Roxy Jacenko back doing what she does best – reinventing herself

After the worst year of her life, PR guru Roxy Jacenko is back doing what she does best and reinventing herself – again.

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Sydney – she’s back.

After famously waking up one Thursday morning in November of 2022 and deciding she’d had enough of “selling her soul” and closing her 18-year-old business Sweaty Betty, Roxy Jacenko is back in PR. She’s landed six clients in the last week, without even trying. And after the year she’s had – the worst on record, she grimaces – it feels good to feel good again. Finally.

Because the PR guru may love to shop – but she’s no housewife.

“There’s f***ing nothing to do here, nothing,” she laughs.

“Housewifery is not for me. Like, let’s be real. I have shopped to the point where I can’t shop anymore.

“It’s a f***ing boring existence.

Roxy Jacenko is back! Picture: Supplied

“Yes, Ministry of Talent ticks along and I work on that every day – but it’s not enough. I’ve still got too much time in the day, and there’s only so many hours that Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada are open.

“I take my hat off to the people who are stay-at-home mothers, because I did it for six months and, f*** me, that would have to be the hardest job.

Roxy Jacenko is bored with shopping and ready to get back to work. Picture: Paul Suesse

“It’s easier for me to go to work and run six businesses than it is to look after two children. I mean, I had to do fractions, which I had to Google what a f***ing fraction was. It’s not in me ... I’d rather run the country than have to do that. It’s hard. So I’m back.”

Jacenko’s speaking to Insider on Zoom from her Singapore base, the place she calls home for two weeks of the month. She’s sitting in front of a wall of Birkins. Literally. There are 11 Birkins behind her, worth an excess of $500,000. And, yes, she’s bored of shopping – but her new credit card has arrived, so it’s off to Prada she goes, she laughs. It’s a life of excess – but to her point, she’s bloody earnt it.

“And while I thought I reached a point two years ago where I couldn’t do any more, I think it was not the case,” she admits.

“I don’t love PR, but I’m good at it – and no one has taken my place. So that, to me, says there’s money to be made. I want to buy a jet. Plus, cars here are f***ing $3m ... so I’ve got to work, that’s the reality,” she jokes.

“I guess I’m the queen of reinvention,” she says more seriously.

“You know how many times I’ve been knocked down, and I’m reinventing again. It’s all about continually looking at how to do things better, how to do things differently – not just coming up with the big idea and maybe it’ll work – actually taking the risk.”

She took a risk in March which changed everything though. Some 7000 people signed up for her online business course Roxy’s Brand Bootcamp, a promotion she launched with Youssef Tleis and Kassim Alaouie that was to give away a luxury Cronulla home – a property that could not be won unless the promotion received millions in revenue. She liquidated Roxy’s Bootcamp and vowed to personally refund the money people had outlaid. But her million-dollar mistake cost her far more than that.

“You know, there’s been a lot of things in my life – cancer, Oli – and I have never felt, actually in my whole entire 44 years of life, ever been so physically ill over a decision,” the breast cancer survivor says.

“I got to a point where, quite honestly, I’d stand up and f---ing faint. I had a bruised face because I fell over and hit my face on to the sideboard. And this is the other thing – I think boredom is a dangerous thing for an individual who’s an entrepreneur by nature.

Roxy Jacenko at the home in Cronulla she was giving away. “That was, without question, the worst decision that I’ve ever made.” Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“I was bored. I was approached by direct message, it sounded like a fantastic and relatively simple idea – it was well sold to me, and I thought, you know what, why not? But boredom clouded my judgment. That was, without question, the worst decision that I’ve ever made.

“I’ve had so many ups and downs, but I’ve taken them on, learned, and gone, ‘you know what, keep going’. Everyone has issues but that – where I was made the scapegoat – was without question, the most distressing, depressing …

“I’ve never been so physically ill over something in my life. No one wants to lose that kind of money, but it was an expensive lesson – and it was a lesson that was terrible for my brand.”

That brand is changing. Work is giving Jacenko her purpose back, and she’s taking stock. She stays with mum Doreen in Sydney’s east for a few weeks a month, including this week. She’s got some brand launches, client activations, a lunch with friends, and then it’s down to Melbourne for The Kid Laroi.

“It was the hardest thing to get out of,” she says of the dream home giveaway drama, which took over her life from March to September.

Cancer didn’t bother Roxy but, when it comes to the bootcamp nightmare, “I will never get over it”.

“Having to lodge at the Supreme Court and say you need to put this company into administration – for me, and I’ve always said, nothing’s ever a failing – but it was a huge failing,” she says.

“I’ve had ups and downs, made money, lost money. But that, to me, was a personal failing. And getting out of that was a very big challenge, but I guess what it’s done for me is I got fit and healthy.

“I don’t drink alcohol anymore.

“I was drinking myself into a f***ing stupor every night. I drink alcohol now, don’t get me wrong ... I’ll have a few Champagnes – but going from drinking like six drinks a night to get through the day and the aggravation of it all – I don’t do that anymore.”

“It was the worst thing ever.

“Cancer didn’t bother me, nothing bothers me – this is just – I will never get over it. I was physically broken.

“The money thing I don’t care – I can make money again. You know, I lose a million, I’ll make f***ing 10 and watch me do it. But I felt personally responsible for sucking people in (to) believing the dream.

“If I had done my research, Google would have told me what not to do.

“But you live and you learn, and I think it’s a big lesson that you don’t go into partnership without doing your due diligence.”

Another lesson was how important health and wellbeing is.

“Being at a point where you actually cannot eat, and you stand up and you faint – there’s more to life than that,” she says.

“What, to make money? But I also needed to stop it for the individuals that participated.”

Life in Singapore for the last 15 months may have been a welcome break from the scrutiny of Sydney – but it has also been “extremely challenging”.

Roxy Jacenko and daughter Pixie, who will be boarding in Switzerland next year. Picture: Instagram

“More so for Pixie, keeping in mind, she’d been at the same school since she was about four. She had very close friends,” she says.

“Living in Singapore is not dissimilar to living in New York – it’s a very transient life. So she’s got some gorgeous friends here from London, from Bangladesh, all around the world, and it’s an amazing opportunity to meet people from all different authenticities – but they’re passing through. She would love to come back to Australia, but unfortunately she can’t get back into her old school at the moment, so she’s going to go to Switzerland next August and board there ... I just feel like the best thing I can do as a parent is give her the opportunity to learn independence and the importance of it.”

She admits to sheltering her kids, and is determined to allow them to find her own way, like she did.

“I’m not a very good person at saying no – and I want her to be able to stand on her own two feet as an adult,” she says.

“Boarding will be a very good opportunity in a foreign country for her to actually snap into action and go, ‘OK, I’ve got one go at this’. I had to work so hard because I was a shit student. I want her to be the stellar student who gets a good job with a high salary, and she doesn’t have to work like a dog, like me. I didn’t study at school, I didn’t apply myself, I didn’t try – so I’ve had to work harder than everybody else.”

Jacenko, Pixie and son Hunter moved to Singapore for husband Oliver Curtis’ company Firmus Technologies, which he founded in 2019. She says they had to leave – and it has been the right decision for Oli and their family, despite challenges.

“Oli deserves that opportunity,” she says.

Roxy Jacenko on holiday in the Maldives. With tall poppy syndrome in Australia alive and well, her family has moved to Singapore. Picture: Instagram

“Unfortunately, tall poppy syndrome in Australia is alive and well, no matter how clever you are or how well you do. So for him, it was something that was important to move here, and the business has grown exponentially. For me, it was, it was a big call, but I did it for the children more than anything, because the children deserve to be with their dad. He’s a very good father – he reads the books to them and all of that – I’m horrible at all, I’m not interested. He’s the fun dad. We’re still yet to teach them how to ride a bike – that’s on the agenda – but I can’t ride one, so what chance have they got,” she laughs.

She says navigating social media for youngsters was hard enough – but the “children having a voice” parenting trend was not doing anyone any favours.

“I know it’s a controversial thing to say, but I never had a voice as a kid, and it did me the world of good, because I was respectful of authority,” she continues.

“Now we are teaching our children that whatever you think, you have a voice. Unfortunately, when they go out into the big, wide world and their boss says to them, ‘that’s not the way to do it, this is how I want it done’ – what, are they going to use your voice and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it, see you around’. It’s not going to help them.”

When she told Curtis she was going back to PR, his exact words were ‘as long as you’re happy and you don’t push too hard’.

“And I guess why he says that is because, when he met me, I was 24 and he was 30, and I was running six businesses,” she recalls.

“I would work from six o’clock in the morning until one o’clock in the morning. I don’t have an in-between.”

“I would work from six o’clock in the morning until one o’clock in the morning. I don’t have an in-between – I am 500 per cent or you don’t get me at all. And he’s seen the highs and lows of that. Now my learning is – how do I be a good mother and still have school for activities, and the fun runs and that stuff, which I never, ever had the opportunity to do because I was obsessed with my work – but at the same time, ensure that my customers do get that 200 per cent. So I now, at 44, need to learn how to do both.”

That doesn’t mean her latest reinvention won’t be a transition.

“I guess from Oli’s perspective, he’s seen me have a meltdown. I have to take the happy pills every day. That’s the reality of my life. That’s my genetic makeup at the same time, and I need to work. I need to be active.

“And you know what? I’ll say it again – no one’s taken my place.”

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