Maybe I shouldn’t have done Strictly and missed my husband’s 50th birthday!
She’s the steely Dragons’ Den investor worth tens of millions but even Deborah Meaden admits to making the occasional bad call when it comes to her home life..
WOE betide any cashstrapped entrepreneur who stands before Dragons’ Den investor Deborah Meaden without having their sums ready and correct.
As fans of the long-running BBC show know, the multi-millionaire businesswoman is its most fearsome Dragon. When Meaden is displeased, she purses her lips and narrows her turquoise eyes, a sign she’s about to tear into some deluded unfortunate.
And while the former Strictly Come Dancing star can radiate smiley warmth, her straight talking has made her synonymous with business success, netting her more than £6million from 60 investments during 18 years on the show.
So can it be true that the very same Deborah Meaden is now advocating for a dramatic overhaul of the business world for the good of its workers?
Her firm gaze says yes. Meaden is backing a new study which has found three in four workers are unhappy at work, with many saying it is harming their physical or mental health, or personal relationships.
The research, from tech giant HP’s Work Relationship Index, found 50 per cent of employees have also raised their expectations around how they should be treated over the past three years, including when it comes to greater flexibility about when and where they work.
“Sadly this didn’t come as a surprise to me,” said Meaden.
“But people are much happier to voice it now. Post-Covid, people are taking the time to think about what they want out of life. And that often means aligning what they want from work and outside of it.” She continued: “When I started my work, I liked the independence of my own business, and benefiting from good decisions, and taking the consequences of bad ones. Now it’s clear the next generation want to feel like human beings. They want their leaders to have empathy and passion.” But hang on a minute, does she practise what she preaches? While acknowledging the office equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer treatment of players – frightening staff into upping their game – is now antiquated, Meaden concedes her “robust” approach from days gone past may have lost her people. “I think trust builds trust and respect builds respect,” she said. “Not everyone is perfect, but as long as staff are trying, it means good people will get better at their work. If people feel good about their workplace they will do a much better job, and be more inclined to stay.” In addition to being the longestserving Dragon – she’s about to start filming the 20th series – Meaden, 65, co-presents The Big Green Money Show on Radio 5, supports numerous charities and has accepted her publishers’ request for a second book giving children money advice. She also has investment stakes in 21 companies. Despite her punishing work schedule, Meaden calls her work-life balance “great”. “I love business, so I’m doing the thing that I love but I’m surprisingly good at enjoying my downtime and completely switching off,” she said. “I ride. I surprise a lot of people: I don’t get up at 6am, I get up about 8.30am or 9am. I go riding first thing whenever I’m in Somerset.
“My assistant Charlotte knows to put nothing in my diary in the morning. I am a naturally late worker. I’m not doing crazy hours.”
She’s learned that the key to happiness is enjoying what you do and making enough time for outside interests, rather than just working fewer hours.
“There’ll be long periods of time when businesses are ticking over, so all we’re doing is just catching up, and then other times businesses are going through something big like an acquisition or an exit,” she explained. “Then I will be really busy. But I’ve always advocated it’s no different to an athlete. You need to know in business when you can have your downtime, because you can’t keep yourself at peak performance all the time.” Do that, she said, and “you’ll get burnout”.
She occasionally breaks her own golden rule – with hubby Paul Farmer, who she married in 1993, once bearing the brunt. “The only thing that I get pangs of thinking, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done it’ is when I was doing the Strictly 2014 tour on my husband’s 50th birthday,” she said.
“I said ‘Well, we can have a party later’, but he said ‘No, I’m having a party on my night, and I’m going to have everybody there’. So he went ahead without me. You’re better off thinking about the consequences beforehand rather than thinking about them afterwards.
“When deciding ‘Should I or I shouldn’t I?’ I project forward to think, ‘How will I feel next year, am I going to regret it?’”
Meaden “loved” her Strictly experience in 2013. “But I nearly talked myself out of it,” she said. “I thought ‘Why would I do Strictly?’ And then I thought, ‘Because I want to’.”
Her Strictly dance partner Robin Windsor was found dead in a London hotel room, aged 44, last month. Paying tribute on Instagram, Meaden wrote: “Robin was a good man. He was kind
Robin was a good man and he was kind and incredibly generous
DEBORAH ON HER TRAGIC STRICTLY PARTNER
and incredibly generous, supporting so many charities, helping so many people and giving so much of himself wherever he went. He lit up a room with his fun and energy and certainly his sparkle… he was never happier than when he was covered in crystals!”
There aren’t many other TV shows she would consider, apart from the comedy panel show Taskmaster, hosted by Greg Davies.
“And Dragons’ Den, honestly, is as close as you’re going to get on television to the real business life I love,” she said.
Meaden’s net worth is reported to be in the region of up to £50million and she no longer needs to work.
“I spend my money on my animals,” she said. “I’ve got loads, most are rescues. If I have any luxury in life, it’s having the space to take on and keep rescued animals.”
She has six horses, plus dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese.
And the travel fiend, who trekked around Central America in her younger days, didn’t fly long-haul “for six years”.
“I’m not preaching to anybody else, but I don’t feel I can complain about the environment and then regularly jet off all over the place,” she said.
“I’ve also drastically reduced my domestic flying and short-haul flights by about 90 per cent. I won’t unless I’m absolutely backed into a corner.”
Then comes an admission. “This winter, after not having done anything for six years, we did go to Antarctica and we blew our entire carbon budget.” Meaden’s environmental protectionism dates back to the 70s, when she wrote her Brighton Technical College dissertation about climate change.
“It just seemed so bleeding obvious to me that we were heading into trouble,” she said. “It resonated with me, but I wasn’t living in trees. I didn’t feel as strongly about it as I do now.”
Business is still her primary motivator but it’s people not money that keeps Meaden on Dragons’ Den after all this time. She explained: “I’ve had a handful of complete ‘that hasn’t worked’ [investments] but overall I’m definitely up financially by a lot, although it’s not going to make a big difference to my life money-wise.
“But when you get involved with these businesses, you don’t just put your money in, the plan is to help them grow. I’m not doing it because it’s my income. It’s very crass to say it’s not about the money in the early days – of course it is when you don’t have any.
“But there does come a point where you think, ‘Why do people keep doing this?’ I do it personally because I work with a lot of start-ups, and there’s a lot of energy and creativity around that.
“I like people, and working with people, when you feel they’ve got a tiger by the tail, there’s so much enthusiasm. And I like challenges, because I like solving things.”
Meaden has now branched into writing children’s personal finance books. Following her first title for six to nine-year-olds, she’s focused on a second one for 12 to 16-year-olds, out in May.
“I think our next generation has got a tough time ahead of them and the sooner we can get them forming a healthy relationship with money and helping it to improve their lives, the better”, she said.
Now 64, and having had a skin cancer scare with squamous cell carcinoma, will the tycoon work indefinitely?
“Absolutely, I love it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I? I can’t imagine why I would stop doing a thing that I absolutely love and that energises me. I am in a fortunate situation now where if I want to stop, I’ll stop. But I don’t.” With her unwavering loyalty to Dragons’ Den, how does she feel about a recent reinvigoration of the format, with guest names such as ex-England footballer Gary Neville muscling in on the panel?
She said: “Gary fitted in brilliantly. When any new Dragon comes in, it usually takes a few days for them to settle in and to understand how it all works, so we were a bit worried when we had guest Dragons for one day. But it was like he’d been a Dragon forever. He’s a smart guy, he’s a funny guy, he’s a kind guy. We all got on with him very well.”
Well, after a life built on innovation, it’s perhaps inevitable that Meaden would be excited by the new format idea. We’ll have to watch and see if this Dragon can breathe some fresh fire into the business world itself.