Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn

The thing I think about most, especially when I'm on the go but also when I'm sat here in the Diary of a CEO studio, is the Wi-Fi and internet that we have to work with. In fact, anytime I'm filming away from the studio, one of the first things I do when I arrive is open up an app and do a speed test to see how strong the signal is.

The number of screenshots I've sent to my team about Wi-Fi signals at different locations is actually pretty crazy. It matters that much to me because it's such a competitive advantage to have fast Wi-Fi. On any given day, if I'm recording hours and hours of footage with a podcast guest, I then often have to have my team send that across to our London team who then do the edit.

So fast Wi-Fi and internet is not a "nice to have," it is absolutely business-mission critical. When it came to finding the best provider who could supply internet and Wi-Fi to our new LA studio, which I'm sat in right now, we looked at every single option.

Of all the providers, the one that came back with the steadiest connection, as well as being the cheapest, was today's sponsor, Spectrum Business. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, and TV, and mobile services. Millions of business owners already rely on Spectrum to keep their operations connected. So if you want to join them, head to spectrum.com/business to learn more. That's spectrum.com/business. Restrictions apply, service not available in all areas.

I really don't know where to start. I genuinely believe the story you're going to hear today, if you choose to listen, might just be one of the most mind-blowing, remarkable business stories that I think I'll probably ever get to tell. My guest today is nothing short of astonishing.

And you know, when I do these intros, of course, my job is to market this podcast so that you listen, but I think this is more me begging you to listen. Because in all my years in business, I've not heard a story quite like this. Today's guest is Dame Stephanie Shirley. She fled a Nazi regime at five years old and came to the UK with absolutely no family, no friends, no parents, no nothing.

One might expect someone in that circumstance to fall by the wayside, but Stephanie had other plans. With just £6 in her pocket, she founded a female-first software company which was ahead of its time in almost every respect. It allowed its 90% female workforce to work flexibly from home, it pioneered software that would change the world, and all of this in a male-dominated world that was the 1960s.

Stephanie's company became a multibillion-dollar company—I'm not sure if you're hearing me—a multibillion-dollar company. She founded this company in the 1960s when women weren't even allowed to establish a company without their husband's signature. The company is a software company, again, a heavily male-dominated industry, and it was sold for £2.3 billion.

She might just be the most successful female entrepreneur this country has ever seen, and she's now 86 years old. So I traveled across the country to go and meet her at her home in Henley to sit down with her and uncover her truth, to peer into her diary and to ask her the things that we all want to know.

Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Dame Stephanie Shirley, I think the first question I have to ask you because of a few things I read online is, what do you want to be called today?

Ah, well, I'm always called Dame Stephanie if you're prepared to do a bow or a curtsy if you're a girl, but if you're not prepared to do that, then you just call me Steve.

Steve?

And I've been called Steve for many, many years, simply because Stephanie didn't get any appointments when I wrote letters under the name of Stephanie. Nobody wanted to see me because I date from the days when women were not expected to do serious things, perhaps run a little cat shop or something like that. But in the '50s and '60s, women were not expected to run a financial services company or software house or anything really what I call serious business.

Your story is tremendous and it goes back a long way. I didn't know where the best place to start would be. Typically with a guest that we have on this podcast, I have an idea of where the most relevant or pertinent place to start is, but with you, I wanted you to tell me where your story should start and what the most relevant beginning is.

Well, the film that's being made of my book is focused very much on the years in business, and there were 40 of those. But especially in the early days, it was predominantly female-oriented. It was a policy to use female, it was one of the earliest high-tech companies set up in 1962.

And then if we talk about what motivates me to work in the way that I do, because work is not just something I do when I'd rather be doing something else—I love my work and I think you do as well—it's simply that that workaholism, and I know it's not fashionable to talk about that these days, but really it dates from my traumatic childhood.

That has motivated me because my life was saved from the Holocaust. It really motivated me today, as it was 70 or 80 years ago, to make sure that mine was a life that was worth saving. So the Kindertransport, which was the rescue mission that brought me out of Nazi Europe, is still current as far as I'm concerned because it's what drives me. What can I do today? What is it that I can offer at my age, with my skills, to make the world a better place?

And was that the reason why you started your business? Because you felt that you needed to do something with your life because it was saved, or was it because you saw a problem in the world that you felt you could solve?

It was very much a feminist issue. I'd been patronized as a Jew and I was not going to be patronized as a woman. At that time, women were not allowed legally to do certain things. You couldn't work on the stock exchange, you couldn't take out a hire purchase agreement, you couldn't drive a bus or fly an airplane.

And I couldn't even open the company's bank account without getting my husband's signature. You needed male authorization. So women were very much second-class citizens. I began to get very fed up with that and was really battling for equal pay and opportunities and fighting to be allowed to do what I wanted to do. So that was the original motivation. It was very much for women. It was a social business. I did not go into business to make money; I went into business to offer opportunities for women.

And why you though? Because why not me? I mean, that's the classic question, Steve. The reason I ask that question is so many people existed in that same environment of gender oppression, shall I say. I'm trying to understand why it was you that took on that fight and why you felt you had the confidence to take on that fight.

Well, maybe it is something to do with the Kindertransport story, because there's a high proportion of British companies, at least something like 7%, are founded by immigrants. And you think, why should that be? And it's partly because we're subject to discrimination perhaps, partly because we can bring something from one country to another with a higher possibility of success. But also, I think because we become very cussed, driven people. And the sort that if somebody says "no," the more they say "no," the more I want to do it.

And I heard that you were adopted—fostered—from your biological parents. What role did that event play in your later life and also your entrepreneurial journey?

Well, in my later life, the Holocaust is slipping from human memory. So in the last few years, I've tried to do more about talking on National Holocaust Memorial Day and things like that. But I'm not Jewish in culture. I've lost anything that there ever was Jewish in my family. And I'm really the child of my foster parents in all but birth. And so I'm pretty traditionally English. I'm a patriot; I really love this country with a passion that perhaps only someone who has lost their human rights can feel. And that is a driver for me.

And in those early days, it almost boggles my mind. In my industry, the technology industry and the social media industry, there are still conversations around how hard it is for women to break through. And if you look at the boards of the big technology firms, it is still completely dominated by men. So it boggles my mind how hard it must have been.

It was a very young industry. I think it was a virgin territory, so that in the early days, women during the war—for example, World War II—were working in coding at Bletchley Park, which was the precursor of software as I know it. And it was a very vibrant industry. The excitement would look banal to you. We got excited because we got a photocopier! A photocopier and it printed white on black, you know?

Everything was so different. Software was given away free with the hardware. So the entire idea of writing software and then selling it was quite alien. So we were breaking new ground, and that really drove us.

What was the outside impression of you as a female founder?

People laughed. They really did. They laughed at my crusade for women, they laughed at the idea of selling software. "It's free; can you sell air? No." And in a way, again, I'm a very proud person and I didn't want to be ridiculed. When things got really tough where somebody else might have given up, I knew that my success opened the door for a lot of other women.

Within a few years, we had 300 staff, 297 of whom were women. You know, it was very much a crusade. And that lasted until 1975 when equal opportunities legislation came in in this country, and it was not legal to have a pro-female policy. And so my woman's company had to let the men in.

And you started with, I read, £6?

Yes. But it was financed by my own labor. For years, I didn't draw even expenses. So it was a very slow burn.

It's almost hard to fathom because of the entrepreneurial world that I've grown up into, where you raise millions and millions of pounds before you've got a profit or really a product that fits the market and you inflate the team.

No, no, no. I definitely wanted to build—not a corporation, but I wanted to build this culture, the sort of organization that I wanted to work in, that I wanted to live in, that I thought was right for people in a holistic way.

And what do you think of the world of work today?

Well, I'm surprised it hasn't changed more. Because some of the things that I was doing about job shares, about co-ownership, about paying people with a cafeteria of benefits, about real opportunities, about team working—these things are still being talked about, and I was doing it 50 years ago. So in a way, I'm disappointed that it hasn't moved faster, but it's moving in the right direction at least.

And so what happened to your business then? You start that business, and then was it 20 years from when you founded the business to when it sold or was acquired?

No, it was 45 years before it was sold. It's a long history. So it's quite different. It employed 8,500 people when it was acquired. A quarter owned by the staff. So I was doing lots of things in an entrepreneurial way, like getting it into share ownership, getting share ownership embedded into the organization.

And that really underlined the sort of rather collegiate way of working that we always had because with our female start, we worked as teams, we worked multitasking, we liked each other. We may not have been in the same office because we all worked from home, but we liked each other, we were friends, it was a team. We were going to do it.

You worked from home?

Yes, all of us. I still work from home.

It's really—this is becoming popular now, the model of remote working.

But I mean, that's what IT allows you to do. We had in our application forms, which were fairly traditional, but we actually asked, "Do you have access to a telephone?" Not "do you have a telephone"—"do you have access?" It was a different world. But the skills that we used were intellectual skills, coding skills, pattern recognition skills, and people skills.

And did you teach yourself to code?

Yes, that was before the days of coding books.

It's really, really fascinating. It's only one generation back. We forget everything that was revolutionary in my time you take for granted. What you're doing now will be thought of as quite naive in 50 years' time.

Sure. And it's really fascinating because of the industry. And it's such a male—you know, Silicon Valley, if you go to Silicon Valley, it's such a male-dominated place typically. And technology as a pursuit is so male-dominated. To think of being able to create a company worth billions from that era which was—

We finished up at $2.8 billion.

Blimey, that's a lot of money. What do you do with that much money? I mean, so—this is normally a question I come to a bit later on, but what has been the impact of that much financial wealth on you in terms of happiness and possibilities?

I don't think wealth in any way is correlated with happiness. What it gives you that is pleasant is choice—choice of how to live. And I think I've kept my feet on the ground because a lot of wealthy people start living at a different level and they're still worried about money because can they afford a bigger yacht or whatever it is. To me, my feet were kept on the ground because our only child was learning disabled.

And so there were a lot of things we couldn't do if we were going to have a family life with him. And it was quite clear that that's what both of us wanted. But I've forgotten your question.

It was just about the wealth and what that enables for you in terms of happiness and possibilities. You know, because so many people, including me, when I was broke growing up, just almost fantasized about the day that I would get money and what I would do with it.

What would you do with it?

I mean, if you'd asked me when I was 16 or 18, I would have said I would have bought a Lamborghini and a big house and then I would have been exponentially just happy all the time, like a permanent smile.

But it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way, no. But what it has given me is a lifestyle that suits me in retirement because I did retire at 60. In that I now enjoy learning to give my money away wisely. So I've turned into an ardent philanthropist. I really enjoy it. That's what I do. I try and do it as a venture philanthropist, really thinking about projects, thinking about things and starting in an entrepreneurial way three charities and taking them again to sustainability.

Now the first charity took me 17 years to get financially and managerially independent of me. Wow. The second one—I'm a learning person—only took me five years. And the third one only two years. But you know, it's like running a business except that the metrics are different.

And what were some of the lessons that you would impart to young women that are trying to make it in their own endeavors or careers or as entrepreneurs today that you learned through your journey that you think are still sort of relevant today? Obviously, I know the story of you saying your name was Steve so that—

I think we all have to dissemble a little bit and put the best foot forward and any way of getting through the door is important.

So if my name is Shirley and it's 2020 as it is today, what advice would you give to me as a female entrepreneur who's setting off on my journey to make it in this world?

It's much the same as the advice I would give to any young man, to you as Steven. And that is to get into an area that you really enjoy. Get trained in it so that you are up to speed. Get retrained so that you're really at the leading edge and know what the sector is all about. And then just take a risk. I think a lot of people just are not prepared to take that risk. And it is a risk. Most new companies fail, most new projects fail. But you can always start another one.

People don't like risk though, do they?

I do, you know. I have a very low boredom threshold and I like to—I sometimes say when people are thinking about jobs, to apply for something that is so risky that you have that frisson of fear about it. That's the one to go for.

Why is that?

Well, you'll never get bored, you know that it's going to stretch you. And you're going to learn; I guess it's a growth opportunity if it's terrifying to some degree. Why do you think that the world hasn't changed fast enough?

Because it's so fascinating for me to hear that a lot of the things that you espoused back then—remote working, flexible working, shared ownership of corporations, and even giving your personal wealth to your team—these are concepts which we as employers are just kind of wrestling with and getting to terms with today.

Maybe every generation does that because people are intrinsically selfish. And I think today's culture is very much "me, me, me." So anyone that goes outside that is really treading on not virgin ground, well-trodden ground, but nobody really knows what happens.

And your book, I was very fascinated about it, particularly because—did you find it honest? Everything that you've done I find honest. I was literally watching your TED Talk in the car on the way here as well, which was fascinating as well. The book is fascinating to me for a number of reasons. The main reason is because I'm in the process of writing a book. How are you tackling it?

So I took myself to a jungle in Indonesia on my own because it feels like it would be impossible to write a book whilst I'm running the business because it's just constant. So I took myself to a jungle in Indonesia and I sat by the lake for about two weeks and I made good progress there with a clear head over New Year's and Christmas when no one would really be bothering me anyway.

And you physically wrote it yourself?

Physically wrote it, yeah.

I dictated.

Okay. I'm about 40% in. When you wrote this book, were there things that you found out about yourself in hindsight or dots that you connected because you wrote the book?

Yes, there certainly were. And the whole concept of letting go, letting go of the rancor of my childhood to start each day afresh. The whole concept of letting go of the company once I'd lost control of it, you know, at the time I found it extremely difficult.

Tell me about that.

Well, I'd always been the boss. I'd made it, I'd created it, and I was the boss. And gradually through co-ownership and acquisitions, my share of the company dropped from one time it was 95% or something and then we dropped and finished up with 5%. But when it dropped below the majority shareholder, and I was still the major shareholder but not a majority shareholder, people's attitude changed. There were professional managers running it now, they're the ones whose views were taken into account. And I found that a bit like—I think I mention it in the book—King Lear, who once he gives his kingdom away... sorry, this is Shakespeare, maybe you don't know it.

I know it slightly.

You know, once you've lost control of something, you can't necessarily get it back.

That's really I think relevant to every entrepreneur, especially entrepreneurs these days who raise a lot of investment very quickly and find themselves at the mercy of venture capitalists and those kinds of things.

Well, you see, while you've got 51%, you're not vulnerable to that at all. You don't have to. But once you've lost that, then other people's decisions take over. And we floated at a time when I wouldn't have floated, but—

But that was pressure from investors and shareholders?

Yes, they obviously wanted to capitalize.

When you look back over your professional business career, what are the things that you wish you did differently? And I ask this question because I think it's going to help me—this is a very selfish thing. I'm I think in many respects at the start of my professional business career, and there's a lot of lessons that I'm learning which I wish I didn't have to learn.

Without being big-headed, I really don't regret much. I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things because whatever I do, I do to the best of my ability. I get myself trained, I spend enough time on it. And so I can't do more than my best. And if it doesn't succeed, it doesn't worry me. I don't look back and think, "Oh, if only I'd done this."

There were some very classic mistakes that I made because I thought I knew better. And that was to replicate our success in the UK in, first of all, Scandinavia, then Benelux, and thirdly in the States. And none of those really took off; they were all more trouble than they were worth. But what did take off was India. And we started off—well, I started off writing theoretical papers about exporting software to India because there was a workforce there in short supply. And eventually, we had half our people in India, and they were very highly skilled.

So you never quite know what you've got to be opportunistic about things. "We'll try that—doesn't work, you know." I'm a scientist; if something works, I do more of it. If something doesn't work, I do something else.

I still am trying to put my finger on where this level of confidence and conviction came from. Because from what I know about the past, it would have been so tremendously difficult for a black entrepreneur, for a woman entrepreneur to go out in industry which was dominated typically by white men. And I'm really trying to understand where the confidence, where the conviction came from.

I don't think it was confidence; I think it was just sheer guts. I was not confident; I would be petrified going into some of the presentations that I was doing. I would be physically sick sometimes. But what I had was determination and resilience—that you know, if somebody knocks me down, I pick myself up, brush myself down, and put a smile on my face and go ahead.

Maybe that's the immigrant thing.

Well, I think it's a characteristic of entrepreneurs. People remember us for our successes, but actually what epitomizes the entrepreneurial drive is our ability to cope with failure.

What's the most worthwhile thing that you think you've done over the last 70 years?

Probably taking the company into co-ownership.

You made a lot of people very wealthy.

Yes, I also acted as a role model, not only for women but also for co-ownership. A lot of people—I read somewhere that you've donated or you've made 70 people millionaires? Yes, I'm proud of that as well.

It's pretty staggering. Puts a lot of pressure on me with my team.

But I do think that you know, if you share the team, you've got a smaller proportion of a larger cake, which is how people explained it to me because I was sort of quite—didn't really want to let it go.

And your philanthropic endeavors these days, which one are you most proud of? Is there one particular philanthropic endeavor that you've created or funded that you think, "That's the thing that I'm most proud of"?

Well, I've taken three charities in the autism field to sustainability. One of them cost me most in human terms. One of them cost me £30 million in sheer five years of my life. But the most strategic one is the last one, and it shows I think that I'm learning, because it's a research charity. The one you might be interested in though is I co-founded the Oxford Internet Institute, which that was in the year 2000—it actually opened in 2001. And that concentrates not on the technology of the internet but on the social, economic, legal, and ethical issues of the internet. And I'm very proud of that actually because it's a way in which I've been able to contribute to the sector long, long after I was technically competent.

And even that is somewhat ahead of its time. Because you know, even 2020 we're in now, which is almost 20 years later, and the ethical implications and the social—we're just starting to nibble at them. You talked about the autism charities that you've supported and created. I understand that you had a son, and that's really the sort of motivation behind them. How did that change your life?

Oh, phenomenally. My life has gone in completely different directions. I spend my time now with schools and support services and learning disabled people and academe and so on, quite, quite different to how I might have imagined. I could see me, when I was a child, I would have liked to have been an academic. I never went to college. You haven't either, I think? No. Maybe college sort of knocks some of the spark out of people, I'm not sure.

It would appear that way to some degree. I don't mean to be offensive to anybody, but I typically think that learning is—I mean learning in that context is incredibly good for information, but maybe not so good for creativity because you're—I we always were saying that in my business anyway, our naivety is responsible for our best work or our best ideas. So not knowing how it was supposed to be done gave birth to things that were considered special. And when I think about innovators that exist in the world like Elon Musk and others, it's actually their naivety. Elon Musk talks a lot about how when he started his first electric car, everybody told him that you couldn't make fast electric cars affordable because—

Couldn't make electric cars full stop.

Yeah, and those that were, were incredibly expensive, couldn't go far, weren't fast and weren't sexy. And so he broke it down to these fundamentals; he rejected convention and thought, "Well, if you buy the metal on the metal exchange and these kind of things, you can build a new..." and that requires some level of naivety or you know, the same sort of guts I guess that you've described.

Because I didn't have a first-class education, nobody told me what one wasn't supposed to do in business. So I just went ahead and did it.

And that's that same naivety which—there must be quite a fine line between being a genius and an idiot to some degree. You know what I mean? And I guess that's how it ends, I guess that's how people decide.

I'm really curious, you know, you've got a retrospective clarity on business and life and what matters that I haven't got.

But do you read business books?

I do. And I'm naturally curious.

So I'm really intrigued as to what you think I might not know because it's an "unknown unknown" to me, of course. Well, you've got a big smile on your face and I wonder whether you yet know the sort of tragedies that are going to hit you when you're responsible for a lot of staff. You have a death, you have an illness, you have breakaway groups, you have all sorts of things that are really hurtful to you as an individual. Have you gone through that sort of experience yet?

I haven't.

Well, long may it be in the future, but I'm sure that is.

What do I need to know about those experiences and how to deal with them?

That you are resilient. That you know you don't have to go down under. That there are ways, you know, if you can't go through something you can go under it or round it or over it or go elsewhere. I mean, you know, if a business doesn't take off, there are other things that you can do. And that gives you the confidence to sort of face "What's the worst that can happen? I can deal with this."

And resilience I guess is built like muscle in the gym by repeat survival I guess of those kinds of— Yes, but it's also basic character I think, that you know you've got to have good health and energy. I learned to be healthily selfish after a bit. To actually look after my own well-being and not just health, but probably mental health in that not to let things get me down. Because I find business very tough. It's nice looking back on it, you know, and everybody pats you on the back and says "How terrific." Other people did it. What did I do? I'm a leader, not a real manager.

And you talk about being selfish there. What does that look like practically?

Learning to say no. Because you get a lot of demands on you and just learning to say no. Spending time on yourself. Spending care and attention, giving care and attention to your family and your nearest and dearest, rather than just everything to the business.

One of the things that you mentioned earlier was about tragedy and about death and those things. You asked if they had struck me yet. I think I'm somewhat haunted by this idea that someday one of my parents is going to pass away and I will suddenly realize in that moment that I misprioritized what was important. Because I know that I'm giving everything to my business now and—

It's fine if it just turns out to be a part of your life. But if for whatever reason it then becomes a whole part of your life, then you do think, "My goodness, I didn't spend enough of my time with my parent, I wish I'd done this or had more children" or whatever.

And do you think those things? Do you think you wish you'd spent more time with your parents or your certain family members that aren't around anymore?

I don't think any parent is happy with how they've brought up their children. In my case, just one child. But they're decisions that I took that I would take again in the similar circumstances. But I think it's worth contemplating some of those issues. And you do know that your parents are going to die and the chances are they will die before you. And to actually think, "What's the worst that can happen? Supposing you had a phone call now of a death, how would you react?" And if you can face that, then you may change the way your life goes or you may be even more determined to continue on the path that you're taking. I mean, I love what I do. And I think especially at 86, I'm so lucky to have something to get up for each morning. But other people don't want to live like I do, so it's a very personal choice.

The next point in my diary this week is about the podcast sponsor which is Boost by Facebook. They are a dedicated one-stop shop for entrepreneurs, for CEOs, for small businesses, job seekers, and anybody with ambition that's looking to thrive in this digital economy. They launched with the aim of creating a place where all of us can understand this new world of digital and social. It can be incredibly intimidating. My mom, I was talking to her about Boost with Facebook the other day, she doesn't know how to use a phone. She doesn't know how to type and she's trying to run a business in 2020 and compete against people that do. Boost is a place for people like her where she can learn more about the digital economy, about features and skills and training and all of the things that matter, the things that might level the playing field for her as someone that doesn't know about this new world that we live in. You can learn more about this at facebook.com/boostwithfacebookuk. And if you do check it out, drop me a message and let me know how you find it. I always pop on there every now and then to try and make sure I'm staying ahead of the curve, but yeah, do let me know how you find it.

Do you think that entrepreneurship is somewhat a curse? Because I almost describe it as something that I can't unsee. Because the way that I live my life is quite neurotic and I'm quite obsessed and I think I'm probably not the most social person. And I think if people really understood the true extent of like my personal obsession with what I'm doing in my business, they would probably describe it as an illness.

But some of it may come from you, but some of it is the demands of the business. I mean I used to feel that the business had so many demands on me, I was absolutely crouched under this heavy load that I was carrying. And then a few years later, you learn to delegate a bit more, things have gone—you've had a couple of good things happen and it all starts to be much more fun. And then something else happens, you know, you've got a breakaway group and I mention that because I found that very debilitating.

A group of staff who, knowing the business plans of my business, decided to break away and progress it without the overheads and the baggage of the past. So they started off on a fresh piece of paper. And so I lost a lot of staff, I lost certain contracts were put at risk, and I found that pretty depressing. But again, you learn to deal with it and it's just the way the business goes.

I'm surprised that you're writing your book yet, because I would have thought it was so early on or is this just chapters one and two?

It's not actually heavily about my business story. The book is in essence talking more about the journey from being 12 years old and being this broke kid that wanted to get successful and wealthy and whatever else because my family were bankrupt and we didn't have any money ever, to going on that journey of believing that I would become super happy if I just managed to achieve these things I wrote in my diary which was I wanted to be a millionaire before I was 25.

You set that as an actual target?

I set it—I can show you the piece of paper. It says "Four goals before I'm 25" and I wrote this when I was 18. I want to be a millionaire, I want a Range Rover to be my first car (didn't have a driving license, never driven in my life), I wanted to have a girlfriend, a long-term girlfriend because again, the toxic relationship between my parents made me despise relationships, and the last thing was I wanted to work on my body image because I was incredibly skinny and short. And so it's just really the journey from there to getting to 26.

So it's more about confidence and growing, growing up?

And just realizing that everything I thought was really wrong. And also having the self-awareness to suddenly realize why I wrote that I wanted a million quid and a fast car, and how wrong I was upon getting those things about those things.

Well, we would still like to have some of those things.

I mean, but for different reasons, right? For much more intrinsically motivated reasons. Before it was because external—I thought maybe Jasmine in school would date me if I had a Range Rover. And the reason I'm writing it while I'm young is because I think that empowers the message a little bit more. Being able to say that when I'm 26 or 27 to other 26 and 27-year-olds is much more powerful than I think in that moment. So it's not the perfect timing and it's not "that" book, it's not "this" book. It's just a message really to younger audiences about understanding—

So the fact that it's about business is almost incidental to your broader path?

Completely, completely, yeah.

So you wouldn't market it as a business book?

I wouldn't say it was a business book, no. And I don't think the publisher would say that either. It's more about inspiration from young life and—I that's why I said I don't know everything now. I know there's so—and the reason I know I don't know everything is because I thought I knew everything when I was like 25 and then 24 and 23 and you change so drastically. And that's why I found it—was so keen to come here and meet you because the wisdom you have is I mean there's nothing I could do to pay for such wisdom. But I mean this is one way of trying to get some of it, is you know coming here and asking you questions.

So yeah, on that point of family, it's something that I think a lot about. I also understand the importance of really being mission-orientated.

Where am I trying to get to? What sort of a person am I trying to be?

Exactly. Because that I mean that's what keeps you going for 30, 40 years I'm guessing, right? Having that genuine purpose behind what you're doing.

I'm always sorry for people who don't have a purpose. My purpose has changed several times in my life, but I've always had a purpose. Building up the company.

And what were your purposes across the years? How did they change?

I think like you, I first of all I wanted to get out of poverty. And it was clear, predominantly from what people told me, that learning and education was the best way out of poverty. So I was very keen to do well at school, I was very keen to go to university which I didn't manage. And that was a dream that was put on hold. Now I've got honorary degrees from Cambridge and goodness knows what. But they don't really give me a lot of pleasure because life has moved on. What I want now is a role in the philanthropic field, the feeling that I have made the world a better place. And that is—that's pretty strong. There's always things that you can do, always ways in which you can cut costs by 10%, always things.

And when you get out of bed these days, what's your typical day like now?

Quite a lot of time spent at this desk because I find going out—I don't travel a great deal now. Went to Europe once last year I think. But I try and pace myself so that I do the things that I want to do and don't get stuck with a lot of—so you know, I have people that do my accounts and people who do my look after the house for me and I have a very easy life except when I'm sitting usually alone at my desk which is where innovation comes from. I'm sure it's a solitary activity. Everything else is teamwork, but the innovation comes from one individual, one spark, and you capture it.

So true. Very true. Consensus doesn't really come up with, doesn't produce innovation, does it?

And yet all the time we're teaching young people to work as teams because you need these complementary skills to do most things.

It's almost quite—it's against the professional narrative for one person to come up with the idea and tell the others what the idea is. I've found in my own organization that working in really small teams—so I might have an idea and then pulling together like three or four people to develop it at pace. If we go to 15 people, 20 people, you know, nothing happens.

What I found very disappointing was I went into software because I really do find it fascinating and in the early days you needed mathematics to do it as well which is totally and utterly absorbing once you get lost in the mathematical algorithms. Technology was what I wanted to do. And you start off one person, two person, five person, and very, very quickly you're having to delegate the bit that you really love, the software. And I got landed with the tax, the human resources, the finance, the dealing with HR issues. I mean it happened so quickly. And that's a shame because the motivation then has to come from something else.

And that's that—happens in a lot of businesses, I think it's pretty much happened in mine. Where the founder probably has a very unique skill and then they in order to not be a bottleneck to the growth of the business they have to move out the way and delegate to other people. Something I've definitely struggled with—delegation. And I mean at the scale you were at with 8,000 people—

So you start to be like a corporate person, you know, you're learning to discuss the quarterly results and—oh, it's such a bore!

And what do you think of entrepreneurship these days? Because in our culture now it's like this somewhat rockstar career choice where it's over—tremendously glamorized. And people don't talk a lot about the cost, whether that's an emotional, mental health, or physical cost, whatever it might be. People don't talk enough about that. And part of the reason I started this podcast was because I wanted to shine a bit of a light on the non-glamorous—

But you see, who is going to let you publicize the failures? You know, we might glancingly comment about various failures that we've had. But by instinct, we're always promoting not only today's success but what you want to do tomorrow and the day after.

Was there ever a moment when you were start building your business where you thought that you were finished?

Yes, yes. And I can remember sitting in our living room actually rocking with some sort of fear. "What am I going to do? What can I do? What can I do?" Yeah.

Because of something—because something had happened?

It was a recession and I was going out of business basically. I'd got to the stage of selling personal items to get money to keep us going. So that's part of the cost as far as I was concerned. And you will have comparable costs in different ways.

Was there ever a moment where you wished you could trade your entrepreneurial, obsessive, rocking-in-your-chair life for a more blissful ignorance of—you know what I mean? If you didn't have to—if you didn't even know about the entrepreneurial lifestyle and you could just you know come to work at nine and leave at five and—

No, I I have this very low boredom threshold. It would really be awful. I remember one stage I had a beast of a boss actually. Um and he he gave me tasks that I didn't like and basically I wasn't trained or competent to do so. And so I was time-watching. I'd got to get through from nine till that—desperately trying. And life was so—the black dog was sort of hanging around you. I don't want that.

And what age was that? How old were you then?

Thirty. No, I had my child then, earlier than that, mid-20s.

What would you say to somebody that's in a job now that they despise because they've got a boss like that?

Get out, get out, get out!

What if they say to you, they say, "You know what? I've got a mortgage to pay and I've got this." So you've got a mortgage to pay. And they say, "So I feel like I can't leave because my mortgage and my I've got this kid to pay for and my car."

Yeah, I mean there obviously are situations where it's very difficult to make a career change. But I think the younger you are and the fewer responsibilities you have, the easier it is to make a free choice for you that's right for you now. Now you may look back in 10 years' time sort of say, "I wish I'd thought of something else." But you do have a free choice.

Even in the context of all those sort of practical obligations, you think you have to get out. You have to find a way out. You have to not give up the fight of finding your way out. Well, you mustn't give up the fight, must you? Otherwise, you really are finished.

I just find that topic very interesting because a lot of people that message me will say, "I'm miserable, but..." and then "it's worth it, worth it because look at my nice car, my nice home." And even the "but I'm almost pinned down because of all these obligations, all these responsibilities."

A lot of wealthy people still get pinned down by changing a lifestyle to a level where again they're having to think about spend time with their finance people.

We've just taken a little tour through your lovely home here and it's just filled with such beautiful art. And typically when you think about software and technology and those things, you don't think those people are so into art. And that was quite surprising to me because I don't know what I was expecting but— do you understand the sort of naive assumption I made there?

Well art is patterns and different senses. You've got sight and smell and hearing. My husband's more keen on music and I like music, but I mean he's the one that really knows about it. But I I feel as if I I'm hungry if I don't see good art. And and I like the contemporary work. I also liked Op Art, maybe I got into the contemporary art through Op Art which is this sort of cubist and and—yeah.

Did your love for art manifest itself at all in your professional life?

I don't think so really. I used to put works of art into the into the business. I don't think other people appreciated them very much, but I I thought it gave a different dimension to the business.

I read—I read that you've donated all of your art to— paintings in hospitals, yeah. Incredibly generous.

Well, we were talking about how difficult it is to do if you have responsibilities. It's very much easier our son is dead, there's not you know whatever else would I do with the money? Could leave it to the RSPCA, but I'd much rather spend it in a like a venture philanthropist and really thinking "Well, that needs doing, and I could make that into that."

And what—what are you planning to do with your wealth when you go outside of that? Is it—

It all goes to charity. Yeah. And that also gives a quite a nice atmosphere because people are very sycophantic with people who are known to be wealthy. Um and um it's quite clear everybody knows it's going to charity, it's going to the research charity, and um it's decided.

It's—it's a pretty pretty interesting phenomenon that you know philanthropy tends to take place later in people's lives. Is there— do you think that's the correct way round? For even for someone like me, I try and you know I remember one day I asked myself I said, "If I could have over the last five years of building my business maybe saved five people's lives, would that have been a more worthwhile pursuit than building my business?" And what did you decide? I decided that because I poured into myself, I will have more to pour out for others later.

If that makes sense. Most people in your position do make that type of decision that they're saying, "I'm going to spend a portion of my life making the money and and then start spending it." But the real joy of giving is when it becomes part of your life, part of your um whole being, and that you're always thinking in terms of, "I wonder why what is that person doing in the street? Why are they not in a hostel? Why is he not in work?" You know, you start really thinking all the time, "Well, I could make that little one happen," not just make a lot of money and then—

And on your book, a little birdie told me that this was being made into a movie?

Indeed, yes. Um it's only taken—everything in business takes a long time. It's only taken what, six years to get to this stage. We thought they were going to start actual filming this year, but I don't think they will; I think it's going to be 2021. But it's such fun to think of it being going through another artistic process really.

It must be mind-boggling for you as an entrepreneur to to know that your life is going to be made into a movie.

It will be lovely, wouldn't it? Yes. Looking forward to it. I I keep saying though, "Get it soon, I want to see it happen."

And and you know who it's being produced by?

Yes, we have Damian Jones as the producer and he did *Lady in the Van* and he did *The Iron Lady*. Um so I'm in good company.

That's incredible. Really, really, really incredible. And if you know, knowing your story as I know it, it will make such a brilliant movie.

I hope it will. Yeah. I think some of it is social history as well because with the emphasis on um the years the early years in business when there was this 100% female company sort of struggling to make a mark in the world.

It's almost like the suffragettes of entrepreneurship in some in some respect. What can we do as employers to correct the social sort of injustices as they relate to gender inequality and such today? What more more should we be doing? We've seen the rise in this MeToo movement which is you know shown a lot—

Yes, that's made quite a difference. Made quite a difference because people are now aware that women are coming forward and other minorities. Because women behave as a minority, or have been. But they're now coming forward when things are not acceptable and people are listening to them. But we still have a long way to go.

I think that businesses are also learning that it's not just the bottom line that it the it's not the only metric that it that matters. Um but that they need their branding depends on how people view them, their employment practices, um their corporate social responsibility, the way in which they source their materials. These are things that customers are interested in and so it does go to the bottom line. Um and that is a big change. Now you do your social um marketing and branding, it's very equivalent to to some of the charitable work.

Yeah, and as you say, the world is— I've seen the world change in even in my lifetime because once upon a time corporations were like black boxes and you couldn't see inside. All you saw was what they produced.

Now we have to be all transparent, yes.

Because of— I mean social media's played a huge role in that because all of your employees have access to the internet and they can say whatever, they can post a photo of whatever's happening, they can write a testimonial about you online. So internal company culture has now become brand. As you say, and brand is the bottom line. Say you had a dinner party in this in this room here and you could there's two— so we we occupy two seats at this table and there was four other seats and you could invite anybody from history, um dead or alive, anybody you want. Who would you invite and why? For four seats and also, what are we going to eat?

Oh, I I don't know anything about food. Um I'd invite Michelle Obama, I think she's a very interesting woman who I would would probably make a good dinner party guest. Um Nelson Mandela because I think the way in which his level of forgiveness is is just so wonderful that I and I've read two of his books now. Um and the third one, Winston Churchill has to be. One more I'm going to need. Winston Churchill. Mother Teresa. Again it's these inspirational people you you get inspiration from other people and Mother Teresa's ability to love um is so all-embracing that I would like to experience it.

There's two things I I'm really surprised your husband didn't get an invite, which I think he might—

He's very antisocial.

Okay. And the last one was just a point about forgiveness and um why is forgiveness important?

Well, the title of my book *Let It Go* is something to do with with it's a Buddhist principle of "Let it go." Don't let the rancor of the past spoil the present. Don't hang on to things when you can give them away. Um and forgiveness is one of those things that if you can genuinely forgive somebody for how they've hurt you or whatever it is, the world all the pain goes.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Steve. Dame Stephanie Shirley, for the time today. It feels like a tremendous honor to get to meet you and talk to you. And um I'm incredibly excited about your movie coming out, which I think is just the most incredible thing ever. I think it's probably somewhere inside every entrepreneur's mind a dream to to have such a thing created about them, so um but I think it's in this case definitely deserving. And um yeah, it's a— I I feel indebted to you for allowing me to come here and speak to you, so thank you.

Very nicely said. I've enjoyed our chat today.

*Let It Go*, your your book, *My Extraordinary Story from Refugee to Entrepreneur to Philanthropist*. Everybody can get everywhere and I highly recommend that they do. So thank you, thank you so much.

Pleasure. Thank you, Steven.