YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephanie Shirley

lines on the record: 62
first: 2020-02-27
most recent: 2020-02-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, the title of my book let it go is something to do with it's a Buddhist principle of let it go, don't let the rancor of the past spoil the present, don't hang on to things when you can give them away. And forgiveness is one of those things that if you can genuinely forgive somebody for how they've hurt you or whatever it is, the world... the pain”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, it's these inspirational people. You get inspiration from other people. And Mother Teresa's ability to love. is so all embracing that I would like to Experience”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know anything about food. I invite Michel Obama. I think she's a very interesting woman. would probably make a good dinner party guest. Nelson Mandela, because I think the way in which his level of forgiveness is just so wonderful that I've read two of his books now. The third one Winston Churchill has to be.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's make quite a difference because people are now aware that women are coming forward and other minorities because women behave as a minority or have been, but they're now coming forward when things are not acceptable. And people are listening to them. But we still have a long way to go. I think the businesses also are learning that it's not just the bottom line, that it's not the only metric that matters, but that branding depends on how people view them, their employment practices, their corporate social responsibility, the way in which they source their materials. These are things that customers are interested in, and so it does go to the bottom line. And that is a big change. Now, you do your social marketing and branding. It's very equivalent to some of the charitable work.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hope it will. I think some of it is social history as well, because with the emphasis on the early years in business when there was this 100% female company struggling to. Make a mark in the world.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Indeed, yes. It's only taken everything in business takes a long time. It's only taken, what, six years? To get to this stage, we thought they were going to start actual filming this year, but I don't think they will. I think it's going to be 2021.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people in your position do make that type of decision that they're saying I'm going to spend a portion of my life making the money and then start spending it. But the real joy of giving is when it becomes part of your life, part of your whole being, and that you're always thinking in terms of what is that person doing in the street? Why are they not in a hostel? Why is he not in work? You know, you start really thinking all the time, well, I could make that little one happen. Not just make a lot of money”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It all goes to church. And that also gives it quite a nice atmosphere because people are very sick of fantic. With people who are known to be wealthy And it's quite clear, everybody knows it's going to charity, it's going to the research charity. And it's decided.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we were talking about how difficult it is to do if you have responsibilities. It's very much easier our son is dead. What else would I do with the money? Good leave it to the ISPCA, but I'd much rather spend it in her, like a venture philanthropist merely thinking what that needs doing, and I could make that into that.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so really. I used to put works of art into the business. I don't think other people appreciated them very much, but I thought it gave a different dimension to the business.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will it artist patterns and different senses, you've got sight and smell and hearing? My husband's more keen on music and I like music, but I mean he's the one that really knows about it. But I feel as if I'm hungry if I don't see good art. And I like the contemporary work. I also liked our art. Maybe I got into the contemporary art through op art, which is this sort of... cubist.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lot of Welsh people still get pinned down By changing a lifestyle to a level where again they're having to think about spend time with their finance people.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there obviously are situations where it's very difficult to make a career change, but I think the younger you are and the fewer responsibilities you have, the easier it is to make a free choice for you that's right for you now. Now you may look back in 10 years' time, so say, I wish I'd thought of something else, but you do have a free choice.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I have this very low border threshold. It would really be awful. I remember at one stage I had a beast of a boss actually. And he gave me tasks that I didn't like, and basically I wasn't trained or competent to do so. And so I was time watching. I'd got to get through from nine to desperately try. And life was so, the black dog was sort of hanging around you. I don't want that.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If it's a recession and I was going out of business basically, I'd got to the stage of selling personal items to get money to keep us going. So that's part of the cost as far as I was concerned. And you will have comparable costs in different ways.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, and I can remember sitting in our living room actually rocking with some sort of fear, what am I going to do? What can I do? What can I do?”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We might glancing comment about various failures that we've had. But by instinct, we're always promoting not only today's success, but what do you want to do tomorrow and the day after?”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People. What a found bit disappointing was I went into software because I really do find it fascinating. In the early days you needed mathematics to do it as well, which is Totally and utterly absorbing once you get lost in the mathematical algorithms. Technology was what I wanted to do. And you start off one person, two persons, five persons. Very, very quickly you're having to delegate the bit that you really love, the software, and I got landed with the tax, the human resources, the financing, the dealing with HR issues. I mean, that happened so quickly. And that's a shame because the motivation then has to come from something else.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yet all the time we're teaching young people to work as teams because you need these complementary skills to do most things”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite a lot of time spent at this desk because I find going out, I don't travel a great deal now, went to Europe once last year, I think. But I try and pace myself so that I do the things that I want to do and don't get stuck with a lot of sludge, so you know I have people that do my accounts and people who do my look after the house for me and I have a very easy life except when I'm sitting usually alone at my desk which is where innovation comes from. I'm sure it's a solitary activity. Everything else is teamwork, but the innovation comes from one individual, one spark, you capture it.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think like you, first of all, I wanted to get out of poverty. And it was clear, presumably from what people told me, that learning and education was the best way out of poverty. So I was very keen to do well at school. I was very keen to go to university, which I didn't manage. And that was a dream that was put on hold. Now I've got honorary degrees and Cambridge and goodness knows what. But they don't really give me a lot of pleasure because life has moved on. What I want now is a role in the philanthropic field, the feeling that I have made the world a better place. And that is pretty strong. There's always things that you can do. Always ways in which you can cut costs by ten percent always the”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm always sorry for people who don't have a purpose has changed several times in my life, but I've always had a purpose. building up the company.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What was that? A group of staff who knowing business plans of my business decided to break away and progress it without the overheads and the baggage of the past so they started off with a fresh piece of paper And so I lost a lot of staff. I lost certain contracts were put at risk. And I found that pretty depressing. But again, you learn to deal with it. And it's just the way the business goes. I'm surprised that you're writing your book yet, because I would have thought it was so early on. Or is this just chapters one and two?”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But some of it may come from you, but some of it is the demand of the business I used to feel that the business had so many demands on me. I was absolutely, you know, crouched under this heavy load that I was carrying. And then a few years later, you learned to delegate a bit more. Things have gone up. You had a couple of... Good things happen, and it all starts to be much more fun. And then something else happens, you know, you've got a breakaway group. I mention that because I've found that very debilitating.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think any parent is happy with how they've brought up their children in my case of just one child, but their decisions that I took that I would take again in the similar circumstances. But I think it's worth contemplating some of those issues. And you do know that your parents are going to die and the chances are they will die before you. And to actually think, well, what's the worst that can happen? Supposing you had a phone call now of a death, how would you react? And if you can face that, then you may change the way your life goes, or you may be even more determined to continue on the path that you're doing. I mean, I love what I do. And I think, you know, especially at 86, I'm so lucky to have something to get up for each morning. But other people don't want to live like I do. personal choice.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's fine if it just turns out to be a part of your life, but if for whatever reason it then becomes a whole part of your life, then you do something, my goodness, I didn't spend enough time with my parents. I wish I'd done this or had more children or whatever.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learning to say no, because you get a lot of demands on you and just learning to say no, spending time on yourself, spending care and attention, giving care and attention to your family and your nearest and dearest rather than just everything to the business.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but it's also basic character, I think. You've got to have good health and energy. I learned to be healthily selfish after a bit, to actually look after my own well-being and not just health, but probably mental health in that not to let things get me down. Because I find business very tough. It's nice looking back on it, you know, and so I put his patchy on the back and said, How terrific other people did it. But what did I do? I'm a leader, not a real manager.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you are resilient, that you don't have to go down, that there are ways, you know, if you can't go through something, you can go under it or round it or over it or go elsewhere. If business doesn't take off, there are other things that you can do. And that gives you the confidence to face what's the worst that can happen. I can deal with this.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've got a big smile on your face, and I wonder whether you yet know the sort of tragedies that are going to hit you when you're responsible for a lot of staff. You have a death, you have an illness, you have breakaway groups, you have all sorts of things that are really hurtful to you as an individual. And have you gone through that sort of experience yet?”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I didn't have first class education, nobody had told me what one wasn't supposed to do in business. I just went ahead and did it.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, nobody really knows where innovation comes from, but I'm sure the universities don't encourage innovation, they encourage rigidity, they encourage perfectionism.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh phenomenally my life has gone in completely different direction I spend my time now with schools and support services and learning disabled people and academe and so on quite different to how I might have imagined I could see me when I was a child I would have liked to have been an academic and I've never went to college. You haven't either, I think. Maybe college knocks some of the spark out of people. I'm not sure.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've taken three charities in the autism field to sustainability. One of them cost me most in human terms. One of them cost me most thirty million in sheer five years of my life. But the most strategic one is the last one and it shows, I think, that I'm learning because it's a research charity. The one you might be interested in, though, is I co-founded the Oxford Internet Institute. Which that was in the year 2000 it actually opened in 2001 and that concentrates not on the technology of the internet but on the social, economic, legal and ethical issues of the internet and I'm very proud of that actually because it's a way in which I've been able to contribute to the sector long, long after I was technically competent.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do think that, you know, if you share the team, you've got a smaller proportion of a larger cake, which is how people explained it to me. because I was sort of quiet. Really want to let it go.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's a characteristic of entrepreneurs that people remember us for our successes, but actually what epitomizes the entrepreneurial drive.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it was confidence. I think it was just sheer guts. I was not confident I would be petrified going into some of the presentations that I was doing. I would be physically sick sometimes. What I had was determination and resilience that, you know, if somebody knocks me down, I pick myself, press myself down, and put a smile on my face and go ahead.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Workforce there in short supply. And eventually we had half our people in India and they were very highly skilled. So you never quite know what you've got to be opportunistic about things. So we've tried that. Doesn't work. I'm a scientist. If something works, I do more of it. If something doesn't work, I do something else”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without being big headed, I really don't regret much I made a lot of mistakes, but But I don't regret things because whatever I do, I do to the best of my ability, I get myself trained, I spend enough time on it. And so I can't do more than my best. And if it doesn't succeed, it doesn't worry me. I don't look back and say, oh, if only I've done this. There was some very classic mistakes that I made because I thought I knew better. And that was to replicate our success in the UK, first of all in Scandinavia, then in Benelux, and thirdly in the States. And none of those really took off. They were all more trouble than they were worth. What did take off was India. And we started off, well, I started off writing theoretical papers about exporting software to India because...”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You say, Well, you've got 51%. You're not vulnerable to that at all Don't have to. But once you've lost that, then other people's decisions. And we floated at a time where I wouldn't have floated.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'd always been the boss, I'd made it, I'd created it, and I was the boss, and gradually, through co ownership and acquisitions, my share of the company dropped from one time it was 95% or something, and then we dropped and I finished up with 5%. But when it dropped below the majority shareholder, I was still the major shareholder, but not a majority shareholder. People's attitude changed. There were professional managers running it now. They're the ones whose views were taken into account. And I've found that a bit like I think I mentioned it in the book King Lear, who once he gives his kingdom away, sorry, this is Shakespeare, maybe you don't know it. You know, once you've lost control of something, you can't necessarily get it back”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, this anywhere. And the whole concept of letting go, letting go of the rancor of my childhood to start each day afresh, the whole concept of Letting go of the company once had lost control of it, you know, at the time I found it extremely difficult.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe every generation does that because people are intrinsically selfish. And I think today's culture is very much me, me, me. So anyone that goes outside that. Is really treading on not virgin ground, well-trodden ground, but nobody really knows what happens.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do, you know, I have a very low boredom threshold and I like to I mean I sometimes say when people are thinking about jobs to apply for something that is so risky that you have that frisson of fear about it that's the one to go for. You'll never get bored, you know, you know it's going to stretch you.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is much the same as the advice I would give to any young man. To you as Stephen, and that is to get into an area that you really enjoy. Get trained in it so that you are up to speed, get retrained so that you're really at the leading edge and know what the sector is all about. And then just take a risk. I think a lot of people just are not prepared to take that risk. And it is a risk. Most new companies fail, most new projects fail. But you can always start another one.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that people, I think we all have to dissemble a little bit and put the best foot forward and any way of getting through the door is important”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what it has given me is a lifestyle that suits me in retirement because I did retire at 60. in that I now enjoy learning to give my money away wisely. So I've turned into an ardent philanthropist. I really enjoy it. That's what I do. I try and do it as a venture philanthropist, really thinking about projects, thinking about things, and starting in an entrepreneurial way, three charities and taking them again to sustainability. Now the first charity took me 17 years to get financially and managerially independent of me. The second one I am a learning person only took me five years and the third one only two years. But, you know, it's like running a business except that the metrics are different.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think wealth in any way is correlated with happiness. What it gives you that is pleasant is choice, choice of how to live. And I think I've kept my feet on the ground because a lot of wealthy people start living at a different level and are still worried about money because can they afford a bigger yacht or whatever it is? To me, my feet was kept on the ground because only child was learning disabled. And so there were a lot of things we couldn't do if we were going to have a family life with him. And it was quite clear that that's what both of us wanted.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's only one generation back. If we forget everything that was... Revolutionary in my time you take for granted. What you're doing now will be thought of as quite naive in 50 years' time.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that's what ITL allows you to do. We had in our application forms, which were fairly traditional, but we actually asked, do you have access to a telephone? Not you have a telephone, you have access. It was a different world But the skills that we used were intellectual skills, coding skills, pattern recognition skills, and people skills.”
2020-02-27 · The Diary of a CEO · E49: Dame Stephanie Shirley - Escaping Nazi Germany and Making £2.3bn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT