If you pretend that business is beyond morality, that's the kind of morality you get.

Over the past decades...while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual', I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

You educate people, especially young people, by stirring their passions, so you take every opportunity to grab the imagination of your employees, you get them to feel they are doing something important, that they are not a lone voice, that they are the most powerful and potent people on the planet.

I wake up every morning thinking...this is my last day. And I jam everything into it. There's no time for mediocrity. This is no damned dress rehearsal.

The aging process is fascinating because it doesn't disturb me, because this is what it is supposed to be like. But I'll tell you what does - it's the lack of strength - you can't hold up suitcases and do it yourself. Loss of physical strength.

I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too.