October 24, 2024 • 42 mins
I sit down with the remarkable Debbie Travis, a woman who has spent her life pursuing her dreams, taking bold leaps, and transforming television. Debbie is an entrepreneur extraordinaire. We learn about her humble beginnings to becoming a successful model, a world-renowned and beloved television personality, author, speaker, and today running a Villa in Tuscany.
Debbie’s unapologetic honesty shines through as she discusses her challenges and how she turned them into opportunities. Whether you're looking for inspiration, laughter, or ideas on approaching life, you will love hearing Debbie's story as much as I loved interviewing her.
To learn more about Debbie and to buy her new book,
Laugh More: Stories from an Unexpected Life: https://debbietravis.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
One of my favorite mantras from one of my favorite humans in the world
is Steve Jobs. He said, we're here to put a dent in the universe.
Otherwise, why else even be here? And you think about this for
innovators, that drum stick they hold saying, what can I do? How can I make
an impact? I mean, think of songwriters. It's about voking these deep
feelings. Scientists unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos.
(00:25):
I have to believe athletes, it's not just winning a medal, but hearing that
roar from the crowd and entrepreneurs is solving pressing needs
that improve everybody's lives. Well, today in chatter that matters, I have
someone that just didn't have one drumstick in her hand. She pounded on both of
them. Her name's Debbie Travis. The following show is all
real. It might shock you, and it could be your home. Simply
(00:47):
follow my basic rules and recipes and you 2 will soon be
creating great paint effects. On the next show we'll decorate a
room, a basement, a 300 year old kitchen, loft
space. You know this this cry that comes from the gut.
His hands were shooting up. It was like a religious thing. Take me,
take me, my daughter. Please. Ladies and gentlemen,
(01:10):
miss Debbie Travers. She's
a woman of so many talents and so many marks in the universe.
Former fashion model, she captivated audiences with her beauty and style and
grace. Then she transitioned into television and didn't just
wander into it, became a household name inviting viewers into her creative
world. I said, you know what I would do? And she turned around, she looked
(01:33):
at me with such I don't know whether it was fear or, you know, as
she ran out of the store. Teaching them to beautify their living
spaces with shows like Debbie Travis, Painted House and Debbie Travis,
Space Lift, long before there were specialty television. But Debbie didn't
stop there. She penned books that guided readers through personal home
renovations, echoing her own philosophy that change is not about new
(01:55):
paint, but about transforming lives. It's the dream it, do it, live it. We all
have dreams of, you know, of wanting to do stuff. The doing it is
the work that you have to put in, and the living it is the consequences.
You know, did you make a mistake? Are you, you know, gonna end up back
at mom's kind of thing? And now her villain Tuscany, Debbie
reshapes narratives, moving from reinventing personal environments to
(02:16):
helping individuals reinvent their lives and awaken their
potential. Join us as we delve into the life of Debbie
Travis, a woman where every endeavor beats a new rhythm,
inspiring all of us to find our own ways in making the universe
dance.
It's Tony Chapman. A big shout out to RBC for supporting
(02:39):
chatter that matters. We hope to counter the negativity and growing sense of
impossibility with stories of people who overcome circumstances
to chase their dreams and change their world and ours for the better.
Debbie Travis, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Oh, that's very kind, everything
you said. But yes. Hi. Hi. Hi, Tony. So wonderful to be
(03:00):
here. I'm a little starstruck because I did grow up just loving I love
color. You know, one of my favorite people in the universe said to me one
day, gray is not a color, and I couldn't agree more. So it's just it's
lovely to see it. So you're born in Lancashire, England. And when you
sorta entered the world, I have to believe it was still an important cotton
weaving town. Well, it was. And, actually, my my father, who died
(03:21):
very young, like, at 39, had a mill that
he inherited that made sweet machines. So I was most popular
girl in school because they, they made all the machines that
made things like gummy bears and and colesfoot rock and and or
just all kinds of things. So we used to get all the samples. But it
was a yeah. I was born actually, brought up in Rochdale,
(03:43):
which is a real mill town. But Lancashire
is famous for its coal mines and its cotton
mills. So how difficult was it for you to let your
parents or maybe it was just your mother at the time know that you wanted
to go to art school? Because I have to believe in those days, it was
that's not a secure job. You're not gonna make a living. You
(04:04):
know? Did that or was that something they just celebrated? You know what? It's so
different from North America. And I've talked to a lot of,
friends recently, actually, when I was writing this new
book, because people don't discuss, you know, in England
where you're gonna go to university. Not in my day anyway. And so the the
I think it was just going from 15 to 16 when you
(04:27):
could leave home. And my mom was widowed, and was raising
4 kids. And, it was basically she said, well, you
can leave home when you're 17. The day after my
17th birthday, I said, right. I'm off then. I'm moving to London.
And, she's actually turned to me, and I'll never forget this. She
was at the stove where she kind of spent most of her time, and she
(04:49):
said, do you want a jam sandwich for the bus? So, you
know, you listen to people whose parents, including myself with my own
children, discussed your kids' future and where they were gonna go to
university and stuff. In my house, it was just not a discussion. So I
literally got on a bus, you know, 7 or 8 hours, went to London,
and moved in with a girlfriend, and that was it. And, you know, the interesting
(05:10):
thing about it with no email those days, no tracking devices, it just
you have to imagine how your mom felt. Either she was happy there was one
less mouth to feed, and the last jammed sandwich, or
she just sort of said, let's trust the universe, and and I think she's gonna
be okay. I don't think she even thought about it. I think it was just
yeah. As you said, I was the eldest, one gone, you know, one less mouth
(05:30):
to feed. But, yeah, it's and now I look back on those
years of landing in London,
with with nothing. Probably £5 in my pocket. And
I and I would have had a fit if that was my kids. It's an
interesting thing to talk about because do we overprotect our
kids and try to always give them a safe landing? And
(05:53):
do they learn that kind of resilience that and this ability to
continuously reinvent yourself that kinda marked your career? I wonder if you had
been you being the kind of mother that you're talking about, would you have done
what you've done? No. No. I think, first of all, it gave me
coming from the north gives you a great work ethic
because everybody works there. It also gives you a great sense of humor,
(06:14):
which I think is so important to get through the trials and tribulations of
life. And, you know, it comes with the territory that we had the highest rainfall
in Europe where I come from, and and, you know, so it drizzled most of
the time. So you get very good skin, but you have to have a good
laugh to get through it all. And and I I think it was,
you know, jumping into the London world of
(06:35):
of the craziness and the wildness and and and living by your
bootstraps, as we say, gave you a confidence that
stays with you all your life. And how did you become a model? I mean,
this is a big jump. I mean, I can imagine you calling home to your
mom and saying, they're paying me to take my picture. I can only
imagine that first conversation going, what kind of picture? Yeah. Exactly.
(06:55):
They're gonna say they're paying me to take my clothes off. Luckily, nobody really wanted
to see my body, but, so basically, I was on a bus
and a guy said to me, can you imagine if this was you?
Because we were going through the countryside, and he said, can I take your picture?
And I think I was 15 at the time, and I was living at home.
And I got off the bus and traipsed across a
(07:17):
field, stood beside a tree, took some pictures, told my mom that night. She
hit me over the back of her head, and that was it. But about a
week later, it was in a it was in the newspaper about the youth
today, and an agency called and asked me to join an agency.
So by the time I got to London, I did have an agent. I immediately,
within, I guess, about a year of, doing
(07:39):
what we saw called go sees, going around London, getting a portfolio,
got sent to Tokyo. Again, you know, going back to my mother, you know, it's
like, I'm going to Japan, mom. She was like, that's nice, dear. You know, as
if I was saying I'm going down to the village shop. And and
and I went with other girls, and I was there for 6 months.
And I came back, and I bought a flat,
(08:00):
an apartment, for cash on the Kings Road in Chelsea,
where I'm sitting now. And, my mum did come
to London because she'd heard I bought, you know, a flat, and she asked me
if I was a prostitute. I said, no. I'm doing
pictures. She said, alright, love. You know? She had no clue, but, you know, that
was the only way you made that money so quickly. But it made you tough,
(08:22):
and we were all the same. We I think we got a a street smart
and and a gut instinct when you knew,
that something wasn't quite right. You know, you go to a casting at
10 o'clock on a Sunday morning with 1 guy in a dark room.
It's like, right, run. So, you know, this happened every
day, and and and you just became really good at it. And we were all
(08:45):
I think the the equivalent of of of not having the social
media and not having the contact list that you have today,
we had each other, and we had this, camaraderie of
women. Did London still have the swagger when you arrived at because they must have
been with the British invasion, one of those moments in life where culturally,
London could say, we've arrived as a city. Yeah. I love it.
(09:08):
I love it to the I'm sitting here now. I arrived from Italy last
night, and I remember when I first came at 16/17,
sitting on a a red London bus, looking at this old lady with her
shopping, thinking you are the luckiest person ever. I've never got this
city out of my blood. In my era, it was the punk era.
So 2 minutes from where I'm sitting now is the Kings
(09:31):
Road, and that was where all the, you know, the punk rock
kids were, you know, with the Mohicans, and and and
tourists would come just to to look at them. The wine bar's
open. So it was the invention of the wine bar. And, of course, we would
go to these wine bars, pick up men, so we could get into the
restaurants because we had no money. So you'd pick up a guy, and then we
(09:52):
always chose restaurants where we knew we had a a window in the
toilet to get out of. So you always see these girls leaving at
dessert, going, I'm just going to the loo. And then, of course, you made your
getaway, so you didn't have to do anything for the food. You know, we had
it down pat us girls. We we absolutely loved it. I, I did a lot
of work in London in my early career, and my daughter lives there. And when
(10:12):
I arrive in London, there's a smell to the city. Yeah. Even after they got
rid of leaded gases, like, actually but there's a smell to London.
Camden, you know, there's so many different parts of London, but there's just this
energy, this love. Mid eighties, you meet your
prince, or he makes meets his queen. So tell me about your time
in Cannes, and then you meet Hans, and suddenly, this this
(10:35):
person that loves London gonna be moving to Montreal, Quebec. You know, as
girls, we got we got sent with agents. So if you were in London, you
got sent to different different places. So I was in Amsterdam,
and I was on a shoot, really boring. It was like a catalog
shoot. There were, like, 10 girls and stacks of, you know,
racks of dresses and stuff. And I was sitting there, and there was a
(10:57):
really old woman, I never forgot it, with, like, bright red hair. She
was about 25. I thought she was the coolest woman
I'd ever seen. She you know, for me, she was old. And she was
running around with a yellow clipboard, and she was like, you over there,
you over here, up, you know, and she was really bossy. And I said to
somebody, who's that woman? What's what's her job? I want
(11:19):
that job. They said, oh, she's a producer. I said, well, how do you
become a producer? And they said, well, first of all, you hang around the
pubs where producers go, and and then you get your foot in the door. And
that's exactly I got back to London, went to SoHo, where all
the television people hung out. And within a few weeks, I
had, you know, a a job in an edit suite and
(11:41):
then on production, and and I worked my way up to the BBC. And
I absolutely loved it. I was still rock bottom. But I met
somebody who I somehow managed to start my own television
company. I never made a penny. I spent a lot of
money, and I somehow I I don't know. I always had a
way of making things happen. I somehow wangled my way to what's called
(12:03):
MIP, which is 2 weeks before the famous Cannes Film
Festival, and I didn't care really about
the business side of it. What I cared about was the parties. I loved
parties, still do. So I managed to wangle an
invitation. God knows who I slept with. But anyway, I got an invitation to the
Universal Studios party, and there I met this very
(12:25):
nice Canadian, and, married him 3 weeks
later, Like an idiot. And he was from
he was he'd gone to Montreal to go to university there many years
before, and he said, oh, you'll love it. You know, come out. And of course,
I just that was it. I dropped literally dropped everything.
Within, you know, weeks of being married, I was pregnant, and
(12:47):
then I was pregnant again. So within 2 years, I had
moved countries, got married, and had 2 2 I
had 2 babies. And I was I was shell shocked. Shell shocked. You're one of
the most brutally honest people I've ever interviewed, so I wanna ask you this question.
Did you suddenly go, oh my god. I've become my mom, and I'm gonna be
handing out jam sandwiches all my life and put and park my dreams,
(13:09):
or did you really think that you could do both? No. I I don't think
I really thought about it like that. I was very, very happy, and,
you know, I had 2 kids, but I I I tried to get into I
didn't speak French, so I tried to get into
TV, working behind the scenes, and of course it was
impossible in Montreal. And so I had a friend,
(13:31):
a great friend in London, who had done we were
both signed up to do a paint finishing course in London,
and I chose sex over painting. And I
remember her saying to me, you're going where? You're moving where? What with
who? I said, oh my god. You know, he's so amazing, and I'm gonna follow
him to this country called Canada. And she said, well, I've I've
(13:53):
paid for our course. So I said, well, you do it, and if
you know, I'll maybe I'll start painting, and I'll ask you how to do it,
which is what I did. So we bought an old Victorian house in a place
called Westmount, which is in Montreal. And, I painted it with
all these paint finishes on the phone to her going, well, how'd you do faux
marble? How'd you do faux stone? How'd you do sponging?
(14:14):
You know? And because I had babies, you start to meet other
women, and then people started to say to me, could you do that in my
house? I said, yeah. Sure. So within a few years, I was
I smelt like paint thinner and, obviously thought my children were
gonna grow up terribly bright. So I, I I decided to
make a video because people were beginning to ask me, how do you do this?
(14:36):
Wasn't like just painting with a roller. It was like taking a feather,
putting it, you know, down a wall, and and and and it was the
beginning of the how to movement. So I
decided to make a video called decorative paint finishes made easy.
I sold it through gift shops across the whole of America and Canada,
and we sold, in the end, over a 1000000 copies, 7 languages,
(14:59):
different versions of it. And I started to get invited
onto television shows and radio shows. And I
remember what the first one was a radio show somewhere, I think in Toronto.
And I remember the interviewer saying, this sounds about as interesting as
watching paint dry. And suddenly, all the lights, it
was live, were going on, and people were going, I need to speak to Debbie.
(15:22):
I'm up a ladder, and I don't know how to do you know? And it
went ballistic. And then I got invited on chat shows, but I don't
know if you remember the Deanie Petit
show. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. So I remember being on her
show, and Tom Hanks was in the green room, the
producer coming in and saying, look, we're really sorry, mister Hanks, but we need to
(15:44):
cut your segment short because Debbie's here. And he was like, why? And I
said, well, I'm showing people how to rip off wallpaper. And he was like, oh,
Rita would love to know how to do that. You know? And and so it
it be just became huge. And then
the producers and the networks were changing, as all
media does every 10 years, and the cables were starting. And the
(16:06):
cables were coming out with rubbish because they had no money, so it
was old shows, you know, old dramas and stuff. A few months
later, we were back in Cannes for my husband's work, and this
producer came up to us and said, look, our our network's gonna tank. It's only
been going a year. Would you do a show about painting? And so
I came up with an idea called The Painted House. Hi. I'm Debbie
(16:28):
Travis, and welcome to The Painted House, the decorating show that's
not just for the grown ups. We
rented a brand new house. We painted we we we got a we
got a show an episode out of the toilet, out of the, you
know, the laundry room, out of the yeah. Nobody done this.
Nobody in North America. And then we the show
(16:50):
aired. This is the first episode of the first season of
the Painted House, and it aired to the worst audience you could possibly
imagine because it was the
day that OJ Simpson, got his
sentencing. Missus Robertson. We, the jury, in the above entitled action find the
defendant Orangel James Simpson not guilty of the crime
(17:12):
of murder in violation of penal code section 187,
a, a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson. So even I didn't watch
my show. The whole world was watching OJ. And, anyway, so
it was a disaster. I think 3 people watched. But the week after
that, it went to 200, 20,000, a 100,000,
a 150,000, 3,000, a 1000000 viewers, and they'd never seen this with cable.
(17:35):
They these were network numbers. Back to Cannes where it
was show sold to about 80 countries, so our budget went up and up and
up, and within kind of 2 or 3 years, we started traveling. Now just hold
on. Hold on here. So you're going to these different countries. I mean, you could
have shown them different styles in Montreal. A little bit of sense
of, well, we're gonna go to Italy because there's a certain thing I wanna show
(17:57):
you. That was good. Well, it was hilarious because we turned their living room
into a reggae style. We
got great, and people said, how'd you get such good footage of people sobbing and
crying, and saying, well, look at the room, you know? Now the other shows were
starting, and they were all so straight, and I wasn't really a decorator. I
was a television person, and and, oh, this is how you put blue with
(18:18):
yellow, and this is how I didn't care 2 hoots about that. All I cared
about was this amazing reaction as somebody was
sobbing in the corner, and and and because it was television,
and I understood television. Television is
about entertainment, and that's what we were doing. We were entertaining
people having fun. So how did it feel? I mean, you know,
(18:41):
you Dini Patty was obviously well known in Canada, but, I mean, there was this
I'm trying to remember if people would under remember this name, Oprah.
So we're trying today to solve some of your decorating dilemmas with top
experts from around the country. The woman behind that breathtaking room
makeover is this woman. Her name is Debbie Travis. Debbie?
(19:01):
That's like getting knighted. The day Oprah calls is a day
you never ever forget. I was actually in
a store with my very badly behaved young teenage
boys. The producer at Oprah had got my my cell
phone number from, it must have been the first phones, from, the
office. And she called, and I was in this store which had very,
(19:24):
like, music, and and and and and
I said, oh my god, the Oprah Winfrey Show. So the girl behind the desk
turned down the music. Everybody in the stop shop was listening to my end of
the conversation, and she was basically saying, can you be here Monday
morning? So I went, but they don't actually tell you you're gonna be
on the show sitting next to her. So I got I got into
(19:44):
Chicago to Harpo Studios, and they took all my
footage, and then I had to go into a booth and do
voiceovers. And Oprah was in the next booth, and I remember thinking, this is
the happiest moment of my life, even though there was a there was a wall
between us, never thinking it would go any further. They
don't tell you because they're watching to see if they can think that you
(20:05):
can hold up, you know, sitting next to her. So, the next
morning at 7:30 the day of the live show, they
said, you have the yellow chairs. And
they called it Homebase. And I thought they meant Home Depot. And I said, yeah.
We have Home Depot in Canada too. No. No, Debbie. Homebase. You're
sitting. And at first, I'm not very I'm not a very nervous
(20:26):
person, but I sat next to her, and my and my and at one point,
she put her hand on my knee, and she said, you need to stop shaking.
I was like, oh my god. And and she was so real. And and
Amazon, I think, had really just started, and I had 3 my first
three books were decorating books. And you watch them, and my and they went to
number 3, number 6, number 8 on Amazon. I mean, like,
(20:48):
unheard of today. And then, you know, I did it regularly
for quite a while, and and it it it got to the point where because
they don't pay for you to get there. They don't pay for for
anything, and so it was getting very costly. And then, of course, your publisher
wants to come, and your whole team is coming, and it was very
exciting. All of this is happening. Is any of this planned? Is this
(21:10):
sort of, okay, in the next 18 months, I wanna do x y zed, or
is it just I'm gonna write this book? Or, like, are are you just catching
this wave because you're such a magnetic personality, or are you in
fact purposely setting the wave? No. Never ever
set a plan. Even I'm a little attention deficit. I think I'm I'm
very much on the cusp, so I have a huge amount amount of
(21:32):
energy. I exhaust people because I'm always, like, moving, and
and and one thing I do jump on is opportunity, and that's what I
talk to young people about a lot because some people, you can slam them over
their head with an you know, somebody gives them an you know, some kind of
opportunity. Me, I like jumping into things, and I am all over
the map. I do know when I'm bored and when
(21:53):
I'm tired, and that was a big thing for me in television.
It sounds crazy to say it was easy, but it was easy because
we were the front runner. People were coming up behind us, and the, you know,
the networks were saying, more decorated shows. Give everybody a decorating show. You know,
whatever you want, get somebody else. You know, we need other people, but we were
always pushing the boundaries. And and it was a wonderful
(22:16):
way to do television. It was the cowboy years. And, you know, we ended up
being a production company producing other people's shows. So many
of the lifestyle shows from cooking, property, were
ours. It was just this constant wave, and
then things started to change in the industry.
So the bigger I got when I ended up on on
(22:38):
national networks, more people got involved. There was more money
involved. So now you're sitting in a boardroom with 40 people,
and they'll take an idea, and by the time they've all put their opinion
in, you've got what I call brown. You've got nothing.
You've got dullness. And and I'm a great believer,
pick an audience and go with it. If you start saying to people,
(23:01):
well, those people don't like that, and that you can never pick a you know,
please everybody, You have to pick an audience. At the
same time, you're also launching a sole platform. You're gonna get into
products. You're obviously authoring books. You're doing personal appearances. How
did you manage to keep that altogether knowing
that I mean, where you excel is it when you say when you're putting something
(23:23):
out that you say, I love that kind of television. I love pleasing that
audience. How did you manage to do it all? The good thing about being based
in Montreal, all our business was in New York, LA, and
Toronto. So we had a great Victorian house right
opposite the school. I mean, literally, we heard the bell in the morning,
and I walked the children across the road. Our offices and our
(23:45):
studio was 2 blocks away. We were home to do the homework.
We were home to be with the family. And
when we traveled for work, filming, which
we did a lot, we did it in the school holiday. So my children learned
at 8, 9 years old to be cable carriers, to behave,
you know, couldn't play outside, you know, and be quiet around the
(24:08):
set, and they were used to it. One thing they laugh about today
is the the house that we had in Montreal, we used as a set.
And so my eldest son, probably about 13 at the time, and
wrote to the a national newspaper
about his fear of camp, because in the summer, they went for 2
or 3 weeks to a a boys' camp, and like a lot of
(24:30):
Canadian children. But he wrote not the fear of being away from
mummy, but the fear of coming home and what I'd done to his room
because, mummy, I don't want a ballet room, you know.
Don't want a cowboy themed room anymore, you know? Don't worry, I'll paint it
out, you know? So we used the house as a set, so they would be
anyway, this this newspaper picked it up. How
(24:53):
I hate my mother. So we got our balance by
by making the work environment,
conducive with the children. And then the product line started, and
so that was when I really started spending a lot of time
flying in and out. It was fantastic. So we we started
with paint. Within weeks, we had everything from flooring to taps
(25:15):
to I couldn't do any wrong, and and it exploded, and
and, it was a wonderful, wonderful 10 years.
And and funny, when Brits came over to because they don't have anything like that
in England, really, at that extent, like this massive hardware store. So when
Brits used to come over, we used to tour Canadian
tyres, you know, and say, no. No. Come and look at the home section. That's
(25:36):
me. No. No. No. I wanna I wanna buy a hockey stick, I wanna buy
all this. So my job there was to bring women
into the store because before that, women weren't,
they would go in the shop, but they weren't spending time
buying, plates and and curtains and stuff like that, so
I had to make that attractive. So we put our own team together to
(25:57):
make that happen, and and it was very successful. When we
return, Debbie talks about her adventures of putting pen to paper.
From decorating to the chaos of a working mom raising kids, her love
of writing books, her life in Tuscany, and of course, my 3
takeaways.
(26:18):
Hi. It's Tony Chapman, host of Chatter That Matters presented by
RBC. RBC provides small business owners with resources that
go beyond banking. Resources that help them attract new customers,
build strong employee teams, and manage their money. To get
access to these services, go to rbc.com/beyondbanking.
Small businesses matter to RBC.
(26:46):
A walk at the same time every day. Everybody goes out, so
you'll get teenagers hanging out with their friends. You'll get, you know,
Annona and her grandchildren. You'll get 2 best friends gossiping.
And it's just they walk around the block or they, you know, they they walk
on a highway. The entire country gets
together, and it actually has its own name, the Pasir Jata. So
(27:08):
I'm thinking, well, you can bring that back into your life. All we want now
is touch. We wanna see smiles, you know. We want and
it can take time, but we need to learn to reach out. Today,
my special guest is Debbie Travis. She's an extraordinary entrepreneur,
broadcaster, media personality, author, speaker,
and so much more. As you're constantly moving and putting new dance, is this partially
(27:30):
out of boredom that you've kinda done dents, is this partially out of boredom that
you've kinda done it and you wanna do something else? Say, writing, for example, is
that therapeutic to you? Is that you're doing it for
monetary, or you just you just feel it's part of the platform? Nobody
writes a book, for money, put it that way.
And they call most books, unless you're a huge international bestseller,
(27:53):
but most books, I think, are ego projects.
Not in a bad way. I think everybody's got a book in them, and and
I, you know, I I often say to people who are having a bad time,
write it down. If you're having, you know, you wanna tell the story of your
family, write it down. It's a wonderful kind of homework. It's a
wonderful practice. So the first eight books were with
(28:14):
Random House in New York, and they were 8 decorating books, and they came
about because of the success of the shows. So every single
and then I got asked by the National Post
to be included in a in a group of well known women on
how to get through the the years of working and raising
children. And it was geared to women who were going back into the workforce,
(28:37):
women who were already in the workforce and struggling. So the other
well known women wrote really quite heavy things,
and I just wrote a very funny story about
the chaos of raising kids. And then my publisher
called and said, I think this should be a book. So I wrote a book
called Not Guilty, about the chaos of raising my children,
(28:59):
and, they're still suing me.
But, you know, your kids don't remember stuff. They'll say things like, Mom, we
never went on holiday. I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got the
receipt. You know, kids. Oh, I know. I know. So that book
was was a real turn for me. And then
when I made the leap from the television world to
(29:22):
renovating this property in Tuscany, which
was 5 years of craziness, and and
it was and then I started to get it was called Design Your Next Chapter,
the book, and and I started to get attracted to people.
Maybe they were a surgeon, and they'd had enough, and they wanted
to to sing. Or they worked for the bank for
(29:45):
20 years, and all they ever wanted to do was be a baker.
And you start getting attracted to these stories. So I wrote a book about other
people's stories, my stories, and how to do it. And this was a
big bestseller, a very emotional book for a lot of people,
because it's the dream it, do it, live it. We all have dreams of, you
know, of wanting to do stuff. The doing it is is the
(30:06):
work that you have to put in, and the living it is the consequences.
You know, did you make a mistake? Are you, you know, gonna
end up back at mom's kind of thing? And so that book then
morphed into the next book, and now the one I've just done. So I wanna
end with talking about your book because it's fabulous, but Tuscany
comes along. I think happiness is being in the right place at
(30:28):
the right time and being where you should be at that
time. In any business, you you kinda
crave for something fresh to reignite your
passion again. And to me, this is as big of a
change as this this London girl moving to Montreal.
You now decide that Tuscany is gonna be your base. How did that
(30:50):
all come about? And you've really sort of almost taken what your
these books that you've written more recently and said, this is about personal transformation,
isn't it? For me and for others. So we fell in love with
Italy, while we were filming. I mean, like, everything, the
food, the people, the way of life, we fell in love with it. And so
we had a little dream. One day, if we could afford it, we'd buy a
(31:11):
house for us. And then, of course, you know, you start looking at 14
bedroom convents, and I said, I'm not buying a ruin.
I don't speak Italian. I can't do it. We bought a ruin on
a hillside in Tuscany. I was finishing a show,
which was called All For One, for CBC, and it was
a big national Wednesday night, enormous
(31:33):
show traveling the country, and it was breaking me. I I I
was at the end of my tether. The teams there were so big. We had
a crew of 69 crossing the country. I think the fun
had gone out of it, and I really felt, if I'm not excited,
how is I mean, we had producers from LA. It was
enormous. At the same time, I was on this
(31:55):
journey in my head in Italy. I did a speech
in Vancouver, and I had, maybe a 1000
women in the audience. And at the end of the speech, there was an interviewer
who said, what's next for Debbie Travis? And I said, I am going to
be taking women to my villa in Tuscany, where we'll
do yoga in the lavender field. We'll walk through
(32:17):
the olive groves. And I went on and on for about 5
minutes, and I realized everybody had gone
completely quiet. Nobody coughed. You could hear a pin drop.
Oh my god. I really thought, you know, because the lights are on you, so
you can't really see the audience so much. I thought people have walked
out. So the lights the big lights came
(32:40):
on, and it was like people in shock. And suddenly, all
these arms went up in the air, and it was like, take me, take me.
And the next day, I got husbands saying, take her, take her.
And I didn't have a a villa in Tuscany. You know, we hadn't found
the right place. So I knew I was onto something. So I
went to the area I liked. I rented an old, dusty
(33:02):
villa, cleaned it up, brought the first 18 women
over, and I could have put them in a tent. It was the most mesmerizing,
the magic of putting 18 16, 18 women together who
didn't know each other. And within a year, we found,
the property that we have now, and I spent 5 years doing it
up while we used this rundown place. You know, we did
(33:26):
only 1 a year because I was still filming. And then in 2015,
everybody moved, you know, into our place. Changed my
life. It has changed thousands of women's lives and men
now. Talk to me about your
book Joy, Life Lessons from a Tuscan Village because, like, once
again, you've taken a physical space and brought
(33:48):
the heart out. And you brought the heart out to these gorgeous designs
and beautiful pictures and these stories. So It's a beautiful book, book, full
of photography and and really lovely. When we start so we've been doing the
retreats now for really 10 years. You watch people from the day
they arrive to the day they leave, and within 48
hours, they start to change. Their skin looks better. They're
(34:11):
eating pasta every day. Oh, I don't eat pasta. They're eating pasta every day.
They're drinking olive oil. They're drinking copious amounts of
Tuscan wine. They're talking, like my husband's often saying, you
know, what are they talking about? Women, they
start to they yoga class in the morning. They talk all the way through downward
dog. They talk all the way through breakfast. And these are women who don't know
(34:31):
each other of all ages, all countries,
and they leave with 17 new best friends. And at the
end, we do what we call a forum, and
we started to have a lot of people very nervous and very upset.
And they were saying, I'm frightened of going back.
(34:52):
I live in a condo. How
do I bottle this? I started to break it down. What is
it about? Because really, Tuscany, it's not that it's any
different from anywhere else. It's a time warp. So we're
living like our grandparents lived, you know, chatting over the back
fence, camaraderie of each other, helping each
(35:14):
other, eating in season. You know, my
grandparents ate potatoes and carrots and parsnips in the
winter. You're eating better, and it's all that community.
So these are the the lessons from a Tuscan villa. So you can
take that home to wherever you live in the world and try and
make those changes. So that's what Joy was all about. Your latest book,
(35:37):
Laugh More Stories From an Unexpected Life. It is so beautiful.
Each one of these there's so many things that can be framed in it, so
many unexpected twists in life. And, again, this laughter, this
humor, the stuff that you talk about. Tell me about what inspired
you to do this book, and what do you hope people take away from it?
Well, there's a famous saying in Italy called, let me try
(35:58):
and get it right, mangia beni, eat
well, read dispesso, laugh more,
amore something, love more, love much.
And I love that laugh more, read the espresso. Just laugh
more. When you tell a story to a friend, you've
had a bad day. Like this morning in the hotel,
(36:21):
I got a poached egg. Right? I cut into the poached egg. I
got one pair of white pants. The egg went all over me,
all over the man sitting in white pants next to me, all over the table
cloth. Now some people could go to their room and just have a good sob.
You just have to laugh, you know? Now when you share these
stories with a friend, there's a level of trust. There's
(36:44):
an uplift uplifting feeling, the endorphins going
through it, because you're turning a situation into something funny. We
do it with our children. You know, kids can be hell, but you tell
your friend, oh my god, I'm gonna throw that baby through the window. You know,
it's never stopped crying all day. You know, you're not gonna throw it through the
window, but just by sharing your frustration with
(37:06):
another, another like minded woman, it
helps you. And so, laugh more is loads of
stories. Store I I love being a storyteller. My mom was a storyteller. My
grandma was a storyteller, And and it's the humor. And so it's
not really a typical memoir. It's stories of a
year in Tuscany, the wild characters we
(37:29):
have here. Well, that's what I meant by memoir. I didn't mean it like this
is my memoir, but the 4 seasons and the way you transform, it's almost
like you're asking people to take a piece of something from almost everything. Yeah. It's
a it's I want people to laugh out loud. I want them to think of
their memories. It's like me being back in London today, there was a supermarket at
the end of the street,
(37:50):
and a few years ago, a few years ago, god, 40
years ago, I was in the supermarket. An old
lady, it was July, it was very hot, and
a woman in a big thick coat and a and and a a toque, like
a woolly hat. Anyway, she passes out on the floor. So they
over the tannoy, they're they're saying, is there a doctor in the house? And and
(38:11):
everybody's standing around. And, this
doctor leans over, and she's the woman's about 80, and he says,
this is really strange. She's got hypothermia. Now it's
it was, you know, 80 degrees outside. So it's very strange,
and, you know, everybody stepped back. And, anyway, they took off her coat, and then
they took off her hat. She passed out, and she had a frozen chicken
(38:35):
under her hat. And, you know,
and and, you know, yes, it's a terrible thing. She probably got 3 months in
jail, but, you know, I never forgot that story. And so while
I was writing A Year, the 4 seasons in Tuscany, it would
throw me into these incidents of different periods of my
life, and and I was roaring with laughter writing this stuff. So I
(38:56):
just hope that people have a good laugh, and then we
illustrated them all. So instead of photos, this
Australian, girl I know, who's an amazing illustrator, did these
really funny illustrations, which I think are beautiful.
So I just want people these are very hard times. They're very
heavy times, and this is just a book
(39:19):
to put in a stocking for Christmas or or to curl up by a a
fire and have a cup of tea and laugh more. Have a good laugh, a
chuckle, a giggle. Dream, do it, and living it. If
they were talking about you a 100 years from
now, what would you hope they'd say on all three of
those? Yeah. Dreaming, we all dream. It's an I ideas. You know? But
(39:40):
I think I did it. I worked really hard, and and, I
look back on stuff. Even looking back on the pictures of the renovation,
I think I because I show the women. When when we have groups there, I
show them what this place looked like. It was pigs running around. It was
awful. And how I did it, I really don't
know, and and how I afforded it. But, you know
(40:03):
so I think it's just this determination and willpower. And, yeah, you
can have a good sob and and cry yourself to sleep at night, but you
wake up in the morning, you pull your socks up, and out you go again.
And I think that I'm very proud of, and that's my roots. That's my
tough northern roots. As your kids are growing up and and not worried
so much now that they're they're gonna have a ballerina room, what do they think
(40:23):
of their mom? Well, I'm very, very proud
of of my, of my sons. I think they're proud.
They're not gonna tell me. I think they're proud. They're even poor kids. You
know, we used to I used to go in to get Canadian Tire to get
toilet rolls like everybody else, and there'd be a cut out Debbie Travis, and I'd
go, oh, go and stand by that. Let's take a picture. And they're like, mum,
(40:44):
I hate you. Stop it. You know? And and so
they they used to it. They used to it. But, and then, of course, they've
done stuff on their own. They've never used my name for it, and then, of
course, they hate it. They're both married now, but when they were dating, and then
somebody would say, are you Debbie Travis's son? Oh, okay. You know? And
they, you've ruined it. You know? You've ruined my life. Don't know if they're
(41:06):
proud of me or not. I'm just an annoying mom. So I always end with
my 3 takeaways. And before I begin, you're the most honest person I've ever
interviewed. Oh. Things that come out of your mouth like, I must have slept my
way to get to that party and stuff. It's just but it's so refreshing for
people to stop putting on this false front and just be who you are. But
I think the first one that I I love was when you said, you know
(41:27):
what, TV, I knew it was about entertainment. It
wasn't about being serious. It was to entertain your audience. Know your
audience entertain them. And that's such a great lesson for people that we try
to somehow live through what we think others want versus
what we know inside. Second thing, which is such a a universal
lesson, but one that you've done time and time again, is jump into opportunity.
(41:49):
I talk kids nowadays. They're so overpowered by negativity and this growing
sense of impossibility. I'm going, there's opportunity everywhere. Just look
for it. Jump in. Even if you fail, at least you're trying. You're gonna be
so excited to be on it. But the most important thing I got from you
is how much belonging has mattered to you through your
entire life. When you when you were there with your modeling friends and said, we
(42:11):
belong together. We took care of each other. You know, when you talk about the
times in life when you're speaking to a room full of women and they're all
putting up their hands, and I could just see the sense of community with
you. And now when you're saying in Tuscany, when people come and even when they
leave, you want them to take a sense of that back that they're still part
of this wonderful universe. So for all of that and more and for making
(42:32):
me laugh for the last, 45 minutes, Tammy Travis, you've just
been a wonderful person to chat with. Thank you so much. Thank
you. Once again, a special thanks to RBC for
supporting Chatter That Matters. It's Tony Chapman. Thanks
for listening, and let's chat soon.
One of my favorite mantras from one of my favorite humans in the world
is Steve Jobs. He said, we're here to put a dent in the universe.
Otherwise, why else even be here? And you think about this for
innovators, that drum stick they hold saying, what can I do? How can I make
an impact? I mean, think of songwriters. It's about voking these deep
feelings. Scientists unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos.
(00:25):
I have to believe athletes, it's not just winning a medal, but hearing that
roar from the crowd and entrepreneurs is solving pressing needs
that improve everybody's lives. Well, today in chatter that matters, I have
someone that just didn't have one drumstick in her hand. She pounded on both of
them. Her name's Debbie Travis. The following show is all
real. It might shock you, and it could be your home. Simply
(00:47):
follow my basic rules and recipes and you 2 will soon be
creating great paint effects. On the next show we'll decorate a
room, a basement, a 300 year old kitchen, loft
space. You know this this cry that comes from the gut.
His hands were shooting up. It was like a religious thing. Take me,
take me, my daughter. Please. Ladies and gentlemen,
(01:10):
miss Debbie Travers. She's
a woman of so many talents and so many marks in the universe.
Former fashion model, she captivated audiences with her beauty and style and
grace. Then she transitioned into television and didn't just
wander into it, became a household name inviting viewers into her creative
world. I said, you know what I would do? And she turned around, she looked
(01:33):
at me with such I don't know whether it was fear or, you know, as
she ran out of the store. Teaching them to beautify their living
spaces with shows like Debbie Travis, Painted House and Debbie Travis,
Space Lift, long before there were specialty television. But Debbie didn't
stop there. She penned books that guided readers through personal home
renovations, echoing her own philosophy that change is not about new
(01:55):
paint, but about transforming lives. It's the dream it, do it, live it. We all
have dreams of, you know, of wanting to do stuff. The doing it is
the work that you have to put in, and the living it is the consequences.
You know, did you make a mistake? Are you, you know, gonna end up back
at mom's kind of thing? And now her villain Tuscany, Debbie
reshapes narratives, moving from reinventing personal environments to
(02:16):
helping individuals reinvent their lives and awaken their
potential. Join us as we delve into the life of Debbie
Travis, a woman where every endeavor beats a new rhythm,
inspiring all of us to find our own ways in making the universe
dance.
It's Tony Chapman. A big shout out to RBC for supporting
(02:39):
chatter that matters. We hope to counter the negativity and growing sense of
impossibility with stories of people who overcome circumstances
to chase their dreams and change their world and ours for the better.
Debbie Travis, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Oh, that's very kind, everything
you said. But yes. Hi. Hi. Hi, Tony. So wonderful to be
(03:00):
here. I'm a little starstruck because I did grow up just loving I love
color. You know, one of my favorite people in the universe said to me one
day, gray is not a color, and I couldn't agree more. So it's just it's
lovely to see it. So you're born in Lancashire, England. And when you
sorta entered the world, I have to believe it was still an important cotton
weaving town. Well, it was. And, actually, my my father, who died
(03:21):
very young, like, at 39, had a mill that
he inherited that made sweet machines. So I was most popular
girl in school because they, they made all the machines that
made things like gummy bears and and colesfoot rock and and or
just all kinds of things. So we used to get all the samples. But it
was a yeah. I was born actually, brought up in Rochdale,
(03:43):
which is a real mill town. But Lancashire
is famous for its coal mines and its cotton
mills. So how difficult was it for you to let your
parents or maybe it was just your mother at the time know that you wanted
to go to art school? Because I have to believe in those days, it was
that's not a secure job. You're not gonna make a living. You
(04:04):
know? Did that or was that something they just celebrated? You know what? It's so
different from North America. And I've talked to a lot of,
friends recently, actually, when I was writing this new
book, because people don't discuss, you know, in England
where you're gonna go to university. Not in my day anyway. And so the the
I think it was just going from 15 to 16 when you
(04:27):
could leave home. And my mom was widowed, and was raising
4 kids. And, it was basically she said, well, you
can leave home when you're 17. The day after my
17th birthday, I said, right. I'm off then. I'm moving to London.
And, she's actually turned to me, and I'll never forget this. She
was at the stove where she kind of spent most of her time, and she
(04:49):
said, do you want a jam sandwich for the bus? So, you
know, you listen to people whose parents, including myself with my own
children, discussed your kids' future and where they were gonna go to
university and stuff. In my house, it was just not a discussion. So I
literally got on a bus, you know, 7 or 8 hours, went to London,
and moved in with a girlfriend, and that was it. And, you know, the interesting
(05:10):
thing about it with no email those days, no tracking devices, it just
you have to imagine how your mom felt. Either she was happy there was one
less mouth to feed, and the last jammed sandwich, or
she just sort of said, let's trust the universe, and and I think she's gonna
be okay. I don't think she even thought about it. I think it was just
yeah. As you said, I was the eldest, one gone, you know, one less mouth
(05:30):
to feed. But, yeah, it's and now I look back on those
years of landing in London,
with with nothing. Probably £5 in my pocket. And
I and I would have had a fit if that was my kids. It's an
interesting thing to talk about because do we overprotect our
kids and try to always give them a safe landing? And
(05:53):
do they learn that kind of resilience that and this ability to
continuously reinvent yourself that kinda marked your career? I wonder if you had
been you being the kind of mother that you're talking about, would you have done
what you've done? No. No. I think, first of all, it gave me
coming from the north gives you a great work ethic
because everybody works there. It also gives you a great sense of humor,
(06:14):
which I think is so important to get through the trials and tribulations of
life. And, you know, it comes with the territory that we had the highest rainfall
in Europe where I come from, and and, you know, so it drizzled most of
the time. So you get very good skin, but you have to have a good
laugh to get through it all. And and I I think it was,
you know, jumping into the London world of
(06:35):
of the craziness and the wildness and and and living by your
bootstraps, as we say, gave you a confidence that
stays with you all your life. And how did you become a model? I mean,
this is a big jump. I mean, I can imagine you calling home to your
mom and saying, they're paying me to take my picture. I can only
imagine that first conversation going, what kind of picture? Yeah. Exactly.
(06:55):
They're gonna say they're paying me to take my clothes off. Luckily, nobody really wanted
to see my body, but, so basically, I was on a bus
and a guy said to me, can you imagine if this was you?
Because we were going through the countryside, and he said, can I take your picture?
And I think I was 15 at the time, and I was living at home.
And I got off the bus and traipsed across a
(07:17):
field, stood beside a tree, took some pictures, told my mom that night. She
hit me over the back of her head, and that was it. But about a
week later, it was in a it was in the newspaper about the youth
today, and an agency called and asked me to join an agency.
So by the time I got to London, I did have an agent. I immediately,
within, I guess, about a year of, doing
(07:39):
what we saw called go sees, going around London, getting a portfolio,
got sent to Tokyo. Again, you know, going back to my mother, you know, it's
like, I'm going to Japan, mom. She was like, that's nice, dear. You know, as
if I was saying I'm going down to the village shop. And and
and I went with other girls, and I was there for 6 months.
And I came back, and I bought a flat,
(08:00):
an apartment, for cash on the Kings Road in Chelsea,
where I'm sitting now. And, my mum did come
to London because she'd heard I bought, you know, a flat, and she asked me
if I was a prostitute. I said, no. I'm doing
pictures. She said, alright, love. You know? She had no clue, but, you know, that
was the only way you made that money so quickly. But it made you tough,
(08:22):
and we were all the same. We I think we got a a street smart
and and a gut instinct when you knew,
that something wasn't quite right. You know, you go to a casting at
10 o'clock on a Sunday morning with 1 guy in a dark room.
It's like, right, run. So, you know, this happened every
day, and and and you just became really good at it. And we were all
(08:45):
I think the the equivalent of of of not having the social
media and not having the contact list that you have today,
we had each other, and we had this, camaraderie of
women. Did London still have the swagger when you arrived at because they must have
been with the British invasion, one of those moments in life where culturally,
London could say, we've arrived as a city. Yeah. I love it.
(09:08):
I love it to the I'm sitting here now. I arrived from Italy last
night, and I remember when I first came at 16/17,
sitting on a a red London bus, looking at this old lady with her
shopping, thinking you are the luckiest person ever. I've never got this
city out of my blood. In my era, it was the punk era.
So 2 minutes from where I'm sitting now is the Kings
(09:31):
Road, and that was where all the, you know, the punk rock
kids were, you know, with the Mohicans, and and and
tourists would come just to to look at them. The wine bar's
open. So it was the invention of the wine bar. And, of course, we would
go to these wine bars, pick up men, so we could get into the
restaurants because we had no money. So you'd pick up a guy, and then we
(09:52):
always chose restaurants where we knew we had a a window in the
toilet to get out of. So you always see these girls leaving at
dessert, going, I'm just going to the loo. And then, of course, you made your
getaway, so you didn't have to do anything for the food. You know, we had
it down pat us girls. We we absolutely loved it. I, I did a lot
of work in London in my early career, and my daughter lives there. And when
(10:12):
I arrive in London, there's a smell to the city. Yeah. Even after they got
rid of leaded gases, like, actually but there's a smell to London.
Camden, you know, there's so many different parts of London, but there's just this
energy, this love. Mid eighties, you meet your
prince, or he makes meets his queen. So tell me about your time
in Cannes, and then you meet Hans, and suddenly, this this
(10:35):
person that loves London gonna be moving to Montreal, Quebec. You know, as
girls, we got we got sent with agents. So if you were in London, you
got sent to different different places. So I was in Amsterdam,
and I was on a shoot, really boring. It was like a catalog
shoot. There were, like, 10 girls and stacks of, you know,
racks of dresses and stuff. And I was sitting there, and there was a
(10:57):
really old woman, I never forgot it, with, like, bright red hair. She
was about 25. I thought she was the coolest woman
I'd ever seen. She you know, for me, she was old. And she was
running around with a yellow clipboard, and she was like, you over there,
you over here, up, you know, and she was really bossy. And I said to
somebody, who's that woman? What's what's her job? I want
(11:19):
that job. They said, oh, she's a producer. I said, well, how do you
become a producer? And they said, well, first of all, you hang around the
pubs where producers go, and and then you get your foot in the door. And
that's exactly I got back to London, went to SoHo, where all
the television people hung out. And within a few weeks, I
had, you know, a a job in an edit suite and
(11:41):
then on production, and and I worked my way up to the BBC. And
I absolutely loved it. I was still rock bottom. But I met
somebody who I somehow managed to start my own television
company. I never made a penny. I spent a lot of
money, and I somehow I I don't know. I always had a
way of making things happen. I somehow wangled my way to what's called
(12:03):
MIP, which is 2 weeks before the famous Cannes Film
Festival, and I didn't care really about
the business side of it. What I cared about was the parties. I loved
parties, still do. So I managed to wangle an
invitation. God knows who I slept with. But anyway, I got an invitation to the
Universal Studios party, and there I met this very
(12:25):
nice Canadian, and, married him 3 weeks
later, Like an idiot. And he was from
he was he'd gone to Montreal to go to university there many years
before, and he said, oh, you'll love it. You know, come out. And of course,
I just that was it. I dropped literally dropped everything.
Within, you know, weeks of being married, I was pregnant, and
(12:47):
then I was pregnant again. So within 2 years, I had
moved countries, got married, and had 2 2 I
had 2 babies. And I was I was shell shocked. Shell shocked. You're one of
the most brutally honest people I've ever interviewed, so I wanna ask you this question.
Did you suddenly go, oh my god. I've become my mom, and I'm gonna be
handing out jam sandwiches all my life and put and park my dreams,
(13:09):
or did you really think that you could do both? No. I I don't think
I really thought about it like that. I was very, very happy, and,
you know, I had 2 kids, but I I I tried to get into I
didn't speak French, so I tried to get into
TV, working behind the scenes, and of course it was
impossible in Montreal. And so I had a friend,
(13:31):
a great friend in London, who had done we were
both signed up to do a paint finishing course in London,
and I chose sex over painting. And I
remember her saying to me, you're going where? You're moving where? What with
who? I said, oh my god. You know, he's so amazing, and I'm gonna follow
him to this country called Canada. And she said, well, I've I've
(13:53):
paid for our course. So I said, well, you do it, and if
you know, I'll maybe I'll start painting, and I'll ask you how to do it,
which is what I did. So we bought an old Victorian house in a place
called Westmount, which is in Montreal. And, I painted it with
all these paint finishes on the phone to her going, well, how'd you do faux
marble? How'd you do faux stone? How'd you do sponging?
(14:14):
You know? And because I had babies, you start to meet other
women, and then people started to say to me, could you do that in my
house? I said, yeah. Sure. So within a few years, I was
I smelt like paint thinner and, obviously thought my children were
gonna grow up terribly bright. So I, I I decided to
make a video because people were beginning to ask me, how do you do this?
(14:36):
Wasn't like just painting with a roller. It was like taking a feather,
putting it, you know, down a wall, and and and and it was the
beginning of the how to movement. So I
decided to make a video called decorative paint finishes made easy.
I sold it through gift shops across the whole of America and Canada,
and we sold, in the end, over a 1000000 copies, 7 languages,
(14:59):
different versions of it. And I started to get invited
onto television shows and radio shows. And I
remember what the first one was a radio show somewhere, I think in Toronto.
And I remember the interviewer saying, this sounds about as interesting as
watching paint dry. And suddenly, all the lights, it
was live, were going on, and people were going, I need to speak to Debbie.
(15:22):
I'm up a ladder, and I don't know how to do you know? And it
went ballistic. And then I got invited on chat shows, but I don't
know if you remember the Deanie Petit
show. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. So I remember being on her
show, and Tom Hanks was in the green room, the
producer coming in and saying, look, we're really sorry, mister Hanks, but we need to
(15:44):
cut your segment short because Debbie's here. And he was like, why? And I
said, well, I'm showing people how to rip off wallpaper. And he was like, oh,
Rita would love to know how to do that. You know? And and so it
it be just became huge. And then
the producers and the networks were changing, as all
media does every 10 years, and the cables were starting. And the
(16:06):
cables were coming out with rubbish because they had no money, so it
was old shows, you know, old dramas and stuff. A few months
later, we were back in Cannes for my husband's work, and this
producer came up to us and said, look, our our network's gonna tank. It's only
been going a year. Would you do a show about painting? And so
I came up with an idea called The Painted House. Hi. I'm Debbie
(16:28):
Travis, and welcome to The Painted House, the decorating show that's
not just for the grown ups. We
rented a brand new house. We painted we we we got a we
got a show an episode out of the toilet, out of the, you
know, the laundry room, out of the yeah. Nobody done this.
Nobody in North America. And then we the show
(16:50):
aired. This is the first episode of the first season of
the Painted House, and it aired to the worst audience you could possibly
imagine because it was the
day that OJ Simpson, got his
sentencing. Missus Robertson. We, the jury, in the above entitled action find the
defendant Orangel James Simpson not guilty of the crime
(17:12):
of murder in violation of penal code section 187,
a, a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson. So even I didn't watch
my show. The whole world was watching OJ. And, anyway, so
it was a disaster. I think 3 people watched. But the week after
that, it went to 200, 20,000, a 100,000,
a 150,000, 3,000, a 1000000 viewers, and they'd never seen this with cable.
(17:35):
They these were network numbers. Back to Cannes where it
was show sold to about 80 countries, so our budget went up and up and
up, and within kind of 2 or 3 years, we started traveling. Now just hold
on. Hold on here. So you're going to these different countries. I mean, you could
have shown them different styles in Montreal. A little bit of sense
of, well, we're gonna go to Italy because there's a certain thing I wanna show
(17:57):
you. That was good. Well, it was hilarious because we turned their living room
into a reggae style. We
got great, and people said, how'd you get such good footage of people sobbing and
crying, and saying, well, look at the room, you know? Now the other shows were
starting, and they were all so straight, and I wasn't really a decorator. I
was a television person, and and, oh, this is how you put blue with
(18:18):
yellow, and this is how I didn't care 2 hoots about that. All I cared
about was this amazing reaction as somebody was
sobbing in the corner, and and and because it was television,
and I understood television. Television is
about entertainment, and that's what we were doing. We were entertaining
people having fun. So how did it feel? I mean, you know,
(18:41):
you Dini Patty was obviously well known in Canada, but, I mean, there was this
I'm trying to remember if people would under remember this name, Oprah.
So we're trying today to solve some of your decorating dilemmas with top
experts from around the country. The woman behind that breathtaking room
makeover is this woman. Her name is Debbie Travis. Debbie?
(19:01):
That's like getting knighted. The day Oprah calls is a day
you never ever forget. I was actually in
a store with my very badly behaved young teenage
boys. The producer at Oprah had got my my cell
phone number from, it must have been the first phones, from, the
office. And she called, and I was in this store which had very,
(19:24):
like, music, and and and and and
I said, oh my god, the Oprah Winfrey Show. So the girl behind the desk
turned down the music. Everybody in the stop shop was listening to my end of
the conversation, and she was basically saying, can you be here Monday
morning? So I went, but they don't actually tell you you're gonna be
on the show sitting next to her. So I got I got into
(19:44):
Chicago to Harpo Studios, and they took all my
footage, and then I had to go into a booth and do
voiceovers. And Oprah was in the next booth, and I remember thinking, this is
the happiest moment of my life, even though there was a there was a wall
between us, never thinking it would go any further. They
don't tell you because they're watching to see if they can think that you
(20:05):
can hold up, you know, sitting next to her. So, the next
morning at 7:30 the day of the live show, they
said, you have the yellow chairs. And
they called it Homebase. And I thought they meant Home Depot. And I said, yeah.
We have Home Depot in Canada too. No. No, Debbie. Homebase. You're
sitting. And at first, I'm not very I'm not a very nervous
(20:26):
person, but I sat next to her, and my and my and at one point,
she put her hand on my knee, and she said, you need to stop shaking.
I was like, oh my god. And and she was so real. And and
Amazon, I think, had really just started, and I had 3 my first
three books were decorating books. And you watch them, and my and they went to
number 3, number 6, number 8 on Amazon. I mean, like,
(20:48):
unheard of today. And then, you know, I did it regularly
for quite a while, and and it it it got to the point where because
they don't pay for you to get there. They don't pay for for
anything, and so it was getting very costly. And then, of course, your publisher
wants to come, and your whole team is coming, and it was very
exciting. All of this is happening. Is any of this planned? Is this
(21:10):
sort of, okay, in the next 18 months, I wanna do x y zed, or
is it just I'm gonna write this book? Or, like, are are you just catching
this wave because you're such a magnetic personality, or are you in
fact purposely setting the wave? No. Never ever
set a plan. Even I'm a little attention deficit. I think I'm I'm
very much on the cusp, so I have a huge amount amount of
(21:32):
energy. I exhaust people because I'm always, like, moving, and
and and one thing I do jump on is opportunity, and that's what I
talk to young people about a lot because some people, you can slam them over
their head with an you know, somebody gives them an you know, some kind of
opportunity. Me, I like jumping into things, and I am all over
the map. I do know when I'm bored and when
(21:53):
I'm tired, and that was a big thing for me in television.
It sounds crazy to say it was easy, but it was easy because
we were the front runner. People were coming up behind us, and the, you know,
the networks were saying, more decorated shows. Give everybody a decorating show. You know,
whatever you want, get somebody else. You know, we need other people, but we were
always pushing the boundaries. And and it was a wonderful
(22:16):
way to do television. It was the cowboy years. And, you know, we ended up
being a production company producing other people's shows. So many
of the lifestyle shows from cooking, property, were
ours. It was just this constant wave, and
then things started to change in the industry.
So the bigger I got when I ended up on on
(22:38):
national networks, more people got involved. There was more money
involved. So now you're sitting in a boardroom with 40 people,
and they'll take an idea, and by the time they've all put their opinion
in, you've got what I call brown. You've got nothing.
You've got dullness. And and I'm a great believer,
pick an audience and go with it. If you start saying to people,
(23:01):
well, those people don't like that, and that you can never pick a you know,
please everybody, You have to pick an audience. At the
same time, you're also launching a sole platform. You're gonna get into
products. You're obviously authoring books. You're doing personal appearances. How
did you manage to keep that altogether knowing
that I mean, where you excel is it when you say when you're putting something
(23:23):
out that you say, I love that kind of television. I love pleasing that
audience. How did you manage to do it all? The good thing about being based
in Montreal, all our business was in New York, LA, and
Toronto. So we had a great Victorian house right
opposite the school. I mean, literally, we heard the bell in the morning,
and I walked the children across the road. Our offices and our
(23:45):
studio was 2 blocks away. We were home to do the homework.
We were home to be with the family. And
when we traveled for work, filming, which
we did a lot, we did it in the school holiday. So my children learned
at 8, 9 years old to be cable carriers, to behave,
you know, couldn't play outside, you know, and be quiet around the
(24:08):
set, and they were used to it. One thing they laugh about today
is the the house that we had in Montreal, we used as a set.
And so my eldest son, probably about 13 at the time, and
wrote to the a national newspaper
about his fear of camp, because in the summer, they went for 2
or 3 weeks to a a boys' camp, and like a lot of
(24:30):
Canadian children. But he wrote not the fear of being away from
mummy, but the fear of coming home and what I'd done to his room
because, mummy, I don't want a ballet room, you know.
Don't want a cowboy themed room anymore, you know? Don't worry, I'll paint it
out, you know? So we used the house as a set, so they would be
anyway, this this newspaper picked it up. How
(24:53):
I hate my mother. So we got our balance by
by making the work environment,
conducive with the children. And then the product line started, and
so that was when I really started spending a lot of time
flying in and out. It was fantastic. So we we started
with paint. Within weeks, we had everything from flooring to taps
(25:15):
to I couldn't do any wrong, and and it exploded, and
and, it was a wonderful, wonderful 10 years.
And and funny, when Brits came over to because they don't have anything like that
in England, really, at that extent, like this massive hardware store. So when
Brits used to come over, we used to tour Canadian
tyres, you know, and say, no. No. Come and look at the home section. That's
(25:36):
me. No. No. No. I wanna I wanna buy a hockey stick, I wanna buy
all this. So my job there was to bring women
into the store because before that, women weren't,
they would go in the shop, but they weren't spending time
buying, plates and and curtains and stuff like that, so
I had to make that attractive. So we put our own team together to
(25:57):
make that happen, and and it was very successful. When we
return, Debbie talks about her adventures of putting pen to paper.
From decorating to the chaos of a working mom raising kids, her love
of writing books, her life in Tuscany, and of course, my 3
takeaways.
(26:18):
Hi. It's Tony Chapman, host of Chatter That Matters presented by
RBC. RBC provides small business owners with resources that
go beyond banking. Resources that help them attract new customers,
build strong employee teams, and manage their money. To get
access to these services, go to rbc.com/beyondbanking.
Small businesses matter to RBC.
(26:46):
A walk at the same time every day. Everybody goes out, so
you'll get teenagers hanging out with their friends. You'll get, you know,
Annona and her grandchildren. You'll get 2 best friends gossiping.
And it's just they walk around the block or they, you know, they they walk
on a highway. The entire country gets
together, and it actually has its own name, the Pasir Jata. So
(27:08):
I'm thinking, well, you can bring that back into your life. All we want now
is touch. We wanna see smiles, you know. We want and
it can take time, but we need to learn to reach out. Today,
my special guest is Debbie Travis. She's an extraordinary entrepreneur,
broadcaster, media personality, author, speaker,
and so much more. As you're constantly moving and putting new dance, is this partially
(27:30):
out of boredom that you've kinda done dents, is this partially out of boredom that
you've kinda done it and you wanna do something else? Say, writing, for example, is
that therapeutic to you? Is that you're doing it for
monetary, or you just you just feel it's part of the platform? Nobody
writes a book, for money, put it that way.
And they call most books, unless you're a huge international bestseller,
(27:53):
but most books, I think, are ego projects.
Not in a bad way. I think everybody's got a book in them, and and
I, you know, I I often say to people who are having a bad time,
write it down. If you're having, you know, you wanna tell the story of your
family, write it down. It's a wonderful kind of homework. It's a
wonderful practice. So the first eight books were with
(28:14):
Random House in New York, and they were 8 decorating books, and they came
about because of the success of the shows. So every single
and then I got asked by the National Post
to be included in a in a group of well known women on
how to get through the the years of working and raising
children. And it was geared to women who were going back into the workforce,
(28:37):
women who were already in the workforce and struggling. So the other
well known women wrote really quite heavy things,
and I just wrote a very funny story about
the chaos of raising kids. And then my publisher
called and said, I think this should be a book. So I wrote a book
called Not Guilty, about the chaos of raising my children,
(28:59):
and, they're still suing me.
But, you know, your kids don't remember stuff. They'll say things like, Mom, we
never went on holiday. I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got the
receipt. You know, kids. Oh, I know. I know. So that book
was was a real turn for me. And then
when I made the leap from the television world to
(29:22):
renovating this property in Tuscany, which
was 5 years of craziness, and and
it was and then I started to get it was called Design Your Next Chapter,
the book, and and I started to get attracted to people.
Maybe they were a surgeon, and they'd had enough, and they wanted
to to sing. Or they worked for the bank for
(29:45):
20 years, and all they ever wanted to do was be a baker.
And you start getting attracted to these stories. So I wrote a book about other
people's stories, my stories, and how to do it. And this was a
big bestseller, a very emotional book for a lot of people,
because it's the dream it, do it, live it. We all have dreams of, you
know, of wanting to do stuff. The doing it is is the
(30:06):
work that you have to put in, and the living it is the consequences.
You know, did you make a mistake? Are you, you know, gonna
end up back at mom's kind of thing? And so that book then
morphed into the next book, and now the one I've just done. So I wanna
end with talking about your book because it's fabulous, but Tuscany
comes along. I think happiness is being in the right place at
(30:28):
the right time and being where you should be at that
time. In any business, you you kinda
crave for something fresh to reignite your
passion again. And to me, this is as big of a
change as this this London girl moving to Montreal.
You now decide that Tuscany is gonna be your base. How did that
(30:50):
all come about? And you've really sort of almost taken what your
these books that you've written more recently and said, this is about personal transformation,
isn't it? For me and for others. So we fell in love with
Italy, while we were filming. I mean, like, everything, the
food, the people, the way of life, we fell in love with it. And so
we had a little dream. One day, if we could afford it, we'd buy a
(31:11):
house for us. And then, of course, you know, you start looking at 14
bedroom convents, and I said, I'm not buying a ruin.
I don't speak Italian. I can't do it. We bought a ruin on
a hillside in Tuscany. I was finishing a show,
which was called All For One, for CBC, and it was
a big national Wednesday night, enormous
(31:33):
show traveling the country, and it was breaking me. I I I
was at the end of my tether. The teams there were so big. We had
a crew of 69 crossing the country. I think the fun
had gone out of it, and I really felt, if I'm not excited,
how is I mean, we had producers from LA. It was
enormous. At the same time, I was on this
(31:55):
journey in my head in Italy. I did a speech
in Vancouver, and I had, maybe a 1000
women in the audience. And at the end of the speech, there was an interviewer
who said, what's next for Debbie Travis? And I said, I am going to
be taking women to my villa in Tuscany, where we'll
do yoga in the lavender field. We'll walk through
(32:17):
the olive groves. And I went on and on for about 5
minutes, and I realized everybody had gone
completely quiet. Nobody coughed. You could hear a pin drop.
Oh my god. I really thought, you know, because the lights are on you, so
you can't really see the audience so much. I thought people have walked
out. So the lights the big lights came
(32:40):
on, and it was like people in shock. And suddenly, all
these arms went up in the air, and it was like, take me, take me.
And the next day, I got husbands saying, take her, take her.
And I didn't have a a villa in Tuscany. You know, we hadn't found
the right place. So I knew I was onto something. So I
went to the area I liked. I rented an old, dusty
(33:02):
villa, cleaned it up, brought the first 18 women
over, and I could have put them in a tent. It was the most mesmerizing,
the magic of putting 18 16, 18 women together who
didn't know each other. And within a year, we found,
the property that we have now, and I spent 5 years doing it
up while we used this rundown place. You know, we did
(33:26):
only 1 a year because I was still filming. And then in 2015,
everybody moved, you know, into our place. Changed my
life. It has changed thousands of women's lives and men
now. Talk to me about your
book Joy, Life Lessons from a Tuscan Village because, like, once
again, you've taken a physical space and brought
(33:48):
the heart out. And you brought the heart out to these gorgeous designs
and beautiful pictures and these stories. So It's a beautiful book, book, full
of photography and and really lovely. When we start so we've been doing the
retreats now for really 10 years. You watch people from the day
they arrive to the day they leave, and within 48
hours, they start to change. Their skin looks better. They're
(34:11):
eating pasta every day. Oh, I don't eat pasta. They're eating pasta every day.
They're drinking olive oil. They're drinking copious amounts of
Tuscan wine. They're talking, like my husband's often saying, you
know, what are they talking about? Women, they
start to they yoga class in the morning. They talk all the way through downward
dog. They talk all the way through breakfast. And these are women who don't know
(34:31):
each other of all ages, all countries,
and they leave with 17 new best friends. And at the
end, we do what we call a forum, and
we started to have a lot of people very nervous and very upset.
And they were saying, I'm frightened of going back.
(34:52):
I live in a condo. How
do I bottle this? I started to break it down. What is
it about? Because really, Tuscany, it's not that it's any
different from anywhere else. It's a time warp. So we're
living like our grandparents lived, you know, chatting over the back
fence, camaraderie of each other, helping each
(35:14):
other, eating in season. You know, my
grandparents ate potatoes and carrots and parsnips in the
winter. You're eating better, and it's all that community.
So these are the the lessons from a Tuscan villa. So you can
take that home to wherever you live in the world and try and
make those changes. So that's what Joy was all about. Your latest book,
(35:37):
Laugh More Stories From an Unexpected Life. It is so beautiful.
Each one of these there's so many things that can be framed in it, so
many unexpected twists in life. And, again, this laughter, this
humor, the stuff that you talk about. Tell me about what inspired
you to do this book, and what do you hope people take away from it?
Well, there's a famous saying in Italy called, let me try
(35:58):
and get it right, mangia beni, eat
well, read dispesso, laugh more,
amore something, love more, love much.
And I love that laugh more, read the espresso. Just laugh
more. When you tell a story to a friend, you've
had a bad day. Like this morning in the hotel,
(36:21):
I got a poached egg. Right? I cut into the poached egg. I
got one pair of white pants. The egg went all over me,
all over the man sitting in white pants next to me, all over the table
cloth. Now some people could go to their room and just have a good sob.
You just have to laugh, you know? Now when you share these
stories with a friend, there's a level of trust. There's
(36:44):
an uplift uplifting feeling, the endorphins going
through it, because you're turning a situation into something funny. We
do it with our children. You know, kids can be hell, but you tell
your friend, oh my god, I'm gonna throw that baby through the window. You know,
it's never stopped crying all day. You know, you're not gonna throw it through the
window, but just by sharing your frustration with
(37:06):
another, another like minded woman, it
helps you. And so, laugh more is loads of
stories. Store I I love being a storyteller. My mom was a storyteller. My
grandma was a storyteller, And and it's the humor. And so it's
not really a typical memoir. It's stories of a
year in Tuscany, the wild characters we
(37:29):
have here. Well, that's what I meant by memoir. I didn't mean it like this
is my memoir, but the 4 seasons and the way you transform, it's almost
like you're asking people to take a piece of something from almost everything. Yeah. It's
a it's I want people to laugh out loud. I want them to think of
their memories. It's like me being back in London today, there was a supermarket at
the end of the street,
(37:50):
and a few years ago, a few years ago, god, 40
years ago, I was in the supermarket. An old
lady, it was July, it was very hot, and
a woman in a big thick coat and a and and a a toque, like
a woolly hat. Anyway, she passes out on the floor. So they
over the tannoy, they're they're saying, is there a doctor in the house? And and
(38:11):
everybody's standing around. And, this
doctor leans over, and she's the woman's about 80, and he says,
this is really strange. She's got hypothermia. Now it's
it was, you know, 80 degrees outside. So it's very strange,
and, you know, everybody stepped back. And, anyway, they took off her coat, and then
they took off her hat. She passed out, and she had a frozen chicken
(38:35):
under her hat. And, you know,
and and, you know, yes, it's a terrible thing. She probably got 3 months in
jail, but, you know, I never forgot that story. And so while
I was writing A Year, the 4 seasons in Tuscany, it would
throw me into these incidents of different periods of my
life, and and I was roaring with laughter writing this stuff. So I
(38:56):
just hope that people have a good laugh, and then we
illustrated them all. So instead of photos, this
Australian, girl I know, who's an amazing illustrator, did these
really funny illustrations, which I think are beautiful.
So I just want people these are very hard times. They're very
heavy times, and this is just a book
(39:19):
to put in a stocking for Christmas or or to curl up by a a
fire and have a cup of tea and laugh more. Have a good laugh, a
chuckle, a giggle. Dream, do it, and living it. If
they were talking about you a 100 years from
now, what would you hope they'd say on all three of
those? Yeah. Dreaming, we all dream. It's an I ideas. You know? But
(39:40):
I think I did it. I worked really hard, and and, I
look back on stuff. Even looking back on the pictures of the renovation,
I think I because I show the women. When when we have groups there, I
show them what this place looked like. It was pigs running around. It was
awful. And how I did it, I really don't
know, and and how I afforded it. But, you know
(40:03):
so I think it's just this determination and willpower. And, yeah, you
can have a good sob and and cry yourself to sleep at night, but you
wake up in the morning, you pull your socks up, and out you go again.
And I think that I'm very proud of, and that's my roots. That's my
tough northern roots. As your kids are growing up and and not worried
so much now that they're they're gonna have a ballerina room, what do they think
(40:23):
of their mom? Well, I'm very, very proud
of of my, of my sons. I think they're proud.
They're not gonna tell me. I think they're proud. They're even poor kids. You
know, we used to I used to go in to get Canadian Tire to get
toilet rolls like everybody else, and there'd be a cut out Debbie Travis, and I'd
go, oh, go and stand by that. Let's take a picture. And they're like, mum,
(40:44):
I hate you. Stop it. You know? And and so
they they used to it. They used to it. But, and then, of course, they've
done stuff on their own. They've never used my name for it, and then, of
course, they hate it. They're both married now, but when they were dating, and then
somebody would say, are you Debbie Travis's son? Oh, okay. You know? And
they, you've ruined it. You know? You've ruined my life. Don't know if they're
(41:06):
proud of me or not. I'm just an annoying mom. So I always end with
my 3 takeaways. And before I begin, you're the most honest person I've ever
interviewed. Oh. Things that come out of your mouth like, I must have slept my
way to get to that party and stuff. It's just but it's so refreshing for
people to stop putting on this false front and just be who you are. But
I think the first one that I I love was when you said, you know
(41:27):
what, TV, I knew it was about entertainment. It
wasn't about being serious. It was to entertain your audience. Know your
audience entertain them. And that's such a great lesson for people that we try
to somehow live through what we think others want versus
what we know inside. Second thing, which is such a a universal
lesson, but one that you've done time and time again, is jump into opportunity.
(41:49):
I talk kids nowadays. They're so overpowered by negativity and this growing
sense of impossibility. I'm going, there's opportunity everywhere. Just look
for it. Jump in. Even if you fail, at least you're trying. You're gonna be
so excited to be on it. But the most important thing I got from you
is how much belonging has mattered to you through your
entire life. When you when you were there with your modeling friends and said, we
(42:11):
belong together. We took care of each other. You know, when you talk about the
times in life when you're speaking to a room full of women and they're all
putting up their hands, and I could just see the sense of community with
you. And now when you're saying in Tuscany, when people come and even when they
leave, you want them to take a sense of that back that they're still part
of this wonderful universe. So for all of that and more and for making
(42:32):
me laugh for the last, 45 minutes, Tammy Travis, you've just
been a wonderful person to chat with. Thank you so much. Thank
you. Once again, a special thanks to RBC for
supporting Chatter That Matters. It's Tony Chapman. Thanks
for listening, and let's chat soon.
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