food and lifestyle podcast<\/a>, which comes with a side dish of Agony Aunt-style advice.<\/p>\nWhen Paul looks at that photo, she visualises them on stage accepting an award. She can picture the dress she\u2019ll wear on the night.<\/p>\n
Another yet-to-be-fulfilled manifestation on her board is an image from The Traitors, a cosmic shout-out to the programme\u2019s producers that she\u2019d be more than willing to take their call.<\/p>\n
Paul would rather have people lying straight to her face than be stabbed in the back, as she was by her own team on Celebrity Treasure Island a few years ago. She still feels the sting of that one.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, my crikey, I\u2019d love to be on Traitors. I wouldn\u2019t be coming home to watch it on TV and discovering someone has lied to me, because that\u2019s the whole point of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Visualisation isn\u2019t magical thinking, she says. You can\u2019t just stick up a picture of something you want then ignore it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s designed to keep me focused and to keep the dreams alive. And it\u2019s always worked for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the reason I\u2019m here, admiring the view from her Red Beach home on the Whangapar\u0101oa Peninsula, above the softly lapping water of Puawai Bay.<\/p>\n
Prominently placed on Paul\u2019s board is the cover of her new book, Your Time is Now, with the word \u201cBestseller\u201d pinned next to it.<\/p>\n
Time will tell whether aspiration meets reality \u2013 it\u2019s not out until next week \u2013 but she does have form.<\/p>\n
Her 2008 memoir, But Wait, There\u2019s More, topped the New Zealand bestseller list, a year after she won Dancing With the Stars and two years after a highly publicised bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
![\"Paul's]()
Paul’s 2008 memoir, published after her widely publicised bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
Your Time is Now is pitched as an inspirational self-help guide, informed by her life experiences \u2013 from growing up in working-class poverty to her colourful rise as a TV personality.<\/p>\n
Full of practical tips and advice, its final chapter is dedicated to the art of selling, including how to create a sense of connection and build rapport by mirroring a customer\u2019s verbal and physical cues. <\/p>\n
(Paul, who says she never sells a product she wouldn\u2019t buy herself, looks horrified when I ask if she ever feels bad about psychologically manipulating people in that way. I suspect it\u2019s never crossed her mind.)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an index of sources and references at the back of the book, a sign that Paul wants it to be taken seriously. <\/p>\n
In chapter three, for example, she quotes research by a psychology professor at Dominican University in California who found people were 42% more likely to achieve their goals if they\u2019d written them down.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of being things you just talk about doing, when you write down your goals they will start to happen,\u201d she writes. \u201cYour life will be transformed, as mine was back in 1991 when I stepped off that plane in Auckland with my list of dreams and goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Paul]()
Paul gets a touch-up during a break in the filming of Style Challenge, a makeover TV series she hosted in the late 90s.<\/p>\n
Catastrophisers and \u201cNegative Nellies\u201d, on the other hand, are setting themselves up for failure.<\/p>\n
To be successful in sales requires the ability to metabolise daily rejection, so it\u2019s little surprise a key theme of the book is learning how to pick yourself up after a knockback.<\/p>\n
Case in point, the book proposal was initially rejected or ignored by every publisher Paul approached. Then, while selling natural health supplements at a shopping mall, she discovered one of her customers worked at HarperCollins. She pounced, giving her an elevator pitch on the spot.<\/p>\n
Two decades earlier, But Wait, There\u2019s More had ended when Paul was at rock bottom, bankrupt at 50 after her M\u0101ori village project at Northcote Point collapsed.<\/p>\n
Your Time is Now picks up where that left off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost my home, my business, my car and my jewellery,\u2019 she writes. \u201cI lost everything, but I found out that there are worse things to lose than possessions. Because I also lost my confidence, my self-respect and my dignity.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in New Zealand knew that I\u2019d failed \u2013 big time. I was ashamed to hold my head up in public.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her memoir, Paul had outlined the steps she planned to take to rebuild her life, a process she\u2019d followed successfully after other (albeit less spectacular) setbacks.<\/p>\n
At first, however, the prospect of starting over filled her with despair. <\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s 50s were a tough decade. Her second marriage collapsed. Her beloved dog died (after multiple failed IVF treatments earlier in her life, he\u2019d been like a child to her). She went through menopause.<\/p>\n
However, it was the sudden death of her mother, who had come from England to join her in the mid-90s, that rocked her to the core.<\/p>\n
At the time, she was selling two clothing lines she had developed for petite women (one called Short & Sweet) and had opened a shop in Remuera. The loss was so devastating she closed the business.<\/p>\n
![\"Paul's]()
Paul’s boutique in Remuera Mall, which sold her line of clothes for petite women, closed down in 2013. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to carry on working, but the joy of it had gone. You can\u2019t do sales when you\u2019re depressed. You\u2019re just dead inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Christchurch earthquake struck, she says, it took her mind off her sorrows.<\/p>\n
Paul kept busy, arranging for nappies to be sent to women who couldn\u2019t leave the house, and ferrying people from the airport to homes where they had been offered somewhere to stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then my old business partner rang up and asked if I wanted to come back and do a bit of work at Thin Lizzy, training some of the girls and writing a sales manual.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, she\u2019s still at Thin Lizzy, happily remarried and back in the game, ready to share the lessons she has learned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realised I didn\u2019t want that to be my legacy,\u201d she says of her earlier memoir. \u201cSo much has happened since then.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get people coming up to me in their 30s, 40s and 50s who think, because of their circumstances or their age, that their life is over; they\u2019ve had their chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018My gosh, I\u2019m 70 this year and I\u2019m still going.\u2019 I\u2019m still thinking of new ideas. I\u2019m still vibrant. I\u2019m still enjoying life, and I wanted other people to know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Paul]()
Paul turns it on for the camera at a fashion shoot for Viva in 2024. Photo \/ Guy Coombes<\/p>\n
It must be exhausting to have become such public property, required to \u201csparkle and shine\u201d on demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay it, Suzanne! Say it!\u201d strangers call out when they see her. And she does.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut wait, there\u2019s more!\u201d she\u2019ll chirp, as they take her photo or capture the moment on video. Some record her voice on their phone, still obsessed with that unmistakable twang that followed her from England.<\/p>\n
\u201cThousands of luminous spheres \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
There must be times \u2013 although you\u2019d never get Paul to admit it \u2013 when she would rather lick the road clean with her tongue, like one of Monty Python\u2019s four Yorkshiremen.<\/p>\n
Once, out for dinner with her husband on New Year\u2019s Eve, she was swept up from the table by tipsy fans who passed her around like a toy. <\/p>\n
No one likes being manhandled, but interacting with the public is more than a job to Paul. She almost thinks of it as her calling.<\/p>\n
![\""I]()
“I always thought that if I\u2019m going to be happy, it\u2019s because I choose to be.” Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
Next year, she\u2019ll have lived in New Zealand longer than in the UK, and finding a home here is something she has never taken for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just interested in people,\u201d she says. \u201cI like talking to them and I like their answers. I don\u2019t think you would find anybody in the whole country who could come forward and say, \u2018I spoke to her once and she was rude\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a child, I don\u2019t think I brought anyone any pleasure or any joy. I was just there to be tolerated. I felt unlovable for a long time, and I knew from an early age that no one was coming to save me.\u201d <\/p>\n
Paul has made peace with that, and the close relationship she later built with her mother is something she\u2019ll always treasure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be where I am and who I am today if I hadn\u2019t gone through that childhood. It made me very self-sufficient, very resilient. I always thought that if I\u2019m going to be happy, it\u2019s because I choose to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only plan other girls my age had was what they called the man plan. You\u2019d marry someone who would look after you, have a few kids, get the council house. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was never my plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"]()
Your Time is Now (HarperCollins, $40) is out on October 27.<\/p>\n
Joanna Wane is a senior lifestyle writer focusing on social issues and the arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s a load of bollocks, according to Paul, who\u2019s worked every moment of her hardscrabble life since being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[141549,6325,2108,277505,156,71,1364,185,25336,424,4486,117,111,139,1536,425,69,2847,17357,21497,3800,6926,8466,180,14720,4468,2044,44133,14638,14047,102,1959],"class_list":["post-639709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-70th","tag-birthday","tag-book","tag-callup","tag-entertainment","tag-from","tag-her","tag-is","tag-lessons","tag-life","tag-month","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-now","tag-nz","tag-only","tag-paul","tag-pauls","tag-podcast","tag-season","tag-second","tag-shares","tag-suzanne","tag-thing","tag-time","tag-traitors","tag-wants","tag-way","tag-with","tag-your"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}