“I’m a good team player  as long as I’m the captain”

Business Sense spends an afternoon with entrepreneur and business investor Deborah Meaden to find out how the Dragons' Den star makes her business decisions.

(Interview: Andrew Geekie)

The first thing you realise on meeting Deborah Meaden is that her TV persona is not entirely representative of her off-camera character. As she enters a private room in London’s Charlotte Street Hotel (where she claims the majority of her business deals have been struck), she is enthusiastic, chatty and rarely without a smile on her face. It’s not what you expect when you are used to seeing her stern demeanor on your television screen.

“I hate the way I’m always portrayed as the grumpy woman,” she exclaims. “They’ll take hundreds of photographs or do hours of filming, but when I see the result in print or on television, they’ve edited it to make me look like I’m miserable, which is really not me at all!”

Indeed, our photographer had to patiently intervene on numerous occasions to stop Meaden chatting with the make-up artist and giggling between shots. However, it’s that ability to connect with people, along with her obvious business nous, that has been the key to her success.

“I would like to think, and it has been said of me in the past, that I’m a good team player – as long as I’m the captain!” she laughs. “That pretty much describes me, because I really am a good team player and don’t believe that I hold the knowledge to everything. But I’m very robust and make a good general. I think that I react well to other robust people, whereas shrinking violets tend not to do so well with me.” 

A head for business

Meaden’s success is based on her outstanding business judgement and her decisiveness. Having taken over her parents’ amusement arcade and holiday park business, Weststar Holidays, in 1999 she set about turning a relatively small family business into a “lean, mean fighting machine”. The rewards came six years later when she sold it for £33 million and began using her business knowledge to invest in and grow SMEs.

“The reason I’ve succeeded in business so far is because, above all else, I’m a doer,” says Meaden. “I’m a decisive person – I do a lot of research and a lot of thinking, but once I make my decision, nothing stops me. I can’t see obstacles, I can’t see things I’m not able to do. Too often people stop doing things because they look at problems that are in the way, while I just don’t see them. Once I know that something is right, I don’t let anything stop me.”

Having invested in a variety of businesses through the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, Deborah is in no doubt that her involvement as a business angel is in great demand, particularly in the current economic climate. “I have seen more business opportunities in the last 12 months than I did in the five years before that,” she says. “That’s partly because businesses need financial help from angels and investors. But it’s more because they recognise that they can really benefit from the experience we have and the advice we can give them.”

Trust your instincts

So how would a prospective business partner best impress Deborah Meaden? “That’s very simple: don’t be tricksy,” she explains. “Don’t try to catch my attention with gimmicks. Just be honest and know your stuff. I’m not looking for the perfect pitch, I’m looking for a credible one that I believe in.

“I don’t mind if people stumble or falter and say something not quite right, that doesn’t bother me one iota. What does bother me is word-perfect, smooth pitches that don’t have any substance. I want to know what is behind the business and that the person running it knows what they’re talking about.” 

With that in mind, what goes through the head of one of the UK’s best known business angels when she’s faced with the decision of whether to invest or not? “I describe my decision-making process as a row of switches,” she says. “There are obvious fundamental things that you always ask about a business at the outset, such as its size, profitability and what state it’s in, etc, but they aren’t part of my process, they are givens.

“Instead I ask more in-depth questions, which vary depending on the proposition, about what I want to know. For each answer I like, I flip an imaginary switch down. As long as I get enough switches down – and it doesn’t have to be all of them – I start to get interested. However, there is one switch that overrides everything else and that’s this [she pats her stomach] – my gut instinct. I can have all the answers in the world and be logically satisfied that the business is sound, but I just won’t feel good about it. You see me on Dragons’ Den and I’ll have that look in my eye, which is my gut instinct taking over.”  

Reacting to change 

As an investor in a number of UK SMEs, Meaden is well placed to have seen the opportunities and dangers of the recession and she doesn’t mince her words when handing out advice. “The current business environment turns a lot of the rules of business on their head. We were always told to be proactive and not reactive, but I think the fleet-footed will survive.

“People need to stop for a minute and think about their business in this new environment,” she continues. “Think about the short-term. The business world has changed a great deal in the last two years. Even if you’re not changing what your business is selling or doing, you should be looking at the message you’re sending out: ‘good value’ and ‘trusted’ are more important than ever. 

“Sadly, the biggest mistake business owners make is kidding themselves that things are going to be okay next week or next month without the fundamental knowledge that this is the case,” she adds. “That leads people to go too far down the wrong track before they realise they have an issue with their business. It’s not very palatable to admit to yourself ‘I’ve got this wrong, I’ve made a mistake’, but one of the measures of my own success has been that I’ve always been good at knowing when something is not going to work and taking decisive action.” 

As Meaden admits, she’s had her own failures along the way: “I made one investment on the Den in an environmental transport company, which went on to fail,” she recalls. “At the time, I didn’t think it was a bad investment and if another business in that sector came to me with a similar idea I would be tempted to back it again.

Building relationships

Despite times being tough, Meaden is still positive about the future for British businesses, provided they stick to the fundamentals of good business practice. “You have got to seriously pay attention to your customers and not just pay lip service to them,” she says. “I’m staggered by how out of touch businesses are with their customers – even those that deal with them every day.

When I owned the holiday parks I would take any feedback seriously. If people asked for something, I got it for them. It’s also important to tell your customers that you’re listening to them and say: ‘Thank you for letting us know that, we’ve now made these changes as a result of your feedback’.”

Meaden makes a persuasive argument and you can imagine her getting these points across to the business owners she works with. Her passion for business is obvious and she clearly revels in doing something she loves. “I consider myself very fortunate – not lucky, I don’t believe in luck – that I’ve enjoyed everything that I’ve done,” she smiles. “Even the things I didn’t like at the time, with hindsight I can see they were good experiences. I enjoyed the day-to-day business and now I like what I’m doing as an investor. Whether I’ll keep doing this forever, who knows? If I stopped enjoying it I would do something else instead.”

Her track record so far suggests that whatever Deborah Meaden turns her hand to, it will more than likely be a success.

deborahmeaden.com


Meaden's Progress

1977: Studies at business college and then starts a business exporting glass and ceramics
1988: Several business ventures later, she joins family business, Weststar Holidays
1999: Undertakes an MBO and acquires a major stake in Weststar
2005: Sells Weststar for £33 million, retaining a 23 per cent stake. Sells stake when Weststar is later sold for £83 million
2006: First appears on Dragons’ Den

The Meaden Mantra

1. Be credible and know what you’re talking about
2. React and adapt to any changes in the business environment
3. Recognise when you’ve got it wrong and act decisively
4. Take feedback seriously and tell customers you are listening
   

This article is taken from NatWest's Business Sense magazine (Spring 2010)



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