Episode 4 Peter Jones Meets...

Big business is tough.

But I believe there are certain factors that give us all

a fighting chance of turning our dreams of success into reality.

I'm on a mission to get inside the minds of some of Britain's

most successful entrepreneurs

and find out how they made it.

I don't remember really being content. Enough is never enough.

I'll be studying their personalities

just as hard as their business models.

I didn't know my father from the age of two.

In a bid to unearth what drives these diverse characters,

I'll also be asking some difficult questions.

We run a pretty tight ship.

Is it tight or is it... Is it controlling?

And I'll be finding out how they survived

when they faced their biggest challenges.

-You were in sinking sand as a business?

-Totally.

And now you're going to a point

where you are about to lose everything you've worked for

-your entire life?

-Yeah.

My goal is to find out if it's our individual DNA

that controls our destiny or whether there's a blueprint for success.

-Judy, nice to see you.

-Peter, hi.

Tonight I'm digging into two businesses whose owners

have battled through extreme personal and financial challenges.

I'll be meeting Judy Naake,

whose pursuit of success nearly cost her her life.

I was so busy and I'd had this lump in my breast...

So you realised you had a lump?

Well, yeah. But then...

-And you did nothing about it?

-No.

And John Timpson, whose 150-year-old family business

has survived, despite a bitter boardroom battle.

-'My father was fired.'

-'Fired from the business?'

He was even told he had to leave his car in the car park.

And he wasn't allowed to visit a shop, other than as a customer.

Today I'm en route to Nottingham

for a meeting with Judy Naake, once the queen of fake tan.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you, too, Peter. Come on through.

'Judy got the European rights to sell St Tropez

'and turned it into a multi-million pound success.'

At its height, her business was turning over £17 million a year

and making profits of 7.5 million annually.

The brand meant everything to me. It was my baby, you know, it really was.

But there is a time to let it go.

And there's a time to say,

"Enough, let someone else run with the ball."

It wasn't just profits that made Judy rich.

In 2006 she sold up,

netting a piece of a deal worth a reported £70 million.

My goal is to uncover the secret to Judy's success

and her reasons for selling up.

I think it's a great finish, very fine.

But Judy hasn't hung up her entrepreneurial gloves just yet.

Before getting my teeth into her past,

I wanted to explore her present -

a professional make-up applicator modified for the mass market.

Is this your new...

Yes, yes, it certainly is. And so far...

Because St Tropez is really what you're regarded for.

-That's right.

-And now you're onto this.

Yes. But our latest venture is this new one.

Now, you need a lot of imagination for this, Peter,

because this is the very first prototype, OK.

OK.

-Just imagine.

-No, I'll bear with it.

So it's going to look like that and then it'll have a mirror,

white LED lights.

six eye shadows which will fit in there perfectly.

-And then we have an airbrush.

-You airbrush yourself?

-You airbrush yourself. So you've got your mirror there...

-At home?

-Yes.

So I reckon that's going to be a real winner.

And that, hopefully, will launch us into the big departmental stores.

And is this the... Is this your St Tropez Mark 2?

I hope so. I certainly hope so.

It was fairly lucky to find Judy in Nottingham.

The reality is that nowadays she spends a lot of her time

at her villa in Tuscany.

It's great to be at this point in my life with money. Money helps a lot.

What... Money doesn't make you happy, certainly not.

But what it does do is give you choices.

You can choose where you want to be and what you want to do

and if you don't want to do it, you don't have to.

But to earn her millions, Judy's worked really hard.

It's funny - they always say

the people who work hardest are the luckiest.

And that is absolutely true.

But it comes at a price, to be honest.

Chasing the trappings of success almost cost Judy her life.

I never valued my own time or my own health.

Sometimes, the bad times are really the best times

because it makes you rethink.

When I'm out here, I just feel totally at peace.

I'm intrigued by Judy's story

and desperate to discover how selling a simple self-tanning lotion

was make and nearly break for this remarkable entrepreneur.

To meet the boss of the next business I'll be exploring

meant travelling further north to Manchester.

The Timpson name has been a fixture on the nation's high streets

since 1865.

Today the company owns 960 shops and turns over £160 million a year.

The company's first store was established by the great-grandfather

of current chairman, John Timpson.

-John.

-Hi.

-Hi.

-Hi, Peter. Welcome to Timpson House.

Thank you very much.

-This is the HQ?

-Er, we don't call it... We don't have an HQ.

This is Timpson House, as I called it, because this is here to support the business,

not to tell the business what to do.

I mean, we wouldn't have a business

if it wasn't for the people out there who cut keys, repair shoes,

and our photo business. It's all about doing things out there.

So the whole idea of this place

is to support them and make their life easy out in the shops.

I'm looking forward to seeing the business.

-Are you going to show me around?

-Come along. Yep.

You might expect a family-run company steeped in history

to be owned and run by a business dinosaur.

But within minutes of meeting John,

I sensed there was something different about the way he ran things.

The fact that we've always had Timpson on the high street

since 1860, there's part of that that sets a standard

that you want to keep up.

On the other hand, you've got to keep changing,

you've got to bring it up-to-date, and you bring it up-to-date

by putting your own character to it, putting your own...

And each generation should do that.

To survive in business for so long is a remarkable test of any company's mettle.

And it's clear that if I'm going to unravel John's business ethos,

I'll need to delve deep into his company's history.

And what's this area?

Archives.

-This looks like Memorabilia City.

-It is. Now...

I just think the history is so important

and I wouldn't want to lose all this stuff.

Odd little bits from the past.

They've got lessons from them and reminders

as to what things were like, and quite often

you meet the same problem that you had many years ago.

Of course, with me, that goes over 52 years.

Just looking at this, I can see,

I'm thinking that history, to you, is clearly very important.

This, I suppose, represents what experience I've got.

-Is that a young you?

-That's young me, yeah.

-With your father?

With my father. And...at that time my job was to buy all the women's shoes for...

It was a shoe-shop business, mainly. We just had...

Shoe repairs was a lot smaller part of it.

So I was involved with the retail business.

First of all, I started as a shop assistant.

But by that time when that picture was taken, I was the shoe buyer.

70-year-old John has been involved in the family business for 50 years.

What does the business mean to me?

It's still a source of great pleasure when we open a new shop

and it does very well, or I go to a shop that's absolutely fantastic

or I meet someone new who I've not met before.

It still gives me just as much pleasure as

the time when I served my first customer when I started in 1960.

Four yellows and one pink one.

I know. I knew you were coming.

Yeah.

As well as shoe-repair and key-cutting stores,

the Timpson Group owns and operates a locksmith business,

specialist watch-repair shops

and two photo-processing companies.

Running such a large organisation means John is rarely seen behind his desk.

I visit a lot of shops because it's a way of keeping in touch

with the business and connecting with everyone else,

but also, actually, it's the way to find out about the business.

I suppose I've always liked doing things my way.

I discovered years and years ago

that the only way to give great customer service

is to let the person who serves the customer do it their way.

Give them the freedom and trust them to get on with it.

John's energy and enthusiasm for his business is remarkable,

but I want to discover where his motivation comes from

and just how many ghosts of the company's past

still haunt its present.

I really learned about business by what happened in the business.

And who owns all of the company? Are there different shareholders?

No, it's basically my business, it's our family...

Call it a family business, but we've got 100% of the shares.

-So you own 100% of it?

-Absolutely.

-Wow.

How have you been able to do that since...

Long story.

Because I had a lot of bad luck which turned into,

in the end, quite good luck.

I tell you, I'm going to be very intrigued to find out more about that.

-OK.

-A bit later. That's very intriguing.

'I was looking forward to delving into Timpson's turbulent history.'

But first it was time to find out

how and why Judy started out with her self-tanning lotion.

So, Judy, St Tropez... How on earth did you discover St Tropez?

Well, it was... I wouldn't say it was an accident

but it was a product that was offered to me.

I'd been in the beauty business for years and

someone I know said, "Judy, I've got this fake tan. Are you interested?"

I said, "No, I'm not bothered, I've got fake tans."

He said, "Well, this one's aloe vera."

I said, "If it's aloe vera, I'll have a look at it."

So I read the instructions on the bottle

and I just slapped it on my legs and I thought,

"This is going to look like hell in the morning, and I'm glad."

And it was amazing.

It didn't have the smell and the tan looked fantastic.

The brainchild of an American couple, Robin and Tim Gibson,

St Tropez started life in sunny California in 1993.

Its ingredients included aloe vera,

a plant few other products were using.

At the same time, Judy was in the UK gaining a reputation

as an expert sales agent for some of the country's leading beauty brands.

In 1995, Judy and her business partner struck a deal

with the Gibsons that gave her exclusive rights to distribute

the tanning lotion to salons and spas in the UK and across Europe.

But simply having a licence is far from a guarantee of success.

It was up to Judy to sell her untried product

into a competitive market.

Really, self-tanning wasn't fashionable at all

until I came along

because people always thought it made you orange.

But St Tropez was different. And I showed people how to use it.

I started to do training schools

and I did mobile ones the length and breadth of the country

every Sunday and Monday for 18 weekends.

Wow.

And so I would pack up the van the night before,

make the sandwiches with my partner because it was...

I wanted to give them lunch

and it was cheaper than going to a supermarket.

They would pay £25 for the training course.

I would do an hour's product knowledge,

so they knew how to sell it, then I would demonstrate a tan...

-So they self-tanned each other when they were there?

-Yes.

So they knew how to sell it.

They had the stock cos they took it home with them.

And they had a tan.

So when the customer came in the next morning, they say,

"Wow, you look good. Where have you been?" "St Tropez."

Like it. Very, very nice.

Yeah. Yeah.

Really, though I say so myself,

I think I can take credit for the whole self-tanning market.

Judy certainly knows how to spin a line.

Having spotted a gap in the market,

she developed a unique way to make her new product popular.

In contrast, John Timpson's challenge

is to keep his long-established business moving forwards.

Here is what used to be the warehouse

and we've turned into...

-So this was a warehouse and you've turned it into offices?

-Yep.

So what's here?

OK, you can see, actually, a load of different departments just stood in this one space.

Where's your marketing department?

We don't have one.

My marketing is done by the people who serve our customers

out in the shops.

Every time a customer is served, that creates an impression,

hopefully good enough to say to someone else, "Come back."

-Where's HR?

-We don't call it HR.

It wouldn't surprise you to know that we don't use that term.

I'm starting to get a feeling that you don't like the names.

-Well...

-Because it typecasts...

-It's not the names.

Er, everyone decides what they want to be called

in terms of their job title.

And Gouy over there who runs what most people would call HR

wanted to be called People Support

because that's what he's there to do.

He's there to help people

who are running people within their section of the business.

-OK. So you do have HR, you just call it a different name.

-Yeah, but we don't...

A bit like you have an HQ and you call it Timpson House.

No, no, no. There's a good reason for not calling it HR,

because our People Support doesn't tell people the way...

It doesn't dominate the way we run the business.

They help us run the business the way we want to run it.

John calls his business style "upside-down management"

and his employees aren't staff, they're colleagues.

I'll be seeing how this works in his stores later,

but right now I wanted to ask John about his unusual office furniture

and hoped he wouldn't get the hump.

John, in the little bit of time I've got to know you already,

I'm a little bit surprised at the style of the place.

You mean, I'm too old and old-fashioned

to have designed something like that?

No, I wouldn't possibly go with the age thing.

You might well be right because this is James's...

James has really been the inspiration behind it.

This is James, your son?

James, my son, who is our chief executive

and really does all the day-to-day stuff.

So we started together.

We wanted to create something different.

You've got to make it fun.

I mean, you want people to enjoy coming to work.

I think James has created a very relaxed, friendly,

nice, buzzy atmosphere.

To learn that this was the handiwork of company CEO James Timpson

made me wonder what other influences John's son has had on the business,

and whether he was responsible for this piece of playground apparatus.

I noticed that you had the pole here. The old fireman's pole.

It is a fireman's pole. You've recognised it.

-Have you done it before?

-No, I've never done it

but I'm quite happy to... I'll support you.

We've got to have a go, haven't we?

Is this the right thing to do?

Grip with the thighs. That's it, perfect, perfect, perfect.

-This is good fun.

-Well, you could have another go.

-Come on.

-Well done.

It's one thing to slide down the greasy pole of business,

but climbing up it is very difficult.

This is one of my first orders at St Tropez.

-A long time ago, as you can see.

-That's all the boxes, how they came in?

-Yes.

In Judy's early days, she was selling primarily to professionals and salons.

She needed a breakthrough to get her product into the domestic market.

One came in the formidable form of Victoria Beckham.

You can imagine, I was terrified. I'd got my little suit on and off I went.

-Were you all St Tropez'd up yourself?

-I was, yes.

Well, I used to have one white leg and one brown leg in those days

because if I had two brown legs, people thought that it was real.

So I had to leave a white bit.

And so Victoria came along and I tanned her

and we'd run out of carrier bags

and I'd saved a nice Perspex one

that I'd got from a product launch I'd been to the night before.

So we popped the three bottles of St Tropez in this bag

and, I promise you, it was only cos it looked nice,

and she went out and the paps got her, and she was photographed.

What?

Yeah, and so it was incredible, but...

-Are you telling me you did that by accident?

-Absolutely.

-You must have planned it.

-No, I promise you. Because...

I'd had to sign a, you know, a privacy agreement.

-Wow, so you nearly fell out with the Beckhams?

-Yeah.

And I'd done nothing.

But anyway, obviously after that, we became, you know, good friends.

And then did that go stratospheric for you?

It did. It was phenomenal.

I can't tell you how much I must owe Victoria Beckham.

The phones rang off the hook night and day for six weeks.

It wasn't possible to get a phone call out.

We were packing night and day and my poor old dad, who was 80,

-I'd got him packing parcels.

-You'd got your dad packing?

-Yeah.

What did it go up to? What did it get up to a year?

Up to about six million.

Six million? Wow.

Yeah, yeah. It was phenomenal.

But I went from just me and a car to 140 staff.

'Judy clearly benefited from a bit of good fortune,

'but I'm a great believer that if you work hard, you can put yourself

'in a position to capitalise

'when Lady Luck, or Lady Beckham, comes calling.'

Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur businesswoman?

Do you see yourself as a saleswoman?

I think I just see myself as a saleswoman, really.

I don't know, what can I say?

You buy a product, you sell it and you make a profit.

And that's what I've always done.

You say this about yourself

but the reality is, I don't know, I see a quite serious entrepreneur there

on the basis of the fact that you didn't just take this product to market,

you thought about the branding, how to take it to market.

You thought about how to initiate all of the training that's required

to go and push this product.

Then you kept on in a relentless way that, let's be honest,

most people wouldn't be prepared to do.

It's going that extra mile to create this brand.

Yeah, it's all about going the extra mile, isn't it?

If you go that extra mile with client care, it means everything.

I think it's all about caring for the people you're doing business with.

That sounds corny, but I mean that, I think it's important.

Having propelled her product into the mass market,

Judy's next challenge was to stay on top.

But I was about to discover something in Judy's past that

threatened her business and, more importantly, her life.

Having met Timpson's chairman John, it was time for me

to catch up with his son James,

who's been the company's CEO for the past ten years.

James has invited me to Hertfordshire

where he's holding interviews for prospective employees.

It sounds straightforward, but today's candidates

currently reside here at The Mount,

a Category C, male-only prison.

So, James, what are we doing here?

Well, welcome to a prison.

We're here today to interview some candidates,

so, hopefully, I can find some superstars to come and work in my shops.

And is this something you do a lot?

OK, we started ten years ago

and just by pure accident I went round a prison on a visit

just to have a look around, really,

and the guy showing me around was really good. I really liked him.

So I slipped him my business card and said, "Give me a call when you're out."

And he did. And he's still with us and he's brilliant.

And so I thought I'd get a few more.

And, you know, I've had lots of highs and lows, lots of disaster stories,

lots of tears, lots of successes,

and we think it works for us.

Is it a publicity stunt?

No, it is not a publicity stunt.

Not many business bosses would stand here in front of a prison

saying, "I'm going to find people."

But I do it because I passionately believe that it's the right thing for my business.

and there are lots of good people here

that no-one else will give the opportunity to. So I'm getting the best.

-Shall we go in?

-Let's go for it. Let's go for it.

Timpson employs just over 2,600 people.

Of these, 134 are ex-offenders.

The company claims to be the country's biggest recruiter

of men and women who've served time.

Giving so many ex-offenders a second chance is not a policy

everyone will agree with.

And James was yet to convince me that this wasn't more about publicity

than public service.

Good morning, Brian. I'm James.

-Hi.

-This is Peter.

'I wanted to watch James and the candidates in action...'

Hi, James. I'm James.

'..and see for myself whether recruiting ex-offenders works for both of them.'

Pleased to meet you.

I've had a horrible life, unfortunately.

Been abused. Got into drugs, alcohol at an early age.

Just kept messing up in life.

So at its peak, how much was your drug addiction costing you a week?

£100, £200 a week.

And you couldn't afford that out of your salary, so you were selling drugs to pay for it?

That's right, yeah.

And so when was the last time you took drugs?

15 months ago.

And you're feeling that that's a different life and...

I'll never go back to it. This is my first prison sentence.

Um, I'll never come back. Never.

So, tell me about the jobs you've had.

I have had some good jobs. British Telecom, Virgin Media.

I've been a bus driver.

In the later stages, I couldn't get up for work

because of my drug addition.

So what's your plan? What's your dream?

I... To be honest, my dream is to have a secure job.

And what would it mean to you if you got a job with Timpson's?

It would mean the world to me, to be honest,

and for you to, like, trust me

and for me to have a criminal record, but...

what would be good is for me to, like,

be able to get up and go to work

and just get a normal life, like I said.

Just be responsible and to prove to you I can do well.

-Hmm.

-Cheers.

'The job on offer is decent,

'but had James spotted any potential in the candidates?'

Who, out of the three that you saw, who stood out you?

James, the first guy we interviewed, really liked him.

I thought he was bright.

Going to give him a job?

I will offer him a job, no problem.

And I think he will be a real success.

-I think he's... He's as good as they get, actually.

-What about Dave?

I thought Dave did really well. I'd be tempted to give him a go.

He really wanted this job and it was really important to him.

This was going to be the opportunity to turn his life around.

And what about Brian?

Because I felt that with Brian there was a little bit of a twinkle in your eye.

Yeah. I like to recruit people who understand money,

who understand about selling,

about serving customers,

about ordering things and selling things.

And the fact that he could make a lot of money selling drugs?

I know from experience that some of the best ex-offenders I've taken on

are the coke dealers.

They're the brightest, quickest, most commercial,

and they're the ones that make great cobblers.

Do you ever think, "It worries me a little bit.

"Will they go back to that old habit?"

One of the reasons why I interview them and I look at them in the eye

is to work out whether I believe they've changed.

But really it's a gut instinct.

Am I going to risk my reputation by picking this person

and hope that they're not going to let me down?

But the thing that I like about recruiting people from prison

is I know everything about them.

They tell me that they have done fraud,

whereas as I could recruit someone off the street

and I don't know what they've done

because they can often lie on their CV or just not choose to tell me. So it works.

Um, if you were...criticised for something you'd done wrong

in your early life and you never have the opportunity

to say sorry or, um, to have another go at something,

then it would be a pretty sorry waste of life.

I totally agree.

I think it could be quite clever recruitment,

because there's a feeling that they might owe you something.

And I wonder, is that tactical?

What I've actually found out is that those I recruit from prison

are generally much better than the average colleague

I'd recruit off the street,

because they don't have any other options.

That's why I'm here. I want good people to work in my business

because good people are good at serving customers -

puts money in the till, makes me money.

I can see that James enjoys turning coke dealers into cobblers

and he's convinced me that he believes his recruitment programme is good for business.

We've got Ivan coming to see us again.

But James and John can try new ideas, thanks to the fact

that theirs is a long-established business and they own 100% of it.

But that's not always been the case.

I knew that there was blood on this company's boardroom floor

and I was determined to find out more.

Mmm! Lovely.

In contrast, Judy's business was much younger

and her product completely new.

But she also grabbed every opportunity she spotted.

I wanted to know where she got her entrepreneurial ethos from,

so was taking her back to Nottingham city centre.

As a youngster, Judy worked here with her dad,

who owned and ran five high-street stores.

Did you learn how to run a business at school

or do you think that you learned all of that from your dad?

They taught you nothing like that at school, no.

I learned all that from Dad.

And that was the thing, I was always practical and doing things

because I always had Saturday jobs.

I used to go down to the shops at night.

So, yeah, business was the way I was brought up, really.

I didn't know anything else.

So you learned how to sell in his stores?

Yeah.

Little things that Dad used to tell me, you know,

like, "You never tell anybody what your margins are."

"You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."

-PETER LAUGHS

-Very good.

Yeah. All those things.

Is that where you got it from?

Yes, I think so. I think so, yes.

He was very busy. He was always working.

But he was always too busy to,

um, invoice them.

-That's not a good thing in business.

-It's not a good thing in business.

You need to remember to invoice the people...

I certainly learned that. He was too kind.

He would do a favour to anyone.

And... You know, he just...

would leave the invoicing so long that he left it too long

and then people didn't want to pay. So, yeah.

That was the sort of businessman he was. He was always working.

He was too busy to make money,

if that makes sense.

-Did that teach you something?

-It taught me a lot, yeah, absolutely.

Judy was four years old when her dad opened his first shop,

selling wallpaper, paint and hardware

here in Nottingham's West End Arcade.

This shop here was one of Dad's. That was a jewellery shop.

So that was the jeweller's shop?

'As well as a jeweller's, Judy's dad opened a florist's,

'fruit shop and a restaurant.'

So you literally can see the...

So we're here?

Yes, that's right, that's where we are.

There was a step in the middle at different levels, you see.

-What were your biggest memories from here?

-Biggest memories?

Well, I think playing with all the... straightening all the tins

and playing with the keys and then when a customer came in,

trying to sell them something.

-Did you try and sell them something?

-Yeah, of course I did.

That must be hard. Could you always...

Yeah, I loved it. Dad always said that. If he was here today

he would say, "She used to get these trays out and sell."

And I used to repair the jewellery as well.

-Did he encourage you to sell?

-Yes. Well, he couldn't keep me back!

What was your relationship like with your dad?

It was very good. We were very close, obviously.

But I always felt that I never was quite good enough.

He used to say I had a butterfly mind cos I never stuck to anything,

which was rich coming from him, really.

-Is that what he used to say?

-Yeah.

Because you used to flutter all over the place?

Because I wanted to do lots of things, you see.

What do you think was the biggest thing that rubbed off on you

that you got from your dad? If you had to pick one thing?

"You can do anything. You can have anything you want.

"You can be anything."

He used to say, "There's no such word as 'can't'."

And I still say that.

I haven't realised it's one of my sayings but I say,

"I'm not having that."

And I think that's it.

It's just a question of, "I'm not standing for that.

"You know, there must be a way round."

And I think if you have that attitude, you can't go wrong.

'Judy obviously learned some key business lessons from her dad.'

-He sounds a real character.

-He was a character, yes.

And it seems to have rubbed off...

-which is great.

-Maybe, a bit.

But I was going to discover that she took his strong work ethic

to a dangerous extreme.

Right, here's my office.

Back in Manchester, it was time to explore the turbulent Timpson history.

Five generations of the family have been involved in the business

since William Timpson established it in 1865.

-That's a historic one of me.

-Your father?

-That's my father.

-Grandfather.

That's my grandfather there. And then Great-grandpa is up there,

so all the generations that have run the business.

In 1929, founder William died

and in the same year Timpson became a public company.

John worked his way up,

joining his father on the board of directors in 1969.

But in 1972, John and his dad fell out with the rest of the board,

disagreeing on how to run the business

and tackle mounting competition.

Having only a 22% share of the company,

they were vulnerable in what became a bitter boardroom standoff.

What happened was that three of the directors called me in,

said, "Could we have a word?"

And they said, "While we're talking here,

"the others are upstairs asking your father to leave."

What?

And that was it. My father was fired.

Fired from the business...

He was even told he had to leave his car in the car park

and he wasn't allowed to visit a shop, other than as a customer.

It was quite nasty stuff.

That must have felt like he'd been...ousted.

It just took a whole bit out of his life.

I mean, you know, it was the family business created by HIS grandfather

and developed by his father that suddenly had disappeared.

How has that shaped the way that you do business today?

It certainly taught me a lot about what you have to do

to control a business.

The difference between 0 and 50% of shareholding

and between 50 and 100%.

But also it taught me always to try and make sure

that no-one can tell me what to do.

After the boardroom coup,

Timpson was taken over by a large retail group

and fell out of the family's hands.

But by 1975 the company was in trouble

and John was asked to return to Timpson as managing director.

John got his part of the business back on track,

but the group continued to struggle.

Eventually, though,

John got an opportunity to stage a management buyout.

This is 1982. I'd never heard of a management buyout.

Very few people had in those days.

How did you raise the money?

I sold... on a leaseback arrangement...

£30 million worth of freeholds

that my grandfather had bought in the 1930s

and were attached to this business. So I used...

Used the property...

Used the property, and, obviously, geared up the leases,

basically to pay for the business.

And then, obviously,

I remembered the boardroom row.

And I made absolutely certain, however it got carved up,

I got more than 50%.

Er, and it was a family business again.

John had bought the company back into his family's hands

but that wasn't the end of his battle.

He now needed to change the way it did business.

I got to the stage where I realised I couldn't open another shoe shop and make money out of it.

I came to the...

This was probably the most emotional decision I had to take,

that we had to sell the shoe shops.

So I suddenly, having done all this magic thing,

of buying it back, making it a family business,

the thing that my great-grandfather had started, I then had to sell it,

which we were able to do, which was the right thing to do,

now I can detach myself.

I kept telling myself it wasn't,

because emotionally it wasn't the right thing.

But I kept the shoe-repair bit and then, four years later,

I bought all the other shareholders or directors out of their shares

by mortgaging the house

and I've been a 100% owner of the business ever since 1991.

Going forward, owning 100%...

Will you ever sell again?

The last thing I want is...

The whole way we run our business depends on us

being able to do it our way. I don't want to do it anyone else's way.

I don't want anyone else telling us what to do.

That means no shareholders and it means no borrowings from the bank, either.

And then they ask, "Well, what's your exit?" And...

I think they're quite shocked when I say, "I'm going to die."

-So your exit is your coffin?

-Yeah, as far as the business is concerned.

But that's not the exit for the business

because the business carries on

as a family business

because that's got to be...

Going back to what happened in the boardroom,

what happened with my great-grandfather,

the challenge is not only to create a business which we're proud of,

but also a business that can go through the generations.

It's a remarkable story,

one that's helped me understand why John's determined

that his company's history is never forgotten.

Owning all of the business means that John and James can now run it the way that they want to.

But I still have questions about the company's future

and whether it can survive in a competitive environment.

I'd already delved into Judy's business history,

so it was time to talk about the crisis she'd faced in her personal life.

Judy had invited me to Maggie's cancer care centre in Nottingham,

an institution extremely close to her heart.

So, Judy, what does this place mean to you

and how did you come to get involved?

I became involved some time ago

because I was diagnosed with breast cancer in October '02

and then October '03.

I love the way you just sort of almost...

smiley, skirt over the fact that in 2002 you had cancer.

Well...

What to tell?

I mean, I hadn't been feeling well for quite a while, actually.

But because I was working so hard - it was at the height of St Tropez...

And so I was so busy and I'd had this lump in my breast

-and I said, "Well, you know..."

-So you realised you had a lump?

Well, yeah. But then...

-And you did nothing about it?

-No.

No. How stupid could I be? But, you know...

And how bad was it?

It was as bad as it gets because it was grade four.

And then the following year...

In the July, I was fine.

By the October it was grade four again in the other breast.

That was a bit scary. Didn't like that one.

-Was it because you were too busy working?

-I was too busy working.

I was too busy to listen to my body.

So you had to go through the whole chemotherapy?

I had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy the first time.

And then the second time a year later I had to have another mastectomy.

-And all clear now?

-Yes. Hmm.

-How lucky am I!

-So you really did push it to the limit, didn't you?

Absolutely. And, in fact, my oncologist, who I know quite well now

because of Maggie's,

he said to me less than a year ago,

"We didn't think you'd make it," you know.

-Really?

-Yeah. So, you know,

and you realise... Because I didn't dare ask what grade four was

until I'd come out of the first one and I said, "What's grade five?"

And they said, "Well, Judy, there isn't one."

-Wow.

-"Four is as bad as it can get."

Hmm. It was a grim time.

And at what point did you decide to sell the business?

Was this the main reason to say, "Get out"?

It was the catalyst. Yes, it was. There was competition coming along.

And you know that moment that when you're really at the top

but people are snapping at your heels, and it's going to get harder.

So, the timing was right financially to sell out.

I'd taken the business as far as I possibly could within the UK.

And it wasn't possible for me to go out to do

the rest of the world or the rest of Europe, which it required.

And then after this illness, it just was ridiculous and, you know,

life's not a rehearsal and you're a long time dead.

Between 1995 and 2006, Judy had gone from travelling saleswoman

to head of an operation employing 140 people

and turning over £17 million a year.

But after being diagnosed with cancer twice,

Judy made the life-changing decision to sell up.

With Judy selling up, the product's American owners also opted out

and sold St Tropez to a private equity firm

for a reported £70 million.

How did you then handle the negotiations?

How did you deal with the sale of the business?

Well, I think, to be truthful, it was my business partner

that did most of the negotiation

because I was really poorly at the time.

But, of course, I liked to read all the documents

and read all the small print, so I used to do that,

but the stressful stuff, I'm sure I didn't know a lot about.

-And in terms of the characters that you were negotiating with...

-Yes.

How did that dynamic work? Because you... They were Jehovah's Witnesses.

That's right.

And because they were Jehovah's Witnesses, it meant that ethics

were very important, so they couldn't screw anyone over in business.

So what we did because, remember, we only had the distribution,

so, really, we had nothing to sell.

So they could have just sold it on

and we would have still been distributors and had nothing.

But they said, "No, we split everything straight down the middle,

"50-50,

"between UK and America,"

which was very fair.

-And did it put things into perspective...

-Absolutely.

You were clearly very relentless, weren't you?

Yeah, I was. I was.

Whatever you did, you didn't do things in small measure, did you?

No. It absolutely put things in perspective

and what I don't...

I try not to have in my life now is stress. I just don't want it.

-So I just sort it.

-So stress, conflict...

It's not worth it.

Because at the end of the day, it blows up,

it blows back down and it all goes on the same, doesn't it?

Judy's been incredibly lucky.

St Tropez's American owners were unusually generous

to split the proceeds from the company's sale.

And surviving cancer, despite pushing herself to the limit,

is remarkable.

John Timpson doesn't have to answer to anyone else

when it comes to running the business.

Thanks to lessons he's learnt from history,

he owns 100% of his company and can do whatever he likes to keep it competitive.

Earlier, he'd stressed that his staff, or,

'as he calls them, colleagues,

'were more important than him and his team at the company's Manchester base.'

-John, how are you?

-Very good to see you.

-Good to see you. This is it?

Amongst other benefits, he also gives these colleagues

their birthdays off and lets them use the company's holiday homes.

I wanted to find out if all of these things were just management gimmicks

or a genuinely fresh approach to running a business.

You've got this philosophy about running a business

-and you call it "upside-down management".

-That's right.

What's that all about? Why? Is it a bit of a marketing...

No, it's not. It started for a really very good reason.

It's very clear in our business, to be the best at what we do,

to compete with anyone else doing what we do,

we had to be very good at what we do

and very good at looking after customers.

If you want to give really fantastic service,

the way to do it is to give the people who serve the customers,

the colleagues in the branch, the freedom to do it their way.

They can settle the complaints and they can even change prices,

they can do whatever is right to satisfy that customer.

OK.

But in reality it's just a little bit of a quirky name, then?

Because the reality is, in modern-day business,

people in stores, managers, they take responsibility, don't they?

They take responsibility for the stock.

-If they need to move stock out...

-I doubt it.

I think they do. I know a lot of retailers that do take responsibility

of the stock they've got out there. They're pushed by their branches...

The major difference between what happens in our shops

and most multiples on the high street

is our colleagues actually order their own stock.

It makes a big difference to us

because I believe that our colleagues

understand their business much better than head office

and certainly much better than the computer at head office.

The technology actually get in the way of the business.

What about the most important technology, which is

reporting your sales numbers and all the money you're making?

No, I don't think that... You might think that's important,

but there's no computer connection between our tills and head office.

Our till is an adding machine on the top and a drawer on the bottom.

Simple as that.

You're clearly going to be tracking sales numbers, you're going

to be focusing the business against an operating budget

or an annual operating plan.

-No?

-Not really bothered about budgets, to be honest.

I look against... Last year is a much better measure. Budgets...

We leave our finance department...

We have a budget, but that's really between them and the bank.

You really are working in the 1920s, then?

I think I'm probably in the 2020s-plus

because it's working so well for us. I'm interested in forecasts.

I want to know what's happening to the cash,

what the forecast for the business is going to be.

But budgets are not the same as forecasts.

I don't take...much notice of what best practice is meant to be.

What everyone else thinks...

I'm going to run the business the way I want to run the business.

-I've kind of realised. I got that feeling.

-Yeah.

John and I were poles apart on how to monitor the finances of the business.

But he made around £16 million worth of profit last year,

so at least we DID agree on one thing.

I'm pleased to see that you haven't run an upside-down business policy

on the way that you make money.

John seems to shrug off the pressure of running a big family business,

but I couldn't help feeling that he doesn't always find it easy.

Back in Nottingham, it was time to catch up with Judy and her son Lloyd.

Come and meet my son Lloyd, Peter.

-This is Lloyd?

-This is Lloyd.

-Hi. Peter, good to meet you.

-How are you?

-I'm very well, thank you.

'Lloyd is in charge of Judy's latest make-up venture.

'I wondered whether she's passed any entrepreneurial genes

'on to Lloyd and whether they always saw eye to eye.'

So your mum did well with St Tropez.

I'm trying to copy everything that she's done, really. Um...

-Literally?

-Literally, yeah, exactly.

There's no point in rewriting the book.

-If she can make all this money, you may as well...

-I saw how she did it,

so there's no reason why it can't be done again.

Are you doing anything different to put your little slant on it?

Well... I think probably the difference between myself

and my mother is that this one can sell snow to the Eskimos.

She's never happier than when she's selling.

In fact, I've seen people come in for an interview for a job with her

and she's the one that does the selling.

-Are you the boss or is she the boss?

-Well, I'm not sure what she'd say.

-I'd say I'm the boss, but maybe I pretend to be the boss.

-Who's the boss?

He definitely is the boss. He's got to make his own mistakes. But...

Do you let him?

Yeah, sometimes.

But it's a difficult one because it's his business, you know,

it really is his. And it's no good if I keep sticking my nose in.

It's not fair.

Judy, how much have you put into this business so far?

I think about half a million.

But I'm not sure exactly, but about that.

Wow. Good mum to have, huh?

Yeah, fantastic. I'm very lucky.

But I'll always know, even if, WHEN I succeed, hopefully,

it'll be because she gave me a step up.

I've always had that safety net underneath.

If I can't pay the staff wages...

I can pick the phone up and say, "Can you help me out? I can't pay the staff's wages."

-"Mum, lend us a fiver."

-Yeah. Absolutely.

-But...

-Everybody needs that little bit of luck.

I think so. It's great, isn't it? I think that I can do that for him.

Honestly, it's far easier to borrow a large chunk of money off her than a fiver.

If you borrow a fiver off her, it's the hardest thing in the world.

You spend ten minutes trying to get it out of her

and justify why you need this five pounds,

but if you need a big chunk of money she's great.

-It's business, isn't it?

-I'm really pleased you told me that!

-We should have a business chat later.

-We should.

-I like it!

In financial terms, Judy has given Lloyd a healthy,

but sensible head start.

But her biggest assets are the lessons she's learnt

from her dad, and those from her own business past.

As well as the stress of running a big business,

John Timpson has the weight of family history to manage.

I wondered how he handles pressure.

I was about to get a revealing insight from his wife of 45 years, Alex.

What first attracted you to John?

Well, um, not very much, really.

Was it love at first sight?

Yeah, it must have been, sort of, vaguely. I mean...

I've never asked you that question.

No, but you've just been asked it. Certainly...

Um, no.

No. For me, it was something that grew.

When John was going through his... Cos you have had tough times.

We have had tough times, yes.

Well, I mean, you've talked about your stress, have you?

No, I haven't talked about that.

-Well, John...

-He hasn't prised that out of me.

No. Well, I'm going to tell you. John suffers with stress,

you know, and sometimes he can be really quite unwell.

Basically, you... You either go...

You suddenly find you're going through a period of being

very tensed up or very miserable. One or the other.

And you can't... You don't want to...

You stop doing things, don't you?

You don't want to go out, you don't want to meet people.

So you can't function in the same sort of way.

But everything is turning over in your mind all the time.

But... But you always feel that you're useless,

you've never done anything that's any good.

You actually find yourself looking at other people...on television...

It's a form of depression.

-You say, "I wish I was like them, because they're so capable."

-Yeah.

You worry about things that don't matter.

Have you ever felt suicidal...

-No.

-..as a result of...

-No. I've never got that far.

But, I mean, it... It is a...

It's the first question you're asked when you go to the doctor.

Tips, for anyone who gets in that situation -

first, talk about it.

I mean, this is another area where Alex has given great, fantastic...

I've talked to Alex, talked to Christine, my PA,

cos she's got to live with me more than most.

And go to the doctor. And do what they say.

John's personal revelation is brave.

But having someone like Alex at his side

has helped him get through the stressful periods

when he's feeling the strain most.

Over the course of their marriage,

John and Alex have had three children of their own,

adopted two and fostered over 90 others.

The Timpsons also dedicate time, advice

and raise funds for an adoption charity.

There are far too many takers in this world. We need to have more givers.

It really used to... I get a buzz from it.

I used to get a real buzz,

you know, knowing that I'd hopefully done something really well.

I can't tell you how refreshing that is in a pretty capitalist society.

It's nice to meet people that do that.

It shows it's possible to do that

as well as have a very successful business.

-Absolutely.

-You can be nice and make money.

I mean, it has added an awful lot to the business as well as...

By bringing so many people into our lives,

I've learnt a lot about people generally,

people I probably wouldn't have met in the same sort of way.

And, therefore, I mean, I've learnt from that,

probably more than anything, how important it is

for us to be available to help people,

not just in work and do a better job at work,

but if we can help them with the rest of their life,

that makes a difference to how they perform at work.

I can see now that John's determination

to make sure the people working in his shops are central to the business

is founded upon his history of caring for and understanding others.

But he's not just being kind.

He sees it as a clear business advantage.

As well as her business with Lloyd,

Judy currently has investments in a range of skincare products,

a TV company and a range of baby wear.

For our final conversation, I wanted to know why,

having become a millionaire

and survived a life-threatening health scare,

she hasn't simply retired.

One of the things that you said when we were talking before

was that you really took it right to the limit

and it nearly cost you your life.

And now you wanted to sort of relax, de-stress.

And now it seems like you're right back in the middle of it all again.

Yeah, cos I've done that, haven't I?

I've had the relaxing time.

I just love to work.

I love the thrill of business. I...

I can't help myself. If I'm not doing business, what will I be doing?

I can't lie on the beach all day, can I?

Or, you know, be a lady that lunches.

Not all the time, anyway!

-It's in you. Is that what you're saying?

-It absolutely is.

-You just can't stop.

-I can't, no.

I think it keeps me young, you know, I just love it.

Where do you see Lloyd in five years' time?

Well, I hope by then he'll be fully self-sufficient

and actually making money.

And what about if he comes to you in eight months

and says, "Mum...

"I was only ever really doing this for you

"cos I want to make you proud,"

what would you do?

What would I do?

Well, I'd probably say, "Give it to me and I'll run with the ball."

So you'd come back into the business?

Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?

That's sort of all I know, really.

Judy's a serial entrepreneur.

From her youth working with her dad

and taking the self-tanning market by storm

to today's company with her son,

she's shown that business is in her blood.

For my final meeting with John, I travelled back to Manchester

where he was relaxing away from the business.

So far, we'd discussed his company's past and present,

so it was time to tackle its future.

So, John, the business has been around for over 100 years now.

Yes.

What does the next 100 years...

-Well, 100 is too far...

-What does the future hold?

One thing's certain - it won't be the same.

Because the businesses that have disappeared,

and we've seen enough disappearing on the high street recently,

almost all of them, they haven't changed,

they haven't kept up-to-date.

You have to keep changing your business.

You never, ever can be satisfied.

I think every entrepreneur, to be successful,

has got to be pretty paranoid.

Hmm.

And if you're not worried, if you're not thinking,

"What can I do better?"

then sooner or later, it's going to get worse.

But isn't that time...

I'll throw this out there, then - it's a good point.

Isn't that time looming?

-You can buy shoes today for £12, £15...

-That's been...

£25.

If your shoes then wear out,

don't you throw them away now rather than come to you?

That's been the case for a very long time,

that there's a big chunk of the market that actually sells shoes

about the same price as we repair them.

But the market which IS available to us actually has got bigger.

It surprised me.

But, I mean, the business that we have now

doesn't rely on shoe repairs.

In fact, key cutting is equally...

Just about the same turnover as shoe repairs

and we've got a fast-growing watch-repair business.

-So...

-But it's interesting timing, isn't it,

because you've got a photographic business now?

You're hearing more and more pressure on the high street.

How are you going to survive?

I suppose the biggest...

It's not diversification, but probably the biggest change

that's happening to our business at the moment

is that most of our new shops are off the high street

and are connected to supermarkets.

Because it must be better to continue

to do what you know well and do it better

than to start to think you're going to be clever enough

to run someone else's business.

And I don't think you're going to retire,

I think you're going to carry on, but...

Is James the right man to carry on the legacy?

I would think that we are unbelievably lucky.

What do we have? We had 300 and something shops when he took it on.

We're making profits of somewhere around three million.

Er, we're now...

We will make at the equivalent level 16 million this year.

And... we'll get through 1,000 shops.

I guess, you know,

probably the best bit of upside-down management that I've done...

..is handing over to James.

If you really did take a full-on back seat,

what's the biggest mistake James could make in running the business?

The biggest risk is that we lose the culture,

that we stop doing the things, what we call the magic dust,

that really make the difference -

the birthdays off and the holiday homes,

and the upside-down management thing.

If you hired a manager from outside, he wouldn't do it that way.

And I think the business would lose an awful lot very quickly

if it was run in a more conventional sort of way.

John and Judy have both achieved success

because they've done things their own way.

Their individual approaches to business were shaped

as they built on the lessons learnt from their fathers and grandfathers.

I always knew that I was going to be successful at something.

Because my father always said, "Judy, you can do anything if you want.

"There's no such word as 'can't'."

So, of course, for me, that was... I took that as gospel.

Today John and Judy are passing their skills on to their children.

James isn't like me.

If you ask people in the business, they'll recognise that.

He's a lot quicker and tougher and...

and also, I mean, more ambitious than I ever was.

And John knows that to secure success in the future,

you have to respect the next generation.

I want him to learn the lessons from what I got wrong

and hopefully learn some of the things I got right,

but then I'd want him to do it his way

because if a family business is going to survive,

it's got to have someone in each generation

who's really got it in their own right.

And after taking things to an extreme,

Judy's learnt that success shouldn't be achieved at any cost.

Would I change any thing about my journey? No, not really. Only...

abusing my own body, I think.

I'm very happy with what I've got.

I've got my son, I've got a nice home.

I have, touch wood, my health.

What more can a girl want?

Over the course of this series,

I've met PR-savvy plumbers and market traders

who've made money when the odds seemed stacked against them.

I've spent time with businessmen and women

with strong ethics and values,

as well as entrepreneurs, who have learnt the secrets of success the hard way.

If you want to hear more from these inspiring individuals, go to...

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd