Investment masterclass: Deborah Meaden on her life in business

This is an audio transcript of the Money Clinic podcast episode: ‘Investment masterclass — Deborah Meaden on her life in business’

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Claer Barrett
We’ve had CEOs, investors and economists in the Money Clinic studio before, but up until now, we’ve never had a dragon. Deborah Meaden, star of the hit BBC show Dragons’ Den, is one of the highest-profile investors in Britain. She’s famed for grilling entrepreneurs who want to secure her financial backing for their business.

Deborah Meaden
So unless you can tell me in 30 seconds flat why you think it’s OK to come in and ask for 1 per cent, for 150,000, I am absolutely, as quick as anything, going out.

Claer Barrett
In this investment masterclass, I get to grill her about what we can learn from her mean but green investment approach, scaling up a side hustle and why she wants to teach seven-year-olds more about their money.

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Welcome to Money Clinic, the weekly podcast about personal finance and investing from the Financial Times. I’m Claer Barrett, the FT’s consumer editor.

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Well, Deborah, the FT’s motto is: without fear, without favour. But I will confess to feeling slightly scared sitting across the table from a dragon. (Laughter)

Deborah Meaden
Well, you’re not showing. You’re hiding it very well, Claer. (Laughter)

Claer Barrett
Well, you’ll be relieved to hear I’m not gonna pitch to you a business idea. Although one of my friends once did — a see-through toaster so you could see whether the toast was done or not.

Deborah Meaden
Well, the truth is, they now exist, don’t they? So it was clearly a good idea.

Claer Barrett
Yeah, as you told her at the time, I think. But I do want to know what are the most common money mistakes business owners make when they’re pitching to you in the den?

Deborah Meaden
Well, the first one probably is to say I’m not a numbers person, because what I always say is, you know, in business, you don’t have to be an accountant. You don’t have to be a numbers person, particularly. But you do need to know, you need to be able to get that balance that says, am I selling it for more than it is actually costing? That’s not just what it cost me to buy it. It’s what it costs me to buy it and package it and process it. And, you know, so you do have to be able to keep numbers in your head to work things out. So saying you’re not a numbers person is, you’ve got to know . . . you’ve only got to know three numbers in business: your turnover, your gross profit and your net profit.

Claer Barrett
And why are those three numbers important?

Deborah Meaden
They’re the numbers that tell you whether or not you’re making any money. So your turnover, are you selling enough? OK. That’s the business. I’m selling enough to make it a business. Your gross profit says, actually at the, you know, I’m selling it for more than it costs me. And then your net profit says, OK, well, I’ve got all those overheads, you know, am I actually paying for the cost of running the business? So although I made money on the goods, am I making enough money to pay for all of the costs of the business?

Claer Barrett
The other things like people’s time, the time that they’re putting in as the business owner. That’s something that people who are self-employed often think actually.

Deborah Meaden
So true. And the trouble is, so that’s actually OK if you’re a sole operator and you think, well, actually that’s kind of my wage. But once you take an investor on board, the investor has got to think when this business grows, we’re going to have to pay people to do these jobs. So we’re gonna have to work out whether or not this model works when you’ve actually got to pay people properly.

Claer Barrett
Now, let’s talk about successes in the den. As an investor, what impresses you the most about someone who’s pitching?

Deborah Meaden
First of all, I need to trust them. I need to believe that they’re telling me what I need to know. Because as an investor, you’re remote from your business. You’re not working at it every day. So I’ve got to rely on people to say, I need you when I need you. You know, so I need to know, do they know what’s important in their business? Will they be good to work with? Will they ask me the right questions, use me in the right way? So that’s important. So I do have to trust them. I like energy and I like a clear understanding of their reason to be. Why this? Why this particular one? And if there are others out there in the market, why is this one better? And also to be able to articulate what they do know and what they don’t. What help do they actually need? That really impresses me when people can say, look, I’m really, really good at all of this, but I really do need help there, you know, because that’s clarity. That, it gives you a really good idea.

Claer Barrett
So that’s not showing a sign of weakness by saying, I find it difficult to do this. It’s actually a sign of strength.

Deborah Meaden
I think it shows me that they know themselves. They know what their business needs and they know which parts of that they can provide and which bits they can’t. That’s really important.

Claer Barrett
Many applications for their, I think, careers in the workplace as well. Now, I checked, being a journalist, and pretty much all of the businesses that you’ve chosen to back on the show over the years are still trading today.

Deborah Meaden
Well, there you go.

Claer Barrett
What qualities unite them other than, of course, having you pick them?

Deborah Meaden
Well, I’d like to think that they did have vision, you know, so they weren’t just businesses of the moment and that they’ve been able to move with the times because consumers are changing faster than ever. The way it’s delivered and the language that’s spoken to consumers and the ethics behind businesses has changed and is changing fast. And I’d like to think that those businesses that I’m working with are keeping ahead of that. It’s not just that they do what they do and they’re gonna carry on doing that forever and a day. You know, they’ve all evolved.

Claer Barrett
And what would you say is the worst investment that you’ve ever made, like, not just Dragons’ Den, in your in your life? And what did you learn from it?

Deborah Meaden
See, I can’t do that because I don’t find, I don’t judge things in best and worst. Because I make bad decisions, I make bad investments. But you don’t have to get everything right. If you strive to get everything right, you won’t invest in anything because nothing is known. You know, you’re making your best guess at whether or not this is going to work. You know, do I, using all of my knowledge or my judgment, has this got a fair chance? So when I get it wrong, to me, that’s just part of the investing process. You know, I’ve just got to get more right than I get wrong. So getting it wrong, I don’t like getting it wrong. Nobody likes losing their money. Sometimes I’ve got it wrong because I simply can’t work with the people. And I don’t mean I can’t work with them in a sort of, you know, falling out sort of way. Just that we have different desires. When you’ve got an investor on board, you know that you’ve got a slightly different path. You’re looking for a return on their investment and sometimes you find that the person that you’re helping really didn’t want what they thought they wanted. They actually want an easy life. They don’t want me going, look, I can get you into, you know, Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s.

Claer Barrett
Yeah. Quadruple your turnover.

Deborah Meaden
They really think, oh I don’t really want to do all of that. So sometimes that’s the reason it doesn’t work. But I don’t really judge them as long as I’m happy with the investments that I’ve got, not just financially, you know. Are they, have they got the right impact? Are they doing things in the right way? Are they ethical and are they making money?

Claer Barrett
It’s fascinating to both hear you talk about this and see you on the television running the rule over these different companies, because our bread and butter on Money Clinic is talking about investing in shares of different companies on our normal episodes. Is there any advice you’d offer people listening to the show who do buy shares on the stock market of how they could sort of take the Deborah Meaden approach to their investment decisions?

Deborah Meaden
I don’t know. The advantage that I often have — because people are pitching their businesses to me and I do get to meet them — the advantage that I have is I’m able to judge the characters behind it. A lot of businesses actually succeed because of the people standing behind them. So I think it’s important to get a sense of the character, the personality of a business, because we’re beginning to appreciate business personalities in our buy-in. If it is a consumer product, we do look for personalities. So I think an understanding of, is there a clear personality and is there a clear vision looking forward? Not what does it look like today because you’re buying at today’s prices, can I see that this is a relevant business going forward?

Claer Barrett
And do you invest in shares on the stock market as part of your wider investing activities or just stick to the companies?

Deborah Meaden
I mainly stick to the companies. I’ve got some shares and I have invested in a couple of green funds at the start of the funds, mainly because I wanted to be part of getting them off the ground, you know, because in the early days green funds weren’t that attractive. Now, of course, everybody understands huge opportunity in the green economy. And that is another thing I would say. I want to enjoy my investments. I want to know that they fit with my ethics. And I think people are beginning to understand that more as well. You know, even your pensions, you know, you can ask for your money to do the things that you want it to do. So I think using investing in a way that doesn’t just gain you financial gain, but also makes you feel like, OK, I’ve played my part, you know, I helped change the world.

Claer Barrett
We’re gonna come back more to green investing later, but we’ve talked quite a lot about buying companies, but we haven’t talked much yet about selling them. Now, at the time when you invest in a company, are you already thinking about what the potential exit strategy would be? I ask this question because it’s often a problem for people when they’re buying shares. They stick with them for ages. The price goes down. They don’t know what to do.

Deborah Meaden
Well, yes, and that is a really important thing now particularly. And that will absolutely turn me off if I ask somebody, you know, what’s their exit route and they haven’t got one, it’s very worrying because I’m a junior investor, I can’t force a sale and it means I could be in there forever and a day. Particularly you get family businesses, you think, oh, hold on a minute, you’re gonna pass this on to your . . . It’s fine. You can do that. But don’t get an investor on board unless you’ve got a way of actually getting that investor out because people tend to forget we are investors. We want a return on our investment. So I’ve got to understand, there has got to be a willingness to exit within a reasonable timescale for me as an investor, as any investor, really, you don’t want to find that your money is stuck in there forever. You know, that’s the point about investing.

Claer Barrett
And what would you say your normal kind of timescale would be? Three years, five years, less than that?

Deborah Meaden
I would say three to five years. At the moment, the landscape isn’t great for fundraising or exiting because there’s a lot of deals around there, a lot of cheap acquisitions going on around there. That means there’s a lot of people underselling their companies. So I will take those into account. So I won’t think, well, actually it’s a three- to five-year timescale. Come on guys, we need to look to exit. I will think, OK, but we’ve had two years of doldrums and I am able to, I’m not relying on that cash to fund my lifestyle.

Claer Barrett
And of course the great advantage that we have as retail investors investing in the stock market is that we can sell when we want. We’re not like a corporate investor or fund manager who’d be under pressure to make that plan with a share that they had bought in a fund, deliver returns to shareholders, get in, get out. If we think that there is a great story there, even if performance is in the doldrums for the next couple of years, we can hang on, we can invest more. We can do what we like.

Deborah Meaden
Well, that’s true. But I think it’s also why people must remember they should only invest cash that they don’t need to live their everyday life on. Because if you’ve got to sell at the moment that they were in the doldrums, that’s clearly bad news. So I think that’s, you know, that’s a really important thing sitting at the back of everybody’s minds.

Claer Barrett
Now, chatting to my colleagues before you came in, one question that one of them had was would Deborah have ever enjoyed being a city fund manager in another life because they have a similar job to you as a dragon. They’re looking at companies in the corporate world, weighing up whether they want to buy their shares for their investors or not.

Deborah Meaden
I’ve never been asked that question before. I like it when I get asked a question I’ve never been asked before. I don’t know if I would, and I’ll tell you why. I actually, for a start, I enjoyed working in a business. So I actually like, if I miss anything, it’s that having a challenge and rolling my sleeves up and getting in and sorting out. I miss that. I definitely miss that. And I also like to feel that I have a connection with the businesses that I’m working with, so I want to help them where I possibly can. And I think I might be too far removed if I was a pure investor. I think it’s why Dragon suits me so well. I actually want to get involved with those businesses. I want to run them, you know, I don’t want to be looking over their shoulders every five minutes, but I want to know that I can help them where and when I can help them.

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Claer Barrett
Anyone who watches Dragons’ Den or follows Deborah on Twitter knows that she’s renowned for investing in sustainable companies. Why does being green matter so much to her?

Deborah Meaden
I don’t know. So when I was 19 . . . no, earlier, 16, I went to business, left school at 16, didn’t do A-levels, went to business college, and my thesis at college was on climate change.

Claer Barrett
Wow.

Deborah Meaden
So we’re 40 years ago?

Claer Barrett
I mean, that’s pretty far-sighted.

Deborah Meaden
It’s always, well, I don’t think it was. I don’t think it was far-sighted. I think it was obvious it was going to happen. I don’t think there was any doubt at all that we were affecting climate. I think that what has happened is I did it as something that was gonna happen but probably beyond my lifetime. And I think what has shocked me — and I am not a worrier in life at all except about climate change and biodiversity — so what worries me is the speed at which it has taken hold. And that is why I have to be true to myself in my investments. I can’t worry about something and be as concerned about something as I am about climate change and then behave in a completely different way. I’ve got to reflect that in the way that I work.

Claer Barrett
Do you wish that being green mattered more to the government?

Deborah Meaden
(Laughter) Mattered at all would be helpful, I think. Yes, I do. I actually, I get frustrated because I honestly, the opportunity in the green economy, it’s happening. It’s going to happen. Listen, if we’re completely wrong about climate change, it doesn’t matter. We get clean air, we get cleaner river. You know, it’s just so much good coming out of it. It’s going to happen. Why on earth wouldn’t you embrace that as a business opportunity? If you couldn’t care less about the climate, why wouldn’t you embrace the green economy? There is so much new opportunity and an opportunity to bring in people with such diverse skills and such diverse knowledge and create jobs that have never existed before. It’s exciting.

Claer Barrett
We’ve obviously seen this rowing back on some net zero commitments by the current government. So there’s an election coming up soon. But do you think that the environment will continue to matter to companies and their investors despite what’s going on inside No 10?

Deborah Meaden
So I think business is the great hope because the consumers are becoming much, much more aware of the issues, not just around climate change, around nature and biodiversity, and it is becoming a proper business issue. And business can move much faster than governments. And the only thing I think that is disappointing is, as far as politics is concerned, is that you do need a constancy when you’re in business. You need to understand the direction of travel. Business works much better when it knows when it’s going, oh, that’s where we are. We’re off then, you know, we’re not we don’t know what the rules are. We know where we can go. I think this flip-flopping around is really not helpful. So, you know, the reversing of so many things is just very confusing. And it freezes cash because people start thinking, hold on a minute. I better hold on to that until I understand, you know, where it needs to go. So I don’t think that’s helpful. But I do think that generally business is much more connected to its customer, understands how its customer is feeling, which is really important, responds to that and can move much, much faster than a government.

Claer Barrett
Now, I think one of the biggest challenges for consumers when it comes to being greener, I say this as the de facto consumer editor, is that it often costs much more for us to make the greener choice.

Deborah Meaden
Well, what does? I always say to people, tell me what it is that you think costs more? So it’s not that they cost more, it’s that the upfront costs more. So actually, if you’re gonna keep something for longer and we change our habits, we’re a little bit disposable at the moment, we are gonna have to shift our habits to valuing things that we have forever. I love it. I’ve got jumpers with holes in at home and I can’t tell you the pleasure I get out of looking at the holes in the jumpers. I think: I’ve worn it out, that’s amazing.

So I think that the funding of the upfront costs is very, very important because where do people get that cash from? Money is, particularly at the moment, really expensive. So I think there’s definitely a piece to be done there. But I also say that if you can afford it, then you have almost a responsibility to drive the market because electric vehicles are, the price will come down. The more that are bought, the more that are made, the price will come down, the more charging points there will be. And sometimes certain sectors of society are really important in the driving of that market so that it becomes available to everybody.

Claer Barrett
Do you have any practical tips about how people can pay more attention to where our investments are going and the kind of businesses they’re funding and the kind of attitude our banks might take to all of this?

Deborah Meaden
Well, I tell you what, ask the question, then ask the next question, because what I have sometimes seen is that I’ve got an answer that is quite shallow. You’re not investing in this and you’re not investing in that. OK, what am I investing in? You know, that’s the next question, not just what am I not investing in. And sometimes that can uncover some things that you think, oh, hold on a minute. We’re investing in that fund and I know that fund invests in fossil fuels. So I think ask the question, but you can’t, you can literally email your pension, you know, whoever you’ve got your pension with, you can email them and say, how do I find out what’s in my pension? You know, bother them. You know, bombard them enough that they have to set up an entire department doing nothing but informing people how their investments are being spent. That money is being spent.

Claer Barrett
But of course, if you’re investing your Sipp, your self-invested personal pension, or your Isa, there is a multiplicity of green funds and ESG ratings, that’s environmental social governance for those who don’t know what ESG is. But these have attracted a lot of criticism, things like greenwashing, you know, the inconsistency of the ratings, the green bubble effect that all of these things are bandied around. What’s your view?

Deborah Meaden
Well, greenwashing is, of course, an issue, because what I mean by sustainability could be completely different to what you mean by sustainability. You know, so I always say you need to again, it’s finding out when somebody says it’s a green fund, what does that mean? What is your version of green? What are the rules around that? Do they fit my rules? So I think asking for the definition of the green fund and the rules sitting behind it is very, very important. And that stops the greenwashing. The more people that ask, the less people get away with greenwashing. People know a lot more now. You know, they got a good nose for when they’re being — I was gonna use a word I’m probably not allowed to use — bullshitted.

Claer Barrett
No, you’re allowed to use that. (Laughter) Now you’re normally the one listening to the pitches in Dragons’ Den. But when it comes to making greener investment choices, greener consumption choices, what would be your pitch to Money Clinic listeners?

Deborah Meaden
I think, just think and do what you can do. I don’t think it’s helpful when people beat themselves up over every single thing that they do, every decision they make and everything that they buy, it just becomes a very negative thing. But I just think, make thoughtful purchases, you know, think about things. Listen, if you waste things, you’re not just wasting money, you’re wasting the planet, you’re wasting time in it in buying it. You’re wasting, you know, logistics and actually getting it delivered. So just be really, really thoughtful. I actually stopped buying clothes for 18 months.

Claer Barrett
Wow.

Deborah Meaden
And I just don’t buy clothes. And, you know, now, I physically am, do I need it? You know, so I think, just a waste. That’s the first port of call.

Claer Barrett
Lots of great lessons from Deborah, but she also wants to teach the next generation about money. She was approached by the publisher, HarperCollins, to take on a new project, a book about money for children. Why Money Matters came out in July. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s a beautifully illustrated book aimed at six- to nine-year-olds. And it answers a question Deborah says she’s always being asked: when should children start learning about money?

Deborah Meaden
I’ve never thought it is a subject that should be introduced later. It’s such a part of our life. You know, the reason I think I’ve been good with money is that we didn’t have any when I was tiny and it was a big conversation in the house and it wasn’t in a worrying way. It was just like, what are we gonna do to build a better life? And I think that was a real gift because I didn’t learn about money, you know, I just absorbed about it. And I thought, it’s not even in the school curriculum. And how can this lifeblood of the way our entire society works, how can that not be on the school curriculum from the day they first step foot over that school threshold? So I thought, well, well, there’s a gap. It needs to be written. Whether or not I’m the person to write it or not, we’ll see.

Claer Barrett
The book contains what some people might consider pretty heavy subject matter for children, like the origins of currency, what banks are, the tax system. Do you think some of this will go over the heads of seven-year-olds?

Deborah Meaden
No, I don’t, because I think children, they live in households where those words come up. And I always think children worry much more about things they hear and don’t understand than the things that are actually explained to them. So this is, it’s just normalising some of those words that might feel worrying to them. Nobody says tax in a jolly, happy way, do they?

Claer Barrett
No. Certainly not me. (Laughter)

Deborah Meaden
Absolutely. So children will kind of hear that and think, oh, no. But actually trying to explain that that’s what pays for all of the things that we need, it can just switch that switch into thinking, oh, no, that’s a really bad thing. And I know it’s a bad thing because I’ve heard you know, I’ve heard the tone of voice, into thinking, OK, I get it, I understand it. And I think the earlier you get that, it embeds your approach to money. I want people to have a healthy, happy relationship with money. And I think the earlier you start that, surely the better.

Claer Barrett
Well, far be it for me to turn the tables on a dragon, but I bought a copy of your book a couple of weeks ago and I gave it to my seven-year-old twin nephews and I said, you want to help auntie Claer with her work? And they read it all, and I said, what’s the best bit, do you think, of Deborah’s book? Now that one is able to buy 10 minutes, he was fascinated by the page about budgeting, and I was saying to him, why are you interested in this? And he said, I like there being rules about spending money. And his brother, twins, completely different, he was the most fascinated by the chapter about getting interest on your savings. And he was saying, what kind of interest could I get out of my saved money? And I said, well, at the moment probably about 5 per cent. So I said, you know, if you give me a pound for a year, I’ll give you back £1.05. He was not impressed. (Laughter) He was like, only 5p? So I scaled up and I said, well if you gave me £10, you know, then you’d get back 50p. And that was sort of like a bit better because they can’t really imagine what they’d buy now.

Deborah Meaden
I have to say the book is a little generous with this interest, but partly because I want them to feel good about it and get engaged with it rather than doing that thing like your nephew did, which is, oh really?

Claer Barrett
But one of the other things that we did talk about was tax, because they’ve both been asking my brother, my sister-in-law lots of questions about tax. And he prompted me to ask them and one of them said, oh, I think we should be taxing rich people much more than we should be poor people. And I thought I never would have thought that I would hear those words come out.

Deborah Meaden
Well, I honestly, I cannot tell you how happy that makes me feel.

Claer Barrett
What kind of feedback have you had about the book from either little people or perhaps their mums and dads or their teachers?

Deborah Meaden
It has been, honestly, it mattered. This matters to me. And of course what’s happened is the feedback has been, so when are you gonna do one for teenagers? That’s the feedback. So I am, I’m on it.

Claer Barrett
Wow. Is this a scoop for the Money Clinic podcast?

Deborah Meaden
I think it is the first I’ve said it out loud.

Claer Barrett
Excellent. Oh, that’s what we like to hear. Now, OK so teenagers are next. Prime minister is putting a really big focus on studying maths until 18, which I have mixed feelings about. But if you were in charge, what aspects of money and also running a business, which is another really important lesson, would you like to put on the curriculum?

Deborah Meaden
Well, that’s interesting because I think maths gets a bit of a, disengages. The word maths disengages people because it doesn’t connect what they’re doing with what they need in real life. And of course they need numbers in real life, numeracy. But a lot of the stuff I learned I thought I am never, ever, ever going to use and I really wouldn’t need to do it till I am 18. You can have a feeling for what you’re gonna need. So I think what I would like to see is numeracy actually embedded into the subjects that it should be, that need it and mass-embedded into the subjects that need it instead of being the slightly separate topic, just a different, you know, holistic approach to it, which gives you a much better idea of why I’m bothering to learn this.

You know, I did Latin at school. Well, not for long. I got thrown out of Latin classes. You know, which I’m not proud of. It’s not my proudest moment. But, you know, it was that, so why am I learning Latin? What’s the point to that? You know, and I think maths can sometimes suffer from the same thing. Unless you’re going to be a mathematician or a scientist, so many times people say, so where am I gonna use that? What good is that to me? That means it needs to be practical.

Claer Barrett
With around a million gig-economy, self-employed workers, around 5mn SMEs, small and medium enterprises in the UK, I mean, do you think we should be doing a better job of teaching business maths as part of maths?

Deborah Meaden
Um, I do think business is, it should be shown as a proper topic at school and must be part of that in the same way maths should be part, you know, if you’re gonna become a biologist you’re gonna need to do the numbers, you know. So I definitely think that, you know, just fundamental stuff like, you know, what’s a balance sheet? It sounds really complicated. It is really, really simple. It’s just adding up and taking away. It’s as simple as that. So, you know, demystifying it, I think, would be really important. I think that would encourage more people to think that they could go into business.

Claer Barrett
And grow them.

Deborah Meaden
Absolutely. Business is actually quite simple. It’s not easy. And there’s a difference. You know, it’s hard work and it can be, you know, it can be risky, but it’s actually quite simple. The fundaments of business. It’s funny, when I wrote this book, it was a wonderful exercise for me because it made me simplify stuff. You know, take all of this stuff that over life you just grow in, you overcomplicate, add layers and layers and layers and try to talk about it, you know, to six- to nine-year-olds, getting down to the thing that actually matters, it was a brilliant exercise for me.

Claer Barrett
Now, finally we come on to the subjects of side hustles and starting your own business. And we know that lots of listeners on Money Clinic maybe have a dream of starting a business or running their own business one day, and in the meantime, they might have a side hustle that they’re hoping to grow into one. But as somebody who started countless businesses, grown countless businesses, what would be your advice to those listeners?

Deborah Meaden
Actually, it’s a really good question because I got a lot of people saying, do I give up my job now? You know, when do I give up my job? I’ve got this thing going on. And it’s a very difficult one for me to answer in that because you had to know so much about the life somebody is living. So a single person in a job that they’re not really enjoying an awful lot. You know, they found this little thing that might be going quite well. It gets to the point where you think, well, I think I might have a business here. You know, I think it might be able to support me, can probably take an awful lot more risk than somebody who’s got a young family. Maybe they’ve got a new baby, they’ve got a really well-paid job. Even if their business is doing twice as well as the single person they might think, actually, now isn’t my moment. So I think, you know, timing is all important.

And just to remember to look around the whole piece, understanding what it actually means to run that business, what it would take, what energy it would take to run that business, and to remember the risks that were involved in that. And I’m not putting people off because, you know, it’s given me a wonderful life. It’s created the best of times for me. So I would, you know, I want everyone to do it. I want everybody to have a brilliant time. But timing is very, very important. And you’ve got lots of timing levers. You’ve got, is it the right time for the side hustle, to scale it up? Is the economy sort of faltering a little bit? And is my personal situation, is the timing right on that? And there will be a sweet spot in there. You know, it won’t all be perfect, but there will be a sweet spot that all of the indicators come together to say, OK, now’s the moment.

Claer Barrett
Well, thank you very much, Deborah Meaden. We have very much enjoyed our podcasting moment with you. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you.

Deborah Meaden
Me too. Thank you for having me on.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Claer Barrett
Well, that’s it for Money Clinic this week with me, Claer Barrett. And we hope you found this episode useful. If you did, spread the word and leave us a review. We’re always looking to chat with people about their money issues for the show, so if you’re interested in being part of a future episode, then email us: money@ft.com is our email address. You can also follow me on Instagram. I’m @ClaerB.

Money Clinic was produced by Philippa Goodrich. Sound design was by Breen Turner and our editor is Manuela Saragosa. You heard original tunes this week by Metaphor Music. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. And finally, our usual disclaimer: the Money Clinic podcast is a general discussion around financial topics and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you’ll need to speak to an independent financial adviser. That’s all the small print for now. See you back here next week. Goodbye.