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.

Look at the Quakers - they were excellent business people that never lied, never stole; they cared for their employees and the community which gave them the wealth. They never took more money out than they put back in.

With fewer and fewer corporations controlling more and more of the world's trade, there is an ever greater need to know more about the practices of these large faceless organizations.

I don't want to be defined by being the founder of the Body Shop, and I don't want to be defined as a woman suffering from Hepatitis C. There's more to my life than that.

Since the governments are in the pockets of businesses, who's going to control this most powerful institution? Business is more powerful than politics, and it's more powerful than religion. So it's going to have to be the vigilante consumer.

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.

There is no scientific answer for success. You can't define it. You've simply got to live it and do it.