The Debrief: What we learned from Laura Tenison
In this companion episode to The Queenager Podcast, Eleanor Mills and Wendy Lloyd discuss the biggest takeaways from our guest Laura Tenison, founder of Jojo Maman Bébé and now owner of an amazing Welsh farmstead and retreat.
You’ll find the inspirational takeaways from Laura so you can take action and make positive change in your life.
Eleanor Mills is the founder of NOON, the UK’s leading network for midlife women. She’s also author of the bestselling book Much More to Come.
Wendy Lloyd is a Women’s Centred transformational coach. To find out how Wendy can support you through your midlife reinvention, visit www.dramafreeyou.com and book a FREE 30 minute coaching call.
Transcript
Queenager Debrief Laura Tenison S1 E1
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[00:00:00] Eleanor Mills: Welcome to the Queenager debrief with me, Eleanor Mills. In these companion episodes to the Queenager podcast, I'll be reviewing what we learned from each guest with Women Centred Transformational Coach and NOON stalwart, Wendy Lloyd, so that you can take action and make positive change in your own life.
The QueenNature podcast is brought to you by And Begin, the Age Renewal Skincare Experts. Stay tuned for how to grab a heavily discounted bottle of their gold standard skin solution. Seeing as this is the first debrief of our first episode. I want to introduce you to Wendy, though you may already know her from her long radio, TV, film critic and voiceover career that preceded her becoming a coach for midlife women.
Wendy, hi! Hello! Tell us a bit about you!
[00:00:48] Wendy Lloyd: Yeah, well as you said, I mean I've had a long career in media, but um, you know, let's talk about my midlife pivot, which kind of kicked off when I was 40 and, you know, lasted for about a decade or so. [00:01:00] And that included divorce and health issues, but it also included going back to school and doing a degree in psychology and then doing a master's in sociology and cultural inequalities, and I turned that into a podcast.
And then I kind of really had this sense that I'd gone through quite a lot and learned quite a lot. I had this calling to be a transformational women centered coach. So that is what I have become. And now I am guiding women by the hand and I am taking them through and supporting them through something that I've been through and I've What I love is that I'm taking them through both the tough times and then also setting them up and sending them off into all the exciting things.
The much more to come, Eleanor, that you've obviously nailed in your book and which I now use as a really good resource for people that I coach, for women that I coach, because it's a great way for them to get started.
[00:01:52] Eleanor Mills: And what I've loved is seeing your journey and your evolution during your time at Noon, because Wendy was one of the people who came to our very, very first Noon retreats.[00:02:00]
She'd been part of the NOON Circle and a great Queenager right through. since the inception. So it's so fantastic to have you doing this and we're, I'm really looking forward to the debrief. So let's get cracking with our first guest, Laura Tennyson. What do we learn from Laura? What's your first takeaway?
[00:02:14] Wendy Lloyd: Well, I think what I really loved about the whole interview is that you could really feel from the get go, this deep desire that she had to be an entrepreneur and she started really young. So you really kind of understand that there was a passion there that drove her and obviously. She's been and is still to this day a massive success.
And I think, though, for anybody listening, I think it's really important to realise, you know, we can just think, Oh, well, Laura's just like that. You know, she just, she was good at that stuff. And these are the kind of fixed thoughts that can stop us from trying to do new things. So I suppose really what I really think is important from taking away from Laura's, um, chat with you, is really, Unpacking the choices that she made because it's choices that got her to where she is.
A lot of hard work, a lot of talent, [00:03:00] a lot of business acumen. But I think, you know, when we want to kind of do something new, it's really important that we sort of look at someone like Laura and go, well, what did she do? What could I, you know, how could I, you know, shape my life in a way that fits with those kind of really positive and exciting decisions?
[00:03:17] Eleanor Mills: I think what I found most impressive about Laura when I met her, 'cause she didn't just come on the podcast, I went and stayed with her down in Wales and we now run these retreats at her incredible retreat farmstead and the key, they say that genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains. And I've never met a perfectionist quite like Laura Tenison. Everything you know from the email that she sends you to the way that every single bedroom looks like an art installation.
It really is, um, huge attention to detail. I mean, she's got massive artistic flair, and also she comes from a family where she's the youngest of five, and they were all super intellectual, and she was dyslexic. So I think she also was driven by a massive sense of having something to prove.
[00:03:57] Wendy Lloyd: Wow. Well, it's, yeah, and it's ended up with her [00:04:00] really focusing on, as you said, the kind of attention to detail.
And it's interesting you use the word perfectionist there, because that moves us on to the second part. Second takeaway Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Which was about the fact that um, you know it's interesting the word perfectionism isn't it? Because we can sometimes think it just means you know wanting to do things really really well but actually in its purest and its most problematic form perfectionism is when we kind of can be crippled by wanting things to be perfect so we don't actually put things out in the world or we don't take action.
[00:04:30] Eleanor Mills: And what I always think about that is I went to interview Sheryl Sandberg in Palo Alto when she was head of Facebook, and she always says, done is better than perfect. Yes. And I say that to my kids all the time, particularly my rather perfectionist elder daughter. Um, and I really think it's a really good lesson for us.
Done is better than perfect. And I love Laura. Laura upcycles things. So she takes things which look like they're at the end of their lives, which are all kind of scruffy or rusty. And she showed me with such kind of passion some old skip, [00:05:00] skip found, you know, like a kind of old bath that she was really passionate about turning into the centerpiece of a room.
And to me, it just looked like a bit of old junk, but I think she also has a capacity to really see the gold in the dust.
[00:05:11] Wendy Lloyd: Absolutely. And it's funny you mentioned the skip thing, of course, because the powerful image that I really got from the chat you had with her was the image she had of, um, you know, she set up a business.
She didn't really have much seed money and she was kind of struggling really to have enough money for. So, I think, you know, her attention to detail. She knew where she needed to spend money, but she didn't need to spend money on her office chair. And she found one in the skip and went, yeah, that'll do.
And I think that's a really good illustration of how, you know, we can be really smart about if we want to start something, we haven't got everything. It's like, okay, what do I really need and what can I cobble together? Yeah. And, you know, we can really kind of learn from that. The fact that it can make us take action.
As you said, imperfect action is better than nothing. And Laura kind of like really epitomizes that. She knows where to put her focus and her money and where to go. [00:06:00] That'll do.
[00:06:02] Eleanor Mills: Um, and her midlife pivot was really interesting. So I went to, you know, I went down to see her and actually when I went to see her, she was on crutches and we walked to the very top of this very tall hill.
hill, she calls it a mountain, behind her, her house. Um, and it was the first time that she'd gone up it since she'd had this big knee operation, and I'm sure she shouldn't have been doing it. But I think it was really interesting, I think a lot of Queen Agers over push themselves, um, and think that they're quite superhuman.
And actually, Laura's big lesson was that you have to listen to your body.
[00:06:36] Wendy Lloyd: Yeah. That's a big one, isn't it? I mean, that's a massive thing. You know, you have to listen to your body. You have to listen to what is right for you. And I think Laura's story really kind of illustrates that, you know, making the choice to sell up the company when it didn't feel right anymore.
As you said, in terms of her body and her health, she had a health, you know, sort of crisis in her midlife, hasn't she? So she had sepsis, really bad sepsis. Yeah. I mean, serious stuff. And it's, [00:07:00] you know, maybe a big thing to take away then is also for all of us to recognize that we shouldn't really, if we can help it, wait for a crisis to make those changes and to pull back and look after ourselves.
[00:07:11] Eleanor Mills: And I think all too often we do. In fact, in the needs circle this week, I was speaking to a woman who was wanting to step away from her job. And I was really in favor of that. I said, much better step away, get ahead of the wave rather than waiting for it to kind of knock you off. Absolutely. And I think that's another good bit of advice from Laura Tennyson.
She sold this company, which had been her baby, her life, and she's now really having a fantastic next act and you can too. Exactly. To work with Wendy and be supported through your midlife reinvention, visit her website dramafreeyou.com and book a free 30 minute coaching call. That's it for the Queen Agent debrief.
For more resources, check out our website noon. org. uk and sign up to my weekly Queen Agent newsletter. And there's my book. Much more to come. [00:08:00] Lessons on the magnificence and mayhem of midlife, which has just been published by HarperCollins. Thanks to our sponsor, Begin, the age renewal skincare experts. We all like to look our healthiest, glowing best, particularly in midlife, which is why And Begin's expert dermatology team use gold standard ingredients to formulate the perfect skin solution uniquely for you.
It's just 4. 99 for your first bottle. When you use the special code QueenagerPod at andbegin. com. It's usually £29. 99 a bottle, so don't miss this terrific deal. Next time we'll discuss what we learned from wellbeing guru, Liz Earle. So I thought, okay. And that was it. Well, okay, so he's 17 years my junior.
Oh, yeah, but you've got a biological age of 35. Exactly right. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. Thanks for listening and being a part of the Queenager revolution.