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Transcript: Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Who could imagine that foot scrub and melon-flavored lip balm could make you rich. But, it's products like these that gave Anita Roddick a lifestyle like this. It wasn't always the case. The Body Shop had humble beginnings. From a small sea-side store ... it went global. And now it's a part of French cosmetics giant L'Oreal. Todd Benjamin visited Anita at her home in the English countryside and asked her what makes a great entrepreneur.

Roddick: Obsession. Bordering on the pathological. Obsessed with an idea and then ... and then pushing it to see how far it can go, but you've got to start with an idea. That becomes ... it takes over your life. You think of it in the present tense, there's no ... there's no obstacles, you're pathologically optimistic and with that comes this amazing sense of wanting to be free.

Benjamin: But actually when you started The Body Shop in 1976, you started out of necessity because your husband was having a good time trekking from Argentina to New York on a horse.

Roddick: I think women are good at taking what they're interested in and what they're skilled at and molding it into a livelihood. I mean that's the basis of most women's sort of adventures into the business world. Um, what I did was I found what I was interested in, what -- from travel because travel was my university without walls -- had these ideas, set them in motion, but was only going to be for two years, but you know I didn't have a futurist thought in my head and then it just like topsy grew.

Benjamin: And you think women approach business very differently to men?

Roddick: I think women dialogue better. Women do not like hierarchy. They like more seamless networking. I think when they see hierarchy, in my experience, they want to undo it at any given point, but still on the downside of women in business and women in management, they still do a lot of invisible work, they still look at power and don't want any part of it because they see what it's done to, you know, the other gender.

Benjamin: Talking to you, you're a very charming woman, you're very articulate, but also I think there are certain contradictions in you. Let me just give you a couple of them that I see. Here's a quote: "I have a deep sense that to accumulate wealth is obscene," yet when I look at your surroundings here, they're magnificent.

Roddick: Yeah, so? That's not accumulating.

Benjamin: Why not just give away all your wealth?

Roddick: That's exactly what I'm doing. Not all of it, but I'm giving away some of it. You see, I think real stupidity is going to extremes. I don't want to give it all away, I want comfort, I want my kids, I've got my family and my friends to look after, but I want to take big bunches of my shares and give it away as I'm starting to do, but mostly I want to get my hands dirty doing it. I don't believe wealth is a problem, I think greed is a problem.

Benjamin: You were quoted as saying: "There is no more powerful institution than business."

Roddick: I believe that, I believe now, you know, business is richer than governments, it's more powerful than any other institution whether it's the financial, you know, institutions, or no, the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions. It's more creative, it's wealthier, can turn out a dime, than any other social institution, but if it doesn't have a moral sympathy with everything it does because it's so powerful, and a moral code of behavior then God help us all.

Benjamin: And what advice would you have for anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur? Roddick: Don't go to business school. You don't find ... you don't ... learn to know that business or be taught that business is financial science, it's not. It's having an idea and seeing how you differ from the competition and shouting those differences from the rooftops.

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