Of all the television programmes that have set out to promote entrepreneurism in the UK in recent years, it is perhaps The Apprentice that sits least comfortably with those who actually run their own businesses. The reason is simple: for all the entrepreneurial challenges that Sir Alan Sugar sets his would-be apprentices, they are ultimately competing to work for someone else, in a risk-free environment that guarantees them a nice fat salary cheque at the end of every month. It is a role that does not suit a genuine entrepreneur.
Sugar too seems to be aware of this apparent contradiction: when the time comes to make his final choice he has moved - ostensibly against all expectations - towards ‘safer' options that will fit in better with an established team and are unlikely to cause him too many headaches. That's almost certainly why Lee McQueen took this year's title ahead of the maverick Claire Young; and it's certainly why he rejected arguably the strongest candidate of any series to date when he chose Michelle Dewberry over the combustible Ruth Badger back in 2006.
There is an argument, therefore, that ‘the Badger' - as she has become known - had a narrow escape from an environment in which she was likely to stagnate and, partly boosted by the publicity that arose from the show, was freed to follow her natural entrepreneurial instinct and become the highly successful businesswoman we all recognised from the show. Badger is many things, but an apprentice she most certainly is not.
"I was gutted that I didn't win The Apprentice because I wanted to win the competition," she says. "But hindsight is a wonderful thing. If I had realised exactly what I was doing [by entering], I probably wouldn't have applied. An apprentice is someone that he can mould and I'd got too much experience. I think he made the right decision on the job but I think he made the wrong decision on the show."
Badger actually worked for Sugar for six months in the period between The Apprentice being filmed and broadcast. "He gave me a very new role where I got to manage staff and basically deliver," she recalls. "But I couldn't work for him going forward. I own my own business and that shows you what I'm like in business. I'm very driven and I'm always looking for the next thing and in a job within a business it's difficult to maintain that kind of ambition. He would have struggled as much as I would. When he gave me feedback about why I didn't win that is exactly what he said to me, and I agreed."
Destiny calling
Since the second series of The Apprentice was shown in 2006, Badger has found her true vocation. She owns her own consultancy and is part-owner of two further businesses - a financial consultancy and a brokerage - which she runs with Chris Smith, her former boss from the job she quit to go on The Apprentice, and which take up approximately 30% of her time.
Her main focus, though, is the Ruth Badger Consultancy, a Manchester-based firm which specialises in helping small businesses that are struggling by offering company MOTs and then devising strategies to boost sales and get the company performing to its maximum potential. It's a similar concept to the popular Badger Or Bust television series she filmed with Sky One in 2007, where she visited struggling businesses and attempted - with considerable success - to turn them around. That series further raised her media profile and led to a surge of enquiries for her services that still continues today.
Badger's aim is to make the companies she gets involved in as efficient as possible. "Productivity is simple," she says. "It's all about performance management. Most companies haven't got transparency around performance other than the profit and loss figures at the end of the month.
"The ‘best' sales staff are normally the ones that convert the least," she adds. "They might get sales worth £10,000 but they might get through 100 leads to get it. But if you've got someone who gets 10 leads, converts five of them and makes £5,000, I'll stick with that person because they're converting more business. The profitability comes with driving down the cost base while actually increasing the productivity."
The business also offers sales training, recruitment consultancy and starter campaigns for those with a decent idea looking to set up, although Badger has been forced to stop taking on new business in the area of ‘company rescue' after pledging not to take a penny from the business until it started making a profit.
"That was me putting my money where my mouth is because you don't need consultants going in and charging you a day rate when you're losing money," she says. "You need people who are going to help you and then take an equity stake in the business, which is what I do. I'm actually full up in that area and you can't turn around a business overnight so those are ongoing but we've had some fantastic success stories.
"What I like about my business is that I can be with a massive international retailer one day sorting out service issues and the sales process, and the next day I can be with a shoe shop in Bury that's turning over £10,000 a month," she adds.
There's no escaping what motivates Badger. "The one thing that makes me get up in the morning is money," she says. "The one thing that makes me realise who I am, what I am and what I do is money. I look at myself every morning in the mirror and I tell myself how much I have in the bank. I would stop to pick a pound up as much as I'd stop to pick a penny up and I will chase every single penny of revenue."
This approach appears to be paying handsome dividends. Badger once made herself the pledge to be a millionaire by the time she was 30 - a landmark she hit earlier this year - and, while she won't be drawn on how much she's now worth, she admits: "I'm doing very, very well. I've achieved every goal I've ever set myself."
This love of money - and the pursuit of wealth - is essential for any entrepreneur who wants to build a successful business, she believes. "True entrepreneurs get turned on by one thing and that's money," she says. "An entrepreneur will not let a single penny go past them so business owners who aren't focused on profit aren't entrepreneurs. People who run businesses that make a penny profit, for me, aren't entrepreneurs."
Prior experience
Badger admits she learned a lot from The Apprentice - "When I went in there I thought I couldn't sell," she says - but she was already a successful businesswoman by the time her ex-husband persuaded her to apply for the BBC show. Having left school with three GCSEs and funded a YTS course with part-time work as a barmaid and a steward at Wolverhampton Wanderers, Badger eventually joined Compass Finance as a sales representative.
Within three years she had been promoted to operations manager and then again to head of sales and operations on a salary of £125,000 a year, helping increase turnover from £3m to £13.1m a year and playing a key role in the flotation of the business in 2004. Within two years of her leaving, the company went into administration. "Talk about Badger Or Bust," she jokes.
What, then, made her jack it all in for the chance of becoming Sugar's apprentice, on a salary below that she was on at the time? "I thought I'd fluked my career," she says. "My career had literally gone straight up and I thought there would be a time when it would patter off. I was at the end of learning what I could at my company so I really wanted a new opportunity and to prove myself against 14 of the country's best entrepreneurs. I don't actually think they were [the country's best entrepreneurs] but at the time I really wanted a new challenge in business."
Badger acknowledges that her public profile afforded her opportunities the average entrepreneur simply doesn't get when starting up. As well as the media profile, she benefited from free office space, IT equipment and design work. "I do know what it's like to start a business from scratch because obviously I've done that with North West Money but the consultancy was easy," she admits.
"But I applied strict rules to it, which were I don't need a company car and I don't need to put costs in. I need simple and effective branding so my company does what it says on the tin. At the moment even two years on we're still being reactive rather than proactive because we're still getting lots of enquiries. I will worship the day - and people will probably call me a fool for this - when I can sit down and start to put a marketing strategy together."
There have, though, been elements even this hugely self-confident lady has had to get used to. "The toughest thing about running your own business, especially when you've worked for another business, is doing everything yourself," she says. "All of a sudden my finance director disappeared and my HR disappeared. I had no IT infrastructure and it cost me an absolute fortune and when it goes wrong you've got to sort every single thing out."
The majority of small businesses fail, Badger believes, because owners put in too many costs. "There were two chaps who came to me last year and they had mobile phones, company cars, branded everything. You don't need an Apple Mac when you start a new business. What you need is something that does the job. Those luxuries are nice when you're turning a profit.
"I always say ‘give up six months' revenue and a year of your life'," she adds. "You should never draw out of a business for six months. You should be able to keep yourself for six months if you're going to run your own business, by whatever means, because then it will give it a chance to bed in."
Wasting money on marketing is another bugbear on the Badger hitlist. "Branding is actually a good exercise when you're turning over a certain amount of profit," she says. "But you don't need branded pens when you open a business. It doesn't bring business through the door."
The single biggest thing to get right when starting up a business is picking the right team when you're in a position to expand. "If you can get the right staff in the right job your business will make a profit," she says. "The biggest advice I would give to anybody recruiting is not to make a kneejerk reaction. If it's not a ‘yes' or it's a ‘maybe', it's a ‘no'. And you should always interview with somebody else because people can pick up on different things.
"You can't always make the right decision but when I employ somebody I realise that I'm taking their cat, their dog, their washing machine that's going to blow up, their wife, their dreams and aspirations, because that's what they're bringing to work every day. A lot of employers just get the name and say ‘that fits into that box' but that's one of the worst mistakes you can make."
Spreading the word
Badger is further developing her profile - and bank balance - through a lucrative sideline as a speaker at business events and to youngsters aged between 14 and 19. Initially hired as "The Badger from The Apprentice", she now estimates she fills five days a month on the speaking circuit. "It's something I really enjoy and it generates loads of money, and I'm money-mad," she adds. "It's very rewarding but it's hard work. Sometimes it's harder than doing a day's work because you've got to really engage with people to get the message across.
"I won't let speaking affect my business but I think it also adds credibility to my business," she adds. "I don't claim to be successful but I'm 30 years old and I've got two businesses that both turn over profit. I've done The Apprentice so it's quite a story to tell. How many people can speak to a 30-year-old woman who's done all that?"
Badger's life today is very different to what might have been had Sugar made a different decision two years ago. She is too savvy to say she's had a lucky escape but there's no doubting that she's far happier in her current position than she ever could have been working for someone else. "Today I've done television this morning, then I had a business meeting, now I'm doing this, then I've got something else for television but I've had about 20 phone calls from my staff wondering what's going on," she says. "Yesterday I was consulting all day and I retained three companies so it's a really varied role that I've got."
But she maintains she has no desire to be a really big-name entrepreneur, such as the man whose apprentice she once wanted to be. "I don't want to be like anybody else because then I'll only be as good as somebody else," she explains. "And I would never say that I want to be famous. I'm actually a very private individual so if I ended up retiring at 50 with a portfolio of businesses and £10m or £15m in the bank I'd be happy. If it happens it happens but it's not a plan.
"One thing that's for sure though is that I'm very motivated so I'll still be chasing that penny and that pound," she says. "The plan really is to focus on my businesses and do media. I'm having the time of my life."
Extract from full interview conducted by Nick Martindale for New Business magazine
