Sarah Willingham: 'It flabbergasts me how much I don’t know'

The Dragons’ Den star and entrepreneur on why she’s inspired by the TV show’s hopefuls and how it feels to lose a business deal at the 11th hour

“Motivation,” says Sarah Willingham without a moment’s hesitation, when asked for the most important trait for entrepreneurs. “As a business owner you have to understand your motivations, and often people haven’t worked out what theirs is.”

Willingham, who is currently appearing as an investor in her second series on the BBC TV show Dragons’ Den, is very clear on her own drive.

“My motivation is being a mum and having family, and that means no matter how deep a hole I am in, I am getting out of it,” she says.

Willingham is a mother of four from Stoke on Trent, and the entrepreneur who, in 2003, turned The Bombay Bicycle Club into one of the largest Indian restaurant chains in the UK, before selling her shareholding in 2007. She also co-founded nutraceutical (nutrition and pharmaceutical) business, Neutrahealth, which she floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005.

However, Willingham is quick to point out that it hasn’t been an easy path. “When I set up on my own to do the Bombay Bicycle Club that was really difficult because I had never done anything like that,” she says. “I lost that deal at the 11th hour, the 59th minute. I got out-bid and that was very, very hard for me because I had been working on it for so long. That was one of the hardest things I have ever done.”

Now Willingham is becoming a household name, but she says as well as imparting business advice, interactions with entrepreneurs and her time on Dragons’ Den mean she is constantly learning too.

“I learn something all the time, in fact it constantly flabbergasts me how much I don’t know. It is rare that an entrepreneur doesn’t inspire me in some way,” she says. “That’s very much how I felt on Dragons’ Den. The first day I got there I walked into the den. The other four were already in there. Before I sat in my chair I walked over to the lift and walked over to the spot where they come out. That feeling I got in my tummy, I thought – that’s not easy. It is inspiring the fact that they are even there in the first place.”

When budding business owners ask Willingham for advice the most common questions are about access to finance and how to know if you’ve got a good business, she says.

Willingham will be taking part in Fifteen Minute Business Fixes this month, a project offering business mentoring with Heathrow Express. In the space of several 15-minute train journeys, the time it takes to travel from central London to Heathrow airport, she will advise business owners on their particular struggles.

“I hope that I can offer passengers my own advice and help others who are potentially facing similar challenges to those I have faced myself,” she says.

She adds: “I have not had a mentor, ever, in my life, not one. However, I have had a number of people who have inspired me in different ways, who I have spoken to about different aspects of learning.

“I am quite lucky because I am quite self-aware. I know what I don’t know and that makes you very open to finding out and learning. That’s a very easy place to be if you want mentoring because you become very open to it. The hardest people to mentor are the people who don’t know what they don’t know.”

What is the most important lesson Willingham has learned over her career?

“I don’t make gut-feeling decisions anymore,” she says. “My default seems to be intuition or creativity and I used to allow that to make all my decisions. Very early on I learned from people around me that what was very, very good was to learn to back that [intuition] up with facts. I have learned to really love, respect and need numbers and I think that’s been hugely influential in my life. We need to learn to love and embrace the numbers. All businesses need a solid foundation.”

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Contributor

Kitty Dann

The GuardianTramp

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