‘There have been so many different versions of me’: Tammy Hembrow on business, building an empire and THAT night with the Kardashians

In a rare interview, Australian mega influencer Tammy Hembrow reveals how she built her fitness and fashion businesses - and the real reason she fell out with the Kardashians.

Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar

Second only to the confusion around what they actually do, how influencers get so famous is the most perplexing and perennial question asked about them. Unlike actors, sportspeople or even reality TV stars, the path to celebrity for this wide-ranging, increasingly wealthy (and insanely popular) group is not obvious.

Which is why it still fascinates when fitness guru, activewear entrepreneur and mother-of-three Tammy Hembrow reveals to Stellar that she turned $400 in savings into a reported $50 million empire – one with just under 21 million social media followers – particularly since she’s done it all before the age of 30.

Her precocious ambition dates to age 12 when she moved from Australia to Singapore to live with her mother, Nathalie Stanley, a make-up artist, and stepfather Nathan Stanley.

“My stepdad had this gorgeous study and on the shelves were books all about personal development and success and money,” she recalls.

Tammy Hembrow. Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar

“I remember snuggling up on the leather lounge and reading The Success Principles [by Jack Canfield] and it resonated with me so much. It made me think, ‘I’m going to make something of myself.’”

Coming from the Gold Coast Hinterland, where she lived with her actor father Mark Hembrow and her two sisters Amy and Emilee – at one stage in an old wedding reception venue where the family used tables as makeshift walls and blankets as doors – the tween was inspired by her stepfather’s success. “The first day I walked into the house I was in absolute awe,” she says of Singapore. “It was so luxurious, with their own chefs. I didn’t realise that people could live like that.”

Hembrow went on to read many of the books in that study, igniting a fire within. Now, as she releases her first book, a half-memoir, half-instructional guide titled Show Up: Mindset, Motivation And Creating Your Dream Life, the 29-year-old is giving fans an insight into the ferocious drive and self-belief that defies her critics and underpins her success.

Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar

The book’s name is Hembrow’s mantra; showing up is what she does in the face of bust-ups with business associates and painfully public relationship breakdowns, including two broken engagements (to fitness influencer Reece Hawkins, father to her son Wolf, who turns nine in May, and seven-year-old daughter Saskia; and former Ironman champion Matt Poole, father to her daughter Posy, 21 months).

Then there was an incident in 2018 when she collapsed at Kylie Jenner’s 21st birthday party in Los Angeles and was wheeled out on a stretcher (we’ll get to that).

Crucially, showing up is what she did when she was about to launch her first fitness program and unexpectedly fell pregnant at age 19.

Everyone was telling her that her dreams were ruined but, as she explains to Stellar, “It pushed me to want to do it more. I have always been quite stubborn and I used that as a driving force to prove people wrong.”

Having dropped out of a business degree, Hembrow was working in telemarketing and retail. But away from work, she was gaining thousands of followers on Instagram by posting about her fitness, fashion and lifestyle.

Sensing she could capitalise on those numbers by selling her workouts directly to her audience, Hembrow gave up her day job to dedicate time to the project. With $400 in savings, she took the plunge.

A decade later, and on the eve of her 30th birthday next month, Hembrow reflects that she has lived multiple lives. Being a mother is her most treasured role, but it’s her fitness program Tammy Fit, her athleisure label Saski, and her former friendship with the Kardashians that have helped to turn her into a global brand – one that catapulted her onto the Financial Review’s Young Rich list in 2023 and saw her featured as a social media powerhouse in the pages of the inaugural issue of Forbes Australia in September 2022.

Read the full interview with Tammy inside Stellar on Sunday. Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar

Picture: Damian Bennett for Stellar

“I feel like there have been so many different versions of me throughout the past 10 years,” Hembrow says.

The current version became engaged to Where’s Your Head At? podcast co-host and former Love Island Australia star Matt Zukowski in December, three months after the pair confirmed their relationship. The proposal, on a beach in the Maldives, was captured on video and posted to YouTube.

But if fame and wealth gained through social media brings love and devoted followers, it can also bring cruel naysayers.

Not only were Hembrow’s three engagement rings brutally compared, but the 13-minute YouTube video that featured Zukowski’s proposal saw her roasted for being a bad mother and labelled incapable of being alone. In February, she was slammed for posing on her bed wearing sexy lingerie. “You don’t know proper values,” accused one Instagram commenter.

Does the abuse hurt? “I’ve got such a thick skin now,” she says. “In the beginning it definitely got to me but I couldn’t really care less anymore. It doesn’t change how I’m going to act or how I’m going to live my life.”

As for “that party”, Hembrow doesn’t name the Kardashians in Show Up but she does describe how she became friends with the family when she modelled for them. Despite the demands of work and family, she flew to Jenner’s 21st birthday celebration but turned up jet-lagged, and hadn’t slept for 30 hours. After “one or two” drinks, she collapsed and woke up in hospital to find there were pictures published online of her being carried out of the party by paramedics, lying face down on a stretcher.

It was Hembrow’s rock bottom. “I kept telling myself there is only up from here,” she tells Stellar. Alone and fresh from a break-up, she felt like she’d gone from media darling to public enemy. “It was a very dark time and I had to shut out the trolls and the hate I was getting,” she says, explaining that she documents the episode in her book because she wants to be authentic. “People look at my social media and they think, oh, she’s trying to be perfect, but I’m the least perfect person ever,” she adds. “I wanted to show that I’m a real person.”

As for her broken relationships, she says there’s a certain shame around leaving a partner when you have children. “People say you should work things out for the kids but that is just, literally, not the best option. Blended families can be amazing, and my goal is to always get along with my exes.”

Hembrow jokes that going from one Matt to another means she can’t mix up their names but, this time around, she says she’s met her match – so much so she’s been shopping for wedding dresses for the first time. “When people say, ‘Oh, you’re introducing your kids to another man’, I get where they’re coming from, but I’m not doing this lightly,” she insists. “I always do what’s in the best interests of my kids.”

With three children, it’s tricky to carve out romantic time, but she says Zukowski’s own profile means he understands the demands and exposure that come with being an influencer. “It was always sort of like my partner on the sideline and it doesn’t feel like that with him,” Hembrow says. “I haven’t really had someone who understands completely or doesn’t see it as a negative.”

The need for fresh content on her social media feeds doesn’t feel like a burden, Hembrow says, but when asked what went in to creating her recent Instagram reel showing her, Zukowski and her children in the ocean at sunrise, she admits there’s clearly more involved than a simple dawn frolic. She had to wake the kids at 4.30am, set up a tripod on the sand, and make sure Posy was being looked after by the older children in order to capture the images of her and Zukowski in the waves.

Yet Hembrow says she doesn’t feel like her life is staged. Likewise, despite rivalling the Kardashians as the pin-up for big booty confidence, she doesn’t see body shapes as trends. “Everyone can build muscle and lose fat but everyone has different bone structure and genetics,” she says. “The weird body trends that come and go are a bit silly.”

For the record, she says she hasn’t had a Brazilian bum lift or lip injections, but she did have breast implants after having Saskia, and is now thinking about having them removed. “I’m very different from where I was back then,” she admits to Stellar. “I love looking good, but there are so many more important things in life. It’s not things like that that make people beautiful or who they are.”

With the release of Show Up, Hembrow is out to prove that dreams can come true – if built on a foundation of grit and a solid work ethic. As she enters what she calls her “peace era”, it’s with her pre-teen self in mind that she’s sharing her own success principles. As she says, “I want to show women that you can have it all and be whatever you want to be.”

Show Up by Tammy Hembrow ($36.99, Ebury Australia) is out April 16. Pre-order at penguin.com.au

Originally published as ‘There have been so many different versions of me’: Tammy Hembrow on business, building an empire and THAT night with the Kardashians