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.

A vision is something you see and others don't. Some people would say that's a pocket definition of lunacy. But it also defines entrepreneurial spirit.

I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom.

Globalization ... is the most important change in the history of mankind, and often just the latest name for the conspiracy of the rich against the poor.

I think it is completely immoral for a shop to trade in the middle of a community, to take money and make profits from that community and then ignore the existence of that community, its needs and problems.

Why should how I act in my workplace be any different from how I interact with my family at home? It's making sure the company runs on feminine principles where the major ethic is care.

My goal was livelihood. We don't use that word often enough. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone it's don't obsess with this notion that you have to turn everything you do into a business, because that ends up being a small version of a large company. 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.