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.

if companies are in business solely to make money, no consumer can fully trust what they do or say.

The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you.

Whatever you do, be different - that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can't think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you're different, you will stand out.

If you really didn't ever want to get wrinkles, then you should have stopped smiling years ago!

But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

Free trade holds much of the blame for continued international conflict. Markets are said to possess wisdom that is somehow superior to man. Those of us in business who travel in the developing world see the results of such western wisdom and have a rumbling disquiet about much of what our economic institutions have bought into.