Ann Summers CEO: The Heartbreaking Story Of One Of Britain's Richest Women! Jacqueline Gold CBE

Key Takeaways

the diver ceo live my live show my live reincarnation of this podcast is coming on tour and it's coming to a city near you there's a link in the description below put your email address in and i will email you when tickets go on sale can't wait to see [Music] i know what i've done has been culture changing and i'm super proud of that all hell would kick loose if that happened today i was poisoned by my nanny i've had a bullet through the post it was so important to me not to feel like a victim you know anybody that's listening will not know the crusade that i've been on i don't really know what to say honestly i feel speechless yeah gosh it is hard i was diagnosed with breast cancer when i spoke to the consultant he said [Music] jacqueline gold she is one of the most successful business women in europe she's also one of the wealthiest women in the uk and she's certainly one of the most inspiring people i have ever ever met just remarkable but her road to success is one of the most devastatingly misfortunate tragic heartbreaking roads i think we've ever heard travelled on this podcast imagine me speechless this podcast made me speechless not once not twice but over and over again she is and has been the ceo of anne summers for decades a company that if you don't know is known for popularizing sex toys dismantling the unhealthy archaic stigmas around sex and starting a crusade to make sex i'm a widely accepted part of all of our lives but her story twists and it turns the lessons the courage the resilience the heartbreak the pain this should be a movie you just couldn't make it up jacqueline thank you for your honesty thank you for your courage and thank you for the inspiration i know that it will stay with me for a lifetime without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the dire ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] i really hate when um podcasts are quite predictable however i've noticed that in my podcast i've continued to start in a very similar place and it's i can't get away from it and the place that i always tend to start is about the person that sat in front of me early years and how those early years have shaped them and as i was reading about your story i actually read that you'd said that i read that you'd said your early adversity heavily shaped who you are today and who you became and influenced the career journey you took so i have to start there and i feel like i always start there but can you tell me about that early adversity that you're talking about yes i can um i had a really unconventional and challenging childhood my parents split up when i was 12. my sister was a lot younger than me she was seven years younger than me so it didn't impact her in the same way as it impacted me um i found it it was quite traumatic i actually stayed down a year at school because of the impact it had on me and at the same time my mother moved in with her boyfriend um who sexually abused me between the age of 12 and 15. you know and that combined with a mother who was overprotective you know wouldn't let me or my sister just do anything and play in the normal way you know we weren't allowed to go to sleepovers or parties or anything like that but then when it came to this abuse which i believe she knew about um you know we were left in the most vulnerable situations um you know she was quite a complicated woman and you know we were in a a pretty tough situation so for me later in life in fact i say later in life i probably was about 15 you know finding financial independence was really important to me because that was my escape it's hard to it's hard to imagine a parent knowing about about that especially as you say one that was so risk adverse was so keen to keep you in the house to not let you outside because you might fall into a dangerous situation but would turn a blind eye tonight i mean you know i've tried to rationalize this myself numerous times because she was she was quite ill in her later years so i didn't challenge her i just felt she was and even in her earlier years i just felt i always felt she was very vulnerable herself um you know just she she once said to me if i could live in the middle of a field with no one around me i'd be happy so she herself wanted to be protected in one sense you know she she wouldn't even let my sister and i play in the front garden in case we were kidnapped i mean it was you know totally irrational and yet stayed with a man you know i remember overhearing her on a in a phone conversation with her sister after he'd returned after a year's break and i remember hearing her say yes i know he's a bastard but you know i i don't want to be on my my own it was just a toxic you know a toxic relationship a toxic environment um and i and you know i i have forgiven her um but i feel very sad for for her and and the life that she lived did she ever admit to knowing that her partner was abusing you no did you ever ask her i didn't ask her but there were many occasions when i called out for help and a couple of occasions that she either witnessed or overheard me telling someone you know i was told off for telling lies even my aunt has later told me that she saw something going on she told my mum about it who played it down so there were lots of situations where it was clear to me that she would have known do you know much about her upbringing and what might and what um the early sort of experiences that shaped her no i mean i i think that i mean my grandmother was lovely um my grandfather was an authoritarian um you know her sister grew up you know perfectly well but she she was very was was very insecure beautiful woman you know very elegant but you're just scared of life and your younger sister you've got a younger sister i have yeah she's uh seven years younger than me fantastic business woman great people person and somebody who really you know i admire her so much vanessa we have a great relationship and she's funny and engaging and yeah and she's my best friend you grew up in the same household with her but you turned out to be very different people and you're only a couple of years apart because you talked there about at the very start about how just being a couple of years apart in those early years experiences even if you're in the same household can create two completely different people because they both experience very very different things because of age and i i really resonated with that because um like even in my in my childhood my family became on the verge of bankruptcy when i was um old enough to know what was going on but my older brothers and sisters kind and also when i was probably most influential so sort of easily influenced like adversity showed up in my childhood when i was when i was at like the ripest of ages um and so i'm very very different from my brothers and sisters and i kind of felt that from what you said there the difference between you and vanessa was just a couple of years off but um you experienced very different things in those early years yes i think vanessa was also a bit more outspoken than me and i think that you know as a child maybe it was because of the way my mother was and the fact that you know for my first um seven years of life i was an only child and uh i don't know but i i was very i was very shy and i remember my mother used to if we went on a beach holiday she used to draw a circle in the sand put me in the middle and i wasn't allowed outside that circle um so i i never really had opportunities to make friends with other children and engage with adults i was i always felt quite lonely bizarrely whereas i think the second child always you know has it easier in my opinion um as i keep reminding my sister and so you know she just was that much more confident more much more outspoken so i don't think she was ever you know likely to be a a target i'm not saying she wasn't but because we we haven't spoken about it but i think she's less likely to have been a target of of abuse than i was um you've never spoken about it well we have spoken about it but i don't think she wants to she just doesn't want to talk about her experience which is which is you know i respect that and you know and everybody deals with adversity in different ways um and you know no matter how successful somebody is or privileged they may be you know it doesn't change you know the the challenges that we might experience along the way and everybody deals with them in different ways and for me it was so important to me not to feel like a victim i didn't want to feel like a victim i hate the word and that's not to say you know that other people handle it wrong it's just for me i just wanted to i suppose gain something from that bad experience you know whether it be proof that i can you know and actually i've experienced adversity throughout my life i've i've been quite unfortunate you know in that way um you know i lost my son when he was six years old i was poisoned by my nanny i've had a bullet through the post so i've had a number of challenges subsequently to the childhood experience but certainly just going back to that the childhood experience did i believe shape who i am today i think it drove me to want to go out and work hard uh have that financial independence you know i was always curious always talking to people always looking for inspiration i guess and so much of just thinking about that as well so much of your work now because i've been through your story multiple times and looked at the way that you've made your decisions and so much of it is is centered on that idea of like empowerment and giving you know empowering people to be free from whatever their prisoner might be and sometimes prisoner is society sometimes it's social narratives whatever else but um i've really i deeply respect that about you because i read there was a day in your story where you confronted your abuser and that ended up being a really pivotal moment could you tell me about that yeah um gosh it is hard yeah going back and remembering those periods in time that you you just want to park away but i was 15. i'd be trying to plan how i was going to do this for some time but obviously you lack the courage you know i was a very young 15 year old as well um and i didn't want to you know generate anger i mean he was the rows that my mother used to have the coercive control that i witnessed made me want to make this as you know easy as possible so in my childish way i decided to tell him it wasn't fair on mum so it was i was trying to i mean is this something we do as as girls i think girls are brought up to be helpful and to please people please and this is you know i'm sure we're coming on to empowerment but that was you know that was the problem i was brought up to be well behaved and to be a people pleaser and take john up a cup of tea and you know he likes you and this all this type of stay inside your circle yeah um [Music] so for me the best way to handle this was to help him not lose face or not feel bad or so and he he just he didn't really say anything he just shrugged um and that was it was as easy as that and it never happened again but i didn't when i look back or if i was talking to my you know young self now i didn't realize you know that i could stand up to him and that i was perhaps more powerful than i realized i'm disappointed as an adult that i felt i had to approach it in the way i did but then i forget that that you know i am an adult i was a child then and i was incredibly brave you know i could have done nothing um and i did i was able to bring it to an end um and you know whilst it's very difficult to forgive somebody that has put you through that much pain and trauma in your life um as a person i have to take positives from anything negative that happens to me and everything that i've been through that for me is how i survive that's for me how i better my life how i go on to better things and you know i turned my focus to work and to ambition and being curious and learning different things and then just seeing this opportunity which actually turned out to be a great opportunity to empower women you know a lot of people are well because you went through that abuse why would you go into something like this but there was an opportunity there and you know fast forward i mean i'm 61 now i was 21 when i started so fast forward 40 years 25. you say all the right things whatever you do you're 61. [ __ ] me mental that's crazy so i know what i've done has been culture changing and i'm super proud of that i really am and you know i've you know anybody that's listening that is 25 will not know the crusade that i've been on for the last 40 years i mean it's you just wouldn't believe that you you know what you couldn't do and what you what you couldn't do then what you can can do now and the changes and attitudes of you know the generations of today compared to the generations then i really want to talk about that because i know you've had some really tumultuous experiences going on that crusade and i love i love talking about shifting perceptions and also we've seen in our lifetime how quickly a lot of perceptions have shifted around like you know equality and sexuality and gender and um the crusade that you you know led i think is is has been a really important one and probably more important than a lot of people realize um i wanted to pick up on one thing you said about you being shy you know the what you've gone on to do in your career and life and the crusade you've led is not one that would you know one would think would be led by a shy person the person that i've met today doesn't seem to be a shy person necessarily to me seems to be one of conviction and confidence and belief in hindsight how did you go from being that shy person that was kind of coddled um at an early age by a mother that was risk adverse drew a circle around you in the sand didn't let you off the front garden to being the person you are today what is it that check that what is it that does that to somebody um well i think there's a few things around this because um i don't think this is exclusive to me i think a lot of women especially uh experience this i think well first of all i i might be wrong but i don't think we're born shy i think it's our situational environment that creates that and secondly you can be shy but still have fire in your belly which is what i had you know i had that ambition and that burning desire and when you have that passion you have to release it you can't keep it inside just because you're shy and um i think there were many things that i did you know i remember in my very early 20s holding a conference my first conference for my army of of um sales ambassadors which i had about 500 in my first year franz summers veranda summers yes and i held this conference at the grand hotel in brighton and i thought it was a great idea when i planned it because the whole idea is to engage with your teams and tell them about what you're doing and what your mission is and get everybody involved and on the journey and it was sort of you know a few hours before i was going on stage i was thinking oh my god what am i doing because this was like horror to me i had no experience and i was you know absolutely terrified but if you're talking about something that you are passionate about i think it changes it it's not the same as doing your best man speech or you know getting up for school and doing your first speech when you're talking about something that you really care about and that you live and breathe once you get out there and you've got that first sentence out the way i do think it changes you yeah and you know that's what it did for me so i i am a great believer that courage comes first and i've always had a lot of courage and i think if you have the courage eventually the confidence will come yeah so yeah from what you've said there it's like the courage is creating is forcing you to create evidence for yourself yeah it's forcing you to step outside your comfort zone and then we all know anyone that's successful knows that when you do great things happen yeah and your comfort zone then expands becomes a bit bigger and then you step on other than exactly interesting um so you said they're about work and you've always had that drive when i was reading through a story again i i heard about one of the things your mum did allow you to do was to work um and so i was i was thinking about the the relationship work you then had in your life from a very early um from a very early stage if if work was the place that you were allowed to go to to leave the home then was it was it an escape from home was it like a the place of freedom in your life it was so freedom i mean well first of all i can't tell you the countless times i asked her if i could go to a sleepover or a you know party or just things that normal kids do and it was always no um and there was another sort of form of abuse was this they had her and her husband had this uh her new husband had this task mask task master approach to everything they did and it was you know there was no end to it you it's never like you could ever finish the tasks and they were like digging the garden um they weren't like cleaning the kitchen they were like digging the garden bringing logs up you know it was very it was manual labor for my sister as well and it was like these jobs will never get done so we'll never be able to go out a bit like cinderella as i'm telling the story it sounds a bit like that um but she seemed to accept things that were traditional so going to work was something or getting a saturday job is something that people do so that was okay so i couldn't get a bus into bromley to meet up with friends but i could get a bus into western to go and work at the spinning wheel as a waitress so did you look forward to that ah absolutely and of course there weren't the rules then you know i was working at 14 years old i worked in a bar at biggin hill airfield i did waitressing i worked in a hairdressing salon so um yeah that was a release did you try and work all the time more hours over time and actually it compromised my schooling because i i didn't really invest in my schooling i just wanted to work so i didn't go to college or university or anything that i expect my daughter will probably do now was there um and i would i do want to to talk about some of these other points around empowerment but was there any physical and i don't think people think about this enough but one of the things i've i've got we're increasingly fascinated by was the connection between like psychological trauma and physical impacts so the on our physical health and how the two are somewhat interlinked and was there any sort of physical symptoms or consequences of that psychological trauma that reared their head so interesting you say that because i have a stalker um and his mother many years ago many years ago and the impact was tinnitus i had tinnitus yeah and all through there because they they caught them it was went to trial they were um found guilty i mean it was it's another i mean it's a crazy story it's a crazy story can you describe so tinnitus is when you get the ringing in the ears but actually i just had this marching it was a constant marching and it doesn't stop so when you go to bed you've got you know i had it oh did you so i know very few people will know what tinnitus is like unless you've had it because it sounds trivial if i say to you oh it's just like a ringing in the ears or whatever people go that's fine like i've been to a gig before my ears have run yeah but you get like day two into it and i so i got tinnitus for right so i go on google what's this ringing in my ears and why wouldn't it stop and that must have been about six years ago seven years ago and then you get to day three and you're losing your mind and i'm on these forums and people are like people commit suicide because of because of it and i i kind of understood why yeah it was like a form of torture sleep you wake up it's constant you're eating lunch your ears are ringing and there's no end to it there's nothing you can do to stop it so fortunately you know talking about my experience with it one day i don't really know what happened but your sinuses are connected to ears that's when i came to land when i had tinnitus tinnitus and i think it must have been because my sinuses were blocked because on day nine of my ears ringing it just stopped and some people live with it for life yeah i mean i was very fortunate i think i had it for about three months and then it stopped so i was very lucky i mean some people have to live it live with it um but mine was definitely brought on by that awful experience and obviously the abuse i i i did i mean i had a severe sorry to be graphic but severe constipation that um i look back and i think was you know brought on by my own trying to be in control behavior just remembered as you said that i remember going to the doctors about it and blurting out to the doctor what was going on at home and the doctor and i said and i'm really worried because i've got a younger sister and the doctor said to me um okay do you want me to get social services involved oh no no no because you know as a child you think you're going to be in trouble you think you're going to be taken away from your mum and she's ok i mean i mean all hell would kick loose if that happened today i don't really know what to say honestly i feel speechless because you just can't imagine an adult hearing that these days and and posing the question to you about next steps just think that just seems unthinkable perceptions have changed a lot haven't they around sexual abuse and um and and also victim blaming which i think was was a was a really destructive habit that society had which fueled the problem not having a safe environment to to speak thinking that you'd be blamed or you know absolutely i think there's still our challenges i don't think this is a problem that's gone away just because we're all more vocal and i did a a a project recently and just going off piece for a moment i was quite surprised about consent and i i did a workshop on consent and i think there's a lot that we don't know we don't realize and i did a piece around talking to university students and you know some girls go to university expecting to be assaulted so i do still think there is a lot a lot more education that's needed and maybe that's because i'm the mum of a 12 year old daughter so things like that sort of resonate with me more i've got to be honest um i completely agree and i think as a man um there is a ton of education that we need to understand this topic um from the other side of the spectrum as well because a lot of my friends find themselves in a place my male friends where they are like naive and they know they're naive to what consent means i i really agree with you i really agree with that and i think that i just think there should be more emphasis in schools we should be talking about consent more i interestingly when i did this project i met a trans man and he was telling me that when he was a woman he experienced certain attention unwanted attention and obviously saw it from a female point of view and then when he transitioned to a man he was just blown away by some of the things that he was hearing from a man's point of view so um yeah that that was quite uh enlightening and interesting those are the conversations we need to be having for sure for sure you um you said that you talked earlier on about how you know hard times shape you and i you know it's clear that from everything you've said that resilience is one of your superpowers i've i've actually heard i've heard that written a few times when people talk about you what does that mean to you resilience think that's true i i think i am a resilient person i think um for me the battle is won before the war has even started so for example i was diagnosed in 2016 with breast cancer i remember my husband and my sister when they were first told the news i could tell they'd been crying and i'm saying come on guys you know i need your support here we you know we need to put strategy together we've got to put a plan together because that is how that's my mindset my mindset has always been that way there's got to be a solution to this you know there's got to be something better that can come from this it was a brutal journey um there is no doubt about that um but i remember saying things to myself like when i have my next scan the cancer is going to be gone and when i had my next scan in the january it had gone or it wasn't on the scan i then had an operation in the in the july i think it was uh a lumpectomy and i was told i was all clear and that there was a one 0.1 percent chance it would come back because i'd had such a good response to treatment unfortunately i was in that 0.1 and it did return a couple of years later and i had a mastectomy and when i spoke to the consultant he said it's not curable but it is treatable uh because it's now gone from stage two to stage four which was you know which was devastating to hear and of course i i immediately said to him well um you know what are the chances of it being cured i know you're saying it it's not curable but we've all heard of people oh yes but you know that's not not point and my attitude is well if anyone's going to be that 0.1 is going to be me because i have to think like that that's what helps drive me forward and get me out of these situations if i could have been that 0.1 where it went wrong i can be that 0.1 where it goes brilliant and actually i'm right now in what they call excellent remission so you know i'm still got my i still have ambitions for more but i am feeling blessed at where i am and i think that has a lot to do with with my outlook on life and that's the learning you know when nobody wants to wish this you know serious illnesses or life-threatening illnesses on ourselves but for me i have to find the opportunity in that where's where's the good thing where's the opportunity well it has made me live a much healthier life you know i do appreciate things so much more you know i am a different person i put you know my priorities have changed i love the female empowerment side of what i do and i want to invest more time in that i think this is far more important to me and i think finding your passion is so so vital whether you are going through health issues or not in everything that you do that bias towards optimism that you describe like you know it sounds like you could be thrown in any sort of situation and you'd be looking at the as you say like the 0.1 chance of a positive outcome that's a really really remarkable thing right and you've you know you've been the ceo of a tremendous company you'll you'll be able to look at your organization and see those people in your organization that have that same bias to optimism when all goes wrong pandemics show up out of nowhere they have that bias towards optimism which is we can and you know like it doesn't even matter if we can't because all we can focus on is we can that's the only choice we have but you've also probably seen the negative the other side of that right and um i guess my question to you is like from what you've seen in your organization and you know even in your life how important is that and how costly is the antithesis of that oh gosh there's a few answers to that first of all in my personal life the first thing that comes to mind is my daughter so when she was in junior school every morning without fail as she left i my husband would take her to school and i would say i can and she would shout back i know i can so we did that every morning and i didn't want her to grow up having the that feeling of lacking in confidence and being so painfully shy i just wanted to empower her as much as i possibly can so it's just that's just a little thing i used to do i think um [Music] you know the pandemic is a really good example i mean i remember i mean at our peak we had 146 stores you know over the years obviously more people are going online we've reduced our our store portfolio and then of course the pandemic anyone having leases had to uh negotiate with their landlords and you know we had to suddenly be told that all of your stores i had to be closed i mean i never i can never forget that moment it was heartbreaking actually because it was like my baby you know to suddenly be told that was incredible and then of course you you're thinking how am i gonna tell my teams we value our people so much and this was how we're going to talk them through what's you know the plan because we had to make difficult decisions we had to let people go but bringing those people on that really difficult journey was so important talking to them regularly reassuring them telling them what our plans were how we were going to get through this um was it was incredible actually in a yes we all worked really hard everybody worked so hard but they achieved things i never thought we as a business could achieve i mean our sales ambassadors you know went from 4 000 to 20 000 in three months um because we were doing a fantastic job um i mean you may say differently but i think we were doing a fantastic job on social engaging with our customers and you know keeping the conversations going and being relevant in what was going on and you won't be surprised that we completely sold out of penis pasta penis sorry one second [Music] take a add break there for peanut though penis pasta of course okay all the supermarkets sold out of pasta and we were pushing pasta and toilet rolls we were pushing our penis pasta which is pasta shaped like penis okay we were doing and still are doing some amazing things it was a very creative time hmm very innovative forced innovation very creative and innovative quick one on this podcast i've spent a lot of time talking about how huel has changed my life especially someone that lives a very fast-paced lifestyle that wants to also be healthy and not you know reach for convenient food having a nutritionally complete um partner in my life like huell has led me to being in the best shape of my life but also has given me high energy has made me feel good has helped my mental health however this week i wanted to do something different because every week i bang on about the impact it's had on me i received a dm from somebody this week um from a young man who picked up um some huel a couple of months ago after listening to the podcast which makes me feel amazing um and they described to me how having fueled and having a convenient alternative to the junk food they were eating has had a tremendous quote tremendous impact on every area of their lives that they would never have foreseen before um and this person has continued to send me videos and sometimes pictures of them on their heel journey and their transformation and for me that is why it's a pleasure to have huel as a sponsor a company and a brand and a product that i genuinely believe can help people change their lives and start getting nutritionally complete in their dietary choices you started working at summers when you were 19. i did yes how did that happen so i was working at royal dalton i had no i had no business experience i had retail experience but it wasn't you know roald dawn is a fantastic brand but it was too quiet and i wanted a much buzzier environment they offered me management but i you know it wasn't really what i wanted to do so i was creative as well so i wanted i guess there was that creativity um and i i worked at ann summers which was my father's business at the time and they were he had sex shops and um a mail order business which was like literally tearing a coupon out of a magazine and posting off what you wanted i was only working there as for work experience and i was invited to a tupperware well it wasn't tupperware it was pippa d but it was sort of like tupperware style party and it was closed and it was in a council flat in southeast london in thames mead and i remember driving there in my mustard colored mini um i was just you know just these two women invited me they knew what i did and i was just a guest um and they were showing around the clothes and and then somebody got i do remember actually having to draw a picture of my husband's meat and tooth edge on a piece of paper on top of my head that and i was sort of thinking this is not how i imagined my career starting but it's uh it's an interesting story and it was women at the party sort of knew i worked at ann summers and said look why don't you do ann summers parties we want to we'd love to be able to spice up our sex lives but we're we're too embarrassed to go into a sex shop and i thought actually this is quite a good idea so i got some of the toys and lingerie from the from our tottenham court road store we had at the time um i held a few parties myself and uh and i remember guests at the party sort of passing the product round like this because obviously it was switched on and they were sort of excited um curious but incredibly nervous at the same time which now of course they just want to know what sizes they come in what speeds they are it's completely different but they were having fun they were enjoying themselves that they were talking about their relationships you know they were just being open and relaxed and candid and i just thought this this is something completely different i've never seen anything like this you don't even women's magazines aren't this candid it was that point i thought if this if i go forward with this it's going to be for women only you know you're just not going to get that same atmosphere with with men and also a mixed um group i just thought women would feel uncomfortable uh there'd be other partners husbands there showing personal product this isn't this isn't going to work and i think that was actually one of the best decisions i made so of course today it's sort of like a a female institution but we had at that time there was i think 10 of women going in the stores and i remember taking this idea to the board walking down this sort of what felt like this long corridor into this room full of all men all middle-aged all in grey suits um and telling them about this party i'd been to and these parties that i'd held and you know we we need to do something different we should do and summer's parties i had no business experience by the way just all from the heart and i remember one businessman at the meeting ron coleman he's dead now so i can talk about it he stood up and he threw his pen down on the table and said well this isn't going to work is it women aren't even interested in sex so i instantly thought well actually this has got a lot more to do about your sex life than it has about my idea wow um and you know luckily they agreed to it to invest in some advertising so um i was advertising in the evening standard once a week and i wasn't allowed to put erotic parties i had to put exotic and i couldn't say ladies only because of all the rules but i used to hold like a seminar once a week at strand palace hotel and i'd go up there meet with people that had seen the advert probably about 25 people in the room talk to them about my idea obviously the men i had to ask leave some would actually get up and leave themselves they you know it was nothing had been done like this before and i remember i still remember having those conversations and i remember remember one couple it's two women wanted to do the parties together bored housewives living in chelsea not the demographic people would necessarily expect and then all of a sudden people were popping up groups of people were popping up in different areas so i recruited the two girls in chelsea i recruited the eight women at the party in thames mead then what i would do is i would advertise in those area areas concentrate the advertising in those areas and it really was self-propagating then later when we decided to right we're ready now to open stores reopen stores with a through a female lens it was like a an induction into the brand so um and it still is i think to a degree it's incredible and something you said at the start there about being naive in business i thought was really compelling because so much innovation seems to come from being naive yeah i agree i had no experience but it that no experience forced me to rely on feedback from my customers you know something we don't always do enough of um because i had no choice and what i saw as a disadvantage actually turned out to be you know one of my and the brand's main benefits because that's in our dna now that's what we do it's really interesting i've never heard a phrase like that that you were because you didn't have experience or a ton of knowledge you were learning from feedback as opposed to like convention convention doesn't create new things it's just more of the same yeah and you know as a woman in business i was only 21 i was quietly spoken not how people would expect a business person to be alone if you like in the sex industry as it was then i don't sort of think of it that way now there's so much negativity so from business people i would have comments um i remember one guy i owned a chain of estate agents saying to me this isn't going to work it's just a fad give it two years you know and i think people were so used to doing things how they'd always done them and we know that don't we when we and i'm moving on a few years and if it's okay to go off-piste again because you know when you think of heritage brands like wal-was you know doing things the way they'd always done things that's why i say the pandemic there were positives because it it forced those companies that have done well to do things differently you talked about the phase in your business where you started opening these stores um in that era you know if someone was to open a a shop that was perceived as being just a sex shop in my neck of the woods you know when there was a huge amount of stigma towards it i can't imagine people being so happy about that it wasn't the people it wasn't if you weren't if we wanted to go into i mean i'll give you an example of loads of examples but you know bromley um we really wanted a presence in in bromley um glade center and i actually remember you know i was i went with the landlords and the um the center and you know and they were going right well you know we could do it we could do it if if we change the if you could change the name from ann summers and there was a a brand bias there were many you know center management that would say over our dead body and someone did someone send you a bullet in the post yes what the [ __ ] why did they send you what uh god i wanted to open a store in dublin the sales per um per head parties were higher than they were in the uk so i knew that um you know there were there was an appetite and we found this site in o'connell street which admittedly was a bit of a controversial location because it was right opposite the gpo building um and so you know it's where there were you know there was violence and clashes and the dublin corporation which is the equivalent of our council in fact they might be called council now um were ema not emailing me sending me letters you know putting me under pressure not to go ahead saying that they had another location backstreet but i didn't want to be in the back street i wanted to be accessible so they um in fact it was me i invited them over to the uk i just wanted them to see our stores to see that we weren't trying to shock people that we you know we were trying to empower people we were trying to make it comfortable for women empower women in the bedroom but despite showing them around and they they in the after so then during the morning they were shown round by my retail director in the afternoon i invited them to a board meeting and their names were kieran and alan kieran couldn't look at me he sat he sat there without any eye contact at all alan sat right next to me right here telling him every you know they were really good cop bad cop he's trying to tell me about his sex life and i said to them look you know it's very clear you have your own agenda you're not going to change your mind there's no not much pointness carrying on here and alan said to me his parting words were well i hope you'll understand that we cannot be held responsible for what might happen to you which was a very chilling thing to say and there was loads of uh negative media because there was all this big hoo-ha about ann summers um going to o'connell street and i'd never done any media before and i was uh invited on the late late show which has sort of got a bit of a cult following yeah and um i was you know really nervous about going on the show but the producer took me out to dinner and said it's going to be great you know it's going to be fine you you know gave me lots of reassurance so when i got there uh and i was sat in the green room michael crawford was on before me and uh for those that don't know he was a a legend iconic um comedian he i could hear him on stage you know he was a comedian so he was telling jokes and the audience were laughing and i'm thinking oh my god what's it going to be like when i go on you know so i went on and i sat on the stage the presenter had a desk i've sat i was like at the headmistress his office i'm telling you i sat there and all the audience were uh you know it's a live audience sort of tear-shaped he didn't interrupt introduction and then he then said right we'll get alan uh to speak first and i'm like gosh they never told me about this that allen's going to be on the show alan from council from the council stood up at the front of the stage and then starts you know beating his chest telling everyone why there shouldn't be an summer store in dublin and then of course it was my turn and i i just told the story pretty much how i told you about the sales of the parties first of all one woman at the very back at the highest level stood up and she's pointing down at alan like this don't you dare tell us where we can and can't shop and it was fabulous because once one person did it others did it and despite us being served a writ on the first day of opening um the dublin store is now in our top three performing stores and it's also on the tourist bus route which you know because of that story which i think you know for me is great served a writ a writ yeah so we were taken to court we won the court case we got damages uh because they tried to stop us from opening and someone sent you a bullet in the post after the show oh sorry yes the bullet in the post that arrived anonymously obviously a week before i was due to fly out to dublin and how did that feel um very frightening but i just felt i've had to deal with a lot of challenges within the business a lot of preconceived ideas to me i felt like i was being bullied and it was actually before before bullying was even a thing but that's how i felt and i felt so strongly about what i wanted to do that nothing was going to stop me and i actually i did get a somebody a security person to meet me at the airport and you know that was but that was about it that's what i did you became ceo of ann summers in what year was that do you remember i don't but i was in my 20s still i think really becoming a ceo in your 20s is not easy especially if you're going to be completely honest especially if you're a woman especially in that time in that era when there is so much discrimination um tell me about because i also became a ceo in my 20s tell me about the discrimination that a woman ceo in that era experiences that i would not know about well there's two as always there's two answers to this question if that's okay the first one is about being [Music] there were very few business women so about being a woman in business you know that you'd meet somebody at a meeting and they would assume that your colleague if they were a man they would start talking to them so there was that assumption and i think there is a possibility that still goes on now and actually i as you can tell i'm quite i'm only five foot one i looked younger than i was at 21. and well you need 25 now so that's unbelievable so i was only two then and my managing director was very tall although she was a woman she was very tall so there is this bias that if you're if you're short and female that you can't possibly be running the business but then i i still have that now so a few years ago i was speaking i was doing the keynote speak at the retail live show and i was i remembered i was interviewing baroness neville rolfe on stage um about her role in in business and some of the challenges that we were experiencing that the industry was experiencing and i was just walking the boards basically getting myself comfortable some guy came over and he said i've still got i've still not got my slides i'm not looking at him he said i'm not in half an hour and i've still not got my i said i'm i'm speaking oh and then he just walks off and says that's oh [ __ ] you know and and um another example i've got to tell you this one i jump on the train at the last minute with the first glass ticket i've been there have you i know exactly you know what i'm gonna say yeah i'm at london bridge all the city boys are sitting in there the train is full and i just i just come down for sheffield and just managed to get my um connection i was dressed casual and i said to this guy could could you move over could you just move over please so i can sit there he said have you got a first class ticket yeah and i looked at him and i said you're kidding me aren't you you said no if you got a first-class ticket i said i'm not answering that and so he reluctantly moved over and i sat down but he then carried on and i'm saying you know this is this is sexist how many other how many of these city guys sitting in here if you asked then the guy next to me said who's on the other side of the aisle said just show him your ticket you know we just start arguing just show him your ticket and the woman in front of me was doing this i'm like don't calm me down don't calm me down and that's the problem we need you know that's one of when people say its job done it is not job done it really isn't job done those are the rare instances where you get to see it but most of it you don't get to see right most of that discrimination is invisible because it will be small decisions compounding against you because of discrimination over decades and decades and decades those are the instances where you can go hmm that was clear prejudice because that was just me um i read that there was a bullying culture and summers in the early i heard that for me okay yeah yeah yeah sorry i thought you meant doing mine no no no no no no but that you um you kind of transformed that because you didn't like that yes yeah and again that was before bullying was a thing so we have a parent company called gold group international and that person worked in that part of the business um and you know and he wasn't the only person there were others and and bullying was um entertainment in those days there wasn't the open the open um culture that we have in businesses today people wouldn't speak up you know they they would assume they're not going to be listened to or um but i you know i knew it was going on and i thought this is this is not this is not how i want the business to be so that was that was actually very very early on and you have a no sort of tolerance approach to that yeah i mean i just don't i get to hear about you know we're small enough that i get to hear about most things and uh that's not something i hear about and if if we did we'd be all over it i asked i unschooled my guest this question you know you've built this tremendous business it's hugely successful and it's really as you said it's more than just a financial success because it's been a almost like a social success it's been a societal success because it's kind of led a um perception shift it's dismantled the stigma which i think as you've described from the atmosphere you describe at these early parties was like liberating for people to be able to be open and um speak freely about sexuality and sex and which was to be at one point um but a consequence of my point is the consequence of business success is um financial success and what role has that played in your in the in your life generally as it relates to your fulfillment and everything in between financial success i mean obviously financial success is something you know that as a society i'm not saying as a an individual but as a society we recognize as you know one of the elements of success and you know certainly in my younger time that was you know the more sales the more bottom line all of these things were symbols of success that i recognized and i i started the female empowerment almost from the day i started but didn't realize it so or i didn't i realized but i didn't realize the relevance of it or the importance of it or how groundbreaking it was going to be you know i wanted to create an environment that was for women i could see why i wanted to do that and i wanted women to feel safe i wanted them to be open as time has evolved that passion for doing that has evolved along with so many other things you know that to me is what gives me the pleasure more than having nice clothes or or whatever you know just the financial independence that i've given hundreds of thousands of women you know during lockdown we had women earning thirty thousand we were g