Executive Chairman
Boden

Johnnie B

00:00:05 My name is Johnnie B. I am founder and executive chairman of Boden Mail Order Clothing Company. We sell women’s, men’s and children’s clothing by mail order or over the Internet to people in the UK, America and Germany.

00:00:25 It was never something that I thought I was always going to do. I came to the career through, because I’d made so many mistakes in my other careers. It was a bit of a fluke really.

00:00:38 I was happy at school. I did quite well. I was a rather annoying sort of goody-goody really. I did everything quite well but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and that was, I was a jack of all trades really. I had a very conventional background. My father was in the Army and he wanted me to go into the Army, and I thought of that as a career but actually I didn’t think it was for me. I didn’t like the idea of the discipline. I’m fairly self-disciplined and I didn’t like the idea of other people kicking me around really.

00:01:13 At my A levels, I did English, History and Economics. So arts subjects basically, and I read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at university, which I enjoyed. I decided to go into the city of London because I thought it seemed a nice idea. There were, the money was good, the people seemed nice, but very soon after going into that career, I realised that it was…I wasn’t particularly good at it and I also didn’t find it terribly interesting.

00:01:44 My father and others would say to me, ‘oh well, you know, all work’s difficult and hard and you’ve got to keep your head down’, and I did, but actually there comes a point where you have to say, ‘this really isn’t the job for me’. And I think the best advice I could give any young person is, you know, you have to try your hardest at what…your job, but if you get no satisfaction out of it at all, then you’re in the wrong job.

00:02:09 When I left the city, the first job I did is I went to work in a pub. But I then discovered that I didn’t really like the hours; that was a real drawback and it really got me down after a while. I then became a teacher. I taught at a small private school, and I did really enjoy it actually, but it wasn’t financially rewarding enough for me. And then I started to panic because I was running out of ideas. But selling clothes was another idea on the list.

00:02:41 My family were fairly surprised and didn’t understand it at all. They didn’t think it was a proper job selling clothes. You know, I’d started this business, they thought I had a perfectly decent career and why should I leave it. But I did have quite a few obstacles in that respect. They were not very supportive but it made me more determined which was probably quite a good thing.

00:03:07 I have a lovely wife who’s been incredibly supportive. She really encouraged me to go for it. She said to me, ‘you’re a failure. You have had this amazing education. You’ve got to do something’. And they were hard words but they were absolutely right and I think, Americans call it ‘tough love’, but it was fantastically important to have somebody who just pointed out to me that I needed to sort myself out.

00:03:40 Because this job is very all-encompassing and I think about it a lot, I don’t have as many outside interests as I probably should. But my family are very, very important to me. You know, my biggest regret is that, I see quite a lot of them but I’m sometimes miles away and I’m thinking about work, and that’s a bit of a pain for them. But that interest dwarfs all others outside work.

00:04:10 I am quite ambitious. I’m in the lucky position that, you know, financially I’m relatively secure. But, you know, the reason why I get up and go to work is because I just enjoy the challenge. I think retiring is a terrible thing. I’m just so lucky to be doing something that I enjoy and why should I stop?