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Join Gabby Logan every week as she speaks to some familiar faces about their relationship with money, the financial lessons they've learned on the road to professional success, and how they're investing for their family's future.
Visit ii.co.uk for more investing ideas and information.
Gabby: Hi, I’m Gabby Logan and this is The ii Family Money Show. In each episode, I speak to a familiar face about the role money has played in their family life and professional success. This time, I’m joined by the entrepreneur, investor and star of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, Deborah Meaden.
In our conversation, Deborah tells me about the huge influence her mother had on her career and her attitude to money, and why she’s always believed she can figure out how to do things if she puts her mind to her, and why her pet hate is hearing businesspeople claim all the credit for their successes, rather than acknowledge the people who helped them along the way.
Deborah Meaden, it is a real pleasure to chat to you on The ii Family Money podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.
Deborah: Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m very excited.
Gabby: Yes. Well, we always go back to the very beginning of people’s understanding of money. Their relationship with money when they were a kid, and your story is perhaps, I think, almost more relevant to what eventually happened in your life and your career. You know, I’ve heard you talk before about almost this instinctive business and entrepreneurial spirit that you had as a child, but it was almost as a result of the circumstances that your family found themselves in, would you say?
Deborah: Absolutely. I think so. I mean, I don’t spend hours thinking about, you know, what am I like and why am I like it, but actually when I am posed the question, I think my mother, by the age of 21, she was divorced with two young children. She had no money and she set an example of somebody – she didn’t foster us out, but we had to go and stay with families while she went out and built our life.
Now, I don’t remember being taught about money and I don’t remember being taught about work and earnings, but obviously I had a great example of somebody who was in a very difficult situation, who just got on with it, worked her way out of it and has ended up having a huge successful life of her own. So I think that obviously left itself with me.
Gabby: And I’ve thought about her actually quite a lot when I’ve heard you talk about that, because she could have easily decided, “Well, I’ve got these girls and I’m going to rely on other people to give us –” whether it was the state or whether it was somebody in the family being a benefactor. What was the kind of ambition in her, do you think, to do it the way she did? Where did that come from?
Deborah: See, I don’t know that, but we’re all fiercely independent. I’m one of four girls. We’re all fiercely independent. I don’t know whether that is nature or nurture, but I think that we all resist asking for help if we feel we can work – it’s sort of the last resort. That’s not true in business. I’m really happy to say to people, “I’ll help you. Can you help me?” but there’s something in me that says, “Just try and do it on your own first.”
As I say, I don’t know if that’s nature or nurture. I don’t know whether that’s because I saw an example of that in my mother and I don’t know where my mother got it from, but she always has been that person who just sort of gets on with it and looks to herself first. Although to be fair, she did have to ask for help because she was literally – I mean, she had two young girls and nothing, and she went to see a lawyer because she couldn’t find her way around the benefit system. I’m not even sure there was a benefit system them.
So she went to see a lawyer and this lawyer, she didn’t know it at the time, she said, “Look, how does it all work?” and he said, “Well, I’m not sure there’s anything for you, but I’ll work it out for you.” Anyway, he said that he’d found some support for her and gave her enough money to put a deposit down on a flat. She found out years later that actually, it was his money and she obviously paid him back, and they remained our family and our business lawyers for about 30 years out of kindness.
Gabby: Wow, that’s such a lovely story.
Deborah: Yes, absolutely, but I think he saw in somebody, you know, they were really going to work their way out of this.
Gabby: Yes, she didn’t want to play the system. She wasn’t getting him for that reason. She wanted to get you guys into a better life –
Deborah: Absolutely.
Gabby: And eventually, moved you geographically across the country and you ended up on the family travel park, like holiday homes, it was that kind of set up you were living in?
Deborah: Yes. Well, no. I mean, we moved around a lot when my parents – so my mother met my father, the man that I call my father, when I was seven, by which time we’d already moved from Essex to Minehead to Wiltshire. So we were basically going wherever the work was, but as they came together and they started becoming more and more successful, eventually – and this was when I was a bit older in my life, but we ultimately ended up with holidays parks that I joined. Well, they went through several businesses before that, and actually I also had left the family and gone and done my own thing by the time we did that.
Gabby: Yes. Well, let’s talk about that. You went off to Italy. Is that right?
Deborah: Yes, yes, I did.
Gabby: So you weren’t fluent in Italian at the time. You weren’t going out there to further your education with Italian. You were going out there for business with what would seem to be incredible confidence at the age you were.
Deborah: Well, Gabby, that’s a little bit of an overstatement. To be perfectly honest, I followed an ex-boyfriend [laughs], and I’m not saying that’s a great way. No, but I went with the intention of finding a business. I was in that moment in my life where I thought, “Nothing’s changing. I’m stuck, and unless I change something, nothing will change.”
So I thought, “Well, actually, to get on a plane, go out and see Vincent,” he was a graphic designer, his new girlfriend was a fashion designer, and I thought, “Well, let’s just see if an opportunity comes from that,” and it is true in life. You know, if you put yourself out there and you change your scenery, change the landscape, something new happens, and it worked. But it wasn’t really part of a plan. There was no, “What do I do once I get there?” There was more of a, “Let’s get there, change the landscape and see what happens.”
Gabby: And you started exporting, was it glassware and pottery, ceramics, that kind of thing?
Deborah: Well, yes. So I went to an exhibition, a sort of homewares exhibition, and found these four beautiful ceramic – actually, I might have something on my desk still left from it, but four companies that made something beautiful. So it was either beautiful glassware or it was beautiful furniture or beautiful china, and I set up a business called [Tutto? 00:06:23] Quattro, which is a slight play on Italian because it should be tutti quattro, but anyway. I set up this business, and basically was importing – those four companies, importing their goods back to the UK. I was 18, I think.
Credit to those people. You know, I sort of bounced into their office and said, “You need me to take your products over to the UK,” and good credit to them. They didn’t know me from, you know –
Gabby: What did you know about exporting?
Deborah: I didn’t. This must, again, come from my early childhood. I have always believed I can find anything out. When I say I don’t like asking for help, I certainly don’t mind phoning up people and saying, “How does this work? What do I do now?”
So I did, I worked my way around it. I didn’t have any money. So I had to set up basically just invoice discounting, you know, whereby I actually bring the goods in, get the cash upfront and then sell them. So I found my way around that. Took these goods to an exhibition called Top Drawer, which is actually still going. You know, got into Harvey Nichols and Harrods and really good high-end stores, and then the next year, found that the Italians, who had been so wonderful and supportive of me, had started putting the goods straight into store, bypassing me, which was a great lesson.
Gabby: Yes, because if you were to do that again, presumably you would have some kind of exclusivity deal with them, right, because that’s the business lesson from them.
Deborah: Well, I did.
Gabby: Oh, right.
Deborah: But I had, I had. I tell you the business lesson for me. So I did have them under contract and I did have an exclusivity arrangement, but the lesson I learnt – and this is such a powerful and important lesson – know what to spend your time on. I might have had them under contract. I didn’t have a lot of money. What am I going to do? Fight four companies? I just thought, “Do you know what, amazing lesson. Now, learn and move on,” and actually, from being [unintelligible 00:08:16], I’d seen Stefanel and that was my second business.
You know, I’d seen Stefanel and, again, just bounced into the head office in Knightsbridge, they were at the time, and just said, “Are you thinking about franchising?” and they said, “Well, actually, the managing director’s offices are downstairs.” I went and knocked on the door. I didn’t knock on the door. I saw the secretary, you know, and she let me through, and convinced them I could have one of the first Stefanel franchises in the UK [laughs].
Gabby: What was the motivation for you at this point because obviously you wanted to earn a living of some sort, but was it the thrill of the deal? Was it the thrill of building something? What was the spark of your entrepreneurial spirit?
Deborah: I think absolutely fundamentally, it’s been about independence. I am fiercely independent and I wanted to build my own life and I thought that business, and also because my parents had been talking about business. You know, they’d had a business when I was seven or eight. So they were beginning to talk about it. So it felt very familiar to me.
I’d never really considered a career, and I just thought business – and it is true today – it’s a very good way of building your own life. That doesn’t mean that you’re always in control because business is like having a child. When it’s a baby, you’re at its beck and call. It cries, you nurse it, but you can actually choose your moment. You’re a little bit more in control with business, and I think that’s really what it was about. I wanted to be able to build my own life, and in the early days, I didn’t have any money. So, yes, absolutely was about money.
Gabby: Because sometimes when you speak to people who’ve started at the beginning, they see these big empires and you get a sense of an ego, almost like they’re wanting to have it in their name and their image. But actually, you were buying into other businesses or looking at other things. So it wasn’t that you wanted Deborah Meaden Inc. to be out there. This was all about you creating a life, which is such a wholesome kind of way of starting out, it feels, and that integrity as well, which I think is synonymous with you, was clearly there from the beginning then.
Deborah: Do you know, I’ve got a real pet hate and it’s people taking other people’s glory. Often, you see in businesses, you know, the one person, “I built this. Look what I did,” and I think, “No, you didn’t. You climbed on the shoulders of other people. I’m sure you’re amazing and I’m sure that you’re a great leader and I expect you made a load of great decisions. There will be hundreds of people who helped you get where you are,” and I think the best way to get the best from people is to recognise when they’ve done a cracking job. I didn’t need that.
You know, I’m more satisfied with me thinking I’ve done a good job. I am more upset with myself when I think I’ve done a bad job. You know, I don’t need somebody else to tell me that. So that really wasn’t my driver, and I do. I genuinely get a great deal of satisfaction – and you can see that with my investments – out of seeing people be their best. You know, genuinely, I feel like, “Yes, there is it. There it is.”
Gabby: So you love being a boss. You love that responsibility.
Deborah: Well, I do. I like challenges. I get very bored very easily with doing the same thing all of the time, and most of business is actually quite dull. You do the same old, same old. I’m lucky. Now I’m an investor, I’m really only involved with the businesses at a strategic level and when they really need me, and when they really need me is, “We’ve got a problem,” “We’ve got an amazing opportunity,” “We’ve got an exit,” “We won an acquisition.” You know, it’s all the stuff that gets me fired up.
Gabby: Before we get to your TV investing role, when you are building your business and you’re in your 30s and things are going very well for you, at that point, how much were you thinking about the future in terms of personal investment away from your businesses? Or have your investments always been in other businesses? Could you take an IFA on or anything like that?
Deborah: No. So Weststar Holidays was the big business that I started –
Gabby: Made you the –
Deborah: Absolutely, made me realise that I was actually quite well-off, and I was working in that until I was about 47. I mean, that was holiday parks. That was hard work. It was work I loved, but absolutely, it was the business love of my life. I had no time for any other investments at all and it wasn’t until I exited that that I realised – actually, when I exited that, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. You know, I was so busy in the whole sale process and it was a very complicated sale process.
Gabby: For people who don’t know, how long would something like that take?
Deborah: So the whole story was I was approached by a very big company to buy Weststar Holidays. I wasn’t emotionally ready to. I was loving what I was doing. It was the business love of my life, but my head said, “Actually, Deborah, when you want to sell, when you actually are ready to sell, the market might not be right. So you better pay attention.” We nearly did a deal and then they tried to chip at the end and I walked away and then thought, “Hmm, actually, it probably is time to sell.”
So we put a book out, and what means is we come up with an information memorandum. It tells them all of the stuff that they need to know to consider whether or not they want to get involved with the business. You put that out to about 20 people who might be interested. We did. We came back with about 10 or 11 bidders who were genuinely interested, more information, walking around the parks, then you agree. You know, you actually agree on your final deal.
So I would say from the time that we started, it was probably a six-month process to go through.
Gabby: Presumably, that six months allows you to take your emotions away a little bit, because you said it was like your baby, it something that you – all that process, are you removing yourself emotionally at the same time?
Deborah: I think so. So because I’m quite target-driven and what is it that I’m trying to achieve, it became my job to sell the business, and therefore, that was going to be my achievement. I kind of didn’t think about what it was going to feel like the day after because that was my role. The day after, it was great because I was exhausted and I was running the business. Don’t forget, you know, I’m still running a business because if the deal falls over, I still need a healthy business. So I’m still running the business and the deal. So I was absolutely exhausted and then about a week after, I started moving the furniture around and Paul, my husband, said to me, “Oh, for goodness sake, Deborah, just go and do something. You’re driving me mad.”
Gabby: I love reading stories of people who start a business from scratch and sell it and make a lot of money for themselves having come pretty much from nothing. Was there something materially that you always wanted to buy yourself or you thought would be the reward for this?
Deborah: Yes, reward, not by myself. I wanted the freedom to choose what I wanted to do, and that for me is what having the finances, what having the money has done for me because I can choose what I want to do. People say to me, “How long are you going to do Dragons’ Den?” and I say, “Well, as long as I want to,” because it’s not my job. I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to make investments, you know, and I mean that is a very privileged position to be in. To be able to choose, and it’s not always true –
Gabby: Well, it’s kind of buying time isn’t it, which is the thing that everybody would love to be able to do.
Deborah: Yes, which is the most, most valuable thing.
Gabby: So how quickly did Dragons’ Den come around then?
Deborah: Well, it was actually happening. So there were two stages. I sold the majority of the business the first time and then I sold out the second time. So Dragons’ Den came in between me selling Weststar Holidays to a private equity group and I still owned 25 percent of it. Then it came on-board, which was good because I’d stepped back from the business. My only role was acquisitions. So I was just looking for new holiday parks, and Dragons’ Den came in at the very moment Paul said to me, “For goodness sake, stop reorganising the furniture. Go and do something.”
Gabby: He manifested it for you.
Deborah: He did, and so when I said, “Shall I do Dragons’ –” “Oh yes, no, no, you definitely need to do Dragons’,” but actually, I didn’t want to do it. I said no three times. No, the third time I agreed to. So I said no to Dragons’ because I felt like I’d built this life. I knew the life I wanted. It gets down to freedom and making choices. I didn’t want the media to influence and cut across the way I wanted to live and I didn’t want them to build their own narrative about me that I wouldn’t feel comfortable with.
So I really didn’t want to do it, but then a fantastic lady called Helen Buller who got me involved, she said, “Just come along to a screen –” I think she saw in me that if she could just get me there, I would love it.
Gabby: Get you in the room.
Deborah: “Just come along.” Yes, just get me in the room and look me in the eye, and sure enough, I sat in that chair and I did a screen test with Richard Farleigh and Duncan Bannatyne, and when I came out of that, I was like, “Oh, if they don’t give me this, I’m going to be gutted.” [Laughs] She was very smart.
Gabby: It’s horrible when that happens isn’t it, when you think you don’t want something, and then suddenly, when you’re in a position where it might not happen –
Deborah: I know.
Gabby: “Oh no, I do really want this,” and this was a chance for you to, as you’ve shown over a decade now, to go in and make a real difference to start-ups and people who think they’ve got a crazy, brilliant idea, which for somebody who loves building businesses actually just must be a joy.
Deborah: I love it. I honestly – you know, as I say, people say to me, “How long –” This is 18 series I’ve been doing it and people say to me, “How long are you going to carry on doing it?” I said, “Every single time I sit down in that chair and somebody walks through those lift doors, bang.” I absolutely love it. I love it for the good, the bad and the ugly, you know, the crazy, the inspired and people say this all the time. I love it when people say, “I learn every day,” and I think, “You don’t though, do you?” but I genuinely sit there thinking, “Well, I never thought of that,” or I learn something from my fellow dragons. So it’s amazing. I’m so lucky.
Gabby: Because you all have things that you’re specialists in or things that you would see yourselves being specialists in, but you also have different approaches to investment and different approaches to risk. What have you learnt about your approach to risk through doing the show?
Deborah: So I’m definitely a risk taker, and actually, the closer a business is aligned to my ethics, probably the bigger risk I’ll take.
Gabby: That’s become more apparent hasn’t it, I think, in the last –
Deborah: Yes.
Gabby: You know, your voice has come stronger and stronger on that in the programme.
Deborah: Yes. Well, good. I’m not sure it has come – I think they’re allowing it to be shown because, of course, some of those pictures take three hours. So a lot of what is shown is down to editor’s choice.
Gabby: Right. So you’ve always had that in you, but it’s not necessarily been –
Deborah: I think so, but I just think it’s come forward, and particularly the green – you know, listen, my thesis when I was at college, you know, 17 or 18 years old, it was on climate change. So I’ve always been worried about it. That’s not new, but I do think because it’s more relevant to more businesses now I think that gets shown.
So, yes. So the closer to that, I will take bigger risks because I also understand that we’re in a transitional period and people like me should support businesses who are trying to transition to a more net-zero or biodiversity-friendly model. So it isn’t just about head, but I do have to fundamentally believe there’s a business in there. You know, it isn’t just bring a dog in or talk about the environment and there you are, there’s my money.
Gabby: And along the way, as you say, you’ve invested in all kinds of businesses. You’ve also had different dragons as partners, and I know, you know, telly has lots of artifice doesn’t it, that we know, you know, the retakes and things like that. When they come into pitch, when all those people open the doors and they walk in, on average, how long are they being interrogated by you guys for? How much do we see, do you reckon?
Deborah: So I love Dragons’ because it’s as close you’re going to get to real life on television. Of course it’s on television, but there are no retakes, there’s nothing in arrears, there’s no direction. They don’t tell us when to speed up or slow down. They’ve tried it once about 15 years ago and we all ignored them, obviously. They were stood at the back going, “Wind it up,” and we were like, “Yes, whatever,” and carried on with the talking, and afterwards –
Gabby: “Yes, we’re just about to invest our own money. So, no.”
Deborah: Exactly. Gabby, exactly what we said. We said, “When it’s your money, you can tell us when to stop, but it’s our money.”
Gabby: Quite right.
Deborah: So we carried on. So the good news is it is as close you’re going to get, but what people have got to remember, it’s the beginning part of a deal. So it’s the beginning part of a deal. So it’s the bit that says, “Are we interested in this?” The longest pitch I’ve ever sat through is three and a half hours. The shortest –
Gabby: Did you invest?
Deborah: Yes. So the longer it goes on, probably the more likely you are to get an investment because we’re not there to waste our time, you know, if there’s a moment, but sometimes you can get three hours down the track, somebody asks a question and then you think, “Oh my goodness, problem, problem.”
Gabby: I think they’re my favourite ones [laughs].
Deborah: Well, they are, but then I think, “I’ve sat here for three hours and now I’m not going to invest,” but the shortest one I’ve done is about 11 minutes and again, we’re not into wasting people’s time giving the false promises. So that’s the range.
Gabby: And so are you allowed to say how much you’ve invested over that time? Is that something that you –
Deborah: Yes, I think so. I don’t … because I don’t keep a running total of that.
Gabby: How many businesses?
Deborah: Well, it’s north of 40.
Gabby: Wow.
Deborah: So I think I’ve offered in about 60, but not all businesses complete because don’t forget, the bit that we’re doing in the Den is a negotiation and an agreement, but then we move into due diligence later, and sometimes it doesn’t happen. So I’m definitely north of 40, but you’ve probably seen me offer in north of 60.
Gabby: And do you invest outside of the show as well?
Deborah: Yes, I do.
Gabby: Yes, and are they more orthodox investments or do people still come to you with business ideas?
Deborah: So I have got some what you would call orthodox investments, but I actually prefer to invest with businesses that I think I can make a difference to. So I don’t get a pleasure out of looking at a list of share prices and thinking, “Oh, that’s going to go up and that’s going to go down.” It doesn’t thrill me. That doesn’t mean to say I haven’t got some of those investments, but it doesn’t interest me or excite me.
You know, I’ve earnt money, so I can do things I enjoy with it. So I would much rather be working with businesses, and they’re usually on the edgier side because I think they’re the businesses that can sometimes make a real difference and they’re also the ones who struggle to get the cash.
Gabby: You don’t have children yourself, but you have obviously all these babies, all these different companies and people that you’re investing in. I know you’ve got a family as well outside, you know, you’re married, but do they become like a kind of second family as well? Do you get emotionally attached to the people you work with?
Deborah: I do care about them. I do care about them. So listen, we don’t go out for dinner all the time, we don’t phone each other up. We don’t socialise, but I care and when we talk about them – and, you know, all businesses go through difficult times, and particularly when you’ve got founders and people who’ve started their businesses, they can feel very, very lonely. Sometimes, I know that my only role is to give them confidence and to help them through difficult periods or talk about how, “This happened to me. Don’t worry about it.” I don’t have to do that. That isn’t my role really as an investor. Well, actually, I think it is my role as an investor. I do think that’s my particular role as an investor.
Gabby: But I think also, from the outside, it would appear to be one of the key attributes that draws people to want to choose you as well, I think, because I think that human side is – an algorithm could tell you which person to invest in couldn’t it, but actually, it’s that human connection. Well it certainly makes the show more entertaining anyway.
Deborah: Good.
Gabby: You have written though a book for children haven’t you, which is out in the summer and you’ve been doing a lot of work in this space about educating kids about money. Tell us a little bit about that.
Deborah: So I haven’t got children. Listen, I’m terrible with babies. I’m terrified of them. I’m not scared of anything but babies. You know, they just look so fragile and, “Just don’t hand me the baby. I’m going to drop it,” [laughs], but I do like children, but I do tend to treat them as adults. I think I’m not very good around children, but actually I get on really well with them because we just have a chat.
It just occurred to me and the facts are that actually, most children form their money habits, or most people form their money habits by the time they’re about seven. From that point on, you’re trying to either undo bad habits or build on good habits, which is why I thought, “Do you know what, I think it’s really important that children understand the money and the round,” and I don’t mean money for money’s sake. The book isn’t about that. You know, it’s about the good and the bad of money. You know, the choices that you make in life and your needs versus your wants and being able to identify all of those things, but also delivered, I hope, in a fun way.
Money is actually absolutely fascinating. You know, when you look at the history of it, how come bits of paper are worth anything? How did that happen? So it talks about all the history of money, when it first started and the belief system of money, and I’ve loved writing it. I was really nervous about it though, and I don’t get nervous, but I sent the book off. They gave me a deadline and I sent the book off two weeks early, which apparently is unheard of. You know, everybody’s always late on their deadlines, and I said, “No, no, no, I’m expecting a red line through everything because I don’t know if I’ve got the right voice.” I don’t know. I don’t have children that are six to nine.
Gabby: So are you talking at the right level, yes.
Deborah: Totally, yes, and I was fully expecting loads of red lines and was mildly chuffed when it came back, and I mean definitely some amendments, you know, “You need to explain this a bit and break that down.”
Gabby: But you hit the right tone.
Deborah: I hope so. I hope so.
Gabby: And is that the start of more of the Deborah Meaden publishing empire? Do you see more educational money books coming down the track?
Deborah: Well, so the first thing that happened, I tweeted saying – because I was very chuffed. I never expected to write a children’s book and I was really quite excited about it and I tweeted about it and I said, “I’ve written a children’s book. I’m really excited,” and apart from people saying, “Would you like to send it through to the chancellor? I’ve got a 50-year-old who would like to read it. Can you do one for teenagers?” So I am talking now to the publishers about doing one for the next age group up. I think it’d be quite nice to have a series of books that help people form their money ideas.
The whole point of it is not to talk about money for money’s sake. That’s the point. It’s what can money do to shape the world, make the world a better place.
Gabby: I was going to say, does your philosophy kind of weave through that then in terms of your own personal investing philosophy, do you think? Without it being kind of like smacking them in the face, they’ll come away with that idea that actually, you can do great things with money and you can be a game-changer with money.
Deborah: I hope so, but I try not to preach. I try to say, you know, “You can choose what you do.” You know, the wonderful thing about money is that you can choose how you want to spend it. I don’t say how they should choose or what they should choose, but just, “You can choose to use your money well and you have to decide what your ‘well’ is.” You know, we all have a different ‘well’, don’t we. We all have a different ‘good’, but choose what your good is and your money can help you shape the world towards your good.
Gabby: You obviously are a very passionate advocate for looking after the world and thinking about the environment when we invest, and obviously there are now investment funds aren’t there, which very much that is the sole aim of the fund. Are you a fan of those and have you invested in any of those yourself?
Deborah: I have actually. I invested in a very early one, probably about six years ago, a completely green –
Gabby: ESG investing?
Deborah: Yes. Well, and a completely green fund. It was one of the very, very early ones and I did it again – I didn’t do it for its returns in terms of just cash, and this is something I say a lot, Gabby. I think we should really widen our scope of what we mean by profit because I want more than just cash out of my investments. I want cash. I want to know what impact they’re having. I want to know do their ethics fit with my ethics, and this was one that I thought, you know, we’re not going to set the world alight with this, but it is sitting in an area that I really, really care about.
So, yes, I have invested in those and I do invest in projects that will actually – well, at the moment, I’m really worried about the environment and biodiversity.
Gabby: And in terms of your Dragons’ Den investments, do you have a top and a bottom? Do you have the worst one in terms of returns or one that you regret? It can’t all have been plain sailing.
Deborah: Oh no, it hasn’t. No. Do you know, I’ve absolutely had failures and that would be … why? So sometimes, it just hasn’t lit. You know, sometimes a great idea – and sometimes, it can be a great idea, but just at the wrong time, or the story isn’t told well, and sometimes, the chemistry hasn’t worked. I’ve actually had a business that I said – what can happen is that once I’m invested, they go, “Huh, excellent. That’s done then, isn’t it?”
Gabby: “I’ll have a cup of tea.”
Deborah: Absolutely, and I’m like, “No, this is where the hard work starts because I’m about to move all of those barriers that you think is standing between you and success, I’m going to remove and you’re going to have to go through them,” and then they’ve realised really quickly, they actually thought they wanted to take over the world, but they don’t want to take over the world. Actually, they just want a lifestyle business, and that’s completely fine and at that point, I’ve actually handed people their shares back and said, “Look, life’s too short. I’m going to make you unhappy because I’m going to be driving you to do something that you don’t want to do. So let’s just agree.”
So it ranges from me handing shares back to people. Often, the founders will buy the shares back once the business is off the ground. I’m very happy with that. You know, I’ve helped them do the important bit, which is great, through that really difficult period and then they’ll buy me out, which is great. Then we have the sort of external exits of businesses that are multi-million pound businesses. I’ve got one on the go at the moment which is a cracking business that we’ve got lots of people bidding for.
So that’s the range of how it works, but if you don’t get it wrong, you’re not trying hard enough.
Gabby: Is there anything you wish you’d done differently with your money over the last few decades or so?
Deborah: So I’m not a regret kind of person and I actually think that getting things wrong and learning how to get things wrong, deal with it, move on and not carry that error around. You know, I meet so many people with a sack of things they’ve got wrong sitting on their shoulders.
Gabby: Regret.
Deborah: There’s no point in that. So I’m not sure I’d change anything because listen, my first business was a failure because ultimately, those Italian companies took advantage of me and I lost money. That was a failure, but that was the start of my business journey and I will make tiny failures, we all do. We get things wrong all of the time, all day, every day. All you’ve got to do is get more right than you get wrong. So I don’t think I’d changed anything really.
Gabby: Thanks for listening to The ii Family Money Show. If you’ve got time, please give us a follow in your podcast app and leave us a review or rating. You can find loads of ideas on how to plan for you and your family’s financial future at ii.co.uk. I’ll see you next time.