[Ep. 410] What’s Next After Achieving Financial Freedom? with Debbie Travis

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast.

I’m your host, Jessica Moorhouse, and today I’ve got a Canadian icon on the show.

I have been watching her on TV for decades, and you have too if you are a big fan of home decorating and home design shows.

Who I’m talking about, I’ve got Debbie Travis on the show today.

To not talk about designing your home, she does not do that anymore, but instead to talk about designing your dream life, or rather to discuss what comes next.

What’s your next chapter?

What does life look like for you after you’ve spent years being responsible with your money, have saved up, and are ready to ditch the grind and live a life more than just work?

Because honestly, I think often we get stuck in a cycle of working long hours, spending money on stuff we think will make us happy, or we think we need to keep up with the Joneses, and forgetting, what am I doing all this for anyway?

Now obviously, we all need to work to make a living, and there are those grind years or decades where we have student loans to pay off, a home to save up for, or a mortgage to make payments on, kids to pay for or put through college.

But when you reach that stage in life where you’re in a much more comfortable financial position, because ideally you’ve been taking some notes from listening to this podcast, you’ve got to ask yourself, what’s next?

What’s next for me?

Now, I’ve mentioned many times that I’ve always had a dream of visiting Italy, and after reading Debbie’s book, it’s going to happen even more so.

And also, when I think of retiring, I’m certainly not sticking around in Toronto.

As much as I love it, I’m not retiring here.

I’m definitely going to live somewhere else with the much slower pace of life so I can spend more time outside and doing hobbies.

And honestly, Debbie Travis is kind of living my ideal dream right now.

She moved to the country with her husband in Tuscany and has been there for 10 years.

And not only does she live there, but she actually built a retreat for women on her property so she can house people from all over the world so they can experience La Dolce Vita too.

Now a bit about Debbie in case you don’t know, she basically pioneered the modern day HGTV style home show.

Her first show was Debbie Travis’s Painted House, which then led to some spinoffs such as Facelift, From the Ground Up and All for One.

And she also has a documentary called La Dolce Debbie, which is all about renovating her villa in Tuscany.

And you can check out that show on YouTube right now.

But not only that, she’s very well known for all of her books.

She’s written a lot, a lot of design books, but then a lot of books after she kind of finished with all the design stuff.

So she has a book called Design Your Next Chapter, Joy Life Lessons from a Tuscan Village, and her newest book, which I absolutely love, called Laugh More Stories from an Unexpected Life, which I will be giving a copy away.

Honestly, I read this book so quickly because, especially as I record this, it’s fall entering winter, and oh, it’s just a nice escape.

It really feels like you’re in Tuscany and you can taste the food and taste the wine and the olive oil and just smell all the amazing smells that must be in the countryside of Italy.

And it’s just a wonderful book of life stories.

And she’s really funny.

Obviously you’ll get from this interview.

She’s super, super funny and a really great storyteller.

So I know you’re going to love this episode.

It’s a little bit different of an episode, but we do talk a little bit about how she was able to build her wealth and afford renovating this villa.

So you’re going to get a little bit of that, but there’s so many great things in this episode.

I’m not going to talk any longer.

Let’s just get to that interview with Debbie.

Welcome, Debbie, to the More Money Podcast.

So excited to have you on.

I’ve been probably watching you since the beginning.

So huge fan.

You’re a Canadian British icon.

And yeah, I love everything you do, especially the life that you’re living right now, which is absolutely my dream.

And you have another book.

How many books do you have?

I know there’s a variety.

There’s some from kind of your past career in design.

Now it sounds you’re kind of more in writing the memoirs and stories of your life kind of thing.

But how many books have you put out?

This is book number 12.

Can you believe it?

Oh my gosh.

Still find it hard to call myself an author.

You’re definitely an author at this point.

So the first eight books were design books.

So basically we would photograph after every show that we made, and we made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, we would photograph the spaces.

And then my publisher in New York, which was Random House, still the same publisher, the first book was The Painted House.

The second book was a kitchen book, and then it was a bathroom book, and then it was a living room book.

So that was the first eight books.

And then I was asked to do a book by my editor about, I’d done a story in one of the national newspapers about women going back to work, and the other celebrities had made it very serious, and I just made it very funny, you know, how to beat your kids kind of thing.

And so my publisher called and said, would you be interested in doing a book about raising a family while you’ve got this crazy career?

And so I’d never done anything like that before, and the book was called Not Guilty, and it was about the chaos of being a working mother.

And it did really well.

And so that was kind of number nine.

And then when I had this journey of this next chapter, I became fascinated by other people’s next chapters.

So, you know, I like to say, it’s a bit like buying a new car, you suddenly see that car everywhere, like, oh, she’s got it in red, she’s got it, you know.

So I started being attracted to other people’s next chapter, somebody who had maybe worked for the bank for 20 years and then decided they wanted to be a baker, or a surgeon who decided they just wanted to sing.

And I started to kind of contact these people from all over the world, every age group, men and women, and wrote their story, and at the same time wrote my story of the trials and tribulations of going from one scenario, one kind of world into another, that bridge that you have to cross.

And how scary, of course, it is in every way, whether financially or just having the confidence to do it.

So then, that book was a bestseller, and I was really lucky because I could go on a book tour.

And then I wrote Joy, which was Lies, Left, Lessons from a Tuscan Villa, because we have people, mostly women, come to this villa for retreats.

And to watch these women change in a week was quite remarkable.

And so I wrote this book so that they could kind of bottle it and take all these lessons home.

Sadly, with this book, I couldn’t go on tour because of COVID.

And Joy is a beautiful book full of great photography.

And then I wrote Laugh More, Stories from an Unexpected Life.

So it is, I guess, a bit of a memoir.

But it’s also about life here.

And it’s very funny.

No, I mean, you’re very funny.

I mean, I think that’s probably why you were so successful.

Like even on your many shows that you did, you’re not just great at what you do.

You’re just a really funny, interesting person and you just draw people in.

And oh my gosh, I just, like I said, I read your book so quickly because it was so beautifully written and you just, you could really visualize yourself in Italy and just living that life.

I was telling my husband yesterday, I’m like, so here’s the new plan.

And I told him all about what we’re going to do in our kind of next chapter.

He’s not on board, but you know, that’s okay.

You know, we can live separately.

You start with an idea and you live with that idea and it’s not always the right time for the next chapter.

You might have four kids under five and you know, you’re not going to tuck it all in.

But you know, you can have that vision board and have those ideas and sometimes they help you get through the day, as does laughter.

So, you know, laughter is something and we see it here when we put these groups of women together who don’t know each other and some of them are having a rough time.

You know, it could be divorced or hate their job or widowed or whatever it is.

By putting the camaraderie of other women together, and women are good at this, men not so good, but women are really good at this and they let their hair down and there’s no judgment.

And they can really, you hear them screaming with laughter from 7 o’clock in the morning when they’re doing yoga till finally screaming at them, telling them to go to bed at 2 o’clock in the morning.

And it’s remarkable.

And they talk and they laugh and they share stories.

So I think laughter, especially coming as I’m a Brit, and, you know, quite a rainy country, even the people doing the weather on the news make a joke out.

You know, it’s more, it’s in our DNA to make, to have a good laugh, especially when things aren’t going so well.

So if you’re in a situation where you’re uncomfortable or, oh, you’re unhappy or things have just gone wrong or idiotic.

And so, you know, we all do idiotic things.

And that’s really what the book’s all about.

Some of the complete messes I’ve got myself in over the years.

And it’s not always funny at the time.

No, yeah, no.

I’m really arrested for selling cocaine and things like that, you know.

And, you know, but when you tell the story back and you can see the funny side, you know, layers like an onion are stripped off.

And I think in today’s world of people being, having anxiety and the stress levels are over the top.

If we learn to not take everything quite so seriously, because there’s a lot of hard stuff going on in the world at the moment.

You know, we’re at war in many countries and it’s a really, really just watching the news, you just feel like going, I just don’t know what to do, you know.

But in your day to day life, you know, you slip in a shop or, you know, I actually put on, I went to a function the other day and somebody said, is this a new fashion?

And I said, what’s that?

Should we got different shoes on?

I had gone out with two different left and right feet.

And I mean, like, you either sob yourself to sleep because you’ve done something so dreadful.

And in Italy, you know, it’s a prison sentence to not dress well.

And so you make a joke of it and you just have a laugh.

And then you’ve got a dinner party story to tell.

Oh my god, what if we had the wrong shoes on?

And I think that’s life.

And there’s a wonderful, wonderful saying, which is ridi spesso.

So the Italians, I’ve got it written here, they say, mangi bene, ridi spesso, ammamoto.

And that means eat well, laugh more, love most.

And I mean, is there anything?

That’s what life is.

And if we could just take those three things, just love people more, eat really well, the best you can, and laugh more.

There you go.

There you go.

And on my podcast, it’s really focused on improving your financial situation, building wealth, really sometimes it’s like the practical side of things.

But the other component that I never want to get lost, that I want to have people like you on the show to talk about is, what is this all for?

And you think a lot of the time when you’re in the weeds with your finances, you lose track of what we’re doing, especially I’d say, I live in Toronto.

It’s very difficult to not lose track of why are we working so hard?

Why are we up so early?

Why are we working so late?

Why are we trying to make all this money and save it and invest it and build it and all that kind of stuff?

I think a lot of people have lost track and so their mind goes to, well, I just need more, I need more, more, more.

And your book really is, well, when you get to the point where you’ve realized there’s an enough point, you need to figure out what do you actually want in life.

And you came to a point in your life where you’d work really hard, you’d seen a lot of success and you could have continued going on with shows and shows and shows, had a Netflix series, kept doing the design thing that you’re so known for and you’re like, I’m good, I think I want to do something a little bit different.

I’m curious, you have an amazing story that I think is so interestingly told in your book from starting out in London and you’re a model for a little bit, then you moved to Canada and then you were like basically the first person to have a decorating show or a design show.

Now, there’s so many people and there’s a whole channels dedicated to it.

You created an amazing career in a different way than most people would expect.

I think what was unexpected is that you decided, I don’t want to do this anymore, I want to do something different, which is a huge risk.

Lots of people would be like, well, I’ve spent my whole life building this, I don’t want to give it up.

What inspired you to do something radical and different?

Well, absolutely.

I did five series and the last series I was doing was with CBC, and it was a big primetime network show where we were a crew of now 60, 70 people.

Whereas when I started with The Painted House, with the first decorating show in North America, probably one of the first in the world.

I think the first season, there was like three of us.

I was making the lunches and pressing the camera, painting the walls, doing everything.

Then as things grew, because the shows were so successful worldwide, that then everything else came with it.

The product lines, the events, the speeches, the books, the newspaper columns, that it was just endless.

I had at one point two assistants, I think.

Then we started making other people’s shows.

So many of the lifestyle, what they call lifestyle shows, which is property, food, home, all that kind of stuff, we were making.

So we were one of the largest producers in the country, and we were making them basically for America and Canada.

I worked with my husband.

We’ve worked together since we started.

It got to the stage where I’d walk in his office and he’d put his hand up and get out, I’m on the phone to the bank.

The fun was starting to go out of it.

There is nothing more exciting as an entrepreneur than the climb.

You have the idea, you have the vision, maybe you get some investment, you start.

It’s like opening a coffee shop.

After you’ve made 20,000 coffees, maybe it’s not quite so much fun, but you need to keep going.

That is the middle stage of entrepreneur ship, if that’s the right word, is actually the hardest.

And you need to get through that as you grow.

So for me, we had really peaked, we’d really reached the top, and there I was with this massive series.

And I remember sitting in a boardroom of about 40 people dissecting every goddamn idea.

And in the old days, it was like, yeah, just go for it.

There’s nothing to lose.

They were the new cables, the new cable channels, and, you know, they didn’t care.

And suddenly you’ve got, everybody has an opinion, everybody wants their 10 cents.

And I’m a great believer that when you have that situation, you get mulch, you get brown, you get, you cannot please everybody.

You need to choose an audience, do your thing, have the confidence to go for it.

And then you get somebody else say, well, we’re thinking, we want to hit this, and we want to do this, and we want to, and then you have advertisers coming in with millions saying, you’ve got to do this.

And I just sat there and we’d already kind of started this journey in Italy and fallen in love with this country for many reasons.

And some of the reasons you kind of brought up.

And my head was there.

And I remember sitting in this meeting and my husband was at the other side of the table and he was kind of obviously thinking about something else and afterwards I said, what were you thinking about in that meeting?

He said, well, I was thinking that we could, how many olive trees could we put in here and how can, you know, your head is somewhere else.

And one of the wonders of Italy is their way of life is so different from the work, work, work, have, have, have, I need three cars, four garages, you know, I’ve got to have this, I’ve got to have this, I’ve got to go out for dinner, I’ve got to do this, you know, they, they, you see people, I remember there’s a big trend at the moment everywhere called foraging, which is where, you know, you can go out to the park or you can go in the countryside and you can learn how to pick mushrooms and different lettuces and, and, and, and wild garlic.

And here everybody forages.

And at first, when we were first here, we saw, you know, neighbors and locals up a bank, you know, cutting wild asparagus and stuff.

And I thought, well, they’re so poor.

They can’t afford to buy our garbage asparagus that’s been shipped in from Chile in the supermarket.

No, if you’ve ever had wild asparagus cut on a hillside with a little bit of olive oil and pepper, oh my God, there’s nothing like it.

So they’re not doing that because they can’t afford to buy stuff.

They’re doing it because they’re out in the fresh air.

They’re chatting with their friend and they’ve got something lovely for dinner.

And so you start to get your head round this way of life.

And then over the years, I started to change and do you really need another pair of shoes?

They’re only going to get ruined on this farm anyway.

Do I really need?

So I rarely actually go shopping.

I have just gone shopping in London because I’m on a book tour, but I’m sorry, new shoes.

But when I’m here, I walk around like an old tramp and sometimes people just turn up with a lot of people.

They’re touring Tuscany and they Google us now.

Then they turn up and there you are in your shaggy dirty t-shirt and old jeans and stuff.

They go, are you Debbie Travis?

It’s like, you’re not a clean celebrity we know.

So it’s kind of cool.

And it’s really about finding your mojo, your happiness, what brings you joy, what makes you laugh a lot.

And sometimes you ask yourself, when did I last have a good roaring laugh?

Well, it was probably with your girlfriends, or it was probably, it certainly wasn’t sitting at your desk.

So, I’m not saying people have to jump out of their careers at all, because you need them to get where you want to be.

But to have a vision and say, you know, I met somebody the other day who had been in a bank for 25 years, and went on holiday to Greece, fell in love with a little bar and bought the beach bar, you know, for nothing, and never came back.

And, you know, there are wonderful stories out there.

But sometimes you have to map it out a little bit.

And you do have, you’re a money person, so you do have to plan.

Like I said, you’ve got to feed your family, you know?

But yeah, like you said, it’s, I think having that vision of why, where are we going with this?

Because I think often we just get focused too much on, well, I’ve got to pay the bills, and there’s all these responsibilities right now.

I’ve got to save for retirement, that’s really expensive.

But often too, when we think about retirement, we don’t think about, well, what does that actually look like?

Does it mean still living in Toronto?

Or does it mean living somewhere else?

I think it’s a massive trend.

I think it’s an enormous, enormous trend for, I know in the UK, people moving out of the cities often for financial reasons.

But the minute you hit the countryside and you start to see the change physically in yourself, because you’re moving all the time, you’re up and down and picking lettuces and doing this and doing that.

And so it’s not always everybody can do it, but if you look at the positive side of it and today’s technology, I would actually do the reverse if I could afford it.

I would have the country place and a tiny one-bedroom studio in the city and come in twice a week.

I think we’ve been offered, we’ve been through COVID, we’ve created a new scenario and use it to its advantage.

I mean, to sit at home in a condo is probably really hard all day, but why not buy a country?

It’s a wonderful way of life and I think you’ll see country areas growing, maybe more schools, more amenities, more because I think a lot of people are going to make that leap.

Also, when you talk about retirement and things, guess everybody’s terrified of the cost.

But you see, in Italy, there are no retirement homes, very rare because they live like the Asians do with their families.

So they have these houses that are like a duplexes or triplexes, and granny’s on one floor, but she’s picking up the kids from school, the 40-year-olds on the next floor, and the teenagers on another.

And it’s a way, I mean, I keep suggesting it to my children, that we all live together, but they’ve already booked Windy Pines, thrown me into the old people’s home.

But it is a, I don’t know if that’s ever gonna come back, but it’s a wonderful way of living because you’ve got a support system there.

And, you know, any support with children now is extremely expensive, you know, nursery school and things like that.

So you got good old granny helping.

So sometimes I think North America is sliding away from living life and having longevity.

And we’re seeing the numbers now where longevity is going, you know, going down in North America.

And because they’re not well, the food is not good, the, you know, the lifestyle is not good.

And so if we can just say, do we need these Gaskers-Lestak cars?

Do we need that huge suburban house with the guy?

But it’s kind of in our psyche, isn’t it?

It’s like, that’s how we were brought up.

You know, work, work, work, save, save, save, retirement.

It’s my idea of health.

Yeah, I know.

And sometimes it’s important to see a different perspective.

And yeah, there’s so much research out there that shows some of the biggest issues that we’re dealing with, especially with seniors, is loneliness, lack of community.

And it’s because we are so siloed, we’ve gotten away from the very traditional thing that we used to do, which was have multi-generational homes.

And sometimes I think, why aren’t we rethinking this?

And if it’s impossible to get your kids to live with you, fair enough.

But there’s definitely different ways to think about.

Maybe it’s about buying a home with a couple other couples in the country, and you can all help each other or something like that.

But there’s definitely different ways to think about it.

Everything is complicated.

Everything has a, oh, what if this goes wrong?

And I mean, when I moved here, there were so many people who said, are you crazy?

I mean, I have 14 suites here, you know, and I don’t think I’d ever made a bed.

You know, people are like, you in hospitality, you, you know, I’m like, and you just have to, I really was like a bull in a china shop.

I really, and the more I was here, the less I wanted the other stuff.

And the phone kept ringing and ringing.

Can you do this?

Can you do this series?

Can you, you know, and then it stopped ringing.

Cause I kept saying, no, I had to be here.

It was a five year renovation.

I don’t speak the language.

I’m useless at languages.

So anybody who uses that as an excuse, that’s rubbish.

So there are a million excuses for not doing stuff, but the every, and there was lots of challenges here.

The bureaucracy will bring you to your knees, but the joy of the every day and the people and the rawness of living in the Campania, as they call it, is what gets you through, you know, and you know, you want to scream at the permit office cause they haven’t done this and they haven’t done that and they haven’t, you know, whatever.

Like I said, my books are sitting in customs.

They’ve been there for a week now cause it just takes-

Yeah, everything’s a bit slower.

Just everything takes longer.

But at the same time, you know, I go in the kitchen and the UPS guy was in there the other day making croissants.

And I’m like, why is the delivery guy in the kitchen making croissants?

Oh, he always pops in.

Like, really?

That would not happen anywhere else, you know.

No, no, no.

So it’s those little things that have, that swells your heart.

I want to kind of know a little bit of the background of how this all happened, because again, this is very much a, you know, eat, pray, love kind of, I feel like dream most people have is like, oh, when I save up enough money and can quit my job, I’m going to move to Italy or Greece or France or wherever and just live that life that I’ve read only in books.

You were able to actually do it, but I think most people probably wouldn’t go to the extent of buying this whole estate where now you have a business too.

Now it’s funny because it’s like, oh, it’s not just a vacation home.

You do retreats, it’s a huge property now, and it took five years to renovate.

But for people’s kind of curiosity, how did this actually go about?

How did you decide Italy is the place that we want to go?

This is the property we want to make our project?

And it sounded like in your book, you didn’t have the intention of making this whole, basically kind of a resort where people can kind of visit and you do retreats.

You were just looking for a place to live.

Absolutely.

So we fell in love with Italy while we were filming, because when we were doing The Painted House, years and years and years ago, the first series, the show was doing really well, the budgets were going up and up, so we had more money to spend.

So we would go to different countries to get inspired, and then we would come back.

So let’s say we went to Jamaica and came back and gave some poor bugger in Canada a reggae living room.

And so we went to the Caribbean, we went to the Adirondacks, we went to England, we went to France, and we went to Italy.

And the trip in Italy, we used to be able to afford to take a crew, we would shoot lots of little segments, different things.

So we’d go to maybe some cathedral where they did faux marble, and I would come back and do the faux marble on somebody’s kitchen.

And on one of the trips, we were driving past the Cinque Terre, which the Cinque Terre is five UNESCO heritage villages, hanging fishing villages, all painted, these incredible colors, and it’s a huge tourist destination.

Anyway, we were driving on a cliff, and we stopped and said, let’s get some footage.

So we’re standing on the side of the road, and a woman came out of her house, high up, looking over the Mediterranean.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

And this woman came out and started shouting at us in Italian, and we couldn’t really understand what she was saying.

And then we somehow, we managed to translate.

She was saying, it’s lunch time.

Why are you working, you crazy people?

Come to my house for lunch.

So we said, well, we can’t, because we have a van full of equipment.

So she did this wolf whistle, and the old granny came out, who was about four foot two, all dressed in black, and said, you know, she would guard the van, you know.

Anyway, we went through this doorway of this kind of ordinary staircase into an very ordinary apartment.

And then she opened a door, and there was a terrace hanging over the sea.

And she put up on a lunch that I will never forget.

And friends came and family came, and nobody understood a word anybody was saying, the noise level.

And the food just kept coming and coming, and then two hours later we were spat out and we were on our way, and we were like, what was that?

And that is life here.

That’s what happens.

And so we couldn’t get it out of our head.

So we came back, virtually every holiday was spent here.

We’d rent houses, which is a wonderful way to find out where you want to be.

Very easy to rent a house here.

And you can rent with three couples and all the kids, and as long as you got a pool, and all kids eat spaghetti and pizza.

And it’s an inexpensive holiday.

So we did it for 12 years.

And what we would do is we’d rent a house, and then when everybody left, we would stay on and go house hunting.

So we didn’t know whether we wanted to go to Sicily or Puglia or the North or Tuscany.

And then something happened.

So we were really spending every cent, every holiday with the children, pursuing, looking for a house, for a home.

And then my head was always in Italy.

I couldn’t shake it.

It was like half my brain.

Whatever I was doing, I had this half of my brain.

I was going to do this.

I was going to have olive groves.

I was going to have arches in my living room and all this stuff.

Anyway, one day I did a speech in Vancouver and I was in a theater.

Sometimes when you’re on a stage, you have the lights in your face and you can’t really see people.

There was an interviewer on the stage and she said at the end, she said, what’s next for Debbie Travis?

I don’t know where this came from, this huge lie.

I said, I am going to be taking people to my villa in Tuscany and we’re going to do yoga in the lavender grove.

We’re going to walk through the olive fields.

We’re going to, and I just went on and on and on.

Then I stopped speaking and after about three minutes, and you could hear a pin drop.

Nobody spoke.

I thought, oh my God, what have I done?

I’ve bored them all into a paper.

Then suddenly, all these hands shot up going, take me, men wrote the next day saying, take her, take her.

And I didn’t have a villa in Tuscan.

He had made the whole thing up.

So, but I knew, sitting there, that there was an audience.

There was an audience who could feel how I felt when I come here.

So, I went to London, went to see my best friend, took her out for lunch.

And I said, I’ve got this crazy idea.

Do you want to do retreats with me?

Now in those days, this is in 2008, nobody, so it was ages ago, I was still filming, I was still doing stuff, but nobody had, the word retreat was very religious sounding.

Now, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing a retreat.

So, we came to the area I’m in now, and we found a dusty old villa.

It was a B&B, no guests, and it was revolting inside, but it had like 10 bedrooms, and we rented it.

We cleaned it and dusted it and took out the dirty carpets and whatever, and we rented it and we did two retreats.

And the minute I put it out into the atmosphere, it was full.

And I could have put these women in a tent.

They had the best time.

I did nothing.

I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist or life coach.

It was the magic of, you know what it’s like?

It’s like Girls Night Out.

You go on a Girls Night Out and you come home.

Why don’t we do this every week?

Because I feel so great.

Just laughing and eating the dessert and just giggling and drinking too much wine.

And it was that feeling.

So we did one a year in this rental place.

In the meantime, I found in the same area, this absolute ruin.

And we had learned so much about doing these retreats in this villa.

And one of them was, you don’t want women walking through your house all the time.

It’s your home.

So you can’t just build here.

You can’t just put up a building of rooms.

You have to have something called volume.

And that means it could be pigsties.

You could turn those into rooms, which I did.

There was an old barn that turned those into suites.

So we found this property, which was three buildings, an old villa with no roof, trees growing through it, pigs running around.

And then an old barn, which was falling down, but it was classified as volume.

And then like 30 pigsties.

And so I love saying to people when they arrive, yes, you’re sleeping in a pigstie.

And they look at you like, oh, but they’re gorgeous.

Any pig would be delighted.

So we kind of learned the business and we’re always full.

I mean, we just put the dates up and people go, oh, you know, and people, we’ve had people here 10 days ago who were waiting five years, you know, because we kind of get chosen, but sometimes it’s just luck of the draw really.

And we have people from all over the world and different ages.

And then we, a lot of women said, I want to bring my husband back.

I’d love to give him this experience.

And I’m thinking, oh God, I just imagine sitting with men opening up.

You know, don’t think that’s going to work.

But what do men like?

They love cars and they love classic cars.

So we now do classic car rallies.

And that is when you see men so happy, you know, on a normal holiday, you take your guy on holiday and he’s like, you book all the restaurants, you do everything.

You know, they’re doing what their wife wants.

Here, they’re driving these cars.

They’re seeing Tuscany from behind the wheels.

And we supply the cars.

So it’s one guy said to me a week ago, the last time my face hurt like this, aching, you know, the muscles was on my wedding day.

And I thought that was the best compliment ever because they’re like little boys.

They’re like, no, no, eat your corn flakes before you get in the car.

You know, you’ve got to have breakfast.

So that’s kind of how it rolled out really.

And, you know, and also the advantage I had because a lot of people have a dream of opening a B&B and doing all that kind of stuff.

You know, the thing is, you have to work with agents, you have to get it out there and there’s a little, you know, it’s a very saturated market.

With me, the advantage was I had a following, you know, of people who followed me over the years and so, you know, they’re the people who come, you know, and we change lives.

We change people’s lives.

I mean, it makes sense, the amazing things that you do during these retreats.

When I was reading your book, I’m like, oh my gosh, you make, what, there’s like pasta making, limoncello making, there’s yoga.

Limoncello drinking.

Yeah, limoncello drinking.

I mean, yeah, tell me a little bit more about if someone went to one of these retreats, just so we can all fantasize about going in there as we enter winter, what happens?

What do you do?

It’s a little bit of everything.

We offer all this stuff, so you don’t have to do yoga, you don’t have to, but it’s not a yoga retreat.

But it’s really a lot of, we do a lot of walking, there’s walks every day, because women are at their best, I think.

You go out with a walk with a friend and nobody walks in silence.

And that’s how you share, and I actually have beautiful framed photograph of a woman in her 60s and a woman in her 30s walking hand in hand in front of me from the back, in such a deep conversation and they hadn’t known each other four days before.

Now, you were talking earlier about loneliness, and loneliness is, believe me, yes, it’s with older people, but it is certainly with young people.

And we’re seeing it more and more.

They’re the people sobbing in my arms, they’re 30 and 40 year olds who are so lonely.

It’s so painful to watch because they’ve lost the ability, life has taken away.

My mom’s era of talking over the back fence to her best friend about her idiot husband or whatever it is, or the naughty children, and we’ve lost that.

And then we have this era of, we have to be better or the same as somebody else.

Social media, we’ve got an image to, nobody ever goes, oh my God, did you ever, do you want to throw your baby through the window?

Yeah, me too.

You’re not going to throw the baby through the window, but just by letting out your frustration and sharing it with another mom who’s exhausted, it eases it, same going back to laughter.

You have a glass of wine and a great giggle.

It’s the best thing ever.

And we must find other ways of socializing and get off these devices because they are killing us without a doubt in my mind.

And we ban them here.

So most people are very happy.

We say, listen, your kids are going to be fine.

If they’re not, they’ve got our phone number, put them away.

You’ve invested in this week in yourself and you’ll get a lot more out of it if you don’t have this thing.

And within, we honestly, within a few hours, people really don’t care.

They, you know, they’re so into the conversation.

So, you know, there’s a lot of meals.

Some meals are out, some meals are in, there’s shopping, there’s, you know, we have life coaches, we have mindfulness meditation, we have speakers come.

It’s a busy week.

But it’s also a time with a great pool.

So it’s a time where, you know, it’s very hot, people can, you know, veg by the pool with several bottles of apparel spritz.

They drink a lot, I have to say.

Italy, of course, you’re gonna, you know.

It’s like the guy who takes the garbage out, he’s like, what?

You know, as a year’s supply for him.

And it’s like 18 women.

Yeah.

And then of course, with the car rallies, they’re driving, you know, for all day and they’re swapping cars during the day.

And then there, there is no drinking when they go out because we have lunch out.

Obviously, they’re driving a beautiful E-type Jag, or Ferrari, or Maserati, or whatever.

So you can’t have wine at lunchtime, but they make up for it in the evening.

Yeah.

So I love it.

I love making people happy.

We have emails that come through from people who have been here like 10 years ago.

And I mean, next year will be our 10th year at the Villa.

So we opened the Villa in 2015.

And then it was a whole different experience than in this tatty old rental place we had.

So it’s nearly 10 years that we’ve been doing it at the Villa.

Do you want to go speak to how you were like just the practical nature of actually, you got the property and it definitely wasn’t livable.

How did you actually, I mean, it probably was helpful that you already had a background in kind of renovating and things like that, but maybe not quite the scale in a different country.

Yeah, the builders used to say that because my shows were on in Italy at the time and they were like, you can do this.

I’m like, no, I did a bedroom.

And I was never really a designer designer.

I never did private work.

I only did it on television.

And so I did design the whole place, but I had an architect, but I lived on the property for the first year and a half in a tent, inside with no roof on the building.

Of course, when the plumbing went, there’s no way to pee here.

Even though I’ve got 100 acres, there’s always a builder walking past.

So I rented an apartment in a local town.

And then every morning I was like racing over here.

But it was a, I mean, this was the built, the villa was built in 1275.

So it is very old.

And it was overwhelming most of the time.

But, you know, like in this book, Laugh More, I kind of go, I write about an ordinary year here, which was kind of last year.

So it’s not about so much the renovation process, but it takes you into all this stuff.

And, you know, again, things go wrong, like they do for everybody, all the time.

But when you retell these stories, like I don’t know if you read the story about the pond.

Yeah, no, I did, yeah.

When I was reading it, I’m like, you should have waited for your husband to come home before making that pond in there.

Yeah, he was back running the company and we put in a pond, not a huge thing, but, you know, a lovely, beautiful pond, but we put it with a black liner.

And so when we have no water, which is the case in the summer, all I saw was a meter all the way around of slimy black plastic.

And one day I was alone here, and this is like two years, 18 months ago, and I see this car parked, and this is very slick, like a caricature of an Italian guy with the Prada pants and the, you know, the shiny shoes.

And I’m in the middle of the country side, and he spoke very good English, and he said, call me Principetta, you know, Princess.

And he says, have you ever thought of, you know, putting in a pond?

This is before actually we put in this.

And I said, oh, I would love to put in a pond and everything.

And so within, before I could blink, 10 guys turned up, and he was digging this great big hole, like an amphitheater, lining it with this plastic.

And then halfway through, my husband came back, and he’d left me cash, of which I’d given to this man up front.

Of course, you’re a money person, you never do that.

And of course, did I see him again?

No, I did not.

Well, the pond leaked, it got, everything went wrong.

And then of course, like I said, when the water went down in the summer, you just saw black plastic.

So, 18 months ago, we had to rip this whole thing out.

So, you know, you laugh about it now, and that stops you being bitter and crying.

But we all make mistakes like that.

And laughter and scenarios ease, ease the drama of what goes on.

You know, even if you get fired from your job, if you see the funny side of it, you know, it’s not funny at the time.

But if you can see the funny side of life, it really is so good for you.

You can feel endorphins when you smile and laugh, going through you.

Yeah.

Well, I know you mentioned in your book that when you had this idea, and when you started this project, that it was quite a financial investment.

Like you put in some money.

How did you figure out this is how much we want to spend?

Let’s make sure we don’t end up like lots of people.

That was the problem.

My husband had black hair before we started, so he went gray overnight.

And buying the property was not that expensive.

I mean, in theory, it was the price of a two-bedroom condo in Toronto.

That was nothing.

We didn’t even have a road to get to this property, so we had to put a road in and then a second road.

And then it started, and by the second year, this looked like a construction site in the middle.

I had a crane.

It looked like a construction site in the middle of the city.

And there were 80 men here, and it was how we did it.

And I just battled on.

I didn’t do the money side of it, but the great thing that had happened was this money didn’t come out of television production so much.

Because one thing that I did, my husband did, that was very clever, was most of the television shows you see are owned by the networks.

So you work for a network.

You get a salary, which is part of the budget.

And when that show is over, it’s over, right?

We did something very different at the beginning.

We owned everything.

And that is the best advice I can give to anyone.

As much as you can, own your name, own your life, and own your business.

Own it, because the more partners you’ve got, the more this, the more that, the more complicated it gets.

And so we owned it.

So when the shows were being sold abroad, we owned, we made the money, the network didn’t make the money.

The network paid for the shows.

That was the crazy thing.

The networks paid for the show.

So they had like a window of two or three years and then they gave it back to you and you could sell it.

And they didn’t make any money.

And we were like, oh my God, this is fantastic.

They soon cottoned on.

So people going in who started a food show or a design show or whatever, they suddenly realized.

But when you get an opportunity and so many people want their own show, you’re not thinking straight.

You’re just thinking, oh my God, they want me, I’m going to be on television and whatever.

You’re not thinking straight.

For us, I didn’t care.

I didn’t want to be on television.

It all happened by accident and we owned it.

And they didn’t care because the networks had no viewers.

These were the cable networks.

They had nothing.

So we kind of started this genre.

And then very quickly, the networks realized, oh my God, we’re going to make money out of these shows.

Even to the extent if you did a book, they owned part of the book.

I didn’t do that.

And of course, the other thing that happened that made me quite rich is a good old Canadian tire.

So that was one of the most, oh my God, it was amazing.

So we started, they just wanted to do paint.

Within weeks, we ended up doing everything from taps to flooring to carpets to plates to, you know, Jamie Oliver had the homes, the kitchen and I had everything else.

And I was the only, the contract was I was the only name brand they could have.

And we put a lot of energy into it.

We, you know, we worked very hard to, to give the publics really some nice stuff.

And then we did Christmas and then we did that.

And it was printing money.

I mean, it was amazing.

And we had it for 10 years and it was a fabulous relationship.

And then like, you know, most of these corporate things, they, they change and new team comes in and they want to do their own thing.

And it’s like, okay, fine, we’ve done it.

And we did it to the, you know, we always work hard.

We always give the best that we can possibly give.

And I think that’s, that’s, you know, obvious, obvious with everything you do, you know, you, whether it’s the retreat here.

I mean, we have people arrive going, oh, I didn’t know you were going to be here.

I’m standing there with four toilet rolls, you know?

Yeah, I’m thinking toilet rolls.

You know, of course I’m here.

This is my home, my retreat.

You get me for a week, you know?

And that’s the first two minutes when they’re on the property, you know?

And the same thing with, you know, the design lines, the television shows.

Do the best you can possibly do.

Give the best and it’ll come back in rewards.

So I think I would say it’s the house that Canadian Tire built.

Yeah, thanks Canadian Tire.

Thank you so much.

No, that’s amazing.

I’m curious.

There’s a few things.

One, I had a question.

I probably know the answer to this, but while you were under construction with the Villa, did you ever think, why didn’t you turn that into a reality show or something like that?

We were asked.

Oh, yeah, but you’re not interested.

Well, what happened was the HGTV wanted us to do it, and the problem was they wanted to do it about these women, because reality was so huge at the time, and I’d done, obviously, reality shows, and I know how they work, I’ve produced them, and I did not want vulnerable women coming here who are coming to get, and we’ve had women who’ve lost children, we’ve had women who’ve had the most horrendous separations, we’ve had women, I had a woman who lost a hand, and came here and had the most amazing, I mean, just women who are struggling, and we all struggle, and this is a magical place.

This heals, gets you better.

I mean, some people just can’t have a very good time, but there was no way, there was no way I was going to have, you know, eight cameras on women, who’s sobbing, who said, what about this?

I find the whole reality thing extremely boring now anyway, but I think it’s had its day, you know, who’s screaming at who, so it’s, you know, the way it works is they bank all these reactions, you know.

But then we did do a show, so we did a show called La Dolce Debbie, which was produced by, well, we produced it, but it was on OWN, on Oprah’s channel, and I would say 80% of our people come through that now, see it, because it’s on now on YouTube, so after it was on OWN, it went on YouTube, and it’s on all over the world, and it’s a beautiful six-part series, much better done than a reality show, of the camera, the cameras, we have one camera, one sound man, came maybe twice a year for three years, no hair and makeup, they’re just following you around, and it was exactly everything you’ve been talking about.

The show starts off of me at the convention center talking to 2,000 women, glamorous, hair and makeup, on a stage, and the next minute you’re standing four feet in the mud, you know, with pigs running around going, what have I done?

And it ignites ideas and dreams for so many people, this documentary, because it shows that you can do it.

You can have the dream and make it happen.

And so we did do it.

So it’s a six part documentary series.

I’m going to look into that, that sounds amazing.

Yeah, it’s really good.

And it’s just on YouTube.

But the last thing I wanted to do was, I wouldn’t have been in business a year later if I’d made these women look small.

No, no.

And they don’t, the thing is they don’t argue.

They don’t fight among themselves because reality shows make that happen.

Yeah, exactly.

Put them in the hot tub with two bottles of vodka, you know, and somebody will have a fight.

You know, it’s humane.

So they don’t fight.

They have stories to tell.

And some of those stories are heartbreaking.

And I’m not going to share that with, that’s their private stories, you know.

So, no, we didn’t do a reality show.

No, fair enough.

The other question I had, just because you do share a lot about your upbringing, so you can kind of piece together the journey, the amazing journey you’ve been on.

So, you know, you’re from Northern England, you didn’t come from much.

To see where you are now is pretty incredible.

Do you want to kind of share a little bit more about just what that journey was like, especially when you don’t come from money, and then you’re in a position where, oh, wow, there’s all these opportunities, and, you know, I have more money than I thought I would.

This is kind of crazy.

You know, how were you able to, I guess, make sure that you maintained it?

Because it’s not easy when, you know, you’re like, I don’t have any experience with this.

Do you just have, it sounds kind of like you have a natural talent for business or you’re just really good at spotting things and working hard and figuring it out?

I don’t know.

I think I’m very good at jumping on opportunity and I’m very bullish and I just do stuff.

I never have a plan.

Everybody says, did you have a plan?

But I come from a very ordinary, you know, from a working class family, but my mom was widowed and I was the eldest.

So I was 12 and my brother was six months old.

And I think I saw, you know, you go on Instagram today and you see people crying.

This is another new trend.

I can’t bear it.

You know, this life is so hard.

No, life is not hard.

You’re not in Gaza.

Life is not hard.

Get on with it.

And I’m very tough on that.

And I probably, you know, people are turning you off now, going, but anybody my age is saying the same thing.

So, you know, my mom was 33 and she was left with four children.

And so she brought in lodges because we had a fairly decent size house.

We had two bathrooms, which was quite unusual where I come from, you know, really industrial north of England.

And so we had these young men, usually two or three at a time.

So she would do the bed and she would give breakfast and then evening meal.

And then they would go home back to the city at the weekends.

So we would have, you know, the weekends there.

So there she is with four children cooking for these men and really very little money.

And there’s a story in the book about, which I think just sums up the common sense.

And so I came in from school in my little school uniform.

And, you know, you hate anything when you’re 12 that’s different, you know, and you’re embarrassed by your parents, your mother and stuff.

So I walk in the kitchen and there’s a lovely smell, and she’s at the kitchen sink and she’s frying onions.

And I said, that smells good, mom.

I said, what are you cooking?

So she’s cooking for the men, the lodgers.

And she said, oh, I’m making shepherd’s pie.

And you know what shepherd’s pie is?

It’s minced meat with mashed potato.

And as she’s saying it, she got back to me, I look at the counter and there are two empty tins of dog food.

And to this day, I can remember the humiliation of, and I said, mom, we don’t have a dog.

And she said, oh, a few fried onions and some peas, and they’ll never know.

You know, if dog can eat it, these two lads can eat it.

And I was like, oh my God.

So there came out of the oven this crispy, perfect potato, and underneath it was dog food with carrots, beans and onions.

And I sat on the stairs, they used the dining room, and these three men tucked into it.

And I’m sitting on the stairs thinking, we’re all going to prison.

They’re gonna die, you know?

And one of them came out and he said, oh, Debbie, he said, that was delicious.

Would you ask your mother if there’s any more?

Well, so, you know, they survived, you know, she obviously had no money for meat by the end of the week.

And it’s that you have to get through every day.

And that’s what she did.

And when I was 16, so I have no education.

I mean, I left school at 16, which most of my, a lot of my generation did.

You had to be, you were pretty much upper class if you went on to university or super clever, which I wasn’t.

And I said, can I move to London?

And I’ll never forget.

I’m 16 and a half.

I mean, if that was my kids, I would have had a foot.

And I said, you know, I’m getting the bus to London.

And she said, you want a jam sandwich for the journey.

And that was it.

You’re leaving home.

Because she was busy with the other kids.

You know, it’s like, you have to behave.

You know, ring me when you get there.

Of course you didn’t, because you had to find a phone box.

And I landed in London.

I got the evening newspaper, found an apartment, ended up living with a girl I’d met a bit before.

And now I look back, and I think, it’s like looking back on this renovation.

I often look back going, I don’t know how I did it.

Well, I don’t know how at 16, but we were so whatever.

At 18, I got sent to Japan.

My mother had never really been out of the North of England, and I rang her from Tokyo.

And she was like, oh, that’s nice, love.

I said, I’m in Japan, mom.

She said, oh, lovely, lovely.

You know, your brother found a little bird yesterday, and we’ve put it in the shoe box.

I’m like, I mean, you know, like, like no concept of, you know, it was just, yeah, okay, whatever.

And that’s, and I talked to girlfriends who were brought up at the same time.

And they all said the same thing.

You know, you went off Saturday mornings when you were playing.

My mom used to throw us out of the house and lock the door.

So there was no way we could get back in until tea time.

It was the rain or shine.

It was the way it was.

It was a, yeah.

And were we happier?

I don’t know.

I think so.

You’re certainly independent and very resourceful because of it.

We would pick up boys in London, so that we always chose restaurants.

We used to get guys, older guys, to take us out, but we always chose restaurants where we could get through the toilet window because by the time dessert came, that would be like, just going to the bathroom and then you’d run.

Oh my God.

I mean, half this stuff, you’d be arrested today.

But I lived there.

I modeled till I was about 23 and then I started working in television, behind the scenes and then I heard a whole bunch of people at the BBC talking about going to the Cannes Film Festival.

I asked somebody, said, how do you go?

They said, just ask.

They said, okay.

The first night there, I had a job to do.

First night there, I met my husband, married him three weeks later and moved to Canada.

It was like, I was like, what have I done?

Then I got pregnant straight away.

Then I got pregnant again.

Within two years, I’d moved countries, got married and had two children.

I think that was the hardest years of my life because I-

That sounds hard.

Well, I didn’t know anybody.

I didn’t have any.

I soon made friends.

Then I started painting houses because he had no money.

He’d gone bankrupt, had had a really bad situation.

I bought a bucket and some paint, and I started painting houses with all the faux finishes, which I’d learned to do as a bit of a hobby.

It was quite hot, it was all exploding in England.

Then I started a school, teaching people how to do it.

Then people said, oh, it was the time of VHSs like Jane Fronder and Exercise, and you rented them, you went to Blockbuster and whatever.

We made a video and we sold a million copies of that video.

I got invited on all these chat shows across America and across Canada, morning shows and things like that.

Then one day at CTV, a producer came downstairs.

She runs one of the biggest networks now and said, would you ever turn this into a TV show?

We have something called Cable Starting.

I’m like, who would watch a television show about paint?

Anyway, they said, well, probably nobody, but give it a go.

They gave me $10,000.

That’s all for the evening.

What year was that?

I think that was the end of the 90s.

Then it went back to Cannes and PBS had a show called This Old House.

I loved that show.

Well, they partnered me because I was the girly side and they were the male side.

It was on American television straight away.

Then I went to a trade show with the videos and publishers were there.

They all said, come in and see us.

I went to New York and I saw four publishers.

Then I started to realize they were offering me like five grand to do a book.

Even I knew you couldn’t do a design book without photography and who paid for the photography.

One of the publishers was Random House, the largest in the world.

I rang this woman.

I had a card and I rang her up and I said, I met you at the trade show about a month ago in Atlanta and you said to stay in touch about possibly doing a book.

She said, well, send in your manuscript.

And I said, what’s that?

And she said, obviously.

And she said, well, you know, let us know when you’ve done something.

I said, but I’m here.

She said, where are you?

I said, I’m in the lobby.

Literally here.

That second changed my life.

And she said, you better come upstairs.

And then PBS was happening at the same time.

And so they got on the bandwagon and they gave me an eight book deal, which was unheard of.

The only other person who’d done that was Martha Stewart.

And she was just beginning.

And yeah, that’s how I had one.

And that’s how I got my book deal.

And I’m still with the same publisher today.

I mean, might as well.

Might as well.

I’m curious, my one question was, how did you sell a million copies of your VHS back when?

There was internet back then, but it wasn’t like it is today.

How did it spread like wildfire?

A million copies is a lot of the case back then.

We sold it through gift shops.

So I went to trade shows and big stores.

There was a store in the States called Bullington Coats.

And I remember that I’m standing on a stand at a trade show, tiny little stand.

I shared it with another girl who had candles and stuff.

And they were in little display boxes and they were in gift shops around North America.

And this woman came in and she had an entourage behind her of young women helping her to choose stuff for this chain of stores.

And I think she bought 200,000 or something.

Oh my God.

I’m trying to work out the zeros.

Yeah, it was remarkable.

And I went on these chat shows and radio shows and became regulars on some of them.

And then the show exploded and then, you know, towards the end of the Painted House, I got on Oprah.

So the books went, Amazon had just started.

And when you watch your books, I think I went to number three, number five, and number 10 on Amazon, the first three.

Unheard of.

And that was the power of Oprah.

And then everything, you know, every time I went on, everything just opened up.

So it was, a lot of it is timing.

You know, I was the first.

But I was also not really into decorating at all.

It was quite boring.

I mean, it’s probably the most boring subject to talk about.

What was interesting was people.

So when I did Facelift, which was my favorite show, where it was the first show where somebody went away and we surprised them.

It wasn’t about, you know, did you do the right color with this?

It was about, you go away for four days and you come back and somebody’s gutted your house.

What’s the first thing you’re thinking is like, oh my God, how did I leave the house that morning?

Where was my underwear?

You know, what was under the bed?

I’ll tell you, I saw a few things under the bed.

You know, it’s the shock of it all.

And that’s what we were really good at.

And that’s what everybody tried to copy.

And that was magic because it was people.

And we were often did the renovation with the husband, because it was more exciting to surprise the woman.

And of course, husbands are pretty useless in this, you know, decorating stuff.

So they were funny and they were, you know, they were real and the kids helping and the granny next door and the friend over the fence.

And then we’d bring their, you know, they might have a daughter at university in Paris.

So we would bring her back.

And so it was this huge surprise.

And it was a big team doing that.

And my director actually is here in Italy on holiday and she’s actually coming in a few hours and I haven’t seen her for a long time.

And we had so much fun finding people’s quirky things.

So, you know, you’d interview the neighbor and she said, well, she hates yellow.

Well, of course we’d go and do yellow, you know?

And so anything to get these reactions.

But we also gave them a beautiful, you know, they got flooring and new kitchens and all this stuff.

And for me, that was, it was, it was incredible.

So it wasn’t about the deco so much.

It was about people and how wonderful people can be and how awful people are.

But it was the nice side of reality, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that’s, yeah, there’s not as much of that anymore.

It’s definitely morphed, but I think that’s why people are still drawn to you all these years later.

You’re very much a people person, right?

And I think that’s, you know, why you’ve had such longevity.

And yeah, you know, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing a little bit about your journey and your story.

And, you know, although most of us probably will never be able to replicate exactly what you’re able to do, I still feel like I love the just idea.

Let’s get back to what are we doing this for and what are our dreams?

Because I think often we’re too just busy living life and paying our bills and getting through it to be like, let’s take a minute, put down the phone and think about what can we what can we achieve?

Let’s put those dreams out there.

You never know.

That’s what’s so wonderful about books because books take you away.

You’ve had a long day and instead of sticking the television on, which we all do, and I wanted Laugh More especially to be something because we are all overwhelmed with what’s going on in the world.

I wanted it to kind of envelope somebody for them to sit with a glass of wine or a cup of tea in the evening, put the kids to bed and just chuckle and giggle and roar with laughter.

When I’d send these stories into my editor, and one day I thought she was crying and I said, what’s wrong?

She said, I can’t stop laughing.

Did that really happen, Debbie?

I said, yes, it did.

Of course, when you’re writing it, so the book is about a year here.

But as I’m telling a story, let’s say about the market, and some crazy drivers and the women in the cars, and you know, just mad.

And then it takes you back to another story about a market that I did when I was 18 or 19 and nearly got arrested.

And so you’re jumping in and out.

So it’s not a true memoir.

I was born on.

It just takes you into the history.

And then some of the stories are quite poignant.

You know, I talk about, I went to two Catholic schools, two convents, which were awful, absolutely dreadful, you know, and cruel and just dreadful.

And it was very hard.

It was very hard to write about that.

And you know, when you’re writing and you’re thinking, was it really that bad?

Have I imagined this over the years?

And then you ring a friend from your childhood and they say, oh yeah, that’s what they did, you know.

Yeah, no, I actually loved that it was in and out and there’s, you know, flash forwards, flash backs.

There’s just, yeah, everything you can want.

And I love how you organized it in season.

So you start with, yeah, winter, then spring.

And there’s recipes in it too, because-

Oh, I know, I love your recipes.

I’m like, oh my gosh, I love that.

Because food, you know, ignites memories.

Memories ignite a meal.

You know, if you’re talking to a friend, you go, oh my god, we went there once.

We had this incredible soufflé.

And you know, so I wanted to put recipes dotted all the way through, and they’re really good ones.

But then I wanted to illustrate this book rather than photography, because illustration could be so quirky.

And an Australian woman who I know very well here, is this crazy illustrator.

And I would send her the story.

And within two hours, she sent back a painting, a drawing.

And I’m like, oh my god, that’s my grandma.

I mean, seriously?

And there’s the poochy dress and the cigarette holder and the big floppy hat and the, you know.

And we had so much fun.

So for a year and a half, we went back and forth, back and forth with these illustrations.

And they’re beautiful.

They’re beautiful.

Yeah, they are beautiful.

I love them too.

I thought, yeah, it was a great way to kind of visualize things where, well, you know, I think people would just get a lot out of just grabbing a copy of your book.

I really, really enjoyed it.

But what people may not also know is you also have a podcast.

I mean, I saw one of your live recordings.

You were so funny with you and your co-host.

You want to kind of share a little bit more about where people, what’s it called?

What’s it about?

Where people can check it out?

So it’s called Laugh More Stories from an Unexpected Life.

And it’s available everywhere where you buy books.

So online or in shops or, and there’s an audio book.

So I’ve already done the audio and I love doing it.

And I think because I’ve got a recognizable voice, I know a lot of people prefer audible, the audio books.

So yes, you can listen to it as well.

Or I meant your podcast.

Oh my god, sorry, sorry.

But also I’m excited that you have an audio book because I’m like, oh, that would be such a great audio book to listen to.

But yeah, your podcast too, if they want to continue listening to your wonderful voice.

It’s the best book I’ve done on audio.

So we do have a podcast.

So when we were in lockdown, I started doing live Instagrams with Tommy Smythe who’s a friend and a really good designer.

And we just had such a hoot.

And we would suddenly be like 20,000, 30,000 people were on this thing.

We’re like, bloody hell.

So after COVID, we decided to turn it into a podcast.

So we talk absolute rubbish.

We just, we’re not very organized as a podcast.

We’re not a great interviewer.

So, but it’s a fun thing.

And that’s, that’s cool.

Trust me, I’m a decorator.

Basically never trust a decorator.

So it’s called, trust me.

You don’t really talk about decorating.

Not at all.

Tommy tries to squeeze it in and I’m like, oh, shut up, so boring.

So we don’t talk about decorating at all.

And we have guests on who are really cool.

And we talk about everything, everything about life.

I mean, we can, it’s so funny because before the podcast and after the podcast, we’re still rabbiting on.

And yeah, so we can talk for hours, the two of us.

And we’re two completely different people.

There’s this, you know, cute Canadian gay guy and there’s this crazy British woman.

And yeah, it’s just chemistry.

And he’s really good and yeah, I enjoy doing it.

Yeah, no, I love it.

I love it.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on live from Tuscany, everyone.

Actually, there’s such a crazy time difference here in Italy.

And I think people will love your book just to get that inspiration for what do they want out of life?

What can they do with their money so they can achieve something wonderful?

So thanks for taking the time to come on the show.

Thank you for having me.

And that was my episode with Debbie Travis.

Make sure to grab a copy of her book, Laugh More Stories from an Unexpected Life out on shelves now.

And make sure to check out her hilarious podcast with her co-host, Tommy Smythe.

Trust me, I’m a decorator.

To learn more about Debbie, make sure to check out her website, debbytravis.com, and follow her on Instagram, at Debbie underscore Travis.

It’s a really nice Instagram because you could just follow her and her life in Italy, which is really nice to do.

So make sure to check it out.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I am giving away a copy of Debbie’s book, Laugh More.

So go to jessicamoorhouse.com/contest to enter to win a copy.

Again, really great read, really great read.

I am giving away copies of other books that have been featured on this season of the podcast.

So again, jessicamoorhouse.com/contest.

You can enter to win all of the different books.

You will only win one, of course, but you know, you enter all of them, more chance of you actually winning a book.

And speaking of books, and I’m going to be harping, I’m going to say this every single time until my book comes out.

And even then I’m probably going to be talking about it.

I also have a book coming out December 31st, 2024, New Year’s Eve, my book, Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom.

You can pre-order now, just go to jessicamoorhouse.com/book.

And if you do pre-order, definitely go to that page, jessicamoorhouse.com/book, because there’s information on how you can access a bunch of amazing freebies that are only going to be accessible for people who pre-order.

You just put in your contact details.

And proof of purchase, so I know that you did pre-order.

And then once the book’s out, you will get access to a bunch of worksheets, video and audio, a bunch of exciting extras and freebies that you’re going to absolutely love.

And also speaking, because I know Debbie mentioned in the episode that she recorded her own audio book, which I love.

I would listen to her for hours and hours and hours.

I am also going to be the narrator for my own audio book.

So that’s happening, and that’s something to look forward to.

So you can buy the audio book or the paperback or the digital copy.

Buy all three, do whatever you want to do.

But support this first time author, won’t you?

Won’t you?

If you’ve been listening to this show since the beginning, which is nine years, that means I’ve given you nine years of free content that’s hopefully helped you on your own financial journey.

But also this book is just a bit of a departure from the podcast, quite honestly, even though I have been trying to integrate certain topics into the past couple of seasons while I’ve been writing my books.

It’s not a huge like, what is this?

But it’s not a how-to money book.

There’s a million of those.

I know those authors have been on this podcast and it’s great.

This book is different.

It’s really ultimately a book about why are you still struggling with money?

We all have money struggles, myself included, I’m not perfect.

What are those different barriers or obstacles that we’re still facing when it’s not necessarily a financial education or literacy issue?

It’s not necessarily the fact that, oh, I just don’t have the money.

There’s tools that can help you with that.

There’s a million great tools and books and things like that, that can help you.

But if those aren’t helping you and you’re still running into trouble, you’re still getting into debt, you still can’t put money into savings.

For whatever reason, you keep spending it, you can’t get over this fear of investing.

What’s going on?

This book has the answers.

So that’s really what the book is all about.

I’m really excited about it.

So that is it for me.

Thank you so much for listening and watching.

I hope you really enjoyed this episode.