Cover story Paul McKenna Considering his extraordinary rise to fame
and fortune, it's fair to say there are things to learn from Paul McKenna. But it wasn't all tv and glamour. When he left school, his first job as a store detective at Harrods lasted for one day. "I knew I was no good at it because I
thought I saw a suspicious character and this person was looking at me and they thought I was suspicious and so we both ended up calling security." He laughs. "The thing is, he was another store detective!" Paul then worked in Top Shop as a DJ.
Playing music all day and being surrounded by pretty girls wasn't a bad place for a young man to be, but ever-ambitious, he moved on. He learned about hypnosis after a hypnotist helped him overcome stress and he went on to become a Radio 1 DJ. But still he wasn't happy. So how did he
decide what to do next? "I sat down and made a list of all of the assets I had. First of all I went back five years and I remembered what had happened and I came to the present moment. Then I said to my unconscious show me five years ahead. It was a very clear picture of me sitting there as a DJ but just more paranoid and unhappy." Paul then asked his unconscious to show
him what it would be like if he could do anything he wanted. "It just felt like it was limitless, you know, that I can do anything." After that Paul had to decide who he would
become. What would he do if he knew he couldn’t fail? The answer was startling. "I would have to become a different person. I’d have to be prepared to take risks. I’d have to educate myself." Amazingly, within a month, Paul had
a tv show. So what are the elements of his current success? One of them is most definitely passion. The passion he feels about education is matched by the passion he feels about weight loss. I even detect a sense of justice in bringing the diet industry to heel and doing his utmost to give people an alternative way to lose weight. It's clearly not about the money - although
it's a great side-effect of the work he does. And that's down to his audience and the people who've supported him along the way, like Richard Parks who gave him a break and backed him to put his first show on in the West End. "I believe that all success is also about
backing. You know, if you’re a politician you need your voters to back you, a grocery store your customers are backing you. All success in life comes down to people backing you." It's also about focus. As Paul often says: "You know I think we get more of what we