In this interview, Dr. Sue Black shares three memorable stories and pieces of advice. First, she recounts a humorous incident where she appeared on BBC Breakfast while intoxicated, unintentionally giving incorrect facts. Second, she describes her three‑year grassroots campaign to save Bletchley Park, highlighting how a direct‑message outreach to Stephen Fry led to his tweeting a link to her blog, which skyrocketed traffic from 50 to 8,000 hits in a day and made her the most retweeted person worldwide that day. Finally, she offers encouragement to women entrepreneurs, urging them to "disrupt yourself" by overcoming shyness, taking bold actions, and pursuing passions, emphasizing that personal initiative can create broader positive change.
Chapters
So Sue, tell us one cool fact about you, something that we don't know or something that will surprise us. A cool thing.
Okay, well, so how about that I went on BBC Breakfast Time drunk, did an interview, and got all my facts wrong. I don't think anyone watching knew I was drunk.
Well, you got away with it!
Fine job.
And what else? Tell us a bit as well about all the cool stuff you've done with Bletchley Park. What stands out, like, from all of that experience?
Wow. Well, I guess so many things. I mean, it was a 3-year campaign, right? So, so many things. But I guess some of the key kind of pivotal things happening were things like, you know, getting Stephen Fry to to tweet a link to my campaign blog, and just the difference that made, that kind of taught me a lesson actually, which was that, you know, like, I'm not from a PR marketing background or anything like that. I've got an academic background. And so I was running a campaign but not really knowing what I was doing. I was just kind of like following my nose. And I saw a photo that Stephen Fry tweeted, like a selfie of him stuck in a lift in a tower block in London. And I thought, Stephen Fry, he must care about Bletchley Park. So I checked on Twitter, and he was actually following me. So that meant that I could send him direct messages. So I sent him several direct messages.
That's a cool fact already, that he was following you before you started.
Yeah, well, I thought it was really bizarre. I guess it was back in the day, and actually there were mainly technology people on Twitter, because it's like nearly 10 years ago we're talking about now. And so I sent him several direct messages asking him to get involved with the campaign. And that was probably after a couple of bottles of beer. I can see a bit of a theme coming out here. I'm not an alcoholic, honest. So I sent him several direct messages saying, please, can you get involved with the campaign to save Bletchley Park? And then the next morning, he tweeted a link to my blog. And at that time, I was getting about 50 hits a day on my blog. And that day, I got 8,000 hits. Oh my gosh. And I actually became the most retweeted person on Twitter in the world that day, kind of from the Fry effect, maybe. So that was just incredible for the campaign, because it just got out then to a worldwide audience. How on earth else would you do that?
That's amazing. That's a super cool fact. So what would be your advice to women entrepreneurs, like to kind of get them going and to, yeah, to inspire them?
Well, I just think you only get one life, right? So if you want to make stuff happen in the world, just get out there and do it. And I feel like, you know, I'm kind of known for getting out there and doing it, but actually I too spend too much time procrastinating and not really pushing myself forward to do things. And I think particularly as women, sometimes we're just a bit too shy to put ourselves out there. So like this morning, my talk was called Disrupt Yourself. And I feel like I've kind of— rather than having a life where my life was getting disrupted by other people in certain ways, I decided to kind of disrupt myself. So kind of change my attitude, put myself out there, do things that scare me. And it's actually doing that kind of stuff that makes change happen and makes your life better and also makes life better for everyone around you.
Yeah.
You know, if you find the things you really care about and follow your passions and keep pushing yourself to do new things and solve new problems, then I don't know, it's so exciting and just like get out there and do it.
I love it, get out there and do it. That's— I think you've wrapped up the inspirational quote in there already.
Okay.
I love it, disrupt yourself, get out there and do it and don't hold yourself back.
