Mastering Your Psychology

Explain to us what the Vendée Globe Race is. Okay, the Vendée Globe Race is a single-handed non-stop sailing race around the world. It's sailed in boats that are 60 foot long with 30 meter high masts and so enough sail area to cover three tennis courts. and it's raced every four years by up to sort of 30 or this year 33 competitors and as an endurance sporting event it's probably one of the hardest out there it takes three months and it's kind of non-stop.
And you did it during a pandemic and You are the ninth of 10 women in history to ever have completed it. Actually, I'm the eighth of 11. Okay, I got it wrong. The eighth of 11. Let me get that right. Yeah. So, I mean, that's amazing. How does it feel to have completed something? I mean, we'll go into the story of it, but how does it feel to have actually completed that thing?
Because I remember talking to you a few years ago where you were just like, okay, I'm going to start fundraising and it's something I'm going to do. And now you've actually done it, Pip. I mean, it's odd. It seems a bit unreal sometimes because it's been three months since I finished it. You know, a lot has happened and And the reality of the land compared to my life on the water is so very different.
I'm a completely different person when I'm out there. And there's part of me that is kind of just when I close my eyes and I think about the time when I was racing, I can still relive all of it, you know, really incredibly. But there's another part of me that kind of really struggles to believe that it was me that did it. It's really strange. It was you that did it. You've said that to me before, that you're a different person when you're out there.
What do you love most about it when you're out there? I think it's just the fact that it is phenomenally tough. Sailing one of those boats, the size, the speed they go, the power, you need to be physically very, very strong. but also you need a huge amount of hard skills, you need to be able to navigate interpretation of the weather, you've got to be able to fix engines, diagnose problems with electronics, you've got to do boat building, you've got to do sail making, and all the time you are in competition, you know, you're trying to push your boat as hard as you can, you sleep for sort of 30 minutes at a time on the floor, and so it is if you if you imagine all of those things in this super high intense environment and it just goes on and on and on, 95 days the last race took me, I mean it just demands so much of a human being and I've always been drawn to it as a sport because I want to know if I can be that human being, I want to know if me as a person, as an individual could have enough of those qualities. to be that sailor and that person, but also because I'm doing it on my own.
No one tells me I can't do it. No one takes jobs out of my hands or directs me to do something else. I have to face every challenge head on and I have to be the best version of myself. I don't have a choice, but also I have to own up to my own mistakes. And so I just love that. utter purity that no one else is defining me. I get to be who I want to be, and I think that's amazing.
Let me tell you what was going through my head as you were speaking. First of all, I thought, this sounds horrendous. I was like, all of these things that you have to do, you're on your own, constant challenges, the endurance of it. I was like, why is she enjoying this? And then as you describe that complete freedom, And I really love what you said about having no choice, because in life we want to do things, but we have so many choices.
I sometimes wonder if that's our problem. When you have no choice, like you have to get up, you have to make this boat go, you have to continue. And it's a personal test of yourself every day. I can see how you would find that glorious. I really can see how you can find that glorious. I mean, it sounds wonderful now. I'm like, not that I could ever do anything like that, but.

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And isn't it, isn't this one of the only sports or races where there is equality among men and women? How does that work? Well, we basically, you have to qualify to enter the race. So it's a really long journey to get there. And I would say, you know, there's plenty of inequality on the journey to get there. But once we Once we cross the start line, we are sailors. We are all in the same race.
We're all competing against each other on equal terms. There is no separate ranking for women. And actually within the fleet, there is this incredible respect throughout the whole fleet. You know, we're a massive range of ages, both genders and then this… This year was the first year that we had a disabled sailor sailing with us as well. He's phenomenal, a guy called Damien Sagan, who is a Paralympian who's moved into Imoka sailing.
I think it's because in the middle of the ocean, the ocean doesn't care who you are. In the middle of the ocean, we all face the same problems and challenges. adapt. We deal with those problems and challenges in the way that is most appropriate for us as individuals and there is no right way to do it. But I think we see also though in this sport that I think because the boats are so powerful and so big that you've got to be strong but your physical ability, your physical size doesn't make that much difference for your performance because actually the boats are so big it's about thinking, it's about stepping back from a situation, it's about having clear thoughts about how you're going to manage things rather than just running in there with brute force.
Would you do it all day every day of your life if you could? 100%. I dream of it. When I'm not doing it, I dream of it. I just want to be back out there again. What a life. Have you always wanted to do this? Oh tell me, give me the story, like as a young person is this something you wanted to do or is this something that you discovered late in life?
What's the story there? So I first read about Vendée Globe Race when I was 17 and you know around that time I was really, I'd kind of discovered sailing as a sport and I really enjoyed it. And I started to read a lot about the big ocean races that were happening. And they really appealed to me because of the adventure, the travel, the pushing the boundaries, all of those things. But all of these races, every single book I read, every magazine, they were all about men.
It was just men competing. There was no way for women to get into the sport. And then I came across the Vendée Globe race. the first edition was in 1992. And I read about a French lady called Isabelle Autissier, who is a solo sailor, and she was competing in this race, and she was being talked about on the pages of the magazine in exactly the same way they were talking about the men.
And I just thought, wow, you know, this is this is so hard what they're doing is so hard it might be the hardest sailing race in the world the hardest form of sailing in the world and yet there's a woman doing it and they're not they're not making big of it even that it's just normal and so you know i i lived in caber share land block county in the uk um i didn't have access to boats um but i just went i'm gonna do that um it took me 30 years but but i did That's a years.
So 17, you see this at 17 and you're inspired by this role model of a woman that's doing this. And so take us from 17 to when it happened, what were the main things you had to do to get to the point of doing a race like this? It's really tough in the UK because the governing body for sailing in the UK and the RYA, they support sailing towards the Olympics and then cruising programmes, but they don't support any other disciplines of racing, so there is no performance pathway, there are no coaches, there are no mentors, there's no one to follow, there's, you know, nobody can support you really on that journey. and so you know I kind of figured out I needed experience and I needed to get some qualifications and then just try and go sailing with as many other people as I could and experience offshore racing to try and work my way towards that.
So I left school and I moved down to the south coast and got an apprenticeship to become a sailing instructor and made sailing my job and it's been my profession ever since.

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And then I looked for opportunities to go racing and just had the door slammed in my face time after time after time, because nobody, nobody was giving opportunities to women. And still in the global sport of offshore racing, not solo sailing, but offshore racing, the participation is less than 5% women. And it's really tough to get a place. And I was and still am quite shy. And back then, I was sort of tongue tied.
I struggled to, it was a really, really massive effort for me to walk up to a boat and say, are you looking to take some crew out? Could I have an opportunity sailing with you? And people just kept saying no. And so I sort of… I sort of gave up for a bit and decided I would find my own path. And I, you know, I had a great career. I sailed all over the world.
I've worked in these amazing countries. I've sailed hundreds of thousands of miles and I ended up buying a boat and living on it. And then I got to the age of 35 and this thing was still burning away inside because I guess deep down I knew I could do it. I knew I could do it, I knew this was the sport for me but I didn't know how to articulate that and I didn't know how to convince other people that I could do it and I realised at 35 that actually I was going to have to make it happen myself.
And so at the age of 35 I was living on my boat in South America and I decided fine I'll just sail across an ocean on my own so I pushed off on the second. at the grand old age of 35 you decide okay no one's going to do this for me I had to do it myself so I think that's such a great point whether it's sailing or anybody's doing anything that they're doing sometimes don't you think we god love us for for thinking it's going to happen and maybe it does happen to some people Pip but I don't know them there's someone knocks on the door and says look I know you've wanted to do this for so long here's 10 million dollars so that you can buy a boat and do I'm going to sponsor you all you need to do is put my name on the on the sale and all is well you know it just doesn't happen does it really in real life um how did you manage to be so resilient do you think like you said you gave up for a bit but you still managed to do it so what enabled you to be so resilient and keep going um I think I am truly passionate about sailing.
I love it. I'm really lucky to have made a career out of it. And I think I just always had hope. I never stopped believing. I never stopped believing that it might be possible. And it's a difficult position to be in. We had a few British sailors come through. And I, you know, I watched them, I watched their success, Ellen MacArthur in particular, you know, I watched her success and I just, you know, you do get, you get jealous, you get unreasonably jealous.
You just think, well, why has it happened for her and it's not happening for me? You know, I was there, I was talking to people, you know, I've been sailing this long and it can, I think it can make you quite sort of bitter. If you, yeah, if you just feel that it's, you know, there's no opportunity available for you. And I never wanted to feel that way. So, you know, I just kept, I kept looking and I kept looking, but it did, it took a lot of self-knowledge and self-confidence to suddenly realise that it was gonna have to be me.
And if I really, really wanted to do this, then I was just gonna have to step out, stick my neck out. and do it. I think it's phenomenal. I love what you said about being unreasonably jealous. I just want to underline that for a second and to normalize it for people because we don't really talk about that and we should really admire our role models and be in awe of our role models and, you know, admire people that have done the things before us.
But sometimes it's okay to be jealous, isn't it? It's okay to be like, why not me? You know, I've been working so hard on this. It's not fair. It's not fair. But you didn't want to feel like that. So you this gave you, it sounds like a lot of impetus to get going. So at 35 you did sail solo, that was your first solo sail? Yeah my first ever solo sail was from Uruguay to the UK.
It was seven and a half thousand miles, took 58 days. I thought I'd give it a go to see if I liked it. Right, so it wasn't like, okay, I'll just sail around the block a little bit and see how I do. You were like, okay, I'm going to go from Uruguay to UK, 58 days. And then that's a good stress test, I imagine. Well, I think I just needed, I needed to prove something to myself.
And this is, this is how I operate as a person. You know, the first person I need to convince is myself. You know, I need to prove to myself that I am capable, that I can do this thing.

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And so, you know, step one is always a confidence builder and then step two is performance for me. But, you know, I also wanted to know whether I enjoyed it because, you know, this is, as you rightly said, it's a really tough thing to put yourself through and, you know, there's no point in doing it if you're not finding joy in it. So I just needed to make sure I enjoyed it as well.
And you did. I'm guessing. I loved it. Of course, you loved it, yeah. Loved it. So you loved it. You do the 58 day race, solar sail, you love it. And then what? So how do we get from there to doing the Vendée? So I kind of said, okay, so I set out some steps for me, but not a whole, not all the steps all the way to the Vendée. I kind of every, I said, right, what's the next progression from just sailing across the nation?
So the next progression was racing across the nation. So in 2009, I did my first solo race and that was to prove to myself that I could be competitive. And I was, and I thought, okay, the next step then is with this boat, with my home still, I want to win a race in it. So then I did the round Britain and Ireland race in 2010 and I won it. And then the next step was to join a more competitive fleet.
So I asked around, I kind of worked out where it was at and I got a 21 foot boat, six and a half metre boat called a Mini. It's one of the biggest solo fleets in the world, which is based in France. And then I took myself off to France for two years. I trained there, I learnt French. I kind of learned their craft because they're really good at it. And I competed in that race twice, the first time to convince myself I could do it, the second time to perform.
And I kind of just rolled like that and ended up at the Bonde. But kind of each time I finished a race, I would have already thought what the next step is, but I'd always have like a stop-go with myself, which is like, you know, do I think I'm capable of making the next step? Have I seen something in myself that suggests I can still, you know, that I still have room to improve, I've still got, you know, something to give, and am I still enjoying it?
So, with the Fonda race, Not only, when you described it to me before, you described all the things you have to do whilst you're on board and all that's involved. But for this, you had to do everything ahead of time, didn't you, as well? You had to fundraise for yourself. You had to really make it happen all by yourself. So how did you do that? And what's your top tips for anyone that wants to make something big happen like this?
Yes. So obviously the difficulty for me moving up through the classes, I was moving up through sizes of both and sponsorship became absolutely essential to going anywhere. And then I arrived in the Amaka class and some of the competitors there, you know, they have 25 million Euro budgets over four years and I had nothing. But I kind of believed that if I started a campaign, if I kind of just bought a campaign into being, then I would be able to demonstrate what I could do and I would be more likely for sponsors to join me later on.
So I found an old boat to charter that had a monthly fee. I initially took out a loan to cover the first few months. of the charter and then I set up a crowd fund and that covered another couple of months and then I basically just put my head down and grafted and I had one year to qualify for the race and in that year I had to finish three other races I had to keep this old boat maintained and then I was doing all of my marketing and fundraising as well and I was competing you know the people I was competing again had, a small team would be five people, a large team would be 20 people.
And I was doing all of this on my own. And it was, I mean, I have never, ever, ever worked so hard in my life ever. And it was very stressful and very isolating. And it's quite interesting because people always ask me if I got lonely on the Vendee, and though I didn't get lonely on the Vendee at all, but I was very lonely in 2019, carrying all of this on my shoulders on my own.
That was really difficult. How did I get through it? So I think the most important thing is I had a reason to be working that hard.

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And it was my reason. It was my reward at the end of it. And I was very, very, very clear on what I got at the end and that I wanted that. And so that is a really good motivation to work that hard. I had to be absolutely ruthless about priorities. Because in any given day, there were a minimum of five people's work to do and I had to understand what was the most important thing.
Was it the admin side of things, replying to emails? Was it making a repair on my boat? Was it sailing to France for a race? I had to learn to trust people to help me and that's quite difficult for me because essentially I've driven my own campaign for so many years and nobody else cares in the way I do, nobody does. So I had points where I just had to ask for help.
I couldn't do it on my own. But when you ask for help, you've got to trust people and you've also got to accept that they're not gonna do it exactly the same way you do it. So there was a bit of a crash course in sort of managing people and I guess being really, really clear about what I needed them to do. And also, the other thing is that sometimes people offer help that you didn't ask for, and that's not helpful.
So I had to, and I'm a yes person, I say yes to everyone and everything. You know, I care so much about respecting other people and their feelings and all that sort of thing. And so it was different, a very different year for me because I had to put myself first. Well, I didn't put myself first, actually, I put my boat first. My boat always comes first. I learned as I went along and I got better as I went along.
I couldn't have done it for, I did it for 18 months and I couldn't have done it for longer because it was exhausting. And you describe yourself as shy. and not a confident person. So how do you do that when you are not very confident? I'm just wondering about that because I think people would maybe assume that you're a very confident person if you have to do your own fundraising and sponsorship and everything like that.
Did you have to make yourself do it? Was it horrendous? What are your tips for confidence in that respect? Yes, I did have to make myself do it. And actually, you know, I kicked it down the road several times, waiting for this mythical money tree to turn up. Never did. You know, I had to go and do networking and it terrified me. It absolutely terrified me. I was lucky because a friend of mine, as a present to me, got me a session with a communication coach. who actually, when he heard about what I was doing, he carried on coaching me for free, which was amazing.
And he did such a good job, such a good job, because I could hardly, when I started with him, I could hardly get a word out. I was so nervous all the time. I think the only way that I've managed with raising sponsorship is just, I have to believe that I'm worth. what I'm asking for, and that was very difficult. Now, now I've done a Vonde, I think I'm worth it. But before, I wasn't sure if I was worth it.
So… I suppose you need to get yourself, well, I had to get myself into a position where I was making statements about myself that I genuinely believed. And sometimes, you know, when you put a sponsorship proposal together and people help you and it's full of all these words and pictures and it's all very aspirational, but you look at it and I would look at it and I'd go, I don't believe this about myself.
And everyone's like, no, but you are, you can be that person, you are that person. No, I don't, I can't. I can't sell this with conviction because I don't believe it about myself. So what I had to do was just change the vocabulary I was using, change the statements that I was making, change the things that I was offering to things that I genuinely knew I could deliver and I believed about myself.
And then it became a lot more easy to be genuine and then I became a lot more relaxed. So an authentic representation, that makes a lot of sense. Now tell us about the Vendée. What was the highlight of doing the actual race? All of it, I'm sorry, but all of it. Every single day I was just bursting. I mean, it's a really intense experience. Being on the ocean on your own is incredible and you see so much and it's scary and it's powerful and it's beautiful.
You've never seen stars like it. You're just so immersed in this natural environment. You find another rhythm. I outperformed my expectations. I outperformed everybody's expectations, which was amazing. I loved going fast. I loved the competition. I loved surprising people.

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The way that I used my body and my mind was so, you know, I just used everything that I had to the max every day, even when I was struggling, you know, even when I was at a low or had a problem that I wasn't sure I could fix, you know, if I just kind of took the time to reflect and to kind of, you know, zoom out and think about. where I was and how I'd got there.
It just made me happy and proud. And it was enough to just turn me around to go, OK, this isn't going to last forever. I can get over this. It's a temporary state. Something different will happen tomorrow. But I'd never smiled so much in my whole life. It's the happiest I've been ever. It was incredible. Tell me about the French media. Well it turns out they liked me which is really unusual because no it's a very French race very French and the French media can sometimes be a little bit kind of dismissive of foreigners who enter the race but they they early on they kind of cottoned on to the fact that I was always happy and all of the reports I was sending back and all all the interviews I was happy they called me the rayonet It's a little ray of sunshine, which my friend says he's gonna get printed on a t-shirt for me, because I'm definitely not.
You are when you were doing that. Now, I remember you were telling me about one time, I think in the Southern Ocean, where you described it that you couldn't see ahead of you, that the conditions were so bad. that you couldn't see very far ahead of you at all and it was a very, very challenging situation. Now, I think a lot of us feel a bit like that right now, like we can't really see what's ahead of us and we're in very challenging situations.
Tell us about that moment when you were on there and it was very, very hard and how did you deal with it and come out of it? I think this is one of the The interesting things about sailing these boats is they go so fast. A lot of the time the visibility is very poor, but also you've got these walls of water that just constantly come over the boat and you can't see where you're going, you just can't.
You can start to get this enormous anxiety over what might be ahead. And the reality is that unless it's a lump of land, which we see, which we will know, it's there. if there's something submerged in the water or or even a tiny little bit of ice or something like that we can't see it and there's nothing we can do about it. I guess I that that particular anxiety you kind of have to you have to address it you have to look it full in the face but then you you kind of have to backtrack and say okay well I put myself here I chose to be here I am racing.
I've got all of this technology that can help me see as much as possible. There is some freak occurrence of things that are in the water maybe that I can't see but there's nothing I can do about it and I have to make a decision either to kind of just accept that and push my boat as safely as I can but as fast as I can or be paralysed by that fear and then not achieve what it is I set out to achieve.
And at the end of the day, you know, I put myself in that position. I worked really hard to race that boat and I was going to race that boat. And I just, you know, there were times, there's a lot of times when you are unbelievably anxious. I say it's anxiety rather than fear. It's anxiety because you're reflecting on all of those things that could go wrong. but you just have to address each one logically, and you have to say, okay, I am going to make a decision right now to either allow that to paralyse me or just to acknowledge it, put it aside, and carry on doing that thing that I set out to do.
It sounds so simple, but in the moment, that must have been terrifically hard. I mean, in the dead of night as well, I mean, you weren't really sleeping either, were you? And didn't you get unwell while you were doing it? I did, yes. Towards the end, I had an allergic reaction really randomly to the jellyfish sting, and I was ill for about four weeks, very ill. Yeah. Yes, I mean, it's hard.
It's hard, but you just, you have to become the master of your own psychology. You don't have a choice. And so other, I know that we have satellite console ashore.

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all the time and I know that a lot of other competitors work with psychologists, they have shorting that they can talk to, they can talk about their fears and anxieties and people can help them with overcoming them. I think because I've come up the route that I have, and I've kind of created all of this my own and driven myself and I've not ever had the budget to have that sort of professional support.
I'm actually really self-contained and I didn't, although I had the opportunity, there were always people on the shore I could talk to, I never felt the need for someone to talk me down from those situations or to help with my anxiety because I always found… So I talk it, I speak it out loud or I write it down, you know, just to really, really acknowledge. And when something's bothering me, I just kind of write, what is it?
Just name it. What is that thing that's bothering me? And then I'll kind of say, OK, well, I'm worried that I'm pushing the boat too hard and something's going to break. Let's go through all of the reasons why that won't happen, because I have trust and faith in my team that we prepared this boat as best as we could. Because I trust myself to have the skill to keep this boat together and push it fast.
And it's those sorts of things. And then it sense checks. It's, OK, well, am I too tired to make the right decision? Is that noise I can hear something breaking? what limits did I set on the wind strength? So you're never kind of blindly talking yourself into situations, you're just literally going through almost like you're a room full of people but very methodically going through all of these reasons, making your checklists of pros and cons and then basing your decision on that.
Now I remember one day Because we were all tracking you. We were all excited. And I remember going onto LinkedIn and there was always updates on how you were doing and where you were and all this type of thing. Now, I remember one day opening my LinkedIn page and there was a video message about you from Russell Crowe. And I remember like, what? Russell Crowe? Pier-Pier? What's going on? Tell us that story.
Oh, dear. I'm never gonna lose this one though. So there's a lovely local DJ from Dorset where I live who had been following the race. He was a great, great supporter. And he, it was my birthday and he decided that he would get a load of Twitter messages for me as the birthday present when I was out there. And so he said to my team on the shore, we're getting some Twitter messages.
And I had Twitter messages from Ellen MacArthur, from Jasmine Paris, who's this incredible octor endurance runner, from Griff Rhys Jones, from the head of Sunseeker in the UK. I mean, just loads of really nice messages. But he said to my team, Does Pip have like a favourite actor or anything like that? And I don't. But they panicked. And I had said once in an interview a long time ago, somebody has said, what's your favourite sailing film?
And I said, Master and Commander. And so they panicked and said, Russell Crowe. And so then this DJ tweets Russell Crowe and he records through birthday message. I love it. It was so random, but so randomly brilliant at the same time. And so look, you completed it and it's an amazing thing. I can't underline how amazing it is for so many reasons. I love that you did it by yourself. I love that you didn't have all the resources that everyone else had.
I love that you had to… go beyond your own level of confidence and speak at events, including I remember speaking at Aspire events that we did. And then you got back, and I know you got back in the middle lockdown, which wasn't the sort of glorious fanfare that you would have expected coming home like that, because I think, wasn't it that only a few people could show up because of lockdown rules?
So that must have been a bit difficult after achieving such a high like that. Yeah, that's my bittersweet feeling about the race. I finished in France and only six people were able to come over to France and meet me. And then when I got to the UK, we were in full on lockdown. And this was the greatest achievement of my life.

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I couldn't share it with my friends and family. Most importantly, I couldn't share it with my parents. And it still hurts. It really hurts because I never… I'd imagined this my whole life and I never imagined that I wouldn't be able to share it in that way. And lockdown is easing now in the UK, but the moment's gone. It's gone now. It's sad. I'm really, really, really privileged to have got to do the race during a pandemic.
I mean, that is extraordinary. And it's testament to the organising committee, to the French authorities, you know, that they just said, we will do this. There was a sadness around it as well for me. It's historic in so many ways. I think that I think it's important to point to the highs and the lows of it. and you say it's the biggest achievement of your life and I want to add two words which is to date because I know that you have other things planned and I know that many things will come and you have many years ahead of you.
So what's next Pip? Another fondue. You can do it again. Yeah so I kind of knew When I got back, I knew I wanted to do another one. I knew it. You know, I did this one in an old banger on a shoestring, and I smashed it. And so, you know, I've got that stop-go moment. And the question is, did you enjoy it? Hell yes. Could you do better? Doubly hell yes.
You know, so I got back to the UK. I knew I was going to have a really bad post-race down if I didn't throw myself into something. So I threw myself into negotiating a sponsorship contract with Medallia and we have bought a new, not a new boat, secondhand boat, but a new boat for me. And we're going again. So, but this year I've got a team, I've got a sponsor and I've got three years to train.
And do you know what's amazing about that is I've been back at the queue. all the time you know all of my money and my energy my time has been put into making my boat as good as possible getting to the races you know i've been i created this opportunity for myself but in the build up to it i never had any time for myself and now i actually have an opportunity to invest in myself time and that's amazing and i'm so excited by it And this time, can we have a giant party, please?
Massive. We actually need a sponsor for the party, like a separate sponsor just for the after party when you get back. What are your biggest tips and tricks for women listening who may not want to go solo around the world in a boat on their own, but may feel like their daily lives are like that? I think, you know, the way that I've got through all of this is by having purpose and being really clear about what my purpose is.
You know, that kind of gives me the motivation to… It gives me the motivation to… to endure the tough times because I know why I'm doing it. I think without that reason, then, you know, it's just banging your head against a wall, isn't it? And I think, you know, the thing that I've learned the most about myself is that I can grow my confidence. I can, and in growing my confidence, I grow my competence, but…
When I do it, when I manage it, I do it at the right pace for me and in the right way for me. It can be done. It's taken me 10 years to get to the Vendee, but I did it. I did it by just taking the right path for me and the right steps and also acknowledging that if I try to stretch too far… too soon, you know, it would damage me and so sometimes you have to withdraw and it's just about finding the right pace for me, I think.
I love it. You're an inspiration and you've given me quite the boost today. Thank you, Pip. I can't wait to hear about the second Vonde story and I definitely want to come to the party. So whenever I talk to Pip, I always feel re-inspired and I feel determined again to be able to… She has this resilience and grit and determination to keep going. And she describes herself as shy and not very confident.
And she's learnt to really make the best of that and overcome that so that she can still achieve what many of us are still seeking.

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She's someone to watch. She said this was the biggest achievement of her life and I added to date because I strongly believe that Pip Hair is going a long, long way and we're going to hear more about her in the future.

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