Sahar Hashemi

As a motivational speaker, Sahar is able to explain to audiences how she founded the highly successful Coffee Republic – the coffee bar that grew to 110 outlets and a £30m turnover – then went on to create a range of sugar-free sweets called Skinny Candy in 2005, selling 50% of it two years later to Glisten, the snack foods and specialist ingredients group.

Skinny Candy is distributed through Coffee Republic as well as Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Waitrose and Top Shop.

Sahar’s experience of creating a business from scratch is detailed in her book Anyone Can Do It – Building Coffee Republic From Our Kitchen Table, reckoned to be the second most popular book dealing with entrepreneurship. Another of her books – Switched On – encourages entrepreneurial behaviour in staff, with the aim of creating genuinely engaged employees who contribute to the success of a business.

In 2011, the UK government’s Business Secretary at the time Vince Cable sought the advice of motivational speaker Sahar Hashemi as part of an Entrepreneurs Forum and a year later she was given the OBE for her contributions to charity and to the British economy.