Falling into the pocket of who I really am

For those of you who have told me you prefer reading over listening, the full transcript on of the One Precious Life podcast, with the fabulous Anna Jacobs episode is now available.

Anna is an inspiring colour maximalist, artist and designer with an incredible story. From escaping a cult, to being in a band, to finding self expression  through her creativity - and the courage it takes to leave things behind.

In this clip Anna shares the story behind painting her flying birds design – inspired after a terrible time in life, when she realised she had emerged out of it with joy and freedom by “falling into the pocket of who I really am”. What wonderful words. Full transcript below.

ONE PRECIOUS LIFE PODCAST WITH ANNA JACOBS

TRANSCRIPT

Vasha Hello. This is the One Precious Life podcast. I'm particularly interested in fabulous people living their precious lives, doing inspiring work in or alongside their day jobs. Today, we're meeting Anna Jacobs. Anna is an incredibly creative artist and all-round, vibrant woman who has been involved in everything from starting an a capella girls group called The Shrinking Violets to being in a cult, to a career as a homewares designer. With a huge following on Instagram as The Colour Doctor and some really insightful things to say about colour and its impact on our mood and life in general. We're going to hear about all of this. hello, Anna.

Anna Hello, what an amazing introduction. Thank you, Vasha.

Vasha So Anna, we met through our children 10 years ago. What were you doing at that point?

Anna 10 years ago, so I will have just been launching the very first samples of my homewares brand which was Lamps and Cushions and I was doing the first test samples at the Dulwich Artists Open House. It was a big successful  show and so then I'd gone on to actually officially launch my brand just a few months later at Olympia and suddenly then it was all launched.

Vasha And why did you choose that career path? How did you end up landing with that?

Anna You know, choose is actually a really interesting word to use because when I was thinking about it, I don't think I chose it as such. I would say it more emerged as I followed a thread through my life.

When I was younger, when I was actually still at school, my art teacher, when I was about 12, had said he thought I should earn my living through art. And I was like, really? Well, at that point, I probably still wanted to be a doctor, in fact. That had been one of my big passions.

And then I did A-level art, and then my A-level art teacher also said I should go to art college and make my career through art. And I was, just not feeling it. I obviously was good at drawing. That was the main thing. But I was academic. So I actually, ended up doing an academic career.

And at a certain point when I was 40... I had ended up just not being actually that creative, especially not in terms of art. So it was more at a point that I'd got just fed up and I just felt I really, really need to express this somehow and I just thought, at this point, I have young children. If I don't do it now, then I am never going to do it. This is the moment. You know, in your 40s, it's often thought of as you start your life again at 40. In fact, I think that's probably now when you're 50.

I was then exploring different creative options.  So I did lots of short courses. I did a portrait photography course at City Lit. I did a surface pattern design course at Central St. Martins. I did a painting course at Camberwell. I did an interior styling course at Chelsea.

I ended up thinking, in fact, I was going to be an interior designer because I'd always been passionate about sort of making lovely, beautiful interiors around me. I then also got a job teaching Chelsea College of Arts. And all of these things started to emerge. But out of all of that, it suddenly emerged that actually I was painting. The gallery owner who gave me my first show of paintings said ‘one of those would make a great lampshade’. So then it took me two years to work out how to make a lampshade. And then suddenly there I was starting to design homeware. So it emerged, by following a thread that I needed to express in myself rather than me going, ‘oh, right, that's what I'm going to do’. Because I didn't actually realise it was even a possible career for me. Is that a very long-winded answer to a short question?

Vasha that makes sense. And I remember when at that time you were going through, you'd gone through quite a lot of personal change, hadn't you? You were a single mum by that point. You had two young children and you were trying to find a way to, keep your head above water.

Anna Yes, absolutely. So at that point, when I said I was 40, I had actually been working as head of marketing and business development in a corporate law firm for eight years. And, it was a great job. I was earning, a really good salary. But I got to this point where I suddenly realised I have this beautiful glass office overlooking the Barbican.

But essentially, my life is living in a glass box in front of a computer, right? that is like 80 to 90 percent of my working hours I'm barely seeing my son and I was you know it was shortly to become pregnant my second and I just thought this is just not a life.

Actually it's interesting the title of your podcast One Precious Life - that's really what I thought at that moment, I thought this is it. This is not a life. So that is when I really started to get that creative urge. Because I just thought I have to, it was almost like... An intensity of need.

 I remember on the last day when I was walking into my law firm, before I'd actually resigned, this was just before I was about to resign, I got off the station at Moorgate and I was walking across towards the Barbican near where my office was. And every cell in my being was trying to walk back the opposite way.

 I was having to force myself to put one foot in front of the other because I knew it was so wrong.  It was very clear. But then by the time I left and shortly after I left, I actually unexpectedly became a single parent. Then suddenly at the age of 41 with a nine month old baby and a toddler for a whole variety of reasons. I'd then, of course, left my job, but I'd also lost the house I owned. I'd lost all my money. And I think it's pretty accurate to say I was destitute. You know, at one point I was kind of 24 hours away from living in a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge and that is not an exaggeration. And so at the point where I thought, well, you know, finally I could now start to earn money because at the beginning it was pure survival. I was on £24 a week. I was ended up in this little flat. I realised I could start earning money when my oldest started school. And then, my impetus, and this is the other side of following the thread, was I needed to find a way to work and earn money that kept me flexible, not get me into the corporate trap that I'd been before so that I could see my children, but also be creative. And that's when all of the sort of artistic, various creative ideas started to emerge. Then it started to happen. But it was really, really difficult at the beginning.

Vasha When I first saw your art was you were doing these beautiful birds.

Anna the reason for the birds was because at that point where, it had all been a bit of a disaster, in fact, and I had lost everything. But this woman in a gallery in Dulwich, Jane Newbury, she had been talking to me and she just said, oh, I want to offer you a solo show of paintings. And I was like... Okay. And because I'd also suddenly been offered a teaching job at Chelsea at the same time, and I'd been offered my first interior design job, professional interior design job, I ended up only having three weeks to paint this show. So I had to do something... fast and I had to do something that I felt really had meaning because this was going to be the beginning moment of my whole new career in life so when I was thinking about everything, I thought even though this has been an absolute disaster…

I'd gone through a really really tough time and I'd lost everything.  I realised that in fact I'd been left with the two things that I'd always wanted most in life which were children and creativity And so I just suddenly thought, I actually feel really happy. And I suddenly felt free and there was a real sense of bubbling joy inside me. So the birds represented that sense of freedom.

That's why they were very specifically flying at the beginning. So they were flying birds with a sense of purpose and freedom. And, they represented suddenly feeling as though I'd fallen into the pocket of who I really am. So it really felt right.

It's like when you hear somebody describing somebody singing and they just fall into the pocket of that note and the vibrations that's how I felt and then the colour of the birds really represented that bright joy so they were bright colours they were flying with intense and purpose and that really represented the moment I was at in my life.

Vasha They're stunningly beautiful and so iconic and I remember it really captured my eye, I'd see them around and I sort of knew who you were but I didn't quite know you that well.  I'd go to people's houses and I had one friend who'd bought your lampshade and I increasingly kept seeing your art around and I was like, wow. I loved hearing the story behind that that, because it's really powerful these birds taking off and going on this exciting journey somewhere.

Anna I suddenly noticed that, the last couple of collections I've painted over the last couple of years, I've noticed all of the birds have started coming to rest on branches. They're not flying anymore. They might think that's a negative thing, but actually, I then realised that, you know, I've been with my new partner for the last three years and it's an amazing, lovely relationship and I really feel as though my life has settled now and completely subconsciously my birds have started to settle too on their branches and they're sort of at peace. So it's just really interesting how what comes out of you creatively reflects or can reflect where you are in your life. I just think that's fascinating.

Vasha Exactly. And during that time that you started creating your homewares business, you were designing. So it was lampshades, it was duvet covers, it was paintings, it was all sorts. And you started marketing them, didn't you, in different ways?

Anna so it started off, at the trade show at Olympia. And that's a really big, important thing because that's when the wholesale buyers come. And, you know, the funny thing is, is I never intended to be manufacturing my lamp bases, which have become one of my lead products. So they're these sort of droplet-shaped glass lamp bases with coloured flexors in them. And the way that came about was because at that very first trade show I needed a lamp base to display my lamp shades on and I wanted something that was very simple and contemporary to show that they had a contemporary context but that also didn't take away from the shade which is why I wanted something glass - but I also wanted something that connected to them the shade which was the coloured flex which reflected the colour in the shade. So I went to Ikea and I found these glass lamp bases with white plastic flex, I ripped out the flex literally broke the tops off them found some coloured flex off eBay and then rewired them myself and they were just props. Then what started happening was buyers from big shops started coming by and saying ‘I love these, I want to order this one and three of that and five of the blue ones’ and I'd be going ‘no no they're just props they're not actual products’.

And then one of the other stall owners came to me. She said, ‘Anna, you've got to launch it’. And Barbara Chandler of the Evening Standard said, ‘you must manufacture these under your own name’. So then they said, what you need to do is when a buyer comes and wants to order them, you say, oh yes, this is just the prototype for my new product and they'll be ready in three months time. So with a big like lump and swallow, when the next big buyer came and they said they wanted five of this and eight of that, I said, ‘yes, this is the prototype of my new product. I can deliver them to you in 12 weeks and yes, I'll take your order’. And then I got to the end of the show and I was like, I have no idea about glass I have no idea about electrics I have no idea about manufacturing and suddenly of course I needed to actually design my own lamp base.

So then it was a rush around the country trying to find a glass works, trying to work out how you structure a lamp base, and I came up with this droplet design because it just was really flowing and was very, very simple and somehow sort of represented that fluidity and liquid that I was feeling in my life in terms of creativity and freedom. So I ended up finding this amazing small family glassworks in Langham in Norfolk. and they manufactured it and then suddenly that's how the lamp bases came about, so they started being marketed in fact at that show, before I’d even manufactured them and then about six months later Heals picked them up, and they were being sold in Heals. Then it was a matter of marketing them through a mailing list. I started marketing them through social media and the word just started getting out really through publicity.

Vasha And then so your Instagram following started growing, didn't it?

Anna Yes. But I suppose the interesting thing about my Instagram following was when I was trying to sell my product and marketing, you know, specifically marketing my product on Instagram, It was getting a little bit of traction, but not really. And so I started sort of doing a bit of research and really thinking about it. And I realised that, when you're marketing, you always think, well, what are the things that are stopping a customer buying? What are the obstacles to a customer buying from you?

And one of the obstacles that would stop customers buying from me was people's fear of colour. And because my products are very colourful and, you know, people worry about putting a lot of colour in their homes and, you know, they're not confident. A lot of people aren't confident using colour.

So I thought rather than selling my product, I need to start... I suppose educating people or demonstrating to people how you can create a colourful home and showing them the context in which they could buy the products. So I started first of all using my home as the shoot location for new collections and then that just started to emerge into me carrying on decorating the rest of my rental flat and it was quite a big thing being a rental because my landlord had given me permission but I don't think he was quite aware of what he was getting himself into and so as I started decorating in all these beautiful bright colours that's where my instagram started to take off which I found was really interesting.

Because it wasn't me selling it was just me being who I was, and that's what people started to follow and then of course as that grows then people hear about you and then people buy the product because they want to find out more about what you're doing and they come across you rather than me really kind of pushing it to people. So I thought that was quite interesting in terms of marketing.

Vasha  so you created a really authentic brand that was about you, you weren't trying to necessarily create a brand, you wanted to show who you were and it was a very personal story about your home - and I remember during lockdown, because I was on Zoom calls so much and I had my staircase in the background. I think I messaged you. I was obsessed with your beautiful blue staircase. And you hadn't painted it, had you? You put those stick on things, didn't you?

Anna Yes, yes, exactly. So I'd painted the mural at the side. and I'd had a really strong vision of that and that was actually inspired by the work of another artist I'd seen on Instagram and I had contacted her and said look would you mind if I used your artwork as an inspiration for a mural and she said ‘yes that's fine you know just credit me where you can’.

So that's where the start of that. And then I wanted to paint the stairs, but my landlord had said there was one limit to what he would let me do, which was he didn't want me to paint anything that had been stripped wood because it had taken him so long to strip it.

So I it was actually Coco my daughter who originally had the idea. I found some textured wood wallpaper and then I painted it in the bright blue the same colour as in the mural and then measured the stair rises and cut them to size and then stuck them on which meant that I could peel it off. So because it was wood textured wallpaper, you really couldn't tell the difference as to whether it was real or stuck on. And actually, you'll actually be able to even see a video on my Instagram now of me peeling them off when I moved out of my rental, which is very sad.

Vasha I remember I came round to see you just as you were leaving and you had a front garden sale. Because I had loved your Chinese tree design. Someone had given me your Chinese tree designed birthday card and I had it on my fridge. And I had a little alcove that I really wanted to do something with it. I remember every time you'd put something on Instagram, you were selling your duvets and I was like, could I hang the duvet? Would that fit? And then I came to your sale and you had one of the Chinese tree design panels from your shop at Heals there. I managed to fit it in my friend's car - and it now looks very beautiful in my little alcove.

But just back to that, the shop at Heals. So from there you got the pop-up shop at Heals and your products looked absolutely stunning, you had, what were the products that you had in the shop?

Anna So I had all the products actually. So it was that little space which no longer exists on Tottenham Court Road between Heals and Habitat. And it was this little shop space. So I had greeting cards, lampshades, lamp bases, cushions, duvet covers. I even had a bed outside the shop all dressed up as bed which actually my daughter sometimes used to come back from school and sleep in there was like a living art piece, and I had wallpaper, t-shirts, I had at one point as well. so it was a very full little shop.

Vasha but it was a tough time, wasn't it? Because they were doing all of that building works on Tottenham Court Road. It could have been an amazing opportunity, but it was just such bad timing, wasn't it?

Anna It was really, really bad timing. I mean, the first 10 days, the first couple of weeks were super successful. And apparently, according to the Heals board, I broke all the records for sales in that space. So I really know it could have been successful. But first of all, the snow came, I think it was 2018. You know, we don't often get snow in London now, but suddenly we had weeks of really heavy snow. So there was nobody there. You know, I was standing around, the staff of Habitat, Heals, Paperchase. We were all standing around doing nothing because there was nobody there. And then the snow finally stopped and we went, hooray! And then we had a heat wave and it was the World Cup and England were doing really well, which was marvellous. But it meant they kept having England matches on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, which are the big shopping, big retail days. So then it was really difficult because people weren't shopping.

And then we thought, finally, we're getting to the end of that. September came and then they dug up Tottenham Court Road for two months. And, you know, a lot of it was blocked off again. People weren't shopping. And to be honest, I really tried to keep going, but it was really, really tough, and I was starting to lose money. Because, you know, I still had to pay, to what all intents and purposes is rent for the space. And what finally did it for me was I got to doing the Christmas rota and all my young retail staff had already booked to go on holiday over Christmas and I suddenly realised I was going to be sitting there with my two young children on my own in the cold on Christmas eve on boxing day, on new year's eve and I just thought this is not what I gave up my corporate career for this.  I've just almost somehow without realising it got myself into the same situation that I had not enjoyed. So I decided to close the shop there and then pretty much, even before Christmas, I closed it in November. And, you know, I knew it was the right decision.

It was really hard because I'd invested so much and it was such a dream. But sometimes, again, it's those moments where you suddenly realise what actually is important here. My children don't want to spend all their time living in a shop. But interestingly despite that I was talking to my daughter Coco on the way to school this morning she went ‘oh I wish you'd open a shop again, Mum, because I loved that shop. I loved hanging out in Heals’. But, you know, it's easy to say that in retrospect. And I knew it was the right thing to do. I closed it down. I kind of cut my losses, really.

I retreated back to my flat and decided just to concentrate selling online for a while, just to ease off that pressure and try and, you know, I ended up with a huge amount of debt that I'd had to take out emergency loans for. So, it was quite a nail-biting time. After that, for I would say a good year after that, until lockdown happened.

Literally, I remember there was one moment where I was approximately 60 seconds away from potentially going bankrupt because I had no money. I had no way of paying the debts. I remember I was walking from my flat to Sainsbury's. Almost it was like a sort of weird sort of shock situation where I just thought my whole life is about to change, I'm about to lose everything again. As I was walking into Sainsbury's my phone went and a really big Shopify customer came in and placed an order for a brand of products on my website, and I was like ‘that is amazing’ they paid by paypal which meant I could transfer the money straight into my business- and it saved my business. There have been a few moments like that where it's on a thread, it's on a dime and it's just saved it, and that happened a few times so you know god it's a roller coaster doing a business.

Vasha And how about going through COVID? Did that change? What happened to your business then?

Anna Well, that was really interesting, actually, because, of course, I thought, as everybody thought, it was going to be, you know, a shocker for business. And we were all just trying to survive, stay alive, let alone, you know, run business and things. So at that point, I didn't have the shop anymore because that really, I think that would have done it for me. I'd given it up a good sort of six months before COVID. So what happened at the beginning of COVID was I had an enormous amount of stock because I'd had to de-stock the shop sitting in this warehouse and I couldn't negotiate any lower charges on the warehouse. So I was like. I can't sell it I'm just going to lose all of this money again so I thought well I am going to have to try and sell it and market it to my mailing list. And I felt really worried about it because I thought people were going to think that I was just trying to make money in the midst of this disaster and that it might really backfire and people would hate me for it. But I thought, you know what I have no choice, I've got to somehow survive with my children. Nobody else is going to help me survive. So with my heart in my mouth, I sent the first email and said, look, I've got all of this stock. I'm going to do a really big sale. I need to empty my warehouse. You know, would you like to buy it? And I honestly, that first 24 hours. So many people bought stuff. It was absolutely extraordinary.

I sold so much in that first couple of weeks of COVID. And it wasn't just that, but I got so many emails from people. And this is what really surprised me, saying, ‘well done, Anna. This is amazing that you're keeping going. We really want to support you. We really want to buy this stuff. And we're all locked at home. So we would really love to, you know, cheer up our homes that we're going to have to be staying in for so long with your lovely, bright, colourful products’. And I was like, wow, I really wasn't expecting that reaction.

I've been so scared doing it. And so I suppose what was lovely about it was it became almost a mutual support system because it was helping me survive with my kids. And at the same time, it seemed to be bringing joy to the people who are buying it and helping them survive, I suppose, emotionally in their home. So it was a very lovely symbiotic relationship. So in fact... Lockdown for me at first was great, but then, and this is what so many retailers found in lockdown, who were doing comfy clothing or interiors, which is what everybody was buying. Then of course we all started running out of product. And then it became impossible to manufacture because then my workshops all had to close down. And, all of the distribution routes started to shut down. We couldn't import. So then it became really bad because then once I sold everything, I had nothing else to sell and I couldn't make anything else to sell.

So that became a little harder. I still managed to able to sell prints, but I did sell enough at the beginning to keep going for a while for a good while. And again, then at a certain point, I was really, you know, it was teetering on the brink. So then what I started to do as lockdown started to ease and come out and we were able to open again, it was still really hard because then I had no capital left to actually buy more stock in - as everything started opening, so it's such a balance when you're running a business.  I realised I needed to diversify and find different ways of earning money so I did start my online course for colour, which I've just put on pause for a while at the moment, which meant that people could go online and learn about colour, which is what I used to teach at Chelsea and give talks about Ideal Home Show and Grand Designs Live.

But I also started then renting out my flat out for location shoots. And that's because somebody had spotted me, an agency, Peerspace, had spotted me on Instagram and asked if I wanted to do it. And I thought, wow, that could be great. And that helped me survive by doing that location work, which was absolutely brilliant. And also because my Instagram had grown so much, then people miraculously started offering, you know, to pay me to do various influencer things on Instagram.

Suddenly, all of that helped me survive while my business was really struggling. And I think that's what's really important when you're on your own and you're being an entrepreneur and you've got a creative career is sometimes you need to have this slightly diversified portfolio to your business, so that as one goes down, one can come up. And that's what's helped me survive, really.

Vasha exactly. It's interesting that a lot of people I've talked to during this podcast saying to be an entrepreneur, you do need a certain mindset and it's not for everyone. And you've obviously got real resilience to kind of kept going and managing to pivot through these changes.

Anna You do. I have to say you do really need grit. I’m really fascinated always by entrepreneurs stories and I read quite a lot of these books ,and one thing that always really struck me was the difference between the ones that were really successful and the ones that failed - is how you respond in that moment of complete disaster. When you just want to give up, and every moment there have been so many times when it's been so shockingly bad, and I’ve just thought I just can't do this anymore - but I’ve wanted to give up but I’ve just not done it, because  I do have a really strong belief in my brand. I am really convinced it can be really big and successful. I’ve put so much work into it. My kids have sacrificed a lot for it. I’ve sacrificed a lot for it. I just think I am really committed to this.  I’m really going to keep going - but they're the dark times and you end up just having to think ‘I just have to get through one more day ‘. Sometimes the other side of it is when you feel ill or you feel terrible as well, you know it's not just the business being bad  - it's you feeling terrible and then my strategy is I just think all I’ve got to do is work for 15 more minutes and then I'll give myself a break.

And, it's that tenacity to hold on, that is the only way I think you can survive.

Vasha And what about your background? So you grew up in London. Were your family entrepreneurially minded?

Anna Well, that is a very interesting question. Now, am I going to say this? Yes and no. So what I could say is my dad - entrepreneurially minded yes but in a slightly different type of way in that yes he wanted to make money, but he was actually a burglar so he did it in a different way so he was making money from being a kid he, he was a cat burglar in Glasgow. So actually he already was convicted with a two-year suspended sentence for burglary by the time he was 14. He was then stealing cars. He was in youth detention at 16. He was a real wheeler dealer. He was in gangs in Glasgow. And so what's interesting about that, and it's similar to now, he grew up in real poverty in Glasgow. And so for young people, it really is, you need to make money. You want to make money. And, it's similar now. And so his entrepreneurship came in that form, but also he always haggled and did deals. So he taught us. Always to do a deal.

He has recently passed, so he couldn't be convicted, but he hasn't actually done anything illegal in his adult life. But he did really haggle.

So, for example, in Harrods, God knows what he was doing in Harrods. He actually got escorted out by security for trying to bargain them down on a sofa because he just he couldn't buy anything without trying to do a deal on it. So, I suppose, if anything, that's probably where it came from.

Vasha And what did he end up doing? Because he was quite successful in life, wasn't he?

Anna He was. I mean, remarkably, despite his beginning, he got himself to medical school and he became a doctor and he became a consultant psychiatrist and he did specialise, in looking after children, particularly teenagers who'd had a really rough time and were emotionally troubled.

He worked as a resident psychiatrist in a lot of the children's homes in South London, for example. And I have to say, he was such an inspiration to me, because of that sort of grit and that tenacity to hold on. I just think, wow. If he could have gone through all of that and he had a really rough childhood, which I won't go into for various reasons here. But if he could get through all of that and turn it around and then have a successful career and give back in that way by helping children who'd been in a similar situation to him. I just think is actually remarkable and really amazing. And it's one of the reasons why I think I have no reason to give up. If he can do it, I can do it.

Vasha And your mum also played a big part in that, didn't she?

Anna Oh, yes. My mum was amazing through the whole thing. She had a very different type of career and she had a very different background. And she had tough times. Her dad died when she was 12. So, it was pretty tough on her and her mum and her brother.

But so she was an actor. And it's hard for my mum because she was just on the brink of success when I came along by slight accident, she was married and it was all fine she just wasn't intending to have a baby quite that early and so really she ended up giving up her acting career because the children came along. But she was amazing as well because she worked so hard, with my dad too. They actually at first they didn't really have much money, so we used to live in a house growing up with  dozens of lodgers in it, everywhere from Venezuela and Iran. So some of them would come over as refugees or they were here wanting to make a living.

We had a couple of young trainee air force pilots. So our house was constantly full of... People playing guitars. I mean, it was chaos all the time. And I thought when I was little, they were really old. But actually, you know, when we talked to my mum later, we realised they were between, mostly between the age of about 17 and 26. So it was a very loud household. My mom was looking after all the kids. She was making breakfast for all these hundreds of other people all the time. It was chaos. She was working. And I mean, just her ability to survive and keep going with all of that, again, is amazing, really.

Vasha And then when you went to university, I remember when I first met you, you told me you were in an a capella girls group, which I was absolutely fascinated by.

Anna So when I was at Bristol university and I was studying classics but in fact I ended up most of my time doing drama and music and singing and things so I had auditioned for this really well-known and long-established a capella band called the Smoking Bristols which was an all-female group.

And then when we all ended up leaving university. We didn't want to give up the singing. We just wanted to carry on with it. So we decided to start this new a capella band, just five of us, called The Shrinking Violets. And we were gigging a lot in Bristol.

So we did quite a lot of cable TV. We ended up singing backing vocals for and supporting a duo, some people might remember called Robson and Jerome, who'd come out of Soldier Soldier. Their A&R guy was Simon Cowell. So we were working a lot with Simon. One amazing thing we did was Robson and Jerome wanted us to sing backing vocals on one of their songs on their first album. Simon was really, oh, ‘I don't know if these girls could do it’. He hadn't really heard us sing yet. So he brought us into Stock and Aitken Studios in, was it Bermondsey. I think it was.

We were in the foyer and we thought it was going to be a little bit more formal. So then Simon walks in and  us just sitting there in the foyer, he said, ‘right, okay, okay, girls, sing for me’. So we stood up and actually Sally, one of our band members, who's brilliant at arranging, she'd arranged four-part harmonies, we were four of us then, for one of the songs, I think it was Up On The Roof. And so he said, ‘sing that to me’. So we just sang it standing there in the foyer and he went, ‘great, go in and record’.

Suddenly he just sent us straight in to record with Stock and Aitken. Waterman had gone by then, which was amazing. So then we ended up singing on their number one album. Which at the time when it was released was the fastest selling albums of all time. It quickly got overtaken by other things, it was amazing. And then we gigged a lot in London. Simon wouldn't let us go on to Top of the Pops, much to our deep chagrin. But it was all really fun.

Vasha I remember you saying that at that time, you were sort of a kind of cool, a capella girls group, but they were trying to make you wear the high heels and the mini skirts. And you you were like, no, that's not us. We're not that group.

Anna Yes, it was the early 90s, so we were much more cut-off jeans and DM boots , we weren't all that sort of polished, girly-girly thing. But whenever we did a gig, these managers would come up to us and say, ‘girls, you're so brilliant. You're going to get on this rollercoaster of fame. And when you're on it, you won't be able to get off. I want you to record with this person and that person’. And we'd be going, ‘right, yeah’. They said, ‘but we need to get you dressed up. And so we want you in miniskirts, high heels’. And we were going, ‘no, we just didn't want to project that kind of image’. Finally, we got a manager who wants to take us on. And on our way to signing the management contract, we discovered he was representing female mud wrestlers in the back of a porn magazine. Don't ask me how we discovered that. And we sat down at the meeting to sign and we said to him, ‘we're not signing’. And he was so annoyed. So we ended up not signing this management contract and we just wanted to be who we were.

Then there was a time where we were going, with Simon and Robson and Jerome to do a gig in Jersey and we just landed at the airport and there was a TV in the room where we were waiting to be picked up by the cars. And on the TV came the Spice Girls singing, ‘I tell you what I want, what I really, really want’. And we were like, ‘oh, that should have been us’. I mean, it was literally all at the same time. And, of course we just thought that would have been the way to do it, because they were all had their different characters. It wasn't just all girly girly, but it was cool and funky and girl power. And if we'd had bigger vision, maybe we could have done something similar, but it was, it was of that time.

We were still glad that we stuck to what we wanted to do. It was just, the whole thing was amazing.

Vasha The Spice Girls were amazing when they burst out on that video and getting off that bus. I was living in Argentina then. I remember watching it on MTV going, ‘who are these girls? They're amazing’. It was quite life-changing it was for so many people.

So then from there you ended up living in the US for a while didn't you?

Anna yes I started getting interested in this spiritual teacher, with my boyfriend at the time, and he was based in America but he had centres all around the world and it was interesting because you get drawn in more and more.

In retrospect, I discovered and realised it was actually a cult, but I didn't realise that at the time. I didn't know really what it was. Again, it's about following threads, isn't it? You sort of follow something you're interested in.

And it was interesting because having been brought up in a cult, which was based on an Eastern spirituality, where, we learnt Sanskrit instead of French and Spanish or whatever people learn in normal schools, We learned ancient Indian mathematics, Vedic mathematics instead of normal mathematics. We were initiated into transcendental meditation when we were 10. So it's very much Eastern philosophy. When I was introduced to this other spiritual teacher who was also based in a kind of Eastern Indian tradition, it felt a little bit like coming home to me. After being brought up in a cult from the ages of 5 to 15, I was really out of society. We weren't allowed to listen to pop music or read any other books other than the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Ramayana. My mum and dad were a little bit lax, so they let us occasionally read a little bit of Enid Blyton, which was a lifesaver.

But generally, I felt very odd and outside normal society, and I don't have as many cultural references as other people do. So, I always felt out of place so my boyfriend came across the spiritual teacher, and he introduced me, it did feel a little bit like coming home, it felt familiar so I thought oh I kind of know where I am, I'm in this which was one of the things that helped me sort of draw me in I suppose.

Vasha and then the school that you're going to was a cult at the time? And probably neither had your parents, I would have thought. They just thought it was an Eastern philosophy that they were following.

Anna Yes, certainly at the time when we were there, no, they didn't. It was a philosophy school. But when I was at that school... We wouldn't admit that it was a cult, but it was exposed by two journalists from the Evening Standard as being a cult. And in fact they did write a book about it while we were still at school in the mid 80s. So it was being exposed as a cult. But, you know, we would all go, ‘we're not a cult’. And that was exactly the same. I have cult number one, cult number two. And it's a very similar story with both.

And, you know, this cult number two, as I got more and more involved and I became a formally committed student, which you have to go through various processes and becoming a formally committed student is a little bit like being a nun or a monk, for example. So during that process I got into trouble for pride or ego. I can't even remember what it was. So literally overnight I was in our London centre having been meditating for hours and our spiritual teacher rang from America and said ‘right Anna. I want you to get on the next plane to Massachusetts’, which was the big centre there, ‘and you need to stay here for as long as you're going to stay’. So I got on this plane, had to leave my boyfriend behind, and I was on a plane the next morning. And I was met at the airport by four of the women. We were very much divided into men and women. And they greeted me and said, ‘right, you're not allowed to talk’.

And at that moment, I was put into a practice of silence, which was called Mona. So I wasn't allowed to say anything. And it wasn't just about not speaking. I wasn't also allowed to express anything.

And the purpose of the practice was to become nobody and to recede into the background because he felt I was always kind of in the foreground of everything that was happening. So he felt I needed to become more humble and invisible, I suppose.

I ended up being in silence for nine months in this big compound in Massachusetts. It was in the hills of Massachusetts. And during that whole period, I was on the punishment routine. This is my new name for it.

All of us who sort of messed up in some way were on this thing, it was called being on retreat. So every morning at 4.30am, I had to get up in the morning, do 600 full prostrations, which is like a sun salute. It takes about two and a half hours. Oh my it's so it's so hard, it's so painful every single millimetre of muscle in your body hurts, when you first start your hands bleed, your knees bleed, but as you get used to it. So that was for like two and a half hours every morning ,then we meditate for four and a half hours and then do an hour and a half's mala practice and then another hours of meditation and in between that we've been working on the grounds or in the kitchens. Then we'd have women's meetings in the evening.

We'd go to bed really late. And then four and a half hours later, practically, we'd be up again doing the same thing. And through all of that, I was in silence. So I also couldn't talk to anybody. Probably the toughest thing I did was, again, shortly after I arrived. My spiritual teacher called me into his office. And I was just dressed in a polo-neck jumper, leggings. And he said, ‘right, I want you to go with one of the women down to the lake and you need to do 600 full immersion prostrations in the lake. chanting this chant called Pride’.

I can't remember it anymore, but Pride is vicious. So a woman came, took me down. This was like September, October. In the Massachusetts hills. It was really cold. The water was super, super cold. She put me in the lake and left me. And you go down, bend your knees, get your head fully underwater, and then come up again, just in the clothes I was dressed in. With no preparation. I was really skinny by this stage as well. And I had to do 600 of those. And at a certain point, I started going into hypothermia and I'd never been in hypothermia before, but I could feel it because my, I started forgetting the words, even though I'd said them literally hundreds of times before. My jaw locked, my brain started swimming, my muscles started going. I started falling into the water. I couldn't stay upright. And I really thought, I think I might actually die in here. And I just didn't know what to do. I started getting a bit desperate, but I was being pulled between wanting to survive and stay alive, but also thinking, but I have to finish the practice. I have to be obedient to my teacher.

It shows how far I was gone. I then went sort of semi unconscious. And I don't really remember, I vaguely remember somebody pulling me out of the water, but I don't really remember what happened after that.

It  was only 20 years later that one of the other women actually asked me out for lunch. And she said, ‘I'm really sorry, I want to apologise to you, Anna, because, you know, it's taken me 20 years to say this to you. But I was the one who found you in the water, I pulled you out, you were pretty much unconscious, you were blue. And you couldn't speak. And so I took you back to the house’ and she called one of the doctors who was a very high up student in this community and said, ‘Anna's gone into hypothermia. I think we need to take her to the hospital’.

And the teacher, the student was going, ‘no. You're not trusting the teacher. You can't take her to hospital. What will be, what will be’. And so this poor woman, this lovely woman, she was like really worried. So she said, ‘can you at least tell me what to do for her in hypothermia’?

Again, she was shouted at. And so she ended up trying to just work it out herself. And she stripped me and put me in this hot bath. I don't remember any of this, by the way, which of course is one of the most dangerous things you can do to somebody in hypothermia, unbeknownst to her. And I came to in the bath with my arms and legs spasming everywhere. And I had no idea what had happened. And, you know, it started to come back to me, but I couldn't get control of my body. The hot water on, you know, on top of the freezing cold had sort of put me into spasms.

And then I just thought, if I've been so bad that if I am left disabled like this, with no control of my body for the rest of my life, then that is suitable punishment for my lack of humility to the world. And I thought, now I think about that and I think luckily, I survived it. I regained control of my body and I fell asleep and it's fine. But it was really, really full on. And so I was in America then in the end for about a year.

Vasha And what was the turning point that you realised you had to get out of there?

Anna I ended up coming back to London as a big success from the retreat. And I did learn a lot and maybe that was a whole other conversation. But then I fell again shortly afterwards, was sent back to America again in disgrace. And actually this time I was sent off the property.

It was a communal, it was a compound where we all lived communally. And I was sent off with two other women who had also been very high up. And we were living in this kind of doss house. It was sharing a kitchen with drunks and homeless people. We had no money. We were living on chocolate bars. It was really, really rough. But the purpose of us being together was we were trying to encourage each other and pull each other up. to rejoin back into the community and be allowed to be go back in. So it was really interesting being out of that context we threw all of the rule books as it were, out the window.

We were just really together as three women and there was this one particular moment where we were talking and we were we'd completely melted into each other we'd let go of our own sort of personal wants and we were just so supportive of each other  - and in that moment it was beautiful it was incredible it was an amazing moment between us. I just thought ‘wow this is it, this is it, this actually is the freedom and the beauty of humanity and being with people’. And I came to that and I thought, ‘right, so now this is the moment where I should try and find my way back to my spiritual teacher and beg him for forgiveness’.

What we had to do is, like, spend hundreds of pounds of flowers. We literally then had to prostrate up paths, bow to him, give him honours, write him letters. And I thought, ‘no. I can't do that anymore that's not what it's about’. I knew in that moment that I would never be free and I’d never be free as a woman while I was under the power and the control of this man, this male teacher. It was like a black and white thing of realisation to me, and it came on the back of a week beforehand. He'd called me in and he'd said to me, ‘you know what, Anna? If you leave, your boyfriend's going to leave you. You're going to be destitute. You're never going to earn any money. You're going to be living with your parents. Your whole life is going to be a disaster forevermore. And that will be the end of your life’.

Even then, I just thought, ‘what? You really think I'm staying so that I can keep my boyfriend’ and so that I could have some sort of financial stability? Because my boyfriend was supporting me financially at the time. And that had sown a seed of doubt. And then this beautiful thing happened. And I just thought, ‘this is wrong’. So I escaped. I pretended while we went out for a walk, I pretended I just needed to nip back for the loo. And in fact, I called a cab, ran to the airport and got on a plane and came back to England.

And that was it. It was hard. So because although it was clear, I was also absolutely devastated because I had committed to my spiritual teacher on a really deep cellular level. And I don't think I don't think I'd even realised how deep that commitment was. And it's hard to describe to people, really. But it is cellular. I'd left my beautiful boyfriend behind. We weren't allowed a relationship in and out. I had no career, I had no money, I had nowhere to live. I was at the age of 30 with my parents and I was wandering around the streets going, ‘I don't even know how to reintegrate it back into society. The material world seems so odd to me and so alien because I've been living in this sort of rarefied existence for a year.’ And even in the five years before that, we were still kind of out of normal society. So it was a really difficult, difficult, time.

Vasha it's an incredible story. As you say that, the childhood and the school environment almost primed you to go into that because your mind was quite conditioned. Having gone through all of that, now do you do is there anything you do to help your emotional well-being? I guess there might be some things you learned in that process, but also just having everything that you've gone through to get to this point?

Anna its interesting because the thing that I've done most recently is actually moving out of London and I’ve just recently moved to this beautiful place in East Sussex and What I've realised is that London is just quite intense for me now, as it is for a lot of people. And I started to realise that I just really needed space and peace and countryside around me. And that has been, it's been a really big move, but that has been the biggest thing for my mental health.

On a more kind of daily basis what I know is really good is meditation really makes a difference, when I’ve had the guts to do it again. I’ve managed to control my mind. It's weird because meditation really is not about controlling your mind but the problem for me now is I have a bit of a PTSD , it is way too melodramatic, strong word to use, but the problem for me is I meditated so much as a kid in my first cult and meditation is so linked to me, where I did so much of it with cult number two, that when I do meditate, it very easily plugs me into one of those and I find it really scary and really difficult.

But I know when I've managed to meditate and kept those at bay and gone to something deeper and simpler and purer than that, then in fact, the effect on my day is, I mean, it's incredible. Especially, you know, when I had the small children. I'd get quite stressed when I had no money and on my own with these kids. You know, I feel bad about it now, but I would shout. I'd get really stressed. I'd cry. It was really, really hard. But if I meditated just for the 20 minutes in the morning, I would notice that my whole ground of being was different. So I would be much calm and much centred. I wouldn't even think about shouting at the kids. I would have a greater resource and resilience and sort of calmness from which I could respond to things. So I want to get back into it.

It's such a push pull. It's a great, all I can say, it's just a great thing. It just is difficult for me, but I would love to be able to do it more. And the other thing is exercise. For me, exercise, it's about mental health.

I was doing loads of exercise, running, just that aerobic clears my mind. It transforms my whole sense of wellbeing every day. I can't do it as much at the moment because I've got diagnosed with severe arthritis in my lower back about 18 months ago, so I'm not allowed to do any impact exercise.

I'm now trying to find a way around that. But I would say exercise, meditation, watching Netflix is great. It just chills me out.

Vasha I think it's really important to have that opportunity to switch off and just chill out sometimes. And looking back and beyond, if you're talking to your 75-year-old self, is there advice you think that she would give you now?

Anna Yes, I would say, and this is really, I don't mean this to sound trite, but it's really because I really thought about this. You are actually stronger than you think.

You're going to be more than you are. You're stronger than you think you are.

Is what I've realised. I've had so many disasters where I've lost everything and I've just thought I couldn't see a way through it. And yet somehow... you do and you realise that actually just putting one foot in front of the other you can survive because you have to survive.

Therefore the lesson of that is not to stay in situations where that aren't right because you don't have the confidence to leave them so now you know that goes for relationships, it goes for jobs, it goes for all sorts of situations that if it's not right and you're scared to leave.

Just take that leap of faith because if it's not right, then it's not right. And however awful it is leaving, you will find the right way through it and you will be strong enough to do that. And knowing that that when you're young, without having the experience, if there was some way of getting through that.  I'm trying to say that to my children as well that is the most important thing I think.

Vasha if you were at the end of your life and you had an opportunity to look back at your life, looking back what would the what would be the best bits what would be the bits you'd be most proud of?

Anna surviving and my children, I  mean you know I know everybody says that but it's so true I just you know I always wanted children, my children are incredible and amazing I’m so proud of them. And also what I’m really thrilled about now I'm living a creative life, is having found the passion that I love doing, that I can earn money from, and that seems to bring joy to other people. And, to be able to find something that is an expression of yourself that somehow puts something positive in the world is what I'm really proud of on an overall basis. I would hope that people would like to remember that.

Vasha and is there anything specific that you've been very grateful for in your life?

Anna Yes, my children. I mean, really, they were a saving grace to me. I'm grateful for all. I've had amazing friends, amazing family. You know, one of the things that I've really realised, I've had really tough times. I've really fallen down. And, a whole load of things have happened, which we haven't even talked about here. What I've really recognised in those times is that I have survived because I have had amazing friends, amazing family, and I've had an education that's taught me the ways to find information, to help, you know, to be able to battle, to argue myself out of situations and to survive. But what I've been very, very conscious of in each of those situations is that if I didn't have all of those things or any of those things, then, I would be on the streets destitute and alcohol. I'd probably be dead by now.

And I really feel that for, you know, these people who haven't had the opportunities and the same support system for me, how they survive, I just think, is extraordinary. And I really... If we can support people in society more, I just don't think people realise... how tough it is and how close we all are. There's a really thin line. And, I've been balancing on that line and about to teeter off and all of us could get there at any moment. And our survival is based on our support systems. And if you don't have those, then it's tough.

Vasha Yes, exactly. And I often think about that with the most vulnerable people in our world too.

Moving on to something a bit more uplifting, is there anything you'd do in your life if you knew you'd absolutely succeed?

Anna I would dance.

Vasha I didn't expect that.

Anna I mean, I would paint. I would just spend my whole time painting. That's what I would really love to do. But one thing I've always wanted to be able to do is dance really well. I sometimes have dreams that where I'm just this incredible street dancer, contemporary dancer. And the problem is I just have no rhythm, I can kind of dance on a dance floor. I would just love to dance. And for me, the painting is an emotional colour, freedom and expression for me. And in one way, what I experienced, the freedom of being able to dance incredibly with your body is that it's part of the same thing. It's then the physical expression of creativity and freedom. So if I could do that and paint... life would be complete. It is complete without it. But, you know, you asked the question.

Vasha yes exactly. And what's interesting about what you just said is just going back to the whole use of colour, because the identity that you've built, the brand that you've built around yourself has been so much about encouraging people to be confident in that use of colour. You bring that through in your world, don't you? And everything that you do in a way in terms of how it can affect moods and all of us.

Anna Yes. So I, there have been a whole various things in my life where I’ve started to realise at particular points, how much colour influences me. And, it really does have a big effect. So then it became a lifelong passion, really.

I've become more and more attuned to how much colour affects me. And I've realised the more I talk to people as well, how much they are affected by colour and I think my passion for talking about it so much is that a lot of the time we just don't realise how much the colour that's around us is affecting us and actually we can have more control of that, and we can actually make very conscious positive choices about the colour that we exist in. Especially in our interiors which is my speciality. And that could really support us, our emotional and mental and even physical well-being.

I love colour. And also I love bright colours. I love pattern. The colours I tend to like are sort of slightly cooler colours, as in cooler as in some blues and cooler pinks. But when I talk about colour, it might also be that white is the colour that actually is really important for you. So for example, when I was working in the city and it was a really high intensity job, the house that I owned at the time was completely white because when I came home from all of that intensity and engagement with people, actually I didn't want to be stimulated in any way. I didn't want any sort of tension and therefore I just needed complete white. So, you know, it's not just about bright colour, it's about what is the right colour, whether it's calming or intense.

Vasha Oh, yes. So fascinating. So with that in mind, what's next? What do you want to do next? Anything for the next year that you've got in mind?

Anna Well, having just moved to Sussex, we're doing up a barn, which is going to be a three bedroom house. And we're going to live in with me and the kids. So that's very exciting. That's a big design project for me. And that's going to be really interesting in terms of use of colour, etc.

And I'm going to be launching some new products. It's the 10th anniversary of my brand next year. So I'm just working with various people, maybe doing some ceramics, some new wallpapers. And I'm just changing the whole manufacturing process of my lamps and cushions at the moment. So that's still a little bit in transition.

So if you go into my website right now on the day of recording, you'll see that a lot of stuff is out of stock. But very soon it's going to be coming back into stock. And you'll see some new things on there, which is very exciting.

Vasha Oh, that's wonderful. And just my last question to you is, have you got any advice to others?

Anna Oh, gosh, yes. You know what? It's so, I mean, it's typical advice, but follow your heart. What I have realised, I've had the amazing opportunity to work earning a lot of money in a high-powered corporate career. And I've also... had no money but being creative and fulfilling my soul. Not everyone gets that opportunity to see both sides and i can say hands down it's so much better to be fulfilled and do something that makes you joyful and happy but have less money, than to earn loads of money doing something you're unhappy in. So I would say if you're unhappy in your job and you're earning loads of money leave it, fine, you know, do follow your heart be creative.

It is you know it is your podcast, it's this one precious life, why waste time, just leave the relationship, leave the terrible job, do something amazing and have fun with your life.

Vasha Thank you so much Anna you've been absolutely wonderful and I love your wonderful advice as well.  If you've enjoyed this please do follow one precious life thank you. Full episodes can be found here: https://bit.ly/m/onepreciouslife