Leaving Loose Women I felt at peace as I was starting a new chapter
Enjoying her new career as a life coach, TV presenter Andrea McLean has learned to face her fears. HANNAH STEPHENSON finds out more
SHE lost her house, sold her car and gave herself untold stress during the pandemic when business ventures faltered – but former Loose Women star Andrea McLean has come out stronger.
Looking relaxed in her new home, Andrea is reflecting on how, in the middle of the pandemic, she quit her job and sixfigure salary on the popular ITV show, following a breakdown, to focus on her female personal growth business, This Girl Is On Fire (thisgirlisonfire.com), with her businessman husband Nick Feeney. They both became fully certified life coaches last year.
“It’s been a rollercoaster. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and for anyone who has stopped doing anything, whether a job or a relationship, it’s so weird when you say the words out loud,” says the Glasgow-born presenter, reflecting on leaving Loose Women in late 2020 after 13 years.
Despite the hard times, Andrea is now showing others how to tame their fears and create the changes they want – in her new selfhelp book, You Just
Need To Believe It, in which she charts how to unlock your courage and reclaim power in your life.
She shares her personal journey, along with steps on how people can learn to believe in themselves and live the lives they want, with exercises including visualisation and journaling and guidance on sticking with habit changes and turning to friends.
Mother-of-two Andrea has practised what she preaches, switching careers and now planning winters in sunnier climes with Nick. “Our second biggest market is America, so we are making plans to spend a few months of the year there. We’ve earmarked Miami,” she explains.
“I don’t want to spend any more winters in England. I’m 52 and we’ve got about 30 summers left. Do I want to spend them wishing I was somewhere else, or do I want to be somewhere else? Our ultimate goal is to move to Florida for winters and France for summers. We’ve booked it for next year.”
This ‘can do’ attitude and sense of taking control of her life is evident in the book. “People ask if I’d go back to TV, and yes, of course, if it suited me, but my plans are different now. It’s about living in a way that suits me,” she says.
After leaving Loose Women, Andrea worked 15-hour days on her business – but at one point, she was so stressed that her left eye kept twitching, her jaw hurt from clenching her teeth during what little sleep she got, and her skin was sore to the touch.
Technical issues meant the launch of the This Girl Is On Fire app was months behind schedule and they needed more funds to move things forwards, while publicity jobs she’d been counting on as a financial buffer dropped off as she was no longer on TV.
“The day we realised we had to put our home on the market was a dark one,” she recalls in the book. They moved from their Surrey home the week before Christmas, and both had Covid at the time.
That period put a strain on her marriage, Andrea admits. “But because of everything I’ve been through in my bumpy life, I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t. My go-to is to go very quiet and not say anything, and I’ve realised through burning out that that’s a really stupid idea.
“I’m able now to say (to Nick), ‘We’re getting tetchy and things are really stressed. It’s noone’s fault, it’s just what we are going through and we need to address it’. Luckily I’m with someone who feels the same.”
They have relationship coaching with a counsellor through Zoom, which is a brilliant help, she says, as well as their own coping mechanisms.
“There are two human beings involved, there’s personality and ego. It’s not a Disney movie, but we are able to sit down and talk about getting really prickly and maybe have a weekend doing our own thing.
“Our main problem is over-exposure, which is the same problem so many people had in lockdown, but a lot of people have gone back to work. We don’t do that. We work with each other. It’s finding ways where we can do our own thing,” she says. “He plays golf and goes to the gym. I’m not interested in golf. I like to pootle, but he finds pootling really irritating.”
What keeps the marriage fresh? “He makes me smile. He’s a really good man. All he wants is for all of us to be happy and I love that so much. In your 50s, your dynamics and what you want changes. You want someone who’s pretty easy-going. We have fun together and we laugh a lot.
“It is hard when you are starting a business and you’re both entrepreneurs. The key to it all is getting some space and drawing lines in the sand. We also have times when we are not going to talk about work.”
They moved house to free up equity for the business, and Andrea says: “I felt very sad because it was the house I bought when I got divorced (Andrea has two previous marriages) and it was where I’d raised my kids. The hardest thing to leave was my garden. Gardening is my happy place. Everyone leaves me alone because no one wants to help.
However, Andrea doesn’t regret leaving Loose Women. “Even though it seems really hard and challenging, I genuinely love what I do. When I left Loose Women. It was such a weird feeling, because it was all I’d ever known. From the age of 27, I’d worked for ITV. I had this box of belongings – a cake, some presents and a card. I thought, ‘That’s all I have to show for all that time’.
“I felt at peace with it because I was starting a new chapter – and I’ve felt like that ever since.”
She says her breakdown was burnout from taking on too much work, but that she might be lured back to TV if it fitted in with her life coaching career.
“I’d love to help people overcome their fears, but not in a quick way. I’d rather work on something that takes a little time,” says Andrea.
“It’s never about the quick-fix.”