I'm not a woman in business my gender does not come into it
Deborah Meaden is a force to be reckoned with on Dragons’ Den, and GEORGIA HUMPHREYS found her on typically fire-breathing form
THERE’S a moment in the new series of Dragons’ Den when Deborah Meaden unexpectedly sings the chorus of I Will Survive to one plucky entrepreneur. “How bad is it?!” cries the investor, 59, when she hears I’ve seen the clip of her bursting into song.
“I have no idea where it came from! I was temporarily possessed by somebody, I don’t know who it was. By Gloria Gaynor, I suspect.”
It’s not the first time ruthless Deborah – who launched her first business straight out of college, and has several successful businesses in the leisure and retail sector under her belt – has surprised viewers.
After joining the BBC2 show, in which members of the public pitch their business ideas to five multimillionaires, back in 2003, she became famous for her sharp tongue and no-nonsense approach in the Den.
But then, in 2013, she took part in the 11th series of BBC1’S Strictly Come Dancing, lasting until the fourth week.
“Strictly changed things, because people used to be quite scared of me,” admits Deborah, who spends her time between London and her Somerset home, which she shares with her husband, Paul, and their numerous pets.
“I used to see out of the corner of my eye, ‘There’s that woman off Dragons’ Den!’ But because of Strictly, they got that there was more to me than just the ‘scary woman in the chair’.
“More people approach me now, which I like – I would rather people said hello and talked to me.”
She’s also proud of Dragons’ Den – now in its 16th series – for making the world of business more attractive to the younger generation.
“I am staggered that, I would say the biggest group of people who engage with me on the streets are teenagers. But if you think about it, they’ve grown up with it. They were seven when I first started!
“So, I absolutely think it’s made it accessible and interesting, and when I was looking at my career, I was never offered ‘entrepreneur’.
“Now, kids are talking about being entrepreneurs and I’m absolutely sure that Dragons’ has had a part in that.”
She has an important message for young women keen to go into business too.
“I don’t consider myself a ‘woman in business’ because if I think of myself as a ‘woman in business’, whoever I’m talking to is going to take my gender into account,” she states, being typically blunt.
“You don’t need to take my gender into account, I’m in business – full stop. And that’s the strongest message you can send. Do not think of yourself as ‘I’m a woman in business’ – just do your thing. Just be good at it!”
She adds sincerely: “There are prejudices against all sorts, all around us, all of the time – you give power to prejudice by recognising it. If you ignore it, it’s an amazingly powerful thing.”
The other Dragons competing against Deborah for investment in the
Den this year are Peter Jones, Jenny Campbell, Tej Lalvani and Touker Suleyman.
And Deborah agrees with Touker, who suggested the Dragons play mind games with each other when it comes to making an offer, and the ensuing negotiations.
“You can see through the eye contact of the entrepreneur who they want, and if it’s not me and if I want it, I think, ‘OK, how am I gonna win this thing?”’ she explains.
“I made an offer at one point – it was too high, I knew it was too high, I wanted too much of the investment. I thought, ‘I’m going to flush everybody else out’. “Everybody else made their offers, and – I’ve never done this before – I went back in and I said, ‘Now I know what everybody else has said, I’m going to revise my offer’. And I got it. That’s the strategy.” Deborah has found huge success with a wide variety of products pitched on the show, including Yee Kwan Ice Cream (in series 12), Gripit (the plasterboard fitting from 2014) and last year, there was Dock and Bay (the quick drying beach and travel towel).
In fact, she’s invested more than £3million in the Den – and she reveals this series is her highestinvestment series yet.
But she admits there are some business deals throughout her career which she’s ended up regretting.
“Listen, I’ve had three, four investments that just haven’t worked out. Something I’ve learned in Dragons’ Den is, now I’m keen, to understand, ‘How are we going to work together? How are we going to get on?’. Because, actually, if the relationship doesn’t work, the business doesn’t work.
“People will only engage if they feel they’re on the same page and they’re working together.”
That’s why she always makes what she believes is a fair offer (the Dragons can invest as little or as much of their own money as they want – then the entrepreneur can try and persuade them to match the required investment).
“The worst thing you can do is get into a relationship where there’s grit under the eyelids,” she notes, “because then you just spend the whole time rubbing each other up the wrong way.”
It’s obvious, from watching her on set in Manchester, that Deborah still relishes her role on the show, which will once again be presented by Evan Davis when it returns to our screens this summer.
‘I think, ‘Surely one day I’m going to get fed up with it,’ and by the time we’ve finished a series I think, ‘Hmm, maybe that’s it,’” she says.
“And then I get involved with the businesses and I start again the next year and I just think, ‘This is what I do.’
“This is my hobby – I don’t mean it’s my hobby in that it’s frivolous, because I want these businesses to work, but I’m really lucky, I’m doing what I love in life, and Dragons’ Den lets me do more of it. That’s a fantastic thing.”
The worst thing you can do is get into a relationship where there’s grit under the eyelids, because then you just spend the whole time rubbing each other up the wrong way.” Deborah Meaden on the importance of personal relationships when investing