Sarah Collins

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So I just became obsessed about Wonderbags, obsessed about looking at methodologies and obsessed. So that obsession became the driving force that overrode the pain, the pessimism, the institutional bias, all of those kinds of things. I was like, this can work.

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Christél: Hello and welcome to another edition of Expedition Business, where we talk to inspiring entrepreneurs about the highs and lows of their business journey and how on earth they managed to keep the flame of business adventure burning. My name is Christél Rosslee-Venter, your host and the one privileged enough to be talking to Sarah Collins, founder of Wonderbag.

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But before I introduce Sarah to you, I would like to remind you to subscribe, like, comment and share this podcast with as many of your friends and family as possible. Without your help, we cannot continue to share the amazing stories of our entrepreneurs. But back to Sarah and the Wonderbag story. Sarah, driven by a yearning for equality and social justice, founded Wonderbag in 2008,

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and has created an entrepreneurial solution to many other world’s humanitarian and environmental problems by changing the way people cook. Growing up in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Sarah’s roots are intertwined with community empowerment projects and initiatives, particularly those that facilitate change in gender equality and environmental sustainability. 3 billion people still cook,

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on open fire and 7 million people die from indoor air pollution diseases every year. One Wonderbag can reduce household air pollution by 90% and reduces the amount of fire collected by up to 80%. Wonderbag was voted one of the top 50 genius companies in the world by Time magazine and was announced the finalist for the 2022 Food

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Planet Prize. Sarah is energized by spending time in the African bush, hanging out with her community and family, wide open spaces and having time to think is when Sarah feels at her best. Sarah, welcome to Expedition Business. 

Sarah: Thank you, Christél. It’s great to be with you today. 

Christél: I know you are extremely, extremely busy.

02:53

So Sarah, you have been arrested as a teenager for striking against apartheid. How did this affect your outlook on life and your passion for making a difference? 

Sarah: So Christél, yeah, when you say I’m very busy, I think that’s one of the things that as entrepreneurs we have to realize is busy isn’t always better.

03:15

And so certainly I’m trying to be less busy, and more strategic about what I do. So, I’m really glad to be here and take some time with you to chat to you about my journey. So yeah, as you rightly say, I grew up in in apartheid South Africa, and you know I

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right from when I could sort of understand or figure things out, or even maybe before, something seemed to be really amiss in our home, in the country. And I was very confused by the fact that, you know, we lived in big houses and we had lots of staff, and they lapped us and were so nurturing of us, and yet.

04:06

They couldn’t come on holiday, couldn’t go in the car with us, their children couldn’t visit with us unless it was playing outside. And so it was a very confusing time. And I think as I became a bit older, I started to realize how sick the society was and the deep injustices, and not just the racial injustices, but for me, the inequality for women and growing up in a very patriarchal home,

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and a patriarchal society. I grew up in KwaZulu-Natal and I always felt like I didn’t belong. I always felt out. I felt, people didn’t understand me. And the people that did understand me were the beautiful African woman, the Zulu woman who I spoke Zulu with and who really got and heard me. And I felt very seen and understood by them.

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And yet I did not feel like that in my own home. And as I realized, these deep injustices, and I think for me that there was an internal discomfort and dysregulation constantly that I couldn’t live with. And so, I mean, I used to run away from home, I would try all sorts of things. But then I realized that actually,

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this was institutional racism and that it was a law in our country. And the only way that I could fight this was to actually start to speak out. And so from a young age, I went to London and for the first time, I started to understand I saw people picketing outside South Africa house. And a whole different narrative was being said about South Africa. And so as a young mind, I started to absorb all of this.

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By the time I was 15 or 14, actually, I said to my father, I really needed to go to an Afrikaans school because I needed to understand the language of the oppressors. I need to understand what is behind all of this. And my father was completely horrified and couldn’t understand that I spoke Zulu and English, but I wanted to go to an Afrikaans school and I did. And I really met with the right wing Afrikaners as I got to understand,

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a lot more about the situation. And when I went back to my old school, I just started to speak out and it was at a rally in 1986 when P.W. Botha was speaking about reform, yes, and surrender, no. I think many of the people listening will remember the Rubicon speech. And I said, I put my hand up, I was in my school uniform and I said, you know, I wanted to know,

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exactly what reforms you are making and who are these people that you’re not surrendering to. And the ANC was banned in those days and they were known as a terrorist organization and I really wanted him to say ANC. I wanted the name to be verbalized and he didn’t answer my question, it was at the YMCA in Pietermaritzburg, and when I put my hand up again they said only one

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question. And I stood on my chair and I said, but you haven’t answered my question and I represent the youth and I demand well with that, of course, I was picked up off the chair by the the police and and the Secret Service whatever they were, and I was thrown into the back of a police van and, there was a photograph taken of me sort of kicking out of the policeman as the van was driving away with me in the back.

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And so that’s where my activism, I suppose, really came to the surface. And I think it is that activism and that deep, deep, deep desire for equality and justice for all that really has driven my entire career. 

Christél: Did you ever consider becoming a politician? 

Sarah: Oh, Christél, I don’t know if we’ve got enough time to talk politics on this, but,

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I mean, I believe that actually business was going to be the driving force behind change. And it would be dishonest of me to say I didn’t think of becoming a politician because I certainly did. But that was a bit later in life when I ran against Jacob Zuma in the 2008 elections and started a political party with a colleague, friend of mine, called Woman Forward. And that was in

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reaction to women and equality again. So, yeah, I mean, I suppose by the very nature of what I do is political, I like to stay out of the political arena now. But I think anybody that knows me will say that I’m highly political in my views, if that’s the right term you want to use. But I believe the force for good and what’s going to change the global

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status quo is business. 

Christél: Absolutely. At least business brings about positive change as opposed to politicians who keep on talking for the sake of talking. And talking is not going to change the plight of women who have to collect wood and cook on open fires. But something that I want to get to is your view on women inequality and that sort of as far as I have it your link

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to starting Wonderbag. When you saw all these women being around the fire for hours and hours on end and having to collect firewood and a whole lot of injustices. 

Sarah: Yeah, so I think that the role of an entrepreneur is to take on the biggest challenges of the world. I think that’s why we think differently, that’s why we do things differently. And yes, as a child, eating pap,

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and sleeping with our nannies. We grew up with the smoke in the huts. I understood it, I knew it. And then obviously as I became more involved in communities around conservation areas like the Okavango Delta, I was very privileged that we spent a lot of time in the bush as children growing up. So this deep love of nature and our conservation areas of the world,

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was deeply ingrained in us as a deep love with all my siblings. And so I started to look at how do we empower communities around conservation areas? Because if you are hungry and you don’t have a job, of course you’re going to kill an animal. You’re going to poach. Those things. And then it enables the syndicates for what we see now in poaching with rhino and the endangered species.

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And poverty enables those syndicates to thrive. And so for me, it was about looking for commercial solutions to empower the grandmother cooking over the open fire, who was responsible for the children. And if we could empower people through job creation, through ownership, through leadership within these areas, then we’re empowering the grandmother.

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And the children that she, and her children. So that’s where I started to really look at how do we, how does that really work? And I was exposed to a lot of aid projects, a lot of NGO projects, everybody talked, a good talk, but I never really saw the economic status of a household change. And I saw it in the Okavango when I set up a large,

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community-based organization, and we ran amazing camps and mobiles, safaris in the Okavango with the communities. And so that’s what I saw, but how do you scale that? And so after spending 12 years in the Okavango and working on some extraordinary projects, I knew that there had to be something else that would affect, we could change the status quo of women across Africa. And,

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so I looked at everything. I looked from earthworm farming to vegetable gardening to recycling. I wanted to change the economic status of the gogo in the kitchen. But there was no way we were gonna do that unless we addressed the fire. And so it was that injustice. I think it was more for me though, I’m a solution-based person. I think entrepreneurs are.

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And I think that’s one of the great gifts that we have. We don’t always look at the consequences, but we certainly try and fix puzzles, you know? Try and figure out things. And so I’d seen so many cook stoves and clean cooking technologies littered across Africa that hadn’t worked. And it was about, that was always finding solutions,

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outside of Africa and we as African women might, the people that inspire me the most, the people who are solution-oriented, the people who can always make a plan are the women of Africa. And so I was like, surely we can fix this ourselves. And that’s when I remembered my grandmother used to have a box that Bridget Oppenheimer in the 70s, it was actually called the Wonder Box. And Bridget Oppenheimer and a whole group of incredible people,

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had put these boxes into homes across South Africa. And I remember seeing this box in my grandmother’s kitchen. And I remember seeing it in my house as well. And so in 2008, when we had rolling blackouts in South Africa, and there was just a complete energy crisis. And I don’t like going out for dinner. And every night, we’d be sort of,

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forced to go out for supper. And I was like, this isn’t right, you know? And it was during that time that I woke up in the night and I remembered the box. And that was the start of the journey of the Wonderbag. 

Christél: Just quickly, as far as I have it, you never wanted to start an NGO with a Wonderbag. 

Sarah: So, I’ve worked

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a lot with big humanitarian agencies. I’ve worked a lot with NGOs, NPOs, and I give credit where credit’s due, you know, people do try. But unfortunately, there are, the work, Africa and the world is stuck in something that I call pilotitis, which is let’s pilot a good idea, let’s do it with a local NGO on the ground. But they never properly funded when the person who interest who sends the money,

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wains, they are like, okay, that’s we’ve done our pilots and they can write about it and talk about the conference and the people get neglected again. And if you look at how much aid has been put into Africa since 1964, it’s absolutely blinding the amount of money and where is it, you know, so I needed to find another commercial mechanism that

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I could subsidize the Wonderbags because the people who needed the Wonderbags the most couldn’t afford them. But I didn’t want to be taking money from philanthropists and being dictated to by foundations around the world and by patriarchal people who think they know how Africa operates. So I had to really look hard and look for a commercial solution that would fund these Wonderbags. And

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I didn’t want to do it through grant funding and through governments and be dictated to on how, what and where. So again, I put this all into my sort of brain and my sister lived in London at the time and I had a brainstorm with her and I said, do you know anything about carbon credits? And she said, no, never heard of it. So she started to do some research and so did I. And then eventually I said, I need a meeting with JP Morgan. And she said, what do you mean JP Morgan? I mean,

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So you’re going to have to buy new clothes, you know, you highly un-presentable and how are we going to get the meeting? And I said, I don’t know, but you can figure that out. And I’m coming to London and I came with my boxes and by then they were Wonderbags and she got us a meeting. And by then it was sort of six months in and I’d measured the savings that we were making in the 500 homes that the Wonderbag was being

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used and I was spending time working out how much firewood was saved, how much gasoline, paraffin, coal, electricity, everything. And so I had these scruffy notebooks that I’d sort of put together over six months with a whole lot of volunteers. And there was a remarkable saving. And I went and presented this, and this is in early 2009, to J.P. Morgan.

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And they said this is a carbon credit project. And I was like, really? And then that’s where my brain started to go. And so the business model, Time Magazine called us one of the top 50 genius companies in the world in 2018. And the institutional bias against a bag changing the world. Solutions come from Silicon Valley. 

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And the people bringing those solutions are these young, funky tech guys. I mean, solutions that are going to change the world and reduce carbon certainly aren’t going to come from an economic activist who’s more comfortable barefoot in the bush, you know? And so it was quite a thing that day at JPMorgan for them to look at that bag and say, this can be scaled and this… So we had to jump through a lot of hoops.

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I mean, it is one of the most painful things to become a carbon credit project, especially one that’s community based and really rooted in humanitarian principles. So I didn’t come at this saying, wow, carbon, you can make so much money. I came at this saying, wow, carbon can fund the bag. So that was a direct contradiction, I suppose, to the carbon traders and the people that were making the money at the time.

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And so I think if I’d known what I was doing, I don’t know if I would have done it, because afterwards once we’d registered two projects in Africa and the carbon funding was coming in, everybody said to me, but you’ve pushed an elephant through a needle. And I was like, I know. And they said, how did you do it? And I said, I have no idea. You just take one day at a time and you figure it out and you just, you know, I think this is where it comes in, the passion and the,

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tenacity and also the neurodivergent brain, which is completely interest-based. So I just became obsessed about Wonderbags, obsessed about looking at methodologies and obsessed. So that obsession became the driving force that overrode the pain, the pessimism, the institutional bias, all of those kind of things. I was like, this can work.

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You know, I stopped obviously being invited to dinner parties or away with friends because they were sick of hearing about the Wonderbag and like they would, can’t you talk about anything else? And I’m like, but there isn’t anything else that exists in the world that’s going to change it, you know? So I think that’s one of the things about being an entrepreneur with a neurodivergent brain is that you become socially kind of unacceptable, except if you’ve got amazing friends like I do.

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Who kind of and have always enjoyed the humor behind and what I do. But yeah, it was a very interesting time. And we obviously, it was actually at COP17 in Durban in 2011 where we suddenly got onto the front pages of the newspapers in the UK. And everybody said, well, COP17 was a failure, except for this mad woman and her bag.

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And that’s really where the brand started to take off. And I was very lucky this so much luck involved being an entrepreneur. And, you know, as Gary Payer said, you know, it’s so strange how the more you practice, the more lucky you become. And when you obsessed and it’s a 24 hours, seven days a week and you open your heart, you know, I really believe that this wonderbag was given to me for a reason and that I had,

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to solve it. I had to get 100 million Wonderbags into homes across Africa. And I didn’t think that that was a problem, to be quite honest. I thought it was going to be done in six to eight months. Like, why wouldn’t it? Why doesn’t everyone understand? So yeah, once we started to become known and we had incredible opportunities meeting, you know, key people at the right time, Paul Pullman, 

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the global CEO of Unilever was in South Africa in 2010. He met the Wonderbag by sheer chance and just completely aligned with the goals of what he set out for Unilever to double their income and halve their carbon footprint by 2020. And I don’t think when he put that statement out, he’d figured out how he was going to do it. And I never forget when he held that Wonderbag and he said,

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this is the very thing that’s gonna do it. And so from a business that was producing 10 Wonderbags a week, we went to delivering a million Wonderbags in nine months. And I mean, that was crazy, crazy, crazy times. 

Christél: Absolutely insane. Sarah, but I quickly wanna get back to your success with JP Morgan. A lot of the times entrepreneurs start something,

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and then they just say it’s not working and they abandon their projects. So if you have advice for entrepreneurs, how to push through, how to really get to that point of serious tenacity. Or do you think it’s something that people can learn, or do you have it or not have it? 

Sarah: It’s really an interesting question. It’s the same as are entrepreneurs born or are they made? I, my belief on this,

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and my experience over 17 years with this, and actually over decades of my life that I’ve been a social entrepreneur, is that if you are aligned with the right principles and purpose and you are doing something for altruistic, so yes, of course you wanna make money, of course you wanna be successful, but if you are doing it for that, stop right now, because then it’s not gonna work.

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And so I’m very clear on that fact is that, you know, wealth is not money. Wealth is about creating opportunity. And so if you are creating opportunity for others and solving problems for other people that also can make money and have this ripple effect, keep going. Cause you’re on the right track. If you are looking at it,

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purely to buy a the latest Range Rover or whatever the case might be. I really don’t believe. Yeah, then you are going to fail in the first three months. The first three months, no matter what you are, is going to be tough. I mean, we know the failure rate. And, but I believe so I believe that once passion, purpose and personality

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or find each other, you know in your heart. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was going to be successful. And in fact, so going back to your question, how do other entrepreneurs do it? And I never forget, I always forget my answers and stories, but I never forget being at MIT and they had the D-Lab in those days, I don’t know if it’s still there. This was in the early 2000s.

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2014, around there. And I met all these amazing people who’d invented all these incredible things. And I was just a farm girl from Africa who had a bag, you know? And there were all these MBA students and everything. And the question that they were desperate to ask me is, how did I get involved with Unilever? I said, I showed up. I phoned them. They meant, what do you mean by that?

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I said, well, you’ve got to keep going and keep going and keep going. And you’ve got to be strategic about it. You’ve got to think about who understands what you’re doing. So preparedness is key. Don’t just think people are going to get it. The institutional bias against doing things differently is exponential. I mean, people see it takes decades to change institutional bias. And so of course,

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of course, for Unilever, it was much easier to give away airtime and t-shirts and umbrellas to people to drive their sales. But to think about offering people a solution that’s going to change the way they cook is a massive gap between airtime and that. And for a CEO who’s running one of the biggest companies in the world to hold up a bag,

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that’s based on an ancient technology of hydrotension cooking. You know, that’s crazy. And so it would be so easy for him. So you’ve got to find the entrepreneurs within the organizations. And that’s for me, one of the greatest successes I’ve had. And in my next whatever career, or I’m even doing it now, is to bridge that gap and to bridge that. It’s almost like you need,

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an interpreter because, you know, for example, when I when I did a lot of work with Pfizer in New York, and I went to go and do a large project for them based in Ghana. And they said, where’s the report after my first few months? And I sent them the report, but there’s nothing attached. And I said,

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so I resent and resent, and they said, but there’s no report. And I said, well, can’t you see the photos? And then they realized, and I realized, and I said to the CEO, what I need help with is I need an interpreter from within your organization that can meet with our organization so that we can bridge the gap. Because an entrepreneur does not understand corporate speech. So going back to JP Morgan, which was your original question.

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Is JP Morgan had entrepreneurs in their carbon team, you see, and these were people they had acquired another business and that was sitting within the JP Morgan stable and they understood what happened on the ground. So you have to find the right people and the right advocates, activists, the right people with the knowledge, or not the knowledge, because you can bring the knowledge, you need to,

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with enough ambition to do, to change things. Does that answer your question or not really? 

Christél: I think it definitely does answer my question. Something that I find also quite interesting is the bag itself is quite funky and colorful and just very, as the children would say, cool to have one. How did you get to the design?

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Sarah: Well, the funkiest, coolest people in the world are women of Africa. And they’re the most beautiful. They dress beautifully. And I was catching an airplane and I’d gone to Durban to tell my brother that I was going to change the world with these boxes. And he was like, Sarah, finally we can have you put in an institution. You know, this now after everything you’ve brought home to do, this is just like the craziest.

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And I was flying back to Joburg and in the queue was this woman who was wearing the most beautiful dress, massive dress with made of Shweshwe with a tamarshanta and her name was Moshi Mate and I said in Zulu I’d vote her best dressed on the aeroplane and so as I got to my seat she elbowed the guy that was sitting next to me and said haamba, um, ngisotladela so she said I’m gonna sit here so he moved and she said I want to make a dress like this and I said,

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well, actually, these dresses aren’t my, thing, but I need a bag. And I explained what the bag looked like, and I drew it on the back of a napkin. And the very next morning, she arrived with my first Wonderbag made out of Shweshwe . And it was a complete expression of love of her and my brains connecting. And so we’ve stayed true to honorable Moshi’s incredible tenacity, because she had six women that she had helped.

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Taken out of homes and they were living in her garage and sewing these dresses coming out of abusive relationships. And so she started making our first Wonderbags and that’s how it grew. And so it’s a real statement of the woman of Africa. 

Christél: And I suppose a very serendipitous meeting that you had with her. 

Sarah: Again, it comes back to that thing that people like to call luck, you know.

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You’ve got to be you’ve got to be on it. You know, you’ve got to have your heart open. You’ve got to live it. You’ve got to dream it. You’ve got to talk. You’ve got to. And I suppose it’s just those are the talents. And and, you know, my beloved friend Judith McWanya. Yes, it’s me the other day. She said to me, you know, Sarah, the reason that God gave you this bag is because you have a heart for everybody. And as to what do you mean by that? And she said, because. 

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This one, the bag doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to God or the universe, as I like to say. And it’s my job to get it out there. And so I suppose it’s like big magic, which is Elizabeth Gilbert. And she says, there’s all these crazy things floating around in the ether. And then you go up and you pull one down and you make the success of it. You know, it’s, I think if you meet entrepreneurs who are making things happen.

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You realize that there’s no luck involved. They put themselves out there. You know what it is, Christél, actually? It’s a lack of fear. I don’t fear failure at all. People have often said to me, what if you fail? So what if I fail? I’ll be a waitress. I made more money at university waitressing than I’ve ever had in my life. I will phone a friend and ask if I can use this spare room if I can’t. You know?

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I’m not frightened of failing. And I think that comes from, I suppose, also my background in terms of feeling a failure as a woman and never feeling good enough. So if you start from that sort of low base, you don’t fear failure. And I still don’t. And I think that lack of fear is what allows you to speak openly, go up to CEOs, talk on stages.

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You know, and that’s an inbuilt thing within, I think, neurodivergent entrepreneurs. 

Christél: And I would love to come back to the whole, you know, fear of failure concept. But something that also interests me is the fact that you don’t have one big factory producing all the Wonderbags. You have a whole lot of women. 

Sarah: So I believe,

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totally in entrepreneurs. And I believe every woman in Africa and around the world is an entrepreneur. And so I’d never wanted to build like a massive building in New York City with Wonderbag written across it, you know, what I want to do was build a business that creates entrepreneurs. So I’ve,

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based, I call it the sunflower model actually. And I base my entire business structure around that where I empower other people within the framework of Wonderbag to start their own businesses. And that’s been hugely successful for us. It’s not easy, of course not everybody says, and of course every financial person goes and shuts down at all.

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Sells the machines and puts it all into a big factory. And then when they leave because I like to have nice coffee, and they say that’s a waste of money, then I get all the machines back and go back into the entrepreneurial way. And I think that that is the way of the future. I think people have to be empowered to make their own choices. That’s how intergenerational

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poverty is broken. That’s how the education system of children not going to school, those things change when people become entrepreneurs and when they have the freedom to be themselves. And so for me, I’ve always kept one factory, which is in Tonga, which I’ve had from the beginning. And that is kind of our center of excellence. That’s where we, and that’s our home base. That’s where my family is, you know, but,

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I believe in entrepreneurs and so yes, we have scaled this all over the world manufacturing at source and an example of that is earlier this year when the Gaza war and people couldn’t cook and so I got a call to say hey we need to set up kitchens that don’t operate with electricity, there isn’t any fuel for cooking and,

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I flew to Cairo and found women entrepreneurs around Cairo, and we started manufacturing wonderbags through women who already had sewing machines and were making other things and we just put wonderbags in there, and then we were able to train people in Gaza to actually start making their own within there. So for me that’s really I think my sweet spot, is scaling businesses with

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and for other people. 

Christél: And helping other people to become entrepreneurs and stay entrepreneurs. 

Sarah; Well, you create an opportunity and you create a belief in yourself. And I think one of the greatest challenges we all have is what I call imposter syndrome. And everyone says it’s not a syndrome and it’s not this, I don’t know another word to call it, but you just never,

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feel you’ve even done anything good, you know, and even if you’re on the front cover of a magazine, and it feels like you feel like a failure, you know, and it’s like, what is that about? And so when you’re actually when you’ve got community, and when people believe in you, and you believe in them, and you see each other, and you hold hands, you can cry out there, you know, when you’ve got your darkest days, who do you go to?

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There’s nothing like going to another entrepreneur who really gets it. 

Christé: Speaking of darkest days, I must say the overall story that we hear is that you’ve done so well. You’ve had such amazing experiences. You got the idea of the Wonderbag, you approached all these big businesses and you just went for it. But.

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Do you ever get those dark days and how on earth, if that happens, how do you get through it? 

Sarah: You know, everybody talks about the success and hopefully I haven’t made out that we’re this massively successful organization. I think that, you know, if you Google the Google story, because at the end of the day, we’ve made massive impact.

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Am I a successful business? God, I would argue that hugely because I’m the founder, I’m still the CEO. And in terms of the traditional trajectory of every business that you see on every networking event and whatever, there’s this curve when the founder must exit and all of that sort of stuff. And I haven’t been able to do that. And I see that as a very big shortfalling for me. And…

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We built a business on my name. So I’m the brand, which I had no idea I was doing at the time. And I remember meeting Tim Cook from Apple. I’m back and doing an amazing thing that I was given an opportunity. And he spoke about the culture of businesses. I had no idea what he was talking about. And I said, what’s culture? And what’s a culture of a business? And he said, you’ve got a very strong culture anyway.

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I was thinking, oh my God, I don’t think I have, I don’t know what he’s talking about. So if you look at it from the outside, are we a successful business. We’ve done massive things. We’ve created big impact. Do I run a successful business? Well, I think a business coach would say I don’t. 

Christél: Why would you say that?

Sarah: Well, because I run it.

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I’m very different principles, you know, I run a family business really in the sense that we are all family. We don’t have these sort of reporting lines. Everybody asks for organograms. Well, my organograms are kind of a bit rough, you know. What I’ve done is I believe in people. So I’ve found the best experts in the fields that I need them and they’ve become the petals of my sunflower like the entrepreneurs that manufacture.

39:36

The tech teams, et cetera. I think one of my gifts has been identifying really phenomenal entrepreneurs that become part of my sunflower model. But going back to dark days, I have to tell you this has been hellish. It has been a hellish 17 years. It’s hard to explain how hard it is.

40:06

It’s a lonely, it’s an extremely lonely journey. And it’s, how have I got through them? Oh, I mean, my bedroom is called the boardroom because there’s some times when I couldn’t get out of bed. And so everybody had to come to the bedroom to have meetings with me because I just physically, I was in too much pain. And that’s from overriding,

40:31

the messages of my body saying, you need to stop, you need to slow down, you’re too stressed, you can’t do this traveling all the time. Well, nobody can tell me that. And eventually my body gave in and said, well, if you’re not gonna listen, we’re gonna just collapse. So there have been those times, there’ve been the times when I’ve lain on the floor crying and my sisters come at me sort of to kick me and say, get up and get on with it. Steve Jobs wouldn’t behave like that. And I’m like, I’m sure he did actually.

41:00

But yeah, I mean, my sisters had me crying many, many, many, many times. Um, I’ve wanted to give up often, often. And, and, you know, many people are so delighted when I say, listen, I can’t go on and I want to get out because then I’m a failure and that’s what, uh, people don’t like success, and that’s something I really have found difficult.

41:28

Especially as an outspoken activist, you know, people don’t want to see that success. And I found that really hard because I didn’t understand why people wouldn’t generously embrace positivity and impact. Funding has been extremely difficult. There is no doubt about it. I have the most amazing mentor who one day said to me, but Sarah, don’t you know about the

41:57

institutional bias against women. And I’m like, what are you talking about? And she said, well, only 2% of businesses get funded by banks. And I’m like, I mean, that’s ridiculous. And she said, after all these years, you don’t know that. I thought it was me and I wasn’t good enough to be funded. So, you know, how do I get through the dark times? I have good people that I can turn to and I do ask for help and I’ve learned.

42:27

I mean, Christél, you know, when I spoke to you earlier this year, 2024 has been a very, very big opening year for me. And this is my 17th year of business in Wonderbag. And I spoke to you in the middle of the year. And I was really at one of my lowest ebbs. And I was angry. I felt like a victim. The world was shutting down around me.

42:53

You know banks had frozen bank accounts because of my outspoken work in Gaza. I was having all sorts of challenges and I think you will remember how desperate I was. And I just felt so lost. And yet I have such an, you know, externally an incredible business, which is a carbon registered business.

43:20

Do all sorts of incredible things around the world, but inside of me, I was just lost. And I just, I couldn’t believe that the world was so morally devoid. There are no leaders that are taking us in the right directions. Who’s standing up for humanity? And I sort of had to face myself in the mirror and say, do you want to carry on or don’t you? And…

43:48

I had bills to pay. I have a lot of people that depend on me. And I thought, get up and get going. And I did. But I’ve also found some hacks, which I would love to share. Cold water swimming is transformational. And so what I decided to do is I decided I needed to stay in one place for two months.

44:15

and I needed to swim every day and sauna every day. So I decided five days a week was good. And I swam every day, I sauna every day. I just kept chipping away slowly at work. And finally my mind started to clear and I started to see a different way. And you know, there’s a neuroscientist who’s looked at 250,000 brains.

44:41

And they say that the biggest brain detox happens in a sauna. And I can honestly tell you the way I feel today, as opposed to what I felt like in June, July, August of this year, is two different people. I’m so energized. I’m inspired by what’s happening in the world. You know, people think that Trump election is like the worst thing that could ever happen. And listen, he epitomizes everything that I stand against.

45:11

But it is such a cry of humanity that the status quo as it was, the sheep and the wolves and sheep’s clothing cannot go on. We have to, and I’m being political, but what I’m saying is the world has to crack open. And a new consciousness and a new way of business and a new way of doing things has to happen. And it is happening, and we’re seeing it more and more and more.

45:37

And I’m really excited. The opportunities are coming and I can think differently. So I really encourage people at those darkest days, get into a shower, try in a bath, a bucket, anything, wash your face, just try and just get into water because water absolutely drops the nervous system and.

46:05

If it’s the colder, the better, obviously. And if you can find a sauna or whatever, is find something that works that can bring you back to yourself. And that’s what I’ve done. And by bringing myself back to my purpose has refreshed the energy within Wonderbag. And we are going in a really exciting direction again.

46:33

Where the middle of this year it was everybody else’s fault. I was such a victim. And that’s the mentality we get when we are so low. And it’s that mentality that we really have to fight against because actually the world is working with you if you allow it to. 

Christél: Well, I think what you’ve described is a typical scenario for entrepreneurs. The reality is that most entrepreneurs give up and don’t try and find solutions,

47:02

don’t have that tenacity to push through and restart, re-energize. And that was sort of my next question. What on earth do you do to re-energize and refocus? But I think the cold water swimming seems to be one of the big hacks. What I would like to know, are you planning to swim the English Channel soon?

47:27

Sarah: The English channel seems a bit short for me. It’s only like 20 miles. I was thinking about doing, you know, maybe to swim from Southport to the Netherlands or something. No, I’m joking. You know, that’s the problem with us is we’ve become quite obsessive. And now I’m obsessed by the sauna and cold water. But also, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I’m a knitter. Knitting is another hack that is huge for me. I knit all the time.

47:54

And that is something as an entrepreneur, these are simple things. And you see, again, like you wouldn’t think it back and change the world or have the impact. I mean, who’s going to say your granny is knitting? Listen, when you’re in menopause and you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got everything against you, you bloody well knit. And I’m telling you, that’s why people in the old days function, because they knitted, they garden, they did things with their hands. And I think technology has taken away. I cannot, stress

48:24

to your listeners how shocking technology is for us. I got so caught up in social media and everything around Gaza and I felt I didn’t wanna eat. I didn’t wanna do anything because I felt guilty about what was going on in the world. And I felt, and you know, I became obsessed with sharing the news and all of that sort of stuff. And

48:50

It was destroying me. And if I’m destroyed, then I can’t do anything good. So try and minimize screen time. Please think about it. Think very carefully about social media. I’m listening to a lot more podcasts. And I’m listening to things rather than watching things on a screen. I’m taking those two hours out with no screen time at all.

49:21

Fasting is huge. So I do a water fast once a week for 24 hours, and I do a digital detox for 12 hours every week. I have to. 

Christél: Wow, that is quite inspiring. Just quick question, what do you knit if you do knit? 

Sarah: Anything and everything. Like it’s mindless knitting. So at the moment I’m knitting my nephew a rasta beanie. That’s what he wants.

49:50

And I knit hats, scarves, gloves, wrist warmers, anything and everything. So I’ve got bags of squares and rectangles and everything and I then sew them together and then give them to blankets to people or make little hats for children in orphanages or whatever. I mean, it’s just, I just have to have needles and will with me all the time. 

Christél: Have you ever knitted little teddies?

50:21

Sarah: I’ve tried teddies, but they’re too technical for me. I like to just do mindless knitting, but I know the knitting world is a huge world to explore. For the last 14 years, I’ve just knitted pearl, I mean, just plain, you know, whatever. Maybe one day I’ll become a teddy knitter, but at the moment, it works for me as I’m doing it, yeah. 

Christél: Fantastic.

50:47

I definitely want to get back to the knitting teddies because that’s one of the projects that I’m considering getting more people to knit teddies and give them away just to share the love. But yeah, we need to get the right recipe and pattern for that one to make it super, super easy. Sarah. 

Sarah: So Christél, in my old days, I would have said, fantastic, I’ll join you with it.

51:17

But I don’t have that bandwidth, so I kept quiet, which is most unusual for me. I was like, let’s get on a teddy bandwagon. But I now know I can’t, you know, I have to be selective. No is a big word that us entrepreneurs don’t have. 

Christél: Absolutely. It’s a very, very good point that you are making, because I think as an entrepreneur, your immediate instinct is to see some potential and just start this brand new circle that,

51:46

and in the end you just have too many circles to close. Sarah, if you have an opportunity to restart everything and go back 20 years, would you change anything? 

Sarah: Yeah, I would actually. I would change two things. I would ensure that the institutional brain of the business, the architectural institutional architecture,

52:14

is plotted out. And obviously, that’s impossible because everybody said, where’s your business model? Well, I didn’t even know what a business model was. I couldn’t read a spreadsheet when I started. But if there was any advice I would give is, I mean, in architectural brains sound so complicated, basically all it is is keep the history.

52:40

And if it’s a file, I mean, everybody keeps it online now. But I draw and I write notebooks and everything. So try and get that into a system so other people can access it. Because after 17 years, everything’s in your brain. And you know how hard it is to try and pull it all out of your brain. And everybody wants to know what happened in 2012 and 2014. And I go, well, that, that, that. And they said, well, we would have

53:09

done something differently if we’d known you’d really gone down that route. So somehow try and institutionalize the experiences and everything so other people can access it. The most dangerous thing a founder and entrepreneur can do is what I’ve done, which is to just keep going and not stopping and not clearing it out. So it all ends up just in my brain. And those are the things that cause cancer.

53:38

And early deaths of entrepreneurs and the failure of businesses because there isn’t that institutional architecture that can be accessed by others. And that’s what makes it very difficult to scale businesses and to share the load. So that’s the one thing. And the second thing I would do is I would make peace with myself more, you know, and

54:05

and what that means. And this was said to me so many times, I didn’t understand it. And so maybe I had to go the hard route, but to self care, you know, the knitting, the cold water swimming, the sauna, the time out, the eating, you know, all of that, the water, all of those things, I didn’t understand. I was just too much in a hurry. And so I wish I’d had those because I think I would have been.

54:33

more balanced as a leader and as a person in the world. And I’ve sacrificed, I’ve lost a lot. And we do, we do lose a lot by becoming so single focused. Do I regret what I’ve lost? No, because I have incredible things and people in my life that make up for it. But, and I’ve created my own family and all of those sort of things. But…

55:03

You know, you rush at things and you get too old and then you think, sho, maybe I should have not have done that. You know, so I have no regrets if that’s a question you’re asking none at all. But I would have liked to have done some things a little bit differently. And those are the two main ones. 

Christél: You mentioned getting too old. When is too old, too old? 

Sarah: Well, I was referring to children there, so women can only have children.

55:33

age, you know. Well, I tell you what, I don’t think ever it’s due to old. I think that I often, you know, when people call me gogo in meetings and things and now I’m so… People stand up and let me to sit down on the bus, you know, and I’m thinking, shit. Anyway, I think you…

55:59

You know, I remember, I’m going to tell you a story. 20 years ago, I met a woman and she was, she had this calm, amazing way about her, but I knew she was successful. Somehow I knew that. And in fact, it was after I started Wonderbag, it was probably 15 years ago. And I said to her, can I have a cup of coffee with you? And she said, sure. And I knew that she was somebody special, something,

56:29

told me that. And I said, have you done this? And she said, I was like you at your age. And she said, when I got to my age, I realized that all those things were important for me to do. But they weren’t going to define me. And I didn’t have to have a reason to to make space in the world. And it wasn’t judged by what I achieved. But actually, it was about inner peace and calm. And, and, and that for me is more important than age.

56:56

You know, I think that when you can take time out and see things differently. So my journey is changing, absolutely. Will I be the CEO of Wonderbag till I’m 90? Definitely not. Will I be the CEO of Wonderbag at the end of next year? I hope not. My thinking is different. And so…

57:23

But I see so many people who are in their early 60s who are being forced to retire from occupations. I was swimming with a woman in Norfolk over the weekend and she is 60 something and she’s been in nurse school, whatever, 40 years, and she’s having to retire from the NHS. And she said, but it’s just not fair because I have so much knowledge. I’m not ready. So

57:51

You know, my sister often talks about ageism and this sort of ageism biased and this retirement age. Well, you know, those are institutional issues that don’t belong anymore. People are living old longer. We know about health, you know, all sorts of different things. So when it’s too old, I think too old, when you just feel like knitting longer and being at peace, I don’t know.

58:21

Christél: Mm-hmm. Well, I think the reality is that, as you say, people are getting older and to retire at 60 is just incredibly archaic. So lots of opportunities for new entrepreneurs to develop after they have to retire from all the institutions.

58:43

Sarah: Well, I think that’s one of the most amazing opportunities because those people have also grown up with our technology. And I think the more people we can keep within the innovative space, innovation space that have thought out of the box before technology came is really, really critical to the world right now as we transition into a new way of being. 

Christél: Absolutely. Sarah, do you ever get time to read?

59:13

Sarah: I do. I’m a passionate reader. 

Christél: So what would be a book that you can recommend for our entrepreneurs? With its business or just inspirational? 

Sarah: I mean, for me, the greatest inspiration and the book that’s kept me going through some of my darkest time was Shoe Dog. And you know, when you understand the story of Nike.

59:39

you know it’s okay to be struggling because that is one book where it’s a really honest account from Phil Knight of what it truly is to have to vasbyt, you know. And I’ve read it and read it, I keep it next to my bed, it’s something I pick up. I really believe that’s a book that has saved my business on a number of occasions. 

Christél: Sarah, just a couple of last final words for

01:00:10

to help them cope and continue and prosper and be inspired? 

Sarah: You know, one of the things I was thinking about was a friend asked me if she could come and chat to me. And she’s an incredible entrepreneur herself and she’s struggling with some challenges. And so I said, let’s get out of the mud, take off your gumboots and draw a picture. And she looked at me and I said, yeah.

01:00:39

That’s all we’re going to do. So my advice is stop, get out of the mud, and draw pictures with people that don’t understand your business. Because by drawing a picture, and I’m not saying do it on your iPad or whatever, get a scrap of paper with a pen or a pencil and actually draw a picture of what you are faced with. And explain it to somebody.

01:01:03

Because by doing that, you are allowing your brain time to actually see it visually, and that helps you unwind what your challenge is. And I find that extremely helpful in my life. I mean, I have paper next to my bed, and I wake up at two in the morning, or I mean, I wake up all night, and I just draw pictures. And they really, really do enable you to see things differently.