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What would you do if you believed that Anything is Possible? It’s a mantra that’s helped Holly overcome mental health, build her business, overcome personal challenges and bring her events company through the pandemic. And now it’s the theme of her brand new podcast!
Join Holly Moore, CEO and Founder of Make Events, HM Events and the host of the Anything is Possible podcast. Holly set up Make Events in 2012 from scratch with no investment, and since then has created ultimate experiences for clients' across the globe.
This podcast shares some of the stories of those she feels embody the mantra 'Anything is Possible', brands that have inspired her and those that have been on the same journey with her for over a decade!
0:00:00 - Speaker 1
The devil does not wear Prada. I sat down with Rosie Nixon, former chief and editor of Hello magazine and now creative ambassador for Hello magazine, who's been with Hello for 15 years. She is paving the way for kindness throughout the media in a no-nonsense publication that will not tolerate online or any kind of bullying. She is friends to celebrities and has a little black book and has become a trusted confidence in many that are featured in Hello magazine. Hear how her career started at Barmy magazine and how she met her husband on Valentine's Day and threw her number at him. She will also talk about her midlife reset and pivot. She is also an author of fiction and nonfiction books and Mother to Two beautiful boys. This episode will get anybody excited, whatever age, showing you anything is possible. Rosie, hello, welcome to the podcast.
0:01:18 - Speaker 2
Hello, thanks so much for having me, holly.
0:01:22 - Speaker 1
Couldn't resist that. So, rosie, we've got to know each other over the last few months, and you were a guest speaker at the Anything is Possible conference. Now I'm going to start with what is familiar to all of us. Everybody at home is familiar with this amazing magazine, and you've been there for 15 years. Can you just start the podcast, kind of give us a brief synopsis of your time there and your roles there?
0:01:51 - Speaker 2
So the Hello world? Yes, I've been at Hello for 15 years and very recently earlier this year in February entered my latest chapter at the magazine, which is as our creative brand ambassador. So I've gone from the fast pace of editing a magazine every week, managing an editorial team and obviously keeping on top of the news agenda as it breaks on a daily basis. And during that time at Hello the magazine and the media world have changed enormously. You know, we've become a very 360 digital operation as much as a print publisher, although printing of magazines is still very much at the core of our business. But the whole media landscape has changed almost beyond belief. When I started at Hello, we could sell a million copies in a week. In fact we did when it was the wedding of the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Prince and Princess of Wales now, and William and Kate got married. That, as you can imagine, was a pretty intense day in the Hello office, all hands on deck, and we sold a million copies in three days. They flew off the show. So I like to think of Hello as the magazine of record. So people kind of come to us when there is a big historic moment, especially within royal history, because there's a sense of having that magazine, keeping it forever, storing it in the loft one day and bringing it down for the great grandkids, because it is, like you know, dipping into history when you open our pages.
So I suppose my role as the editor within that was evolving over those 15 years, and it wasn't just about closing a magazine every Friday. We also have our fashion magazine, hello Fashion, which comes out nine times a year. It was about being the face of the brand, being out and about at events, hosting events, launching a podcast, working on campaigns and doing things that will really support our audience through all of their life stages, because to be a thriving brand in 2023, you need to have a strong sense of purpose. You know, just selling or peddling showbiz and royal news isn't going to see you through long term success. You need to have a deeper relationship with your audience.
So that's really what we've become focused on and my role sort of, after being editor in chief for five years, has recently evolved to a three day a week role as our creative brand ambassador, because I'm sure we'll come on to in a bit Reaching midlife and feeling that I needed to look at what my purpose was in the world and what success means to me now as a late 40s woman, and it's different to what it was 15 years ago when I started at Hello. So I think we all need to be comfortable with having these conversations about transition and resetting our life at various junctures. So I'm now focused still at Hello brand that I love. It's really in my blood, I think, three days a week on our purpose driven content.
0:05:06 - Speaker 1
When you started it was purely a magazine. And then these strands and branches and have grown and grown over the last 15 years.
0:05:14 - Speaker 2
That's right. I mean we always had a website, but it was kind of an afterthought. 15 years ago Things were very different. You know social media I think we had Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram wasn't around and celebrities really needed to work with media brands to put their message and their image and tell their stories in a way that they are able to have a lot more control over personally these days. So we were constantly sort of liaising with big showbiz names, you know, over these great exclusives, and Hello Still is the brand that those big names will come to in an opportune moment, like perhaps their wedding or the first images of their babies.
But those exclusives are a lot you know fewer. You know fewer and far between, I would say, because of the advent of social media changed all of that. So we as a brand have had to be agile and adapt to match the times that we're in. So digital has become so much more important to us. You know we have a thriving website both in the UK and in the US, because, of course, we can become so global with our online coverage. But it's great. It just means that there are more touch points for our audience and audiences expect to be able to integrate with a brand that they love on a 24 seven basis. So you need to be available on every platform if you are a media brand that's going to succeed, and know who your audience is on each platform, because that again can be slightly different.
0:06:56 - Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I guess the older generation will still have that glossy on the coffee table and the younger generation are consuming you on TikTok and you know.
0:07:04 - Speaker 2
That's right. Yeah, and snap, yeah. We've got a brilliant social team who have done so well in carving out new audiences for us across new social platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.
0:07:15 - Speaker 1
And how have you seen the team growing in numbers? So if you started off and it was a magazine, who now all these strands like in terms of numbers of people, how have you grown?
0:07:25 - Speaker 2
Well, again, the structure of the team has changed in that time and we now have more people on digital than we have on print. But there are very unique skill sets that are required for each part of the operation. Writing a long piece that might run over 10 pages in the magazine is a different skill set to the writer that is churning out a certain number of news stories per day that are SEO optimized for the website. So we have quite a varied sort of amount of experience within the team and that's great, because that sort of variety of voices, diversity of voices all together makes us, you know, offer something for our very wide audience, and we do say hello is sort of read by everyone from 18 to 18, with a core audience of somewhere in the middle of that.
0:08:18 - Speaker 1
So, taking us back, I think what's so fascinating about your story is anybody listening whether they're into journalism, celebrity will be wowed by the fact that you've been so instrumental in such a huge brand. Your first kind of thing of note, which I think are listening to going to absolutely love, is you went to work for Barbie magazine.
0:08:38 - Speaker 2
I did. I know the pink world of Barbie magazine and it was quite funny because it was. I was always sort of interested in magazines. So I had a really great tutor at university in my final year who who wrote for the women's glossies and that sort of sounded very exciting to me and did inspire me. But I had no clue of how I might enter that world. So I was working for the book publishers in Brighton where I'd been for a few years.
I stayed on in Brighton after my degree finished and saw this advert in the pages of the media, guardian, which is where you looked for all jobs in media, but obviously so did thousands of other people, and I thought you know, I've probably got a hope in hell of even getting an interview for this. But I did my application and I worked for a children's book publisher. So I suppose it did seem quite relevant that I could move across into a children's magazine and I got this interview, went up to London. I'm from London originally so I was quite comfortable going back to London, was quite looking for that. Next move. Anyway, went up to London, had the interview, got the job, so I took the job at Barbie and I was editor of the magazine.
It was just me and a designer and it came out fortnightly and I learned everything about the editorial process there, from flat planning an issue, writing it. I wrote kind of almost every feature that was in there, working on the style guide with Mattel, so you know, every icon that you used in those pages had to be part of the Barbie handbook. We did photo shoots with the new dolls for the cover. But, being very conscious of the responsibility that I had as an editor of a magazine for young girls, that what we were putting in there and the content we were creating was going to empower them, was going to make them feel brave and like they could conquer anything in their lives. And Barbie has evolved a huge amount in the time since then and now she really does represent, you know, a very inclusive world and there are all kinds of Barbies representing all the you know, celebrating multi-cultural world that we live in.
0:10:51 - Speaker 1
You've talked about having that confidence to go for jobs that sometimes men aren't ready for, which typically women don't tend to do. Where did that? I have got nothing to lose, which attitude which we're going to see go all through your career and personal life. Where do you think that's come from?
0:11:08 - Speaker 2
Well, I think my parents were really fantastic. They were both teachers and they were always very encouraging of us and we. There was a lot of love at home and stability, and they kind of instilled in us that it was OK to just give things a go, that we didn't have to be the best, and, again, that's something that I've really tried to instill in my boys. It's not about the winning, you know, necessarily although it's great if you do and we should celebrate success too, you know but it is about you've got nothing to lose, you know, enjoy your life and have fun with it as you go. And I always felt that the pressure was sort of off and I think sometimes, when there's not undue pressure on you, you're more likely to go for things because it doesn't matter if you don't get them. You know, I definitely had that feeling that I had nothing to lose.
0:12:00 - Speaker 1
And then what was your next step after that?
0:12:01 - Speaker 2
Because I know it wasn't straight into hello at that point, so I moved across to Bliss Magazine that, yeah and became a celebrity editor at a time when celebrities were really beginning to sell magazines and brands and be the cover stars Because of their personal stories that could resonate with an audience in a way that just having a model on the front sort of it needed more than that. So that's when I started cultivating my little black book and developing relationships with people and we had gosh everybody from you know Julia Stiles on the cover to Kelly Osbourne the Osborns were really big at that time. To Gareth Gates on the cover, yeah, and he won pop idol blue. I remember the band blue. I did their very first interview. So it was a really fun time and I started getting out and about lots interviewing people and loving the experience of interviewing stars and really getting to know the real person.
0:13:06 - Speaker 1
You started to cultivate your little black book and obviously that was the strategy in terms of your development. But I also get a sense that it wasn't completely mercenary, that you would generally have an interest in these people and want to build relationships. So how did that come to you? Was it a slow realisation that this was what you needed to do to go forward?
0:13:27 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I think I've always felt a responsibility as a journalist to convey somebody's story in a way that is completely accurate, that is not sensationalist. That doesn't mean to say that I write puff pieces that don't really have any substance. I mean I think it's important to ask the difficult questions, but I've always felt that I'm probably going to get the best result from somebody if they feel that they can completely trust me and open up to me. And it stood me in good stead and meant I have achieved some really great exclusives because they have felt comfortable with me and that I'm going to do my best job by them as well as myself. Do you never really know what somebody's going through? And if you treat people with kindness always and make that your thing, then I feel like that kindness is going to come back to you. And certainly I remember once doing an interview when I worked at I think it was a new woman magazine I went to After Bliss, worked at lots of different magazines with Kim Control and it was right at the end of Sex and City, when the TV show was finishing, before they'd announced any movies, and we did a cover shoot with her in New York.
The day after the shoot.
I met up with her for the interview and we met upstate in this uptown, in this lovely coffee shop that was one of her favourites and close to where she lived in her neighbourhood and I sat down with her and we'd had such a great day together the day before on the shoot that she felt comfortable in my company.
And she said to me we started the interview and I had my list of questions that were very based around her character, samantha, and the show and the friendships with the girls.
And she said to me look, I've been honoring and honoring about whether to open up to this, but I feel that I can to you and she gave me this huge exclusive about getting divorced, like at the end of her marriage. So the joy that she was experiencing on the show. But then this very difficult time that she was going through at home and she knew it would probably get out there in the media. But because we had developed a relationship and she felt comfortable with me and that I would do a good job with the story and the exclusive she was going to give me, which any newspaper would have loved, you opened up to me because she knew it would be conveyed in a certain way and it would run alongside these lovely pics of her and it would feel empowering and that she could trust me and really meant a huge amount and made me realize that there's great power and currency in this as a journalist.
0:16:07 - Speaker 1
How did hello come about then? Were you in those circles we had hunted, or did you go for the job?
0:16:12 - Speaker 2
No, I mean, yeah, it was interesting because hello. I'd always worked for big publishing houses and hello was a bit of an anomaly really, because it's a family business. It's owned by a family that launched our magazine in Spain back in 1944. So it really was the original weekly glossy and I'd worked for Condé Nast, at Glamour magazine, at Hachette, the Red magazine. I'd worked, you know, at E-Map, as we've discussed, and I was actually back at E-Map on Grazia magazine where I worked for two years soon after that launched. So I was really enjoying the pace of a weekly title.
0:16:51 - Speaker 1
And.
0:16:51 - Speaker 2
Grazia, of course, was that sort of cross between a glossy monthly and a newsy weekly magazine. So I was working there and I got a call completely out of the blue by the editor of Hello the then editor, who had got my name from a mutual friend and she said I've got a position going as assistant editor, one that if you wanted to come in and have a chat about it. So I thought, oh and hello had just had out the wedding of Liz Hurley and Aaron Nair. So I went for this interview, got on very well with the editor and was offered the job. So I moved across to Hello and it was very different. Working for a family business has a very different feel to it. It wasn't long before that editor actually left and myself and the deputy editor were made joint editors and then I was promoted to editor in chief, you know, across the brand and we launched a fashion magazine. So it's, yeah, it's, I've had a real journey there and works my way up.
0:17:56 - Speaker 1
And when you talk, obviously the position of chief and editor, you know, and if you take that on face value, that is what it is. But what you've actually done is built a huge brand, and when I know that's with a team, yeah. But what have you learned that perhaps our listeners that are either working for brands or setting up their own brand what learnings that you've had over the years?
0:18:16 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I think really understanding what we stand for was a big one, and when we came up with our Hello to kindness campaign, which we launched in 2019, that really was the perfect culmination of everything that we've been building up to, and that was completely a team effort as well.
The kindness was something that we knew ran in our blood and we would talk about our kind approach, but we hadn't really gone public with it in such a big way, and so we launched this campaign on the back of a lot of negativity that our digital team was seeing on our social channels, especially aimed at the Duchess of Cambridge then and the Duchess of Sussex, between Megan and Kate so different rival fans, sort of for each camp and pitting the women against each other and really horrible comments sometimes, and the team was policing these comments, having to delete them, and some of them were abusive, you know, racist, sexist, just really negative, unkind rhetoric that we didn't want on our platforms, and we thought we need to make a stand on about this, and we actually worked with Kensington Palace to launch our campaign Hello to kindness, just promoting more kindness in the online world and saying that we don't tolerate this negative, abusive rhetoric on our pages and it had a huge.
It really hit, struck Accord at the right time and it got picked up globally and we got the message out there and lots of celebrities joined forces with us and that became really solidifying what Hello is all about. So coming up with your USP or sort of unique like what are, what do you do that is different to others, and really going for that and keeping that message going throughout everything you do. So it's like the thread that runs through all of our platforms. So everything we develop, it will always tick the kindness box.
0:20:21 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
0:20:23 - Speaker 2
So I would definitely say that as number one. Number two really know your audience. So who are you aiming at? There've been several times and we've done a huge piece of audience research, and it's really something quite key to do every now and again as a brand, so that you're looking at who makes up your audience and then you can really aim what you're doing at that person.
I felt for a long time really I am the Hello reader. I mean, I fit that demographic really, so that sort of came quite naturally to me and hence, with our menopause campaign, that was something that we launched really at the right moment. So we're now doing things that have a strong purpose, so that we're supporting our audience, so that we're there for them, we care about them and we're extending that kindness to them, as well as the people that we feature on our pages. And we've created a strong Hello community and that has been very important to us in a commercial sense, because then our commercial team are able to work with brands that know they can appeal to a specific demographic through Hello, because we know our audience inside out Two things that you said there.
0:21:40 - Speaker 1
I remember when I said my business and I remember listening to Karen Brady who said what is your difference? What is your point? Why you? So, if you're going to set up any kind of business, who is your competitor and why would people change alliance or you know, I think that's so true. And then with people that have got a real purpose, say, for me, with, anything is possible. I feel like that's got a real purpose at the moment. It's not like a money making, you know, it's an investment. How would you advise people in that smaller sort of startup phase how to kind of monetize the purpose in the end? Have you got any advice on that side?
0:22:17 - Speaker 2
Well, I think that has to come from sort of within and it might be something that you don't aren't able to monetize initially, but I think the consumer today will pay more for. So it's maybe something that you can add extra cost onto as you go along for brands that make you feel good. You know, I know that when I'm buying fashion online, I don't mind spending a bit more because I know that that brand is a B-core. I know that their production line is sustainable because they tell me about that on their website, you know, and it makes me feel good. Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm going to monetize them and I don't mind spending more, but it might be something that you have to build up to reach that stage.
Yeah, a lot of the stuff that I'm working on for Hello, you know is is making all of that a little more public so that people know what we're doing and we're monetizing it. Hopefully, you know, as we go on and if people can feel really good and happy when they look at Hello content, then that is going to put us in good stead sort of long term, they're more likely to keep coming back to us. The same with podcasts. We really enjoyed that as a way to communicate with our audience. We have a weekly Royal podcast, which is really fun, where you can listen to the Royal editors and some of the digital team talking about the Royal News of the week and getting inside us into the studio. Am I in a good place podcast that I host which is all around wellness, wellbeing there's some development channel.
0:23:59 - Speaker 1
You can pull your podcast. Well, link all the podcasts as well. And, touching on the rules, it would be remiss of us not to talk about that and obviously only share what you're comfortable with. But obviously, sadly, last year we had the passing of the Queen and how I, so I know what it was like from an events standpoint, because we thought we were going to have to, you know, cancel loads of our customers events. What was happening at? Hello.
0:24:27 - Speaker 2
You. I'll never forget that day and it does seem quite unbelievable that it was only a year ago approximately that we were celebrating Platinum Jubilee. I mean, that is quite. I cannot believe that that was just a year ago. It feels like another world, yeah, well, it does feel slightly different with the Queen On that day that she passed away. Obviously, the news started breaking that morning and we were hearing whisperings and the conversation was pretty and live on our Royal WhatsApp group from different royal editors that something was going on and that members of the Royal Family were going up to Balmoral Because we knew that's where the Queen was based.
I was actually at the Wellchild Awards later that day that Prince Harry was due to be at because he is the patron of the Charity. It's an annual event and I'm on the judging panel and a big one for Hello, with a media partner for it. So it was all a bit like do we go ahead, do we not? Because there hadn't been an announcement and she was elderly, you know, and we'd seen her, hadn't we that picture of Tras just a couple of days before, where she definitely looked elderly but was still working, yeah, so that was the sort of can this be happening or can it not? And then things started to feel really serious that actually everybody has gone up there. And then Prince Harry wasn't going to be at the Watch Elder Wars and it's an event he never, he will always, attend. He was in the UK for it and it's a charity that supports children, families and palliative care, so that was big news that he wasn't there.
It was also going up to Balmoral and then I was at the event that evening, sat next to Sabrina Elba, idris Elba's wife, who I'd invited with me to come with me, and a host of celebrities in this room with all these amazing children. And I remember Gabby Roslin was going on to the stage to present, and we had this signal that I would do to her, which was that I would put my hand on my chest If I heard news that the Queen had passed on me, because it was likely I'd see it first on our WhatsApp group. Our Royal Editor would be along with every other Royal Editor in me to get the official announcement first. And I remember Gabby just went up onto the stage and it dropped literally immediately, so she read out the official announcement.
The room just fell into silence. You could hear people sort of starting to get pings and things on their phones and as it started to break and it just sort of fell quiet. And then we had two soprano opera singers Camilla Curse Lake was in the room and also Natalie Rushdie was in the room and they came onto the stage and held hands and sang God Save the Queen and everybody stood up and people who had heard a pin drop aside from the singing and it was really emotional and we all had this sort of little moment of thinking about this iconic woman that had been in our lives and most of our lifetimes. It felt really seismic.
So, that happened at that event and then they made the decision not to go ahead with the event because everybody was obviously very then distracted. But we celebrated the children. They came onto the stage, had their moment, which felt really important as well, and then I sort of disappeared into a taxi and raced back home and worked with the team throughout the night to pull together our special issue that we sort of planned in advance, finished off all of the pages and put out this you know big souvenir commemorative issue.
0:28:32 - Speaker 1
Yeah, quite an unbelievable 24 hours, really very surreal looking back, and all the thing that is in the media that you know the Royals don't have a good relationship with the media. I'm kind of assuming from what I've learned about you that Hello does have a good relationship with the Royals. Yeah, we do.
0:28:48 - Speaker 2
We do have a good relationship with the Royals and, you know, also with Prince Harry and Meghan, because we've always played the longer game. We take people face value, we don't read into gossip or hearsay, we don't sit in judgment of people and we let them tell their stories on our pages. So we do have a good relationship and I think the Royal Family sees the place of Hello, in a crowded media landscape, as being supportive and putting the spotlight on all the great work that they do and showing not just the latest outfit of the Princess of Wales but also why she was on a job, who she met, what this means to her, what the charity is all about. So a greater depth of Royal reporting.
0:29:40 - Speaker 1
Now we're going to come back to Hello, but I want to talk about you and not just the amazing brand that you drive. Now you're a mum to two boys and what I absolutely love is your nothing to lose attitude was actually what found you. Your husband, yeah, I think so. We've obviously had like a relationship coach on the podcast. We had a talk on find your perfect partner at the conference. If this story doesn't inspire all this thing about people out there, I don't know what will To go for it.
0:30:14 - Speaker 2
Oh, that's so interesting actually that you've how you joined together back. I hadn't really thought of it in that way actually, but nothing to lose sort of thread. They'll seem to be there, doesn't it? Yeah? And so I met Cal Gosh like 14 years ago now I can't believe that when I was very single girl about town having lots of fun with my girlfriend, and it was Valentine's Day, and my close friend, christy kicking itself, which is African itself, yeah, we'd had our hair done that day. I remember thinking we weren't going to go out. It was one of those sort of old.
But then we got invited to the party last minute, so we thought we will go out, as it's Valentine's Day, and went to a pub in Parsons Green, got chatting to this handsome guy outside the pub. He had a sort of twinkle in his eye and a scar on his head. I was telling his friend about this story that he'd walked into a glass door on a photo shoot that day and I thought my ears sort of pricked up and I thought, oh, I wonder if he works in, you know, a world similar to me photography or something. And we got chatting, just sort of lighthearted to chat, and had a really nice little jokie conversation. I can't even really remember what we were talking about, probably walking into doors and things or something like that. And then my friend and I had to leave as we were going off to this party and that we walked down the street so a few paces, and I remember stopping and saying to her God, that guy was really nice, I really liked talking to him and we decided that I should write down my number and go back and get me to it because I had nothing to do. I did so. I rather embarrassly kind of scuttled back to the pub, at which point he was sat inside with a group of friends so embarrassing kind of had my head down and just went up and said I really enjoyed our conversation. Here's my number if you ever fancy going for a drink sometime and literally left and looked at him for his reaction.
I went down the street to join my friend and it was really kind of exciting thinking, oh well, you know he may never call, same with going for those jobs, they may never reply, but at least I did it for me. He could have been married or, you know, he could have been gay. Anything Went off to this party. We're having lots of fun late that evening. That's another story. And then my phone rang about midnight and picked it up and he said oh hi, it's the guy from the pub. So I was like, oh hi, and he said so when are we getting married? Because this is going to be a really good story to tell at our wedding.
And it is the weirdest, honestly, almost make me have goosebumps now. It was the strange situation because I turned to my friend and I told her. Obviously I thought I feel like I'm going to marry him and sure enough I did. Yeah, a few years later we got married and he told that story at our wedding. So that isn't a kind of yeah, a sort of inspiration to just go for it, because you've got nothing to lose. And I do always tell that story to single friends because it's rare now that we meet people out and about that you might like. Being so much in the dating world is online. When there is that spot or something, it's generally something special and something that you should take notice of and sit up, because that doesn't happen every day, could have easily. I mean, it is a sliding door Siding door.
In my number. Yeah, and that would have been it, and I would never have known that I'd have a whole life and children with him now.
0:34:03 - Speaker 1
Channeling you in a Barbie, clearly, at that point.
0:34:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, a bit of dinner, A bit of, yeah, nothing to lose. So yeah, just go for it. If you see somebody like, give them your number because they may never call. But then who knows? Things went quite quickly between us. We moved in together after six months and then he proposed you.
But I freaked out when he proposed and said I don't know and I think about. I said, can I think about it? And I always knew that that was kind of an okay thing to say because my parents, who've just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, so 50 years of marriage my mum said that to my dad when he proposed and I've known that story from when I was a little girl, because it's a lot to be asked. You know, in a moment are you going to do something for the rest of your life? I mean, when do you get asked that in any other part of your life? I suppose when you become a parent, that's forever. And getting pregnant, but no job is forever, no friendships forever, no houses forever. No, we make all these commitments that we know are we going to break at some point or might.
So it just felt absolutely massive and I just I needed to think about it. Well, I know it was a can I think about it? And I suppose I've always been that sort of thoughtful person. I might have always gone for things, but then I will think very carefully about whether they're right. So I just needed to get my head around it. I famously don't love surprises either, which he now knows. It's always better to keep me informed about things.
So I went away, thought about it. We were on holiday together in China and then we went to Hong Kong and it took me about three or four days, so I didn't sit on it forever, but we and his response. When I said, can I think about it, he said that is absolutely fine. Think, take all the time that you want. I'm just letting you know this is how I feel about you and I think we could build a really great life together, but there's no pressure.
So again, he took that pressure off, again, relating back to how I always felt with my parents, that the pressure wasn't there. You saw, when it isn't. You need to do that. Work around how you really feel. Oh, this is interesting. You know the self-awareness piece. Why am I feeling like this? Explore it a bit and then come to your own conclusion without worrying that you're going to give the wrong answer. He's great and we've grown. You know things have only got better, you know, over the years Because you do change as people. We're not the same people that we were when we met. You know that part. But fortunately we've grown together and we've both had very independent careers as well and I think that has actually helped us. I think we could do it at night, no matter if we were to work together, and he's often has to go away for periods of time for work and actually I think that is kind of great for us.
And it does help make things work. I love to see him busy and thriving and what he does, and he's my greatest champion as well, which is really really lucky.
0:37:13 - Speaker 1
And so if you hadn't always thought about getting married, had you always wanted children?
0:37:17 - Speaker 2
Then was one of those people that and then thought, when I had got married, oh, now I do want to try for children. And then it didn't happen for a number of years. Yeah, it took us a while to fall pregnant, but then I did eventually have my first. One was 38 and the second one I was 40. And but I'm now, in retrospect, very glad that that did happen when it did, because I did have the chance to build my career and I never take for granted becoming a mum and I again. Part of my moving to three days and hello was because I want to spend more time with my children. You know, at the ages of nine and seven they're really turning into these little people fast before my eyes. I was an older mum and I know that I need to take care of myself, to be around for them and to be fit and well and energised for them. Yeah, so I want to be a sprightly grandmother, you know, although I've already been 90, but it's not that.
0:38:16 - Speaker 1
Well, tanya just talked about that in her podcast with me because her son, her son, she had an abortion and she said you know if you are going to have a child, but plus you have to be vital for them. You know you don't want, because she had children a lot younger as well. So I don't want the girls to have had a better experience with me than the boys. So it makes you, I guess, quite mindful and respectful of your health.
0:38:39 - Speaker 2
I guess I'm focused and I never take them for granted. You know I'm so. They are my greatest achievement and the reason why I feel grateful every morning. You know I'm very grateful to have been able to become a mum so that they are a priority in my life, and the thinking that I did around work when I did move down to the three days, because I was pretty much exhausted, full time trying to do it all. It was not fun anymore and I did a lot of thinking around what success meant to me and it simply wasn't successful to have a job title if I felt I was failing in my number one role, which was being a mum, if I felt I was failing in my health and not being able to prioritize wellness. That wasn't success. So it totally rebranded what I think of as being successful.
0:39:34 - Speaker 1
Well, let's talk about that, because at anything is possible. You were our only virtual speaker, which actually was quite a lovely solution, because you had family priorities and, rather than you not be able to be a part of it, we made it work, which was it's people that I think you've led at the time. This is life it is, and.
0:39:53 - Speaker 2
I'm sorry to give you that heart attack last minute, but it was a situation where my husband wasn't around and I was like I just can't get up to Manchester, it's not. I desperately wanted to do it and you're right, we had to be agile. These things happen in life and I had to sort of not feel too cross as though I wasn't able to do it, because that was life, you know. But we could make it work and it actually worked really well. It did.
I had to get them out of the house for the hour that we spoke, so I wouldn't be interrupted, but it was fine.
0:40:23 - Speaker 1
Well, you were one of my favorite guests and what you talked about really resonated with me and I think that you know so in I know you're going to talk about it, but in lockdown you kind of had the time to think and to assess where you were. Can I just ask you, crying to having the children, how do you? Felt a sense of burnout and overwhelm or not? Were you happy to ride that wave when you were? When you did?
0:40:48 - Speaker 2
No, I was happy to ride that wave, although looking back, I am able to sort of pinpoint perhaps moments when it was tipping into overwhelm. My husband actually has this phrase where he calls it hyper-cluck mode, that I go into hyper-cluck mode and I actually get little red patches on my cheeks. Really it's like my body. And it's when I've gone up like ten gears and I'm off racing up here and I can do everything really fast and I expect everybody to be on that level with me. I even talk fast.
Yeah, and it's not, but I recognise that sign now and actually it's very good to give it a name sometimes. Yeah, so that you become aware of. Okay, I need to pair things back. I'm running on adrenaline again and in that fast-paced world of putting a magazine to press every week, you can't have an off day. I was also flying around to various events you know out in the evenings and literally running to get the train back so that I could put the kids to bed, and still you know I can't catch my breath and that you can't sustain that.
0:42:01 - Speaker 1
And also it sounds like first world problems, for I know from being in the events industry. It sounds ridiculous but you're always on, so it's not like a job where you can just turn it with no makeup and you're hair in a bun Like this factoring it sounds silly, but there's factoring all that in, isn't there?
0:42:15 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that's true, I'm holding sort of an image for a brand as well. I'm not conscious of that, and obviously during the pandemic, I was then sort of running a magazine from my bedroom at home the same room that I was going trying to sleep in at night, or not sleeping in at night because I was too wired to be able to run home learning downstairs, and it was absolute chaos. And I think probably it was the buildup of all of that, plus then this insane year that we had, which was the Jubilee and the Queen dying and just more news than ever. It felt that there was never a moment when you could be off. Yeah, the news alerts and the WhatsApps and the emails and the things would just happen. It felt like 24, seven. Yeah, it wasn't sacrosanct, and nor were your weekends, and there was just no boundaries and I found that difficult. So putting in some boundaries has been really valuable to me.
0:43:16 - Speaker 1
So, just to give the listeners context, you had this full time, obviously role at Hello. You were writing books as well, mother to two children, wife to husband, all of these things and you took time to reassess where you were at. Talk us through that process.
0:43:33 - Speaker 2
It was last year, so about halfway through the year towards the end, I just felt exhausted, like I was running on empty. I wasn't enjoying things the way that I had done, which was unlike me. I wasn't feeling positive. I was feeling quite anxious all the time that I was going into meetings that I wasn't prepared for. I didn't feel particularly supported in what I was doing because I probably wasn't able to communicate with people in the way that I had done in the past. I just felt really off and not myself. I was also sort of in the early stages of perimenopause as well, which I now look back and think that probably had a lot to do with it as well. We'd moved house, we were doing building work at home and just it was like the perfect storm of everything hitting at the same time. I just felt I can't do this anymore. It was actually a doctor who signed me off work period of time.
I'd never, ever, taken days off work. It just wasn't someone that ever got ill. I didn't even know what to do when I was signed off for a couple of weeks, but that poor was for me became induced for medical reasons, sort of physically because I had reached exhaustion point. But in an ideal world we want to prevent ourselves reaching that point, although I do look back, because I always kind of felt I would get through that because I am of a positive mindset, but I just needed to stop, to take my foot off the cast. I know that we don't all get that opportunity, so for some of us that pause might have to be condensed into a weekend or even an evening, but a chance to shut everything away or a holiday and really do some deep thinking about where you are in life now, what are your values now, what's really important to you.
I journaled.
I have a note on my phone entitled my Future, and it was in that that I wrote down my concept of what success meant to me. It was that deep thinking around where I was at now that made me see that this was sort of untenable really for the things that I really cared about for my family, you know, and that I was saying yes to too many things and I didn't have boundaries. So you know I am the one that lost all of those boundaries, so I could be the one that put them back into place and realised that we all have the capacity to bring about change. You have to do the work, though, around. You know how much do all the financial planning, so I had to work out with my husband how much do we need me to earn a month to be able to pay the mortgage and the lifestyle that we want, and within that framework, suddenly your confidence can grow, because there's no reason for you to feel unconfident about making that change, because you've got all the boxes to hit and you know where you're at.
So a chance to pause, I think, is just absolutely critical, which is why you know your conference and you know the ability to sort of take people out of that day to day with a note pad. You know, to actually do some planning, come away with a little life plan, which is why I think the coaching space as well is so valuable, because it's all about helping people achieve a growth mindset and to be on that path to reaching goals that you want. You have to understand what your goals are, and that's where I found the journaling really, really helpful, and I didn't sit down and write in a journal every night or anything like that, because we are on the go and even when I took those weeks off, it wasn't I could just sit and, you know, go for a long walk, so I was taking the kids to school and picking them up. It was really busy. So I just had decided to put the focus on what I wanted my next chapter to be and how I could reframe it into something positive.
0:47:48 - Speaker 1
I mean, it's just, it's so fantastic and I agree, I think that people can carve a weekend or an evening and you talk about when you write, you go to a hotel room with your Joe or your Joe loves candle and these little things, isn't it that you know in our workshop book and it's possible. One of the things we encourage people to do is write down a hundred things that make them happy, from like a pumpkin spire slaté, which is my, to this spell book, where I should know what are these little things that we can do for ourselves, and it's often the small things, isn't it?
0:48:18 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and it's regarded like the. Getting out in nature was a huge thing for me as well, going for walks and sometimes like not listening to things on my iPods because I quite often I'd have music on or podcast or but that's often noise Going out with just nothing and letting your thoughts wander. I would always come back and end up writing a whole load of things down in my journal because I'd be like, oh, I've got it. Yeah, at the physically writing out what does success mean to me, and then write a few sentences underneath that and it will be so telling, yeah, and I refer to that now. If ever I am having a war, blue day, or thoughts think, oh God, have I made the right decision? Where anxiety creeps and I look back at my future notes and I'm like, no, this is the part, yeah, what I want.
0:49:08 - Speaker 1
And did you going back to this kind of nothing, nothing to lose, did you approach hello with your proposal? Then this is what I want to reduce my days and this is what I think. Yeah, I did. And part of you that thought they might say, no, it's all or nothing.
0:49:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, but by that point I got the stage where I was like I can't go back to that. So I know that that's not working for me for certain. You know, yeah, and I will make it work. You know, if they don't agree to this, then it won't be the place for me, because I can't work somewhere that doesn't understand how I might be feeling, especially when we're in an, you know, aiming at an audience of midlife women who are probably, as I've since realized, having these conversations each other, or feeling, having these feelings in private and unable to voice them, and looking at people on Instagram or whatever, and thinking, oh, it's all, absolutely perfect and I'm the only one suffering.
0:50:01 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
0:50:02 - Speaker 2
I really think it's important that we bring these conversations to the fore and that we discuss it openly, and I'm working on a personal development strand for hello at the moment that's going to do exactly that. So I feel really lucky that actually I'm able to use my experience to inspire others and to normalize these conversations.
0:50:21 - Speaker 1
There might be a nonfiction book in there somewhere, I think it might I mean.
0:50:26 - Speaker 2
that is actually something that I am working on, but I'm still on that journey.
0:50:31 - Speaker 1
I remember hearing J Lo speak once and she really inspired me. She just turned 15. She talked about this being half time and I'm only halfway through and you know I'm like you. What you're? You think you're 47? Yeah, yeah, which you don't look, and I also feel that you are a hugely unminded. Exactly what we try and portray. Anything is possible, and so what does the next chapter look like for you, Rosie?
0:50:58 - Speaker 2
Well, interestingly, I did a LinkedIn post actually about I had lunch with Dame Joan Collins, as you do last week, someone that I've known for a long time during my work in this sort of area and she was telling me that she got the role of Alexis Carrington in Dynasty age 47. So exactly the year that I am now yeah, the year that the role that would then go on to define her career make her a huge international TV star. I'm not saying we have to be like Alexis she was a pretty ruthless character, not getting into physical fights with people but it made me think that we can all have our restart and our reset and our Alexis moment at any time of life, and I found that really inspiring. So, yeah, now I'm a strong believer that we're only just getting started, that we none of us know how long we've got, that we really only have got today. So it is our duty to be kind to ourselves and make that day count. All we've got is today and you've got nothing to lose by going for it.
0:52:12 - Speaker 1
And you're stepping into the coaching space as well as part of your new map, which is so exciting. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?
0:52:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, well, again as part of my sort of reset, career wise, was that I felt I needed to learn again.
You know, I felt that I was doing a job that I could do pretty well, but that I needed to add some other strands to my knowledge.
I wanted to learn again, so I signed up to do a coaching course. It was always an area that interested me and I really loved talking to people about all these subjects that we're talking about today and wondered what it would be like to get some sort of strong learnings behind that. So I signed up for a coaching course and nearly finished the diploma now, which is really exciting and I love doing it. It's been a virtual course I've done every Tuesday and I've looked forward to the sessions and they're intense, but the self awareness piece has been huge and which been just as valuable as the things that I've learned, and I'm really looking forward to putting in place all of these strategies and working with clients in the future and for it to feed into the work that I'm doing at Hello, which it really is, and all the conversations I'm having on my In a Good Place podcast very much sort of a coaching growth mindset, and it's definitely brought great value to those conversations, so it's really bolstering my experience as a journalist and I've loved it really, really have.
0:53:43 - Speaker 1
I can see from talking to you. Know you've had a group of friends for a long time and you've got this black book and trusted with you know the worlds and the celebrities. I can absolutely see why. I can see that everybody would want a Rosie Nixon in their lives. You just right, honestly like. You just radiate so much positivity and so genuine and in a space that I would have thought before I met you if I'd have thought about the chief and added to it hello, like it wouldn't have been you genuinely like, and so I think you know busting that myth of like the double wise, proud and all that kind of thing, like it's amazing Either face or one of the faces behind a brand.
And you know, before I ask you, what anything is possible means to you, if you'd said to me a year ago when I was, you know, working myself, setting up anything is possible as a podcast and as a conference, that Hello magazine for those of you don't know how to Hello to kindness panel at the conference. You know that is just such a wow moment for me to have such an iconic brand involved. So thank you so much for trusting us as well with that. So, as we come to a close, rosie. It's the anything is possible podcast. What does anything is possible mean to you?
0:54:54 - Speaker 2
That you've got one life, you've got to use it well and you've got to seize the day. So make today the day that you do that thing. You know, don't put anything off, Because you never know. Make today the day, yeah. Make today the day, yeah. I mean it really is all that we've got. And I'd also say the kindness thing, like learn to be compassionate to yourself. We all make mistakes, we all need to start over, but actually that could be a really positive thing for you. So when you hit a low, the only way is up. So that's the direction you've got to travel in.
0:55:30 - Speaker 1
Thank you so much. I hope that our audience gets to see what a special person you are Today. Thank you for being involved and I'll share the notes of bulk and listen to your amazing podcast as well.
0:55:42 - Speaker 2
Well, thanks so much, holly. I really enjoyed it, and keep doing what you're doing too, because it's really brilliant. Thank, you.