When Penny Power was a girl, her parents paid a careers adviser to give her a psychometric test. She was advised to be a Butlins redcoat. Recalling the moment, this 48-yearold entrepreneur in the IT industry laughs and says:
“Oh my God! I wonder, if I had taken that advice…”
At school, she found she didn’t fit in with the public school culture, or with the teachers, some of whom, at this ex-convent school, were “cruel” nuns.
“I laughed a lot and that wasn’t acceptable!” she explains.
She also didn’t feel academically gifted, feeling more drawn to interacting with others. Then, after befriending a young boy with cerebral palsy she decided to become a physiotherapist. On leaving school and Sixth Form, she was accepted in to university in London to become a child psychologist. It was in her gap year as she was saving money that she was invited to apply for a job in telesales by a manager at Vodafone who liked her friendly personality. But when she was sent on a telesales training course, she realised the telesales approach she was
