Sharron Lowe
AN INTERVIEW
Success Coach and author Sharron Lowe believes she’s ‘blessed’, and her purpose in life is to help others to change theirs. Through sheer determination and grit Sharron has worked her way up to the top of her game and now gives motivational speeches to companies and global audiences. Four years ago, due to her popular demand, she decided to write a book to accompany her lectures, entitled The Mind Makeover –The Answers to Becoming The Best You Yet.
Sheffield born and bred, Sharron considers her greatest blessing is her family; they were all incredibly close, her beloved parents Silversmiths by trade and deeply in love – and along with her older sister Annie, she had a “wonderful upbringing”. She left school at 16 and had a dream to work within the beauty industry. “I was inspired by an Auntie whose husband worked for Helena Rubinstein, and I loved visiting her”, Sharron tells us, “I was fixated with the amount of make-up she had”. “Along with jewellery and business, my other two loves, I’ve been able to work with all three!”
With her parents’ blessing, Sharron decided to take a City and Guilds Beauty Business Course as she was too young to train in Beauty Therapy. Sharron loved every minute of it, especially the business side. “At the end of the course, I was 18 and knew I’d grown” recalls Sharron, “by then I knew I didn’t want to be a beauty therapist, I wanted to be in business”.
Knowing that she’d have to start at the bottom, despite now having a great deal of experience under her belt, Sharron got her first job at Debenhams in Sheffield. “I don’t believe in luck, but I was once again blessed to get a role with Fabergé cosmetics. I loved their ethos which was all about passion and delivery”. Sharron certainly did deliver and embraced the opportunity by making the job her own. In any spare time, she’d go and talk in schools and women’s institutes, and find anyone she could to make-over. In no time at all, she’d become number two salesperson in the whole country, just behind Selfridges in Oxford Street.
Sharron’s vision was to become an area manager, and of course like all her visions, that was realised too. At 19, she became the top area manager in the country, Sharron’s passion wasn’t missed by Fabergé and they put her onto training programmes to inspire their other employees. “I had to do public speaking” she explains, “which I wasn’t comfortable with to begin with, but in the end I put myself on a Dale Carnegie course which was amazing”.
Over two years, Sharron lost her fear and started to love helping others to cut through their own fears and release their potential. Now Sharron is a global success coach and has changed the lives of thousands. Her client list reads like a Who’s Who of the Beauty Industry including Chanel, Estéé Lauder, Christian Dior, Clinique, Calvin Klein and Lancôme. She travels the world and prides herself in helping companies, also including spas and retail, increase their market share with her Mind Makeovers.
Known as “the coach that adds millions”, Sharron has shared her secrets of success in her compelling and wonderfully interactive book. Packed with incredibly useful advice and exercises to help the reader reach their true potential in whatever area of life they choose. You can feel her energy reach out to you through each page and many have found The Mind Makeover a life changer. The book has been featured in may publications, including You Magazine, Hello, Tatler and Marie Claire.
Now in her late 50s Sharron looks fabulous; she lives with her husband and soul-mate Roger in Stratford-Upon-Avon and there’s no sign of her energy fading any time soon. In her spare time, she visits Centre Point with friend Jo Fairley. Together with the ‘Make a Difference’ committee, they’ve inspired young homeless women with image and mind-makeover talks and events. Sharron has loved watching these young girls grow over 20 years and remembers in particular mentoring one young lady with a crippling confidence crisis, who now has a successful beauty career in Selfridges.
We asked Sharron to share her answers to our 5 Beautiful Thinking Questions.
1. What’s the best thing about getting older?
That I’m still here! (laughing).
Seriously, I appreciate this magical world every morning. I lost my best friend to cancer at 56 years old and I now celebrate life on a new level. I call getting older, Time evolving to be our best YET!. I have a deeper appreciation for living with new experiences, love and laughter. It’s a time for me to speed up even more, not slowdown and I love having the belief to create opportunities, take risks and jump outside my comfort zone, it’s thrilling. I do not buy into ‘I’m too old’ or ‘I’m too young’, I believe in ‘JUST DO IT. Better to have done than to regret!
2. Who is your female inspiration and why?
I’m truly blessed to have coached 1000’s of women in the power of Mind Makeovers and that’s inspires and motivates me. I also partner with outstanding business women in the world of magazines and the beauty industry who are friends and mentors and their guidance and belief in what I do gives me a great energy and ‘can do’. Amazing women. However, I thought hard on this question and truly my number one is my Mum Margaret. She was a beautiful, independent woman before she suffered a severe stroke. She lived the next 8 years with a courage, resilience and a Sheffield steel determination to be the best she could be and that truly takes my breath away still. Whatever health constraints, she knew how deeply she was loved by her 2 girls and that radiated out from within her keeping her very beautiful, full of life and she lived with an amazing attitude of gratitude. It proves we may not be able to control what happens to us BUT we can control how we travel and perceive it.
I believe we should all surround yourself with motivated women, women who deliver and fully embrace all that life is offering us, it’s contagious. If I’m inspired by someone and haven’t met them then, I’ll read about them…Beautiful Thinking website!.
3. What’s your top health/spiritual/beauty tip for ageing beautifully?
My book is about how to navigate the mind body & connection, a road map of taking charge of our No.1 greatest asset – our minds and thoughts. So, I focus daily on both my Mind and my body as a total approach to beauty. I have rituals, daily habits that enhance my day. For my mind, I wake up and meditate and focus on gratitude. Trust me it’s the quickest and easiest way to feel good and fulfilled. Now it’s a habit like having a shower. I believe what’s wrong is always there to focus on and so is what’s right! When we appreciate what we have now we will attract plenty more good things to us. Our thinking, our choice. And for my body, for over 10 years now, I trampoline every morning for 34 mins (that’s the length of the DVD (laughing). If it means getting up at 5am I still do it, it kicks in endorphins, energy and its hysterical. Oh and juicing!
4. What would your younger self say to you now?
Dream big or stay in bed Sharron!
Thank goodness Sharron Lowe you did not listen to your careers adviser at school who told you working on a beauty counter in Harrods was impossible and to be sensible. If you had listened to him you wouldn’t have spent the last 25 years as a global success coach to luxury beauty brands.
Take your own council, listen to your emotional intelligence, bet on yourself to win.
Mute negative voices, that’s their opinion not yours.
The most important opinion you will have is the one you will have of yourself and the most important thing you’ll say will be the things you say to yourself. Be your own best friend for life, not the enemy within (critic) . Create an inner voice that supports, nurtures, empowers, inspires and believes in you.
Use your imagination as a positive energy (do not misuse it for worry), visualise your goals and always Keep vision boards near!
Don’t try to be anyone else, be yourself, because everyone else is already taken.
Learn as quickly as you can that absolutely everything will begin in my mind and thoughts.
5. What are your dreams for your future?
To be heathy in body and strong in mind and the same for those I love too. Health is wealth. To create and seize opportunities and collect as many country stamps in my passport as I can and not possessions! To continue travelling as a speaker author sharing the power of Mind Makeovers to women globally. I wrote the book to share this success road map and empower and inspire women of many countries and cultures. Bring it on!