Saira Khan

What appealed to you about Beat the Boss, where school children get to compete against entrepreneurs in designing new products?

I liked the idea of it because it was about children in business. It was an opportunity for those kids who liked programmes like The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den, to see how they got on with developing an idea of their own.

What it’s proved to me is that if you give children the freedom to come up with an idea, they think really big, and very creatively, because they’re not constrained by the fear that it won’t work.

Do you think it will change people’s perceptions of young people’s attitudes to enterprise?

I hope so. Even I had certain expectations about what these children could do, and was expecting them to be limited in some way, but they surpassed those tenfold. It’s just been an amazing experience and a real eye-opener. I think it also demonstrates that to be in business, you don’t have to be an adult. You can start at a very young age and enjoy it.

What else are you doing at the moment?

I’ve got a self-development book out called Push for Success [Vermilion, £9.99], and in it I use my life journey to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter what your background is or what education you have – although education is important – you really can overcome any disadvantages, and you can be whoever you want to be.

However, there are certain skills and attitudes you have to have, and you have to be prepared to put in hard work; you cannot achieve anything without hard work. It’s not a business book, but it’s about giving people the foundations to think, yes, I can go out there and do what I want to do.

What kind of response have you had?

I’ve had a terrific response, again from a very young audience, people phoning up and saying, ‘I read your book and I got the job!’ I give tips about how to do a good CV, what you should be doing at an interview, that kind of thing.

It’s done really well, and that was a really big milestone for me, because once you’ve got a book, I think people start respecting you and you’re more of an expert in your field.

Would you say your main focus is on encouraging young people to get where they want to be?

Completely. I think my whole brand image is about motivation and influencing, and saying you can do whatever you want to do – that’s my message.

You can overcome any disadvantage, but you have got to be prepared to analyse who you are, understand that you’ve got to be passionate, have self belief, and take risks; and learn from other people and cultures, because that’s the way the world is moving – you’ve got to be in touch with what’s going on.

Our campaign wants to make it easier for young people to make their ideas happen; how important do you think this is?

I think at a young age it’s very important for kids to understand the value of money. There is a danger at the moment with the kind of world that we live in that people think, life’s just about getting on the telly and being a celebrity and then you earn loads of money.

I grew up in quite a humble background, and money was important, as was understanding that my mum had to work very long hours to come back to us with actually not that much, and making it last.

And also, if you do want to make your idea happen, you have to compromise in the early days. You can’t be expected to wear all the brands you like, do all the things you want, and expect to have money for a business; it just doesn’t work like that.

What advice would you give to a budding young entrepreneur?

I think the biggest thing that I would recommend is that young people go out and work formally first. I’m 35, and I would say I’m only just an entrepreneur now. So have the idea, yes, but you do have to learn skills.

You might be a great potential entrepreneur, and you might have a good idea, but what do you know about sales, marketing, buying, accounts, PR….? You will get all that training if you work for a corporate company.

Get your skills, and if you’re still very passionate about your idea, you can start thinking about it more in depth, and then I think you can become more successful when you do launch your idea.

I think one of the other problems is that if you start becoming an entrepreneur too early, you can’t identify with why your business isn’t doing well.

But I’d certainly recommend that if you’ve got an idea, do something like go to a market every Saturday, see how you could pitch up a stall, start selling things to your family and friends, talk about ideas, get two or three of you working on the same things; I encourage young people to do all of those sort of things all the time.

What kind of hurdles did you experience when you were trying to make your ideas happen [before The Apprentice, Saira was a sales consultant]?

I think the first thing was that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do! Secondly, I started out as a chartered town planner and I thought, oh, this isn’t really me – it was only when I landed a job through a friend of mine, in sales, that I thought ‘this is what I really love doing’ – I like people, I like the fact that I get a buzz from when they buy from me, I like developing relationships.

And then I did The Apprentice, and someone said, Saira, you’re a natural entrepreneur – but I didn’t know that I had all the skills until then. So you’re always developing yourself and learning.

A lot of the time people don’t know what they want to do until they’ve experienced a few jobs, and then they might think, actually, I really like doing this, this is what I was born to do.

Were there any hurdles facing you specifically as a woman?

I don’t want to sound negative, but for a woman there are still all sorts of hurdles. You have to think about your career, raising a family, going back to work…there are still a lot of conservative attitudes about women going on and succeeding.

And women haven’t had a lot of amazing role models; if you were asked to name five top business women, you might say, ‘Anita Roddick…. that lady who started Coffee Republic, er… the one who started toptable.co.uk…’ – you know the companies, but what are their names? We don’t celebrate them.

But that’s changing, hopefully, because I think there are more and more women who are setting up their own businesses because they’re saying, ‘look, I’ve had a baby, and I still want to work, but I don’t want to go back and work under those terms – I’m going to bring a new idea into play’… and a lot of it is related to children, and they’re doing very well.

What would you recommend needs addressing, in terms of women’s enterprise? Is there something the government, or society in general, could be doing to make it easier?

There is a big issue about inequality of pay; we all recognise it, but what are we going to do about it? To be honest, I don’t think it’s up to the government to get involved in stuff like that; it’s about women having the confidence to say ‘I want a pay rise’; it’s about women challenging, and working outside the stereotype and the norm, and working outside their comfort zone. And I think women are beginning to do that.

As more and more role models emerge, and women see that others like them are becoming successful and doing it on their own, they will be encouraged to do it themselves. They also need messages from the media that they can read and relate to – features in magazines and on television.

It is up to the individual to go out and do it, you’ve got to have belief, passion, and a can-do attitude. Women have just got to say, ‘look, I’m going to do it’ - and just go for it.