Jacqueline Gold quotes: the British businesswoman goes off.
“There’s nothing more to fear than fear itself. I think my dad actually said that to me, and whilst it’s a well-known saying, I think it’s so true in business—particularly when you start out. It’s a scary world.”
“Women should own their success. If we are to be good role models to the next generations, we have to empower ourselves. I’ve got a daughter so this is close to my heart. We need to be proud of everything we accomplish and we need to boldly celebrate our success.”
“Women tend to play down their success, and as a result, bosses don’t often hear why they deserve the promotion or pay rise in question. We have to think about how we are selling ourselves. Don’t mumble your way through the discussion or apologize for even being there. Put your case forward with conviction and pride and remember you deserve this.”
“Women tend to have a default button where they slip back into playing down what they can achieve. If there’s a job opportunity they’ll want to consult the whole world and his dog before they accept it because they’re not sure they can do it. Whereas a man will do the opposite, they will big themselves up, perhaps even over-promote themselves in terms of how they can perform. But if you’ve got a male boss who is listening to you say all the reasons why you may not be able to do a job, then it’s not going to come across well. Women often forget about how fantastic they are.”
“Women that could have an amazing impact on business—we know from research that businesses that have a mixed board outperform businesses that have an all-male board. It’s madness not to pay attention to women!”
“A lot of women suffer from impostor syndrome, but there’s a trick that I did for myself when I was younger, that could be useful. Regularly email yourself a list of all of the awesome things that you’ve done, all of the achievements, whether that be in your personal life or in your business life. No matter how small they appear to you, constantly update the email. Then every time you have an important event, whether it’s a job interview, a promotion review or a presentation that you’re worried about, read the email back to yourself, and just remind yourself of how awesome you really are. I promise it will give you such a lift.”
“I would like to not only give women the freedom to pursue their dreams but also the confidence to realize them. I personally think the problem is very much around social conditioning. We bring boys up to be brave, and we bring girls up to be perfect, so it’s no wonder that women, as I often see it, underestimate their own achievements.”
“When you’re brought up to be perfect, you’re always looking to validate. We see a job profile and think, ‘God, I don’t know if I could do that,’ and a man would go straight in and say, ‘Yeah—tick, tick, tick—I can do it.’ I like helping women believe in themselves, and I want to change that stereotypical view that so often holds them back. I’m the mother of an eight-year-old and I’m so aware that it’s just so important that we let our girls be brave, and that we let them make mistakes and learn from them. It doesn’t always have to be perfect.”
“I want to be certain that when my daughter grows up she can be whoever she wants to be and she isn’t restricted by the gender barriers we often see stand in the way of young women.”
“I can honestly say I’ve never felt guilty about being a working mum, I feel that way because I’m doing a good job when I am there and when it counts. There may be a couple of nights a week when I get home after her bedtime but I think it’s about getting the balance right. At the weekend you have to make sure you make every second count. I’m not knocking my stay-at-home mum at all, but I don’t remember doing as many wonderful things as a child as I do with my daughter now.”
“When you’re a working mum you put a lot of effort and thought into what you’re doing with your child, so you make it as enjoyable and memorable for them as possible.”
“I’m renowned for managing a business run by women, for women; and an activist for women in business, championing female entrepreneurs and aiming to better the working environment for women. My attitude towards female empowerment and gender equality inspires countless generations of women to pursue their dreams and celebrate their successes.”
“I persevered and transformed Ann Summers from a company with an all-male board to a now board of 70% women. God, we’ve come a long way.”
“I don’t anticipate objections.”
“I refuse to compromise on my brand. I’m passionate about it, and there have been many times where I’ve been asked to compromise and I couldn’t. I even took the government to court to resist compromising my brand. Out of the blue they wanted me to stop advertising in job centers, trying to label us as part of the sex industry. I had no choice but to take legal action and it ended up going to the high court. It was very intimidating, but the judge voted in our favor, and do you know what’s funny? The case brought us so much publicity that we didn’t actually have to advertise in job centers for some time after!”
“It’s been such a colorful journey and there have been so many challenges, so going from getting arrested in 1995 to being recognized by the Queen in 2016 for doing that very same thing that I have always been passionate about, it was a really proud moment. It is this moment in my career that describes my proudest.”
“My superpower is resilience. I’m definitely a super-resilient person and I think you have to be. When I look back at everything that has happened (getting arrested, being discriminated against, being sent bullets), you can’t get through those types of things unless you’re resilient.”
“Climbing the business ladder as a woman has its challenges, even in 2020, and when you get to the top, it doesn’t get much easier.”
“I did feel like a woman alone in the sex industry. And there were a lot of preconceived ideas. I had great difficulty in persuading newspapers to take adverts and hotels. I was running seminars at the time. So there were a lot of difficulties and it was constantly educating people that we were changing, and completely changing our image.”
“We certainly have contributed to changing people’s attitudes to sex. Certainly women’s attitudes. Over the last 10 years, women in the 1990s—certainly here in the UK—are much more aware of their own sexuality. They’re more comfortable about talking to their partners about what they want from a relationship. And I think they’re all positive changes.”
“I faced challenges, serious challenges, in my early career. But even today, I still experience discrimination for being a woman.”
“I feel so passionate and am so proud of what we have achieved and how far we’ve come—changing those perceptions and the whole culture. I really can’t say it held me back in any way though. It’s probably driven me forward in a perverse way.”
“Women are much more confident today, not just in their personal lives in the bedroom, but also in their professional lives.”
