was brought up in London and eventually became a lawyer with a leading City practice. After her father died she felt she needed a change of lifestyle and resigned from the firm without knowing what she would do in the future. The idea for Coffee Republic came when she discovered ‘skinny lattes’ in New York in the mid 1990s, and believed there was a market for specialist coffee bars back in the UK. Her brother Bobby joined the project – an accountant, he knew how to build the business around her ideas. Funding requests were turned down some ten times before they received backing from NatWest through the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme. With additional funding, the business grew dramatically and eventually both partners would leave. However when the fortunes of Coffee Republic started to decline, Bobby returned as Executive Chairman. Sahar has not returned; instead, and on the back of their successful book on their experiences at Coffee Republic – Anyone Can Do It – Sahar is a popular and inspirational speaker on entrepreneurship.


An entrepreneur in waiting

I never showed any entrepreneurial flair in childhood.  If you’d told me 10 years ago I would have any entrepreneurial qualities, I would have definitely said no.  If you’d asked people around me, my friends, my family, if they thought I was entrepreneurial, they would definitely have said no.  You know I was a lawyer for God’s sake.  There’s no more opposite to an entrepreneur than being a lawyer.  I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer, I was trained to be a lawyer from a very young age, so therefore, that’s why I believe anyone can do it, and that’s the title of my book and I believe that everyone’s got an entrepreneur within them.  Entrepreneurship is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it’s flabby, it’s just there completely unused.  But the more you use the entrepreneur muscle the stronger that muscle gets.  It then becomes self perpetuating.