Rosemary Conley on the saddest day of her life and reinventing herself at the age of 73 | books | entertainment

We have published 136 issues of my journal, each of which nearly half a million people have read.

Hundreds of thousands of viewers have enjoyed our TV channel on the Internet, and tens of thousands have lost weight with us online. The franchisees have raised over £2 million for cancer research and other causes.

Despite this dizzying success, storm clouds loomed large. Every December cash flow is tight but in 2013 we lost 40 franchisees – 25 percent of our entire network.

However, we were still excited about next year. Our new-look magazine went on sale right after Christmas, my new book The FAB Diet was coming out and we were expecting new members to join the classes as well as a lot of “rejoining”, which usually happened in January.

Banks were very cautious, so my husband Mike and I put together all the money we could raise – £100,000 – to help fill the gap. Later, our bank added another £200,000 to the business.

Sadly, with the dawning of 2014, the new-look magazine hadn’t flew off the shelves, and two weeks later, distribution was down 50 percent year over year. Sales of the low-fat and ready-to-eat Solo Slim range plummeted. Then franchisees started reporting poor attendance in their classes.

When the credit crunch came, it looked like a perfect storm.

It was time to send the next issue of the magazine to the press, but we couldn’t pay for the previous issue. This was the moment when I realized we had come to the end of the road. I felt sick.

Mike and I invested all our money and had nothing left. I called him and said, “It’s all over. We have to close the shop.” It was the hardest decision of our lives but we had to make it fast.

It was an incredibly sad day. The business will go to management because we still have 120 franchisees who run weekly classes and a profitable online club and magazine with a huge archive of potentially valuable material. We just need investors to help save it.

What happened next was not what I would have done or wanted to do. But it’s no longer my company, even though it did include “Rosemary Conley” in its title.

The thought of everyone losing their jobs was heartbreaking. Our employees were like family, as were our franchisees. We could see the tsunami from afar but there was nowhere to run. I was afraid to address employees at Quorn House, the company’s headquarters, on Monday.

That weekend Mike and I bought enough food for two weeks because I knew I would feel uncomfortable seeing in public after the news broke. It was a strange weekend. I could hardly sleep, and I kept feeling hot and cold with fear and dread. The news will radically change the lives of many people.

On Monday morning, we gathered in the library. Everyone was cheerful and refreshed after the weekend. I explained the situation, and told them we had no alternative but to go to the administration.

Then our manager Mark Hopkins explained what would happen next: He was running the company now and there would be layoffs, but he was trying to find a buyer so everyone had to carry on with business as usual.

In the meantime, Mike and I were going to pay people out of our own pockets, which he described as a very unusual and generous gesture, but I don’t think anyone signed up. Everyone left the library in stunned silence.

At the same time, we informed all franchisees by video. Then we invited them to the meeting. Privileges came from all over the country and we met in the school hall.

I knew they were going to be upset, even angry, but what happened next came as a shock. Understandably, there was a barrage of questions but I wasn’t expecting the personal attacks and accusations that came to me like bullets from the firing squad. I spent three and a half hours resisting the tears, trying to answer their questions.

Human nature, understandably, puts people on a pedestal and we love having someone to look up to. In our work, that person was me. I was the brand – a solid, reliable backbone – and they felt like I had let them down.

I knew we were where we were due to circumstances beyond our control, but everyone wants to blame someone, and if your name is above the door you are the obvious target. I understand, but that didn’t make it any easier.

I went the following week to take my coaching class, as I had done for 42 years. One of the women gave me the largest bouquet of flowers. “We’re really sorry, and after you didn’t hold us accountable last week, we decided to put money together to buy these flowers,” she said.

Tears filled my eyes. After so many people were so terrible, their kindness was overwhelming.

In the mid-’90s, when we were making a lot of money from books and videos, Mike and I invested in real estate. We lived in a very big house and had one outside, and while they were worth a lot of money, it also cost us so much to run it that we had almost no money.

Our office, Quorn House, was owned by our personal retirement fund, and the property was leased to the company. But she hasn’t received any rent in months due to cash flow problems.

Our villa in Portugal was already on the market but the market there was stagnant. We were rich in assets but monetary poor.

Mike Jane’s mother, who had been living with us for six years, gave us enough money to beat us up. It was a lifeline.

Over the following weeks, employees were notified one by one. It became redundant too, but I kept coming every day. It was painful to say goodbye to the staff. Some took it badly and were very hostile.

My only comfort was the knowledge we gave the employees good jobs and experience that would put them in a good position. In the spring of 2015, a year after we took over, it was all over.

Franchisees were given the choice of going it alone – which the majority gladly did – or joining a group set up by an investor. The business was sold online to another investor who invited me and one of the franchisees, Sarah Skelton, to join them. Our Quorn House Base has been sold out.

At the end of 2016, I celebrated my 70th birthday by having lunch on a steam train on the Great Central Railway, from Loughborough through Quorn, Mountsorrel and Birstall.

It was quite convenient because when our office was in the Quorn House, we would regularly hear the whistle as it passed; We had lived in the old parsonage at Mountsorrel; And now I take weekly lessons at the Birstall Golf Club, right next to the railway station.

About a year later, I was contacted by the European distributor of an anti-aging facial exercise device called Facial-Flex® that I have been using for nearly 20 years. If my face looks a little younger than 70, it’s due to the exerciser.

As a result, it has acquired the UK distribution of Facial-Flex®. So, with Mike’s blessing, a new adventure has begun. It was fun to start a business again.

My interest in skating continued, and in 2019, my professional Dancing On Ice partner, Mark Henriette, with whom I appeared on Series Seven, taught me a blissful new routine to prove to myself that I could still perform at age 72.

She shared the video with a chest specialist, Professor Ian Buford, and was amazed that such an elderly person with limited lung capacity could engage in such an activity. In December 2014, the venture capital firm that had bought Online Weight Loss Club suggested buying management and becoming a shareholder.

Later, I asked Sarah Skelton, now CEO of parent company Digital Wellbeing Ltd, if I wanted to trade some shares in exchange for my name back.

One of the hardest things about when our company went into management was that someone else could use my name. I was hoping, and even praying, that I would get it back someday. I was very grateful to Sarah, and of course I said ‘yes’.

A year later, I launched a free video-based site for those in their fifties – rosemaryconley.com – to help the older generation stay fit and healthy.

When the pandemic hit, I halted Monday evening school for the first time in nearly half a century and created a WhatsApp group, an invaluable means of communication during the difficult months ahead.

Because of my lung ailments – asthma and bronchiectasis – I was considered “clinically very vulnerable” so I had to self-isolate and when it became clear the country was going to be closed for a while, I wrote a new book.

Inspired by Captain Tom Moore, my friend and fellow fitness expert Mary Morris and I created a 28-Day Immunity Plan with recipes that included immune-boosting foods and exercise – e-book proceeds go to NHS Charities Together.

Today, I am so fortunate to continue to enjoy this exciting profession, helping people to be healthier and fitter, and would love to travel around the UK to talk about business, stay in shape, eat well, or tell my story of how I found faith in God.

I didn’t think that when I started my first classes in 1972, 50 years is still going on.

Today, I can’t imagine not taking my class on Monday evening. Several members have been attending for 40 years and I consider them friends.

We’ve supported each other through disasters, drama, life-threatening illnesses, happy recoveries, and celebrated many special birthdays with Prosecco and cake. I love my life. So here in the coming years no matter how many years!

Edited excerpt from Cross Thick and Thin by Rosemary Conley (SPCK, £19.99), published 18 August. Expressbookshop.com Or call 020 3176 3832.