Trinny Woodall: How She Went From Drug Addict To $300m Business Empire!

I look at your skin, and I'm going to come over there-

Oh, no. Oh, f-

Then I go round here.

Trinny Woodall. Beauty queen of the screen.

Founder and CEO of Trinny London. One of the fastest growing companies in Europe. Have a great day. (instrumental music plays) I went through phases in my early 20s of not knowing who I was and turning to drugs. I went to rehab.

I heard that you'd been kicked out the first time for playing a porn video.

Yeah. It backfired. Rehab was a huge beginning of the change in my life, and I went into a whole new world.

Only a 20-year career in media. Trinny took a left turn in the makeup industry.

Here we are, $250 million later. Welcome to Trinny London.

A lot of people have this stigma that you can't start a business at 53.

Crap. Age is just a number. But you need energy, passion, perseverance. I sold my house, hardly earning any money, but I thought, "I'm never gonna give up." Ask yourself, how much do you want to be successful? What are you prepared to give up?

You strike me as someone that's incredibly driven. What was the cost?

Very big question. Probably Audley.

You had a partner who was unwell.

Yeah. And the thing you think will never happen, happens.

He died by suicide.

Yeah. Where do you get to in your brain when you are so worried about your children that you can convince yourself that the best thing is that you're not in their life anymore? Was there anything I could have done to stop it?

I think this is fascinating. I looked at the backend of our YouTube channel, and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. So, I have a favor to ask you. If you've ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content, if you're enjoying this episode right now, please can I ask a small favor? Please hit the subscribe button. It helps this channel more than I can explain, and I promise, if you do that, to return the favor, we will make this show better and better and better and better and better. That's a promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the subscribe button. Do we have a deal? (instrumental music plays) Trinny, you've got a very, um, distinct personality.

Yeah.

You, you, and you know that. You're well aware of that, right?

I know who I am.

But your, your personality is very... You're very straightforward-

Yeah.

... um, and all of these sort of defining traits of your personality, and I'm wondering if that was, when that personality was formed or when it started to, to emerge.

Things happen in your life that, that begin to, you know, fine-tune and define who you're going to be. And I went definitely through phases. You know, I went through phases in my late teens, early 20s, of, of turning to drugs just to not being happy with who I was, not, not feeling... not knowing who I was. Sometimes, people turn to drugs because they just don't know who they are and they want to... You know, they have an inner lack of confidence, and I definitely had an inner lack of confidence. And outwardly, when I talk to people and I look back at the time, they might say, "You just were this very mesmerizing person." And I just remember that internal sense of feeling so lost, so profoundly lost. And so when I got clean at 26, 27, that was a huge beginning of the change in my life. I was so relieved that my 20s were over. So relieved. Because it, you know, it was like that was the beginning of that, that, whew, wash that away. And that was a big moment for me to begin to work out who I was. That was the first moment probably.