it doesn't matter.

And I knew I would just have to think, OK, there's compensation here I'm doing because I am the only proper parent.

But also, you can't do that.

Getting that is a little trickier when you're a single parent.

And it is so tricky. I think as a parent, full stop, it's so tricky.

How do you manage to put yourself first when you need to?

Because I read a quote that your partner, Charles Sarchie, had said to you, you've got to put yourself first.

Yeah. And then you can look after everyone else.

Yeah. As women, I think we find that tough.

I know I do. And then I get to a point where I think, oh, I feel resentful of everyone.

Yeah. Charles has some very good wisdom.

And you can look at it on a first level and think, oh, that's such a selfish thing to say.

But fundamentally, his point on it was you keep trying to juggle so many plates.

And as a result, you're not the best version of yourself and therefore you're not the best person in those people's lives.

But if you put yourself first and look after yourself, you have so much more to give as a parent,

as a partner, as a mother, as a daughter to those around you.

You know, there's certain things I really learned from Charles, but that's one thing that has resonated.

And so I do. I will make sure I have time by myself, because I think when you have very busy life,

it's not about having fun with girlfriends, but actually it's about actually just having

half an hour a day where you are not responsible for somebody else.

And when you have just time for yourself, do you sit quietly?

Because you're a very energetic person. You give a lot of yourself to people.

Do you need to be quiet? I'll be a vegetable. I'll be probably a vegetable.

So on the weekend, I never like to make a plan because I want to have no obligation to anyone.

Obligations are what I have all the day. You know, in my work, I have a team of 200 people.

I'm the CEO. It's a lot. And it's grown very quickly over five years next week, actually.

So during the day, I don't have that because usually I would wake up at six, I'd look at my emails,

I'd do 50 emails in bed, get out at seven, you know, that kind of thing.

So as you wake up, you're like on. And the thing for the brain, which I then read,

you know, over the years I read Eckhart Tolle and then the lovely podcast he did with Oprah

and a lot of different things which then slowly get into your brain.

And then I met the man who was the founder of Calm, which is a fantastic app.

And I realized when we both started an online business in 1999,

we talked the same events together, which is a long time ago.

And after I had dinner with him, I thought, let me go and do that.

So I then woke up, walked outside the house, put on the Calm meditation, walked around the park.

And this is like a 40 minute thing. Then came back and then picked up my phone.

And just doing that and not being immediately on social, on emails, on, you know,

going down rabbit holes gave my brain time to kind of sort itself into little compartments.

So when the quite busy day comes along, it's got fuel in the tank.

Otherwise, it's like there's no fuel in the tank.

You're running on empty and doing that after a few months and you really then are in trouble.

And you're no good to anyone.

No good to anyone. Yeah.

Let's talk about you, the business superstar.

You started your company, Trinny London, when you were 53.

I launched it at 53, but I started the idea at 50.

Yeah. Yeah. And it just, it was kind of the worst time to take such a risk

because many things happened in that year.

Like when I was 50 or 51, Lila's father died.

It was a very tragic circumstances.

And I had stopped doing TV and I didn't have an income.

I was literally living off the residue of a couple of books and that was it.

So my income had, I'd got a mortgage out two years before when I was earning my most money.

And I went to earning my lease money in 20 years and I still had a huge mortgage.

So debt hovering over my head.

And I had had this idea for about five or 10 years of stackable makeup.

I'd done it myself whenever I traveled on these shows, I'd put my makeup like that.

I always mush makeup in the bathroom, I mush colors, skincare, everything.

So I kind of was obsessive and I just knew I had to do it now.

And I remember I was at the funeral of my husband afterwards and I had people around my house

and I had some very good friends, a husband and wife.

And they said, Trinny, you know, I know you want to start this idea,

but you need to be responsible for Lila.

You need to know things are OK.

So you really, I think, should think about getting a job.

So just think about is this the right time to do something this bad?

So I said, OK, I'll go away and think about that.

And then I was kind of all night long thinking and thinking.

And then next day I sent them an email and I said, look,

sometimes maybe I'm going to look back, but if I start an idea at the hardest time,

it's got more chance of working and sticking than maybe if I started at the top of my game.

So I can't not do it.

I can't be 60 and think I wish I'd done it.

So they then wrote me back an email and said,

well, send us a business plan when you have it ready.

And they were one of my first investors.

You see, hearing you describe that, it gives me goosebumps

because most people would run away because if we could just for our listeners,

explain a little bit about about Johnny, who was your ex-husband who died.

And he'd had a number of issues over many years, hadn't he?

He had. We'd met in recovery and he had had a very bad motorcycle accident

and he had taken painkillers.

And then every year of our marriage, he was in rehab at some stage

with dealing with that addiction.

So there'd be months it would be good.

And then that's in a way what led to I just realized.

When you keep expecting things would change and they don't,

at some stage, you have to say, what's the best thing to do here for everyone involved?

And for me, it was that I had to step away.

And it's very hard to end a marriage when it's not like somebody goes off with somebody else.

You know, it's just because it's more of a sense of responsibility

that you have to take ownership of that decision instead of saying, well, if this hadn't happened, you know.

So that happened.

And then he really did sort himself out.

And then we had some years and it was when we were really, you know, we speak every day.

We were good friends and I also then had met Charles as well.

And then just stuff started to go wrong for him.

And then he took his own life.

And it was very, it's very, very hard to process when somebody that you're very close to takes their own life.

Very hard. Yeah.

And very hard to know how to explain it to your daughter when it happens.

I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.

And also, how do you say that to your daughter?

I had, there's an amazing woman called Julia Samuel.

And she wrote a book called Grief Works.

And she actually worked with William and Harry when their mum died.

You know, so she had done some amazing work.

She was just known to be that fantastic person.

And she happened to be a friend of my sister.

And the day it happened, my sister said, I'm going to call her.

Because I was just, Lila was at school and the police had come around.

And I just said, I don't know how to tell her.

So Julia came around and then she said, just say he had a heart attack in his head.

You know, just start with that because she is 10, 11.

She was 11, two days old.

And just then, you know, so she came home from school.

Oh, I always get upset from brothers.

She came home from school and her brother was there.

My sister downstairs.

I took her upstairs and I told her, she let out this scream like an animal.

And I remember Zach and I really hugged her.

You know, when you have a child feeling pain, you really hug.

And I just sort of said to her these words Julia told me.

And that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my entire life.

And then afterwards, it was very interesting how she processed it.

Because over those few days, we had a funeral and then we had a memorial quite soon after.

And there were a lot of people in the house.

A lot of people came from everywhere, you know, at the memorial.

She got up and she recited, if to a thousand people, you know, aged 11.

And her brother, who was 21, had two very brilliant godparents.

So they got him a therapist.

And from literally the week after he started talking to this man in America who dealt with child bereavement.

And also Lila's father had post-traumatic stress disorder.

He was in the army in Israel.

And Zach had it in a way, because being that age when something so abrupt happens, you have that.

And this man, you know, of all of us healing from the death of Johnny, Zach has processed it in the most healthy way.

Because he was at the right age to go straight in there.

He always knew when Johnny wasn't very well more than anyone else.

He was incredibly intuitive.

And Lila needed to process it as an 11 year old would, which is a very, very different way.

So we learned a lot from those times.

You're extraordinary, Trinny.

Thank you for sharing in that way.

And I think for people listening, it's another example of them not feeling alone.

It's difficult to share.

I must say I haven't, maybe I've talked about it in that much detail.

I don't think I have. It's odd.

Here we are sitting in Australia, you know, maybe because I'm so far away from England.

And I think I'm always very concerned that Lila shouldn't hear it.

I think that's what it is.

And I think maybe because I'm here, it's quite, it's a release to just talk about it honestly.

You know, not honestly, but in detail, because usually I'm very, let me just give you the top line.

Because things that are really, that shift you in your life live very deeply inside you.

Of course they do.

But also they're things that forever change you and teach you different things.

And still what I find extraordinary is that you've experienced this and then you wake up

the next morning though and decide, I'm going to start my business.

Yeah, I know.

Where does that lioness or that strength and fierceness come from, Trinny?

A part of it is that sense of survival, you know.

And in that situation, it was that sense of survival.

It was also over those few weeks, I was thinking I have ever diminishing returns in what I'm doing now.

I have an idea of something that I think will help women.

I really feel I know women because I've made over thousands of women.

I feel I know them around the world and I feel whichever country they live in or whichever religion they are,

whichever skin tone they are, we get to stages where we just hit a bit of a brick wall.

And those are the women, they're not the lowest hanging fruit to help.

But there's women I love helping the most because, you know, I will be in a room and I will know the woman in the room who most needs the help.

It's like a beacon.

But it's a, you know, it's a little, I don't know, a trait I have and it gives me so much.

So I thought this will enable me to do it.

You know, it's like the makeup is, in a way, the physical manifestation of the point of what Trinny London is to me,

which is that you feel enriched in your life.

You know, by that association, we have these Trinny Tribes in Australia and just that I want women to help other women.

So if we're the protagonist for that, great.

I love being in my 50s.

I'm 52 and it's the best, it's the best.

But also you can at times feel a bit stuck in terms of can I start again?

Can I do a new career?

And I think, again, that's why you resonate with women, because you've done that.

What advice would you give to people listening who are thinking, oh, I don't think I can or what if it doesn't work out?

I think you've got to think, how would I feel at 60 if I hadn't tried?

That's the first question I ask myself.

How would I feel that I might have let myself down, that I maybe didn't reach my full potential,

that maybe at 50 I was thinking, even though I've done so much in my life,

in my mind, I hadn't reached the place of what I wanted to be as a person doing what I was doing.

So I'd found making a whim very fulfilling, but I was never in control of the final outcome.

You have an editor, a producer, everything.

So the experiences we had making shows around the world were not the same as the edited show.

And there was that sort of discord, which I always found, you know, I'd like have had so much that I got from a show.

And then I'd see the end and I think, oh, they wanted to make it choppy TV or put Suzanne and I against each other or, you know,

emphatic that Trini's a hard one, Suzanne is, you know, it's like, okay.

But starting a business, it stops and ends with you.

So there is a huge responsibility, especially as the business grows, that you have people in a team that you're,

they will expect leadership from you, but also it's up to you.

And there's something actually quite nice.

I meet many people who have an idea in their head and they'll talk about it.

They'll be at their friends and say, I'm going to do this one day.

But they'll never get it out of their head on the kitchen table.

So it never dies, but it never breathes.

And it's a really it's like sitting in this kind of discord.

So the first step is you have to get it out on the kitchen table.

So that might be that you take eight friends that you trust and you invite them for something.

You say, I have this idea.

Tear it apart for me.

Would you buy it? Would you use this service? Would you do it?

Just tell me and don't be worried about they'll steal the idea to do it themselves,

because it takes a lot to start something.

So don't worry about that. You have to let go of that.

Sometimes you have to really trust on this process and then just see what they say.

And then some people, everyone loves to give their opinion.

So you've got to then differentiate the opinions between what's really going to help you as an opinion.

What is just somebody's view on it, which actually isn't the view you have.

But at the end of that, you have to think, OK, that was my first little bit of market research.

I do think it has substance.

And then you have to think like I did with Trinity London.

Do I need to raise money? What can I sell that I have?

Because things need funding. I saw my clothes.

Please tell me you kept some though. You must have kept some.

You know what? I did keep some, but I think all the things I sold to Lila,

she'll see me in old press shots and stuff.

Where's that? OK, I sold it.

And then she'll just say, you sold that, didn't you? You sold that, didn't you?

And the things I didn't sell were things which are longer and more boring for her, more middle aged.

So she's like gutter every time she sees something.

But it was, I didn't, I'd never bought nice pictures.

I'd had a lot of jewelry from my mom and it had been stolen when I was in my 40s.

And so I literally, that was all I had.

My house I'd rented, you know, I'd rented it out to get an income.

And then I had to sell it because the mortgage was way too much and I couldn't have that debt.

So I'd raised a very small amount of money at the very beginning,

my daughter's godfather and a good friend.

The good friend worked for research for a beauty company and she had seen my idea.

I said, portable, personalized makeup.

And she said, you know, three of the five trends in the next five years are in what you're doing.

I believe in you. And there was a scheme in England,

which you might have in Australia called an SEIS scheme,

which is an entrepreneur's investment scheme.

And so if you are a high income tax earner, you can put money in something.

And if the business went under, you get 50% of your tax back.

So like if you put in 50,000, you would lose maximum 7,000.

So it lowers the risk of investment.

So I raised 150,000 on that.

So in that, in the year, I got my prototypes made.

I got samples of the products made.

I'd send things off to the manufacturer in Italy and say,

I put this in my bathroom in it. Can you make this happen?

You know, come back, back and forth, back and forth.

Big learning curve because I'd never done it before.

And then I ran out of money because I spent a lot of money on the prototype

for the stack, 11 prototypes to get it right, you know,

and that journey of getting the first one back,

which looked like some horrible Lego toy and thinking,

when will it ever look as beautiful as the pictures we did of it?

And then also doing it by yourself.

So I had a girl who worked with me, an assistant, and then Chloe,

who's here today, joined us and Federica.

Those are my first two employees.

And my CEO, Mark, joined then.

And he joined without a salary to begin with.

And then I ran out. So we did this clothing sale.

We did two big ones. I literally opened my house up.

I was selling the house. I didn't mind who came in the house.

We had like three thousand people over two different months.

And I made enough money to keep going

until we then went with a business plan and raised properly money.

And look at you now. I mean, look at Trini London now.

It is ginormous. Yeah. 90 percent of the time, I have to be really honest.

I think what we have still yet to do.

But the 10 percent of time now, I do stop and think,

OK, we've got nearly a million customers.

We shipped to 200 countries.

You know, we didn't raise a huge amount of money for the revenue

we have in terms of just building a business.

So we've really bootstrapped the business.

You know, we really made every penny count.

And so there's a lot of the people who started the business there today

in roles where they've grown to be running a team

and just seeing that development of the way we're 84 percent female

in our business and seeing the development of those careers

for those people is something that I, you know, I'm very politically

incorrectly think they're all my children because I'm 58.

They're all in their 20s, 30s. OK.

Now, the makeup, I want to talk about the makeup.

I've got it on. I love it.

And what I think is fab about it, it's easy to use.

Yeah. There's colours that work with everyone.

Yeah. I have to put on some false eyelashes.

Yeah. I think that pops good because I think we go down the path of life

and our eyes become slightly smaller.

You know, we feel that that kind of we have a little bit of a friend

coming over, you know, I always think, which side do I sleep on tonight?

Because I want to equal it out in that kind of hood.

And, you know, I always do that manic exercise where I push up my fingers

and I manically pull my eyes down to kind of lift it.

It so does. Really? Yeah.

But you've got to like two fingers like you're saying, F you.

And then you push them up. Everyone do it.

Who's listening? Yeah.

Push it up onto your eyebrow line and keep the tension on

and then try and close your eyelids, but keeping your fingers

in the same position, even though they'll want to come down

when you close your eyelids. So like this.

Oh, like that. Oh, so you're really keeping the pressure on.

I just have my Botox. It's not going to ruin.

No, it won't ruin your bloody Botox. OK.

Botox actually can make your eyelids fall down a bit further.

And then when you sort of end, we're all doing it here.

It's wonderful. You'll just have that raised, you see?

And it's like it's like doing some ab work on your upper eyelid.

How about that? I know.

You've taught us that the ab, you should market that.

Oh, we should. I know. We actually do it.

We do a signature massage on this website

when you go do skin care, so you can see it there.

I feel like more heart. It's brilliant.

Something else you said, too, about makeup,

and I found this fascinating that often we get stuck in a rut

with wearing makeup at a time when we felt more appealing.

And often that's not going to work as we get older.

Because as we both discussed, we feel the most appealing

we felt in our 50s because we finally found ourselves

and we don't worry what people think.

But I think that when you're in your 20s,

we've suddenly discovered our sexuality.

Whatever makeup we're wearing then, we might stick to.

And men, whenever they discover their sexuality,

they have a certain look in clothing and they stick to it.

So that can be really dodgy.

But with women... I love that, because my husband,

he wears the same.

Iron Williams boots, jeans, she knows or jeans.

No, jeans and like a Ralph Lauren shirt or polo with the collar up.

I'm like, yeah, so 80s.

He first had good sex in the 80s, didn't he?

I mean, it says everything. I know that so well.

So if you were a woman of the 80s in your teens or early 20s,

you probably did a lot more powdering and bronzing and a black eyeliner.

And so then, you know, the 90s was goth, then the noughties was cake and bake.

So all those people who discover that in their 20s, those decades,

then when you go in the next decade or two decades up,

suddenly it doesn't resonate.

And so we just need to relook at our face and think,

what's the skin, hair and eye combination?

And then we give you like there's 200 colours on our site

and then you'll have like 60 colours.

So you'll have like a little, you know,

slightly reduced palette to choose from, makes it easier.

And that's, again, what we need.

We want to spend time on the stuff that brings us joy.

And putting makeup on does bring me joy,

but I want to spend time doing other stuff, too.

I want to talk about your 20s.

I didn't like being in my 20s.

Why weren't the 20s great for you?

Why wasn't that a good decade?

Because I had probably what you would now define as imposter syndrome on steroids.

I thought I should be in finance like my dad,

but I didn't get to university and I had to start working at 18

because, you know, I need to go and earn a living.

So I then worked as an assistant in a commodities physical trading house.

And then I worked selling Anglo-American funds in a trading house.

And I was one of one woman, 64 men.

Knew nothing, hated it, went on the tube every morning.

And I'd have the financial times like the Australian Financial Review on the outside.

And I'll have the Daily Mail on the inside.

You know, that was me.

Imposter syndrome down to the newspaper.

All right. So after three years of it and also partying hard and everything,

I just thought I can't do this.

And now I lead a healthy life and I do meditation and I do my own thing.

But I have that spirituality in my life

that I need to keep life in perspective, to have a sense of,

you know, I still do things that I did.

I then like, I'll write a gratitude list.

You know, when I'm feeling frazzled and treating everyone like a CUNT,

then I'll think, OK, Trini, you know, really, time to build that out.

Yeah. So so it's just, you know, you have to take a check on yourself.

And I'm doing right now CEO training.

I mean, I've been a CEO five years, all right.

But when you are building a business, as it gets bigger, there are many things.

You know, you're you go from being in the weeds to being on strategy.

And at the very beginning of business, you're in on everything.

I would look around the office and there would be 12 people there.

And I literally knew what they were doing on each computer.

And now I don't. People in different floors, different locations, everything.

So understanding how I can be the best CEO for the business

for me in the last few months became very important

because it's brought the stress levels down of my work.

And it made me see things in perspective and it made me not.

Go crazy over one thing that I thought was more important than it was

and keep a balance. And it's really good.

It's just, you know, I think we never, ever stop learning.

And that is the key, I think it is that we always have to be open.

And that's what keeps us.

I think age is immaterial. Yeah.

It's being forever curious and thinking, what can I learn?

What can I discover next? Exactly.

What means the most to you?

Where do you get your meaning in life?

I do get that profound meaning of being a mother to Laila

because I didn't think I'd be a good mother.

You know, I had a history of not having the best parents, frankly.

I mean, they're lovely, but they just, you know, it was like,

do you need to go to university?

And, you know, it's like not much intimacy in our family.

With my siblings, tremendous intimacy, but with parents, not so much.

So you kind of think of all the things you would like to do differently.

And sometimes you do things exactly the same,

and sometimes you do things very differently.

So that's my kind of greatest achievement and greatest challenge, Laila.

Not my great achievement, she is her own great achievement.

I think you know what I mean by that. It's just that.

But also, I get a lot of DMs from people.

We get about 11,000.

That's a very important part of our business.

And I read a lot of things,

and they are people who are most affected by what's happened.

But you feel very good.

It's not an egotistical thing.

You just, when you know, you know, when you have somebody on

or you yourself say something and people write to you and say stuff,

you feel you've done your little bit to shift somebody in their life.

And that is a profoundly rewarding thing.

Trini, it has been profoundly rewarding to meet and talk with you.

Well, you're a great interviewer. I really loved it.

I want to come and live in your cupboard.

Can I do that, please?

You say, OK, come and come and check it out.

It's here at the hotel for now.

But thank you for what you give so many women.

You give us permission to be ourselves and to sparkle and to live our best life.

So thank you.

Thank you. That was great.

I've just emerged from Trini's wardrobe, hiding in sequence and colour

and all sorts of amazing things and sparkly rain hats.

It's just been phenomenal.

Something else that is pretty phenomenal is Trini's new skincare range.

It's called Plump Up.

I know she wants to spread the love about that.

We're excited, too. If you want to find more about it,

the fastest way to get there is through our show notes.

There is a link there that will take you to Plump Up.

And now for more big conversations like this,

follow the Jessrow Big Talk Show podcast and you'll get notified

when new episodes drop.

And while you're there, leave us a review, share the love with your friends.

And if you enjoyed this episode with Trini,

I think you'll love my chat with Julia Morris.

Why do I need that validation?

Why do I not believe that what I've got to give is enough?

And I wonder if that's going to be a lifetime of work.

You know, why do I need that person to think I'm smart?

Why do I need that person to think I'm thin?

Why do I need that person to think I'm funny?

Like, yeah, so that is definitely a work in progress.

And if there's someone you'd love to hear on the show, send me a DM.

Go on, slip into my Insta's and I'd love to hear from you.

And we will get in touch with that guest.

And fingers crossed we can get them on the show.

The Jess Rowe Big Talk Show was presented by me, Jess Rowe,

executive producer Nick McClure, audio producer Nicky Sitch,

supervising producer Sam Cavanaugh.

Until next time, remember to live big.

Life is just too crazy and glorious to waste time on the stuff

that doesn't matter.

Listener.