Jo Loves: Jo Malone CBE (2020)

As a girl in 1970s London, Jo Malone learned how to make face creams by going to work with her mom at a private skin care clinic. By the time she was in her 20's, Jo was running her own skin care and cosmetics business, which eventually grew to include bath oils, scented candles, and fragrances under the brand Jo Malone London. Jo sold the brand to Estée Lauder in 1999 and then left the business after a life-changing diagnosis. She now has a fragrance company called Jo Loves, where she innovates with new kinds of scents and explores new ways to present them. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

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• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:14Guy Raz?

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• 2:58Guy Raz?

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• 3:40Guy Raz?

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• 4:23Guy Raz?

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• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details. Hey, everyone. So today, we're running an episode from a few years ago. It's with perfumer Joe Malone. And what can I say? Joe was so much fun to talk to. Her story is funny and amazing and also incredibly moving. Oh, and one more thing. Later this week, look out for a brand-new episode of How I Built This Lab. I'll be speaking with chef Pierre Chiam about Phonio, an ancient grain that he's now trying to sell around the world that could help change the way we eat and the way we farm. But for now, here's my conversation with Joe Malone. Enjoy.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  This was a real breaking point. Gary came home. He had a pizza in his hand. And I just said, Gary, there's hundreds of orders coming, and we've got to have them done by the end of the week. And he said, let me just have my supper, and I'll do it. And he sat down to eat his dinner. And of course, I touched everything in the kitchen with fragrance. So his pizza tasted of nutmeg and ginger. And he said, if we carry on, we're going to end a divorce. I looked, and he said, I'm going to go and have a shower, and just, I'll come back in a minute. And I thought, oh, my God, no. Because I'd put all these seashells in the bath, and I was scenting them with lavender, sea lavender oil. And I heard him scream as he went in. And he walked down the hall, and he said, OK, that's it. We need a shop.

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:52Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Jo Malone turned her homemade lotions into one of the hottest perfume brands in the world, Jo Malone London.

• 7:10Guy Raz?

  If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? This famous philosophical thought experiment can easily be applied to entrepreneurship. The question might go something like this: if you make a great product, but you neglect the design element, will anyone notice it? Well, probably not. I mean, think about how many dish soaps there were when Method debuted in the late 1990s. There's a reason why people bought Method soap. The product was good, but the bottle design was what got you to try it. When Tristan Walker created the Bevel Razor, he wanted the unboxing experience to be as exciting as the iPhone. He even wanted to replicate that whoosh sound when

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  the top part separates from the bottom of the box. Why did swell bottles break out in a marketplace inundated with water bottles? Because Sarah Kous designed them to stand out. Now, all those things might sound superficial, but in a crowded marketplace, they matter. It's what gets people to hear your tree falling in the forest. And that's kind of what Jo Malone did as well. Now, if you're not familiar with Jo Malone fragrances, I assure you, you have seen a Jo Malone shop in some airport around the world. The logo and the look is really simple: a thin, black frame around three words, Jo Malone London.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  The perfume boxes are cream and wrapped in a single, black bow. That's it. But there's something so elegant about that look that it makes you want to buy it, which is basically how her brand, Jo Malone, took off.

• 8:50Guy Raz?

  But this was after years and years and years of making lotions and creams and selling them out of her small apartment in London. Jo's story is almost like one of those magical realism novels. It involves a real magician, her dad, his 10 dwarf rabbits, a mysterious countess named Madame Lubati, and a working class childhood on the outskirts of London. Jo grew up in a council estate, or what Americans would call public housing, in the 1960s, with her mom, dad, and sister. Jo has dyslexia, which went undiagnosed for years, and it made school a real struggle for her.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  I just couldn't keep up. I couldn't keep the words in my head. The things I was really good at were things like biology, because it's visual. I was very good at history, because I could listen to the stories and I would memorize those. And I was very good at religious studies, believe it or not, because, again, they're based on stories. But mathematics, English, languages, I'd struggled above and beyond. I would literally be thrown out of class with the others, and I was told I was lazy and stupid. And I knew I was neither one of those things, but I just couldn't follow an exam paper. Multiple choice, to me, was the worst thing in the world, because I'd put my cross against an answer, and then I'd watch all the sentences and all the letters move around on the page.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  And by the end of it, I would probably have answered three or four questions out of 20, and I'd fail. And then I would pick up a book, and I would read it, and there'd be no problem at all. And I would think, I'm cured. And then, sure enough, it would happen again. And it still happens to me today. Not as much as it did when I was a child. I can manage perfectly well now, but that's probably because I'm not so anxious about it.

• 10:35Guy Raz?

  What was your parents' marriage like?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  It was happy and very unhappy, both in the same breath. They adored each other, and then they hated each other. And then they adored each other, and they hated each other, and I was caught in the middle. So I was the adult in our household from a very young age. And listen, I loved my mom and dad desperately, and I know that they did their very best for me, but... It made me grow up very, very fast and very quickly. And when they would have an argument, they would, they would do that awful thing of, Joe, tell your father, his shirts are not going to be ironed. And I would go in and say, Dad, mum says your shirt's not going to be ironed. Tell your mother. And they're standing in the same room and I would sit there on the stairs, listening to them fight and argue.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And then he'd walk out and she'd walk out and I would just carry on. I'd go to the fridge, see what was for dinner. But they were loving parents, but they just couldn't live together. They were too volatile.

• 11:32Guy Raz?

  What did they fight about?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Money. What does every, what, what are most people, let's be honest, money. My dad, who was the artist, he had lots of jobs, my father. My father was a brilliant, brilliant man, but did job jump a lot. So he was an architect, he was a painter, he would, he was also a member of the magic circle. So he was a magician. I mean, you name it, he could do it. And he was a huge gambler. So they would row about money, they would row about his gambling.

• 12:03Guy Raz?

  Would he like blow all of his money in like on a poker game?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Would he? And the month after that, yes. And then he'd suddenly have a huge win. I remember him one day coming home and he draws up in this amazing Jaguar. Where it's like, well, you didn't have that this morning. So where's that? Well, that's one on a poker game. And out the back of the car was all these leather coats that he'd obviously taken as payment from someone's factory who didn't have enough money. And my mother said, get rid of the car, get rid of the coats, we don't want them. And so they were driven off up the road. So it was, there was always, there was never a dull moment, that's for sure, in our house. It never made me love my dad less or love my mum less, though. I could see they were both very good people. And I realised about my dad, and it wasn't until I was much older, that when he did those things,

• 12:52Speaker 01

  he was trying to do something nice for us. And he didn't realise the way he was going about it made my mum feel really insecure. But I saw that actually, well, he was trying to, he was trying to tell her he loved her. And, you know, let's get in the car, put on the coat and let's go for a drink. And even as I'm talking about it, it brings a smile to my face, thinking there was so much kindness in my dad. But my goodness, it did often came out the wrong way.

• 13:18Guy Raz?

  And just to clarify, your dad was a, like, I mean, he was obviously an interesting guy. Like, he was, he sold paintings and he was a magician and?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yes, well, as I said, he didn't keep full-time jobs for very long. So he was a magician, he'd gone through magician's school and he was a brilliant magician. And I would go and be the magician's assistant. So in our little garden in Bexley Heath, we had rabbit hutches with about 10 white Nevealandorf rabbits, which of course I had to look after. And I had to look after them in the show because they would appear from hats and hop around and do all sorts of things. So I was the magician's assistant. But he would also do his paintings. And when he wasn't in a full-time employment, he still had to earn money. So we would do, he and I would do all the markets at the weekend. We would go set up our little market stall and put all the paintings up.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And I knew that we had to sell three paintings every single day. Because I knew if we didn't, we wouldn't eat. So I would, we would set it all up and I would send my father off to go and get breakfast very early and I would try and get the first sale before he came back and I'd pocket the money. So I'd pocket it so I could give it to my mum because I knew he would put it in his pocket and we wouldn't see it. So I realised that survival was an important, sort of important part of living.

• 14:40Guy Raz?

  I guess it was around, when you were around age eight, there was sort of an important turning point in, would be in your life and in your, your mum's life. She met a woman named Madame Lubati who had a skincare like shop in London and went to work for her. Who was, who was Madame Lubati?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  She was, oh my god, I loved her. She was such a, she was such an eclectic human being. So she was in her late seventies when I first met her. And she was this brilliant skincare woman. I think my mum went first of all to just be the receptionist. And my mum became so involved and enjoyed very much working with her that she took herself off and got herself qualified in anatomy, physiatrics and set to work working as Madame Lubati's partner.

• 15:27Guy Raz?

  And this was a like a skincare salon, Madame Labaty?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  It was in Baker, it was just off Baker Street in a place called Montague Mansions, which is just around the corner from where Sherlock Holmes was rumored to have lived and walked. And that's where my mom went to work for her. But it wasn't a shop, it was a very private skincare clinic. So at that time in London, there were two women who were the skin doyens of the time, who would look after all the elites. One was Countess Charkey and the other was Countess Labaty, and she had her private clinic. This was a point when women didn't run their own businesses and they certainly didn't, weren't successful in the way that both of them were. But Madame Labaty, she was very tall, she was like six two, six three.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Blood red lipstick, the most amazed, she had the most incredible smell about her. It was always like crushed sandalwood and Bulgari, like the finest rose oil you ever smelled. She had blonde cropped pixie hair. She always had a white lab coat on, she had cream fishnet tights, very high shoes. And I would often come in if I went with my mom at the weekends. Any, any chance I had at going up to Baker Street with my mom, I would go. And I think I got, when I first met her, it was just before dementia started kicking. But I could see, I could see signs of it definitely because she'd suddenly forget my name or she'd forget something and she'd look at me and she'd say, Joe, do you remember where I put it? And I'd say, yes, madam.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I was like her little helper, her little, her eyes. And by the time I was sort of seven, eight years old, I'd spent a long time with her in the laboratory. And it was this white room and there was all these like big glass, like old fashioned sweetie jars, but in glass. And they would all have herbs in, from roses to sandalwood to slippery elm to camphor crystals to, I mean, you name it, it was there. There was every jar of honey you could possibly think. And I would watch her make face creams and make face masks up.

• 17:29Guy Raz?

  Was Madame Labaty like a character or was she really like a countess? Was she English? Who, who, what's her, what's her story?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Well, her real name was Doris Hildebaker.

• 17:39Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  And she, but she did marry a count. And you know something? I don't know whether some of this was. Dementia kicking in. I hope not because she was obviously in her young twenties. She was a very sought after young woman. She told me once that she had passed messages backwards and forwards in the top of lids of face creams. And I said, does that mean you were a spy? And she said, no, no, we never used that word. But I suppose some would say, you know, she was, she was a great storyteller and I just, I loved her. My eyes were like dinner plates the whole time and there was a moment where we walked, I took her out for tea one afternoon. And she walked down the road and then she suddenly said to me, I don't know where I am.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And I knew at that moment, I cry, I remember I cried. And I took her hand, I said, I know where we are. And I took her home and I told my mom. And, and it was at that point that we had to get help, which, and she deteriorated very quickly after that.

• 18:38Guy Raz?

  I guess it was around like nineteen seventy four. Madame Lubati, she, she dies and your mom is her employee. And somehow kind of inherits the, the business.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  She wasn't just her employee. She, by that point, they had been, they had worked as partners. So my mom had worked within the clinic and was equal, she'd looked after her and helped pay all her debts. My mom was, was very good and very kind to Madame Lubati.

• 19:03Guy Raz?

  And I guess we should clarify this, and I guess you will, but which is like, you didn't all of a sudden overnight become rich because Madame Lubati apparently was like bankrupt, like she had no money.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Um, we certainly didn't become, I, I don't think my family were, were ever rich.

• 19:17Guy Raz?

  So when, when Madame Lubati died, um, I guess your mom decides to build her own similar type of business, right? And, and, and continue to make face creams and, and, and so how did that go? How, how, how did her business go?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, very well. She had, she built a really successful business. She would go to people's houses. So she didn't have, obviously Montague Mansions were sold with on Baker Street. And of course I knew how to make the face creams. I'd been doing it, you know, since I was seven, eight years old. So my jobs were to help her. And on a Saturday morning, we would, you know, be in the house in Bexley Heath and when she'd say to me, I need fifty pots of cleansing cream. Can you make them? And that was, you know, that was my Saturday and I knew how to do it. I wouldn't necessarily measure anything out. It was. I I did everything with such precision as she had taught me. And I would clean the fridge out and lay all the all the kitchen roll out and I'd and I'd sterilise all the

• 20:15Speaker 01

  utensils and I'd boil the water and put the oil and I would trust my nose to tell me when I had to put the oils in at that point, it was like a mineral oil and a wax, so you had to wait until it all dissipated in the enamel bucket. Then I'd let it cool down and the minute it skinned, I knew that was the point at which you poured it into the face pots. And then again, I would I would sit there and watch them. And then I'd lid them and then I'd go into the fridge and that would be the fifty pots and they would sell for five pound fifty a pot. So I don't think I was proud of myself, but I was. I knew that I, when I looked at it and we'd sold it, I knew that we could eat.

• 20:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  That was always my motivation.

• 20:53Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so your mom has this business and you are kind of helping her out and it sounds like she's doing okay, um and you're still a kid, I mean, we should be clear, I mean, you were still a, you know, a little girl. And I guess by the time you reached what we would call high school, you decide that it's not for you, that you basically drop out.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Well, in between that, so my mum was very, very sick and the thing that really I think probably I woke up one day, I could see my my dad, my dad had disappeared, he'd gone off, he'd run off with someone. And we, I was left and I could see my mum deteriorating slowly and slowly. And one day I came home from school and I found her in a chair rocking herself backwards and forwards and she wouldn't talk, she wouldn't say anything. So I rushed to go and get a neighbour and she came in and she she said, Joe, take take your sister upstairs, I'm gonna call the doctor and I you know, that they never said your mum's sick, but she, your mum's having a turn, that's what that's what she said.

• 21:53Guy Raz?

  Which we would call what?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Well, she was, my mum was having a breakdown, that's what my mum was, and she was, and you know what, when people go through, I mean, we talk about it a lot now about mental illness, it's not about being weak. She was, she just held it together for too long, she was strong for too long. And she just couldn't hold it any longer and then it was all down to me. And I remember social services coming round and they said that my sister and I would have to go into a home and I managed, I didn't lie, but I certainly didn't tell the truth. I um, I just said, no, no, no, there's people around, don't worry, my dad's coming home. And they said, well, where is your father? Oh, he's travelling, he's coming back, everything will be fine. But for, for a year, I managed on my own. I made sure that my sister went

• 22:39Speaker 01

  to school every day I'd take her and then I'd come back home, nurse my mum, bath my mum, give her a breakfast, make the face creams up, get on the train with a shopping trolley. I'd go up to the flat that my mum worked from, sell all the products, put it in and then come all the way back and then to cook dinner. And I put food on the table and that's when I left, when I stopped going to school. I couldn't see the point of it. I couldn't see the point of sitting there, feeling stupid, being told I was stupid and lazy. And it's like, I'm running a business, I know how to make money and I know how to make face creams. And that was probably the last day I went to school. And I, I was one of those people that fell through the cracks in the educational system. But for that, I'm really grateful because it made me.

• 23:20Guy Raz?

  So basically, around the time you were sixteen years old, you were independent. I mean, you had to work and earn money to live, to, to survive.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  I was independent, you're absolutely right. The age of sixteen, then when I was legally allowed um to leave. So my mum eventually became better. And I didn't realise this at the time, but it was going to happen again. And it happened twice more. But I thought she was better and you know, that I, I wanted to be a teenager or a child. So I went to live with a family friend in London with an amazing family called the Soos. And for the first time in my life, I saw what a family should be. We would sit, I, we'd never sat at a table and ate a meal together as a family at home. Whereas here, every night, you would sit and you would talk about your day. And they, they were just the kindest, loveliest

• 24:14Speaker 01

  people in the whole world. And I kind of went to live with them. I got a job in Justine de Blanks in a little flower shop. I earned twenty nine pounds a week. But it was a really, really, really happy time. And what I noticed, I noticed that I had, that my sense of smell was something that was very extraordinary. I didn't realize to what extent. But I would pick up the flowers and I'd say, I'd smell the bottom of the end of the thing and the top of the tulip and I'd say, they've been in the fridge for three days. I want the fresh ones. No, no, no, Joe, they're absolutely, no, they have. I don't want those. And eventually they just knew that they couldn't. If I picked up something to smell, I could tell whether it was fresh or it had been sitting in a fridge. And that that was my first job.

• 24:58Guy Raz?

  And and I think Justin de Blank was like a high end grocery store, something like that in in London at the time.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  He was a brilliant entrepreneur. He wanted to be a shopkeeper. So he opened a bakery, I think, first of all, and then he opened a flower shop. And then he opened a delicatessen, a really high end delicatessen in Elizabeth Street.

• 25:17Guy Raz?

  And I think I think you worked in that delicatessen too, right? Like like with Justin de Blank before before moving on.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. And I left there. I went on to work in another flower shop. And then from there, I went to work with my mom. I went back because she was very poorly again. And so that's when I went to work with her.

• 25:38Guy Raz?

  I guess at at a certain point, Joe, maybe you were eighteen or or seventeen or you went to to to Bible school.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  I I the reason why I ask about Bible school is because I guess that was where you met the person who would become your partner, Gary, who would become your your husband.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:58Guy Raz?

  He was also a student there?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yes, he was. He was studying. He would have made, we laugh now, he'd have made a great vicar.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  But he, but yeah, he definitely was thinking about it full time and we fell in love with each other and I knew that structure was not for me.

• 26:12Guy Raz?

  So you you meet Gary and you guys, the two of you got married pretty young. I mean, you, I think you were twenty or twenty one.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Twenty one, yes.

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  And that was sort of around the time where your your mom had asked you to come back and help her out. And soon after she has, it sounds like, I think, if I'm right, I mean, she had a stroke, right?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  She, it was like a stroke and it, but there were severe complications with it as well. So the the woman who was taken into hospital that night never returned for me.

• 26:48Guy Raz?

  She was, it was almost as if her personality had changed.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Completely, yeah, completely. And I don't blame her for that. But it was, our relationship from that moment was never the same. She was never the mother that I had remembered. Everything I did was wrong. She completely changed. And of course, the more successful I became in the business, the more she hated me because I was living the life that she wanted to live. And we were a young married couple by the time that she came out of hospital and everything. And it was just like, I just can't live like this.

• 27:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  There was one incident where she, I was upstairs doing someone's face and I came down to the kitchen to pick up a face mask halfway through. And as I walked through, she picked up a part of her face cream and she threw it at me. And it landed all the way down my face. And I stood there and it was the, I, it was just the utter humiliation, I think, of the whole thing. And I snapped and I said, that's it. And I remember going upstairs, finishing, I finished the day and I finished the woman's face. And I wiped my hair and I sobbed and I walked out of that house and thought that if I, if I stay here, I'll die.

• 27:58Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  And so I made the decision that I was gonna walk away that day and I did. But unbeknown to me, I'd signed something that made me responsible for all of the debt. So as I walked out of that door as a young woman, newly married, thinking, I'm, you know, gonna start again, little did I know that I was gonna have debt, that I would have to pay off for the next goodness knows how many years, and I did.

• 28:22Guy Raz?

  You basically were, your mom's a business partner, but somehow this business was saddled with thousands of pounds of debt that you now were responsible for.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did what I'd done all my life, which is accept the responsibility, even though it wasn't my fault, and just get on and push through.

• 28:46Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so it's like 1988 or 89, you're about, I guess, 24. Your mom obviously cannot run a business at that point. And you take on like 30,000 pounds, I guess, roughly $40,000 roughly of debt at the time. So what are you gonna do? Like, how are you gonna make money to start paying this off?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I went back to the four plastic jugs and the saucepan, which have been my, probably my best friends all my life.

• 29:14Guy Raz?

  You meant, you mean, you started to make face lotions and creams?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  I just thought, what can I do? And it was by that point, Guy, it was in my blood. And so I set up and I would carry my massage bed from house to house. And I would do people's faces and I would go to one house and I'd say, if you've got any sisters, you know, if I can stay here and do three, four treatments, I knew that it was a really good day. And that's how I existed for a good six to eight months. And I started to build a clientele together. They were my word of mouth. You know, they did all the marketing for me. I didn't have to do it. I'd do the faces. I'd come home, I'd get a taxi or Gary would pick me up. Then I'd make the face creams and I'd get ready for the next day. And that was our existence.

• 30:00Guy Raz?

  Can I ask you about face creams for a minute? I mean, I'm curious, like, how do you make face creams? Like, what were you buying and mixing together?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Well, cosmetics are either oil into water or water into oil. It's like cooking. It's like making a white sauce or a red sauce. It was in those days anyway. It's a little bit more complex now. But I would take the waxes down or add the oils and boil it all up, strain it through muslin, let it stand for 24 hours, then go back, add all the essential oils of, at the time, we had a juniper skin tonic, which was the most wonderful, fresh, green tonic that you'd put on your skin. So I would, you know, do all of those things. And I suppose, I suppose making juniper is a bit like making vodka or gin. It's all the same sort of pieces in it. It's just different ingredients and different heating points, so.

• 30:47Guy Raz?

  And these are things you knew how to do intuitively because your mom had studied how to do it and you just grew up as a kid helping her out, doing it with her, I guess.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Well, I'd watched, I'd watched, but it was also the, all the years of Madame, with Madame Labarty, you know, it was all of those things like the yogurt face mask that I still make today, that I learnt to make that in Baker Street with a yogurt, a honey, a little bit of lemon juice to kind of sour the milk, honey, sandalwood powder, slippery elm powder, olive oil, avocado oil, jojoba oil, I knew how to do it. And I still, you know, it's still within me, I still know and understand how to, it's when you, do you know what making ten to twelve pots of face cream is easy, it's when you scale it, it's when you get to a hundred pots and five.

• 31:31Guy Raz?

  That's when it's hard, yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you have to, you have to alter, and of course, health and safety and health and hygiene or whatever, didn't exist in those days. Today, you couldn't stand in your kitchen and be pouring face cream in and put it in your fridge, you wouldn't be able to do that. But way back then, it was perfectly acceptable and perfectly okay.

• 31:50Guy Raz?

  And you, and you did this all out of your apartment where, where you and Gary were living?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yes. We had rented a small apartment in Chelsea, and I would transform this little flat into a tiny little exclusive skincare clinic. And we decided that this business, this business was taking fourteen to sixteen hours a day. So perhaps we would live in the flat where we were working, but of course there was no bedroom, it was just a one skincare room, one kitchen and a beautiful big sitting room. So we went to Homebase and bought a piece of blue foam and that was our bed for probably about four, five years. And we would roll it out and then we'd hide it.

• 32:27Guy Raz?

  Oh, when people come in for the treatments, right?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So chic and luxury, isn't it? We'd roll it up and it would go into the laundry closet and everything would be transformed and it would look like a little shop in the sitting room with this big bookcase and it would be full of product. And by the end of every day, everything was gone. So the minute the last client went, which was about six thirty, quarter to seven, I'd make myself a, a big, strong cup of coffee, stand in the kitchen that was just so tight, it was, it was no more than two people standing there. Plastic jugs would come out and I would start and I'd look at my appointment list and who was coming. And I knew that certain women would want six bottles of cream, so I would make a big super duper thing. And by the time Gary came home, hoping for dinner, he

• 33:12Speaker 01

  would be filling the bottles and labelling them. And by about eleven, twelve, we'd roll out a piece of blue foam, lie down, go to sleep, and then the next day we'd wake up again. And then I think the turning point was the third of the fourth Christmas. And he walked in one evening and he had a pizza in his hand. And I just said, Gary, there's hundreds of orders coming and we've got to have them done by the end of the week. And he said, let me just have my supper and I'll do it. And he sat down to eat his dinner. And of course, I touched everything in the kitchen with fragrance. So his pizza tasted of nutmeg and ginger. He went to make himself a cup of tea and everything bubbled up over the coffee cup. And he said, I can't do this anymore. If we carry on, we're going to end a divorce.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  And I looked and he said, I'm going to go and have a shower and just, I'll come back in a minute. And I thought, oh, my God, no. Because I'd put all these seashells in the bath and I was scenting them with lavender, sea lavender oil. And I heard him scream as he went in and I thought, I'm really in trouble. And he walked down the hall and he said, um, okay, we need a shop. And I went, I don't want a shop. And he said, no, that's it. And that night we sat down and he said, I think I should leave my job. And I think we should go into business together. And I will help you. I'll be everything that you're not and enable you to do this. But we can't carry on living like this. And he was right. It was breaking point.

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Joe moved out of the kitchen and into a brick and mortar shop. And how she managed to build buzz even before the doors opened. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 35:00Guy Raz?

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• 38:35Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1994. Joe and Gary have both decided to go all in on Joe's cosmetics business. They have about a year's worth of cash to start out with, and Gary has insisted that the business needed to get out of their apartment and into a space of its own.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  So we walked along Walton Street one day, and he'd found three sites. And I looked at them, and I went, no, no, I just, I have this, always this thing about gut, that gut feeling. And I looked at them, no. And as he walked down the street, he was at that point not talking to me. And just, he just said, you're just impossible, Joe. And I walked past this one shop, and it was a building site. And I felt the shop say, it's me. And he looked, and he went, you have got to be joking. And I went, it's that one. And that's where we started.

• 39:26Guy Raz?

  And I guess, was it just obvious you were going to call it Joe Malone? You were going to call that, that's what the name of the shop was going to be?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I was Joe Malone. I didn't, I didn't even think about that. And it was, by that point, of course, we had products with Jo Malone London on it, you know, we'd done all the packaging. So yes, it was a, I don't think we even thought about that.

• 39:48Guy Raz?

  It it sounds like for most of the early days of your business, you were making face lotions and creams and body oils. But today, of course, I think most people think of Jo Malone as a perfume. So when did that start? When did you start making perfumes?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Completely topsy-turvy. So normally it's a fragrance that comes first and then what we call ancillaries.

• 40:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Mine was the other way around. So I was doing, I created a body lotion first of all. From there, I created a bath oil and then from the bath oil, I went to the fragrance because of course I wasn't allowed alcohol. So you need alcohol to manufacture a fragrance and I didn't have that.

• 40:24Guy Raz?

  Why weren't you allowed to have alcohol?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Well, I was living in a, in premises. I couldn't have a whole lot of flammable alcohol to make it happen.

• 40:32Guy Raz?

  No, it wasn't safe to make.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  You couldn't have the amount I needed as well. And you needed, when you make fragrance, you have to let it stand. It's a bit like, it's a bit like wine or if you put garlic into olive oil and you have to let it sit and then you have to filter it. It's very technical, but I wasn't allowed to have huge amounts of like forty, fifty kilos of neat alcohol to make fragrance with. So the fragrance was the last thing that came in the line. But by that point, when we had the, one of Gary's first jobs when he came to work together was to go and find factories. And that man literally drove around England to all the factories and they said, well, Gary, can you give us the formulation and we'll just follow it?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  And he said, unfortunately, it's in Joe's head. So I had to go with him and I had to stand in the laboratories, which are very frustrating. Cause they'd pour it in and I'd smell it and I go, you can't smell it. Well, you can't put any more fragrance than that in. And I went, give me the thing. And I put another like huge dollop in and I go, yep, that's it. That's the level. And they said, you can't put that level in bath oil and you can't do that. And I said, why not? Who says I can't? And I remember someone saying to me, no one's going to buy a fragrance called Lime Basil and Mandarin. And I remember looking at them and saying, why not? That's what it is. Why are we pretending to call it something it's not? Well, they were wrong. It did.

• 41:54Guy Raz?

  Joe, how are you coming up with fragrances like lime, basil and mandarin or nutmeg and ginger? Like, how are you coming up with the scents for the perfumes?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  The way I create today is slightly different than when I did in those days. I would just create single notes and then lot them together like music. And I would smell it in my head and then I'd create it in a little jar, glass jar. And I'd put it into a body lotion or a bath oil. It's often how I would test things first of all. And then test it, see if it worked. And then if it worked, get it formulated, get it bottled, get it out there. And that was my, the testing period was done on me. Or Gary. Poor Gary used to have everything slathered all over him to see if it lasted. Because you're not just looking at the smell of something. You're looking, what does it do in 30 seconds? What does it do in a minute? What is it doing in an hour? How does it dry down? What is it? So you're looking at all of those different elements.

• 42:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And when you talk about notes, right? You're talking, I mean, we think of musical notes, but you're talking about scent notes, right? Like, for example, the smell of vanilla or the smell of ginger. Like, each of those things would be one note? Or are there multiple notes in each ingredient?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  They're accords. So just think of it just like music or mixing paint on a palette. So what I'm doing is I'm taking, if I look at a jasmine and it's too heady, what I'm looking for is that fine mist that comes from a fountain in the heat in Malaysia in the middle of the afternoon. So I'm taking the jasmine and recreating it. So I'm creating these little notes and accords that I'm smelling. And then I run around and I pick, like, crushed green palm leaves. And I'm taking that and then I twist it around the jasmine. So I'm looking for notes that sit together and that make the fragrance kind of bigger and tell a bigger story.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And then I'm delving into my memory for all the memories that I have of notes from, I don't know, riding a horse in Montana, the leather of a saddle in a rainstorm. To the smell of broth cooking on a breach in Parakeet, which is the smell of pomelo to me, the skin of a fruit. So it's it's an art form, but I'm I'm telling you stories or I'm writing poetry to you. I'm writing music. I'm just telling you and piecing together those notes and then allowing you to have your own memory with that fragrance.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  So it just seemed like an obvious extension. You know, you were already making the lotions that that had fragrances. So why not just just take the fragrance out and put it in its own bottle?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  People were asking for it. There were people saying that when where can I buy the fragrance from? So it was a we knew it was it was a wantable product and we knew that people wanted it.

• 44:40Guy Raz?

  Even in the early days, when you opened the store, like I I read that like there were lines of people waiting to come in before you even opened up. But what I'm wondering is, how did they know about the store? I mean, were you were you? Did you hire a PR firm? Were you getting were you going pitching newspapers and trying to get articles written about you? How did that happen?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  So I had a face client called Deborah Bennett and Deborah Bennett, she'd been a very dear part of our lives for a long time. And she said, I'll help you. And she did. We did a big party to launch the shop and we did an amazing piece in British Vogue, The Telegraph. I mean, everybody did. Everybody came out and supported and wrote about the shop. And it just it just took off like wildfire. But by that point, we had a good 1,500 to 2,000 people that were loyal to the product. And that first Christmas, of course, the minute we hit January, we saw our market literally triple because everyone that had been given a product at Christmas was then coming back, buying it for themselves and then giving it as a gift. So it was it was a phenomenal growth pattern that we saw.

• 45:52Guy Raz?

  At that time, 1994, right? When you when you opened the shop, did you was the the label like, did it already look the way Jo Malone products look today? Did was that the look already at that point?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, pretty much. And it was one of my face clients. She's a lady called Isabel Otejwe and she is one of my best friends to this day. She came and had her face done one day and I was sitting there and she said, What would you like to do with the packaging? And she sat on the floor with me with some empty cream and black boxes. And I said, well, I want this here. And it's so funny, when you're successful, people always claim that they were the ones that did it. I've read a lot of things about people who said they did it. They didn't. It was Isabelle Tegwe that did it. And she was the one that put the packaging together. And as we were sitting there, I said, it's still missing something. And she turned around and on the back of the sofa, Gary had left a tie, a black tie from an event that we'd been at.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And she picked it up and wrapped it around it. And that was the black ribbon. And so it was her, her genius.

• 46:57Guy Raz?

  It was because it's iconic now, right? It's like the Jo Malone box with the little square and the black bow tie.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  She then took it to her graphic designer and they did drawings and whatever. The minute I saw it, it's like, yeah, that's it. And that was, that's what we used.

• 47:12Guy Raz?

  You know, it's interesting, Jo, because we've done other cosmetics brands on the show, like Bobbi Brown and Bliss. And it's interesting because there was, this seems like it was a turning point in the industry or, you know, in the US and in the UK. Like, this was a time when people started to notice these very kind of clean products, you know, these, and Kiehl's is an example of that, right? Like, you walked into Kiehl's in the 90s and it looked like a pharmacy. And it sounds like what, a similar thing was happening with Jo Malone. Like, you had a very clear aesthetic that people seemed to kind of be attracted to.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  I think, I think we were very much the pioneers of the indie brands that are today. All of those people you mentioned, Bobbi Brown, Marcia Kilgore of Bliss, and all of us were, it didn't matter where we were coming from, whether it be color, hair, skin, fragrance, we were all really doing the same thing. It was about buying into a lifestyle. And I think a lot of the indie brands, we were the pioneers that carved out that marketplace for us. Because at that time, they were the poor cousin. Today, they're certainly not. They're the, they're the brands where everybody, you know, the big guys want to buy them because they can see that we had created things that they, with all their money and all their teams

• 48:34Speaker 01

  and all their budgets, could not create. And you could feel the personality of the founder within that brand. And I think that was a huge part of the success of it.

• 48:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, this is the, you know, this story of what was, what's been called disruption, right? Which is like, two people like you and Gary could, could hang out in your kitchen and make this iconic brand, but huge multinationals couldn't actually do that because they, they weren't as nimble.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  It's just they had lots of teams. And by the time you have an idea and it gets through to, I mean, listen, I've sat on both sides of the fence, so I understand both of them. I think the agility of a young indie brand or, you know, these young entrepreneurial brands and the way that have an idea and they spin it and they turn it and they twist it, they're listening to the voice of the people and they're listening to their own inner creative voice. And it's that relationship that brings the product to market faster and quicker.

• 49:29Guy Raz?

  This is so, so like you, I mean, I think you opened the store in 94. Within like six months, you hit your five year revenue goal and 15 months in, you hit a million dollars in sales. This is not, I mean, this is still kind of a time when entrepreneurs like yourself were not going to like private equity and outside investors. It wasn't like today, you, you might have done that at this point, right? You would have had investors coming in. And at that point, you were, your revenue was, was fueling the business, right? Your cash flow was allowing you to, to develop, you know, more products and to expand, I guess. Is that sort of how, how it worked?

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Well, kind of in the beginning it did, yeah. Because there was, I mean, we hit our first million on Christmas Eve, which is, that always just makes me feel so good. So it was, it was Christmas Eve and we'd shut the shop. And as I did the takings on the till, we were 342 pounds, I think it was, shorts of our first million. So I looked at Gary and I said, open the door. We can't shut that, can't shut the shop. And so we opened the door and it was all men. It was all men who were so glad we'd opened the door. And they were, it was like 3:30 in the afternoon. We opened the door and they all came rolling in and we could see it adding up. And within 10 minutes, we'd done it. But the guy that took us over the million was, he said, I want the cheapest thing you've got so I can put it.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  In her stocking and it was an eight ninety five shower gel. I shall never ever forget it. And as I wrapped it, I handed it back to him and gave him a bottle of Don Perignon champagne. And I said, Merry Christmas. And he looked and he said, you're never going to make a great businesswoman by doing that to everybody. He had no idea, but it was him that took us over the million. That's why.

• 51:13Guy Raz?

  So you hit the million. And even though you were doing a million dollars in sales, I imagine that neither of you were personally getting rich because you had to buy product. You had to make product. You had to use the cash flow to hire staff and to put it right back into the business, right?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you, if you want a business to grow, you've got to invest back into it. So there was, and by that point, we were growing. So we couldn't, we couldn't just buy fifty plastic bottles at a time. We were buying two to three thousand plastic bottles at a time.

• 51:44Guy Raz?

  And, and at this point, you still had one shop on Walton Street.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:49Guy Raz?

  And at this point, did you start to think, uh, we should open more shops? Or were you focused on just that, that one shop on Walton Street?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  We were being hounded. When I say hounded, we had every buyer, every agency, every single person saying to Gary, we want this product from New York to LA to, I mean, you name it, they wanted us.

• 52:13Guy Raz?

  They wanted you to open your own shops? Or they just wanted to import your products and sell it at their shops?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  No, they wanted to import the product. So what happened was Dawn Mello, who's one of the, the great iconic shopkeepers of our, of time. And at that time, she was heading a department store in New York City, which is the number one Bergdorf Goodman. And by that point, we had a lot of a New York, LA consumer base that were buying from London. So there was obviously a, you know, a demand and a hunger for it. And she said, we'll give you a little bit of space. And Gary turned around and said, if you want Jem and Lion, you have to build us a shop. And of course, we were these two tiny, we had no money, we had no budget. And she, I remember her looking at him. She was so wonderful. And she went,

• 53:02Speaker 01

  okay, you come to New York City and we'll talk about it. And that's what we did. So we went to New York and we had this tiny little rotunda that she said, you can have that space and that's it. And she said, anything else? And he said, yes, I want to use my own packaging. Well, that they nearly all flipped and they all nearly walked out of the the meeting room at that point. And I was ready to go, oh, Gary, just, you know, we'll use Bergdorf Goodman bags. And he said, no, we're going to use Jo Malone bags. We have to. And they eventually yielded and let us let us use our own packaging.

• 53:34Guy Raz?

  So you basically walk out of Bergdorf Goodman, holding a Jo Malone bag, not a Bergdorf Goodman bag?

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 53:40Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  And I I mean, let me tell you, that was. That was all him. That was not me. I was ready to yield on that one. And of course, he had been thinking strategically. So. On our run up to opening in Bergdorf Goodman, eh, you know, the the rule of thumb is there's no point taking any brand or any product to any part of the world, no matter how brilliant it is. If no one knows it's there. So you have to create this buzz and you have to create the voice and you have to create the wantability. So we'd got back to the hotel, went up to the hotel room. And he started to unpack this box with all these bags in. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm making bags up. And he started to make Jo Malone bags up and put the black ribbon on the outside.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I said, well, there's nothing in them. And he said, no one else knows that. We employed people to walk around New York City, holding ten empty Jo Malone bags. For the month and the six weeks run up to opening in Bergdorf Goodman. And by the time we did, everybody had seen these Jo Malone bags, which had nothing in them. And everybody thought that it was a much more successful brand than it was, but it was converted in empty bags. We call it walking the dogs and we still do it today.

• 54:58Guy Raz?

  Just have people carrying empty Jo Malone bags down the street.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Yep. And it worked. It was genius.

• 55:05Guy Raz?

  I have to imagine that you were constantly getting pinged by people who were who wanted to franchise this business, who were saying, hey, we want to invest. We want to open up Jo Malone shops all over the US. And how are you dealing with that? I mean, was that, first of all, was that happening?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, yes, it was. It was happening, but it didn't feel right. I was, I knew I was looking for three things. I was looking for people with deep pockets. I was looking for the financial bit, but I needed someone to teach us about distribution because we could see that distribution was a key and it was probably one of the things we were lacking. But more importantly, I needed somebody that really loved what we did and what they did.

• 55:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so here's a question. 1999, you have this hugely successful brand. You've got lines out the door. You're at Bergdorf Goodman and you sell to Estee Lauder. I mean, why, why did you decide to do that?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Because I found all three and I knew I had. So those three things, you know, you can often, you can find money, you can find distribution, but it was that last part about heart. It was, do they love me and this business and, and do I love who they are? That was a really important part to me and I couldn't find that last missing piece until I met Mr. Lauder. And when I sat with Leonard Lauder, he reminded me of myself. For me, he was a great entrepreneurial spirit who loved the beauty industry and who'd walked beside his mom. So there was lots of similarities. And when we were negotiating, it was, I was going to stay for the rest of my life. So it was, I needed something that I knew was

• 56:44Speaker 01

  going to be for the rest of my life. I, I wanted to stay and I wanted to continue to be Joe. And the day that we agreed it and signed was probably one of the happiest days of my life.

• 56:55Guy Raz?

  So you are now, Joe Malone is now owned by Estee Lauder and you are, you know, essentially an employee of Estee Lauder. You become the creative director of, of your brand, Joe Malone, and you're still running it and it, it sounds like it didn't feel a whole, whole lot different. And, and I guess within two, two years or three years of, of that happening, you are diagnosed with breast cancer.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:21Guy Raz?

  Which... I'm sure it came as a shock. You were just 37, 38 years old when you got that diagnosis?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yes, I was. I was in New York City. I remember it vividly. I'd only just had Josh, my son. He was sort of two, I think, 18 months two. And I was so tired all the time. And I'd never felt that. I'd never felt sick or I'd never felt weary. And I was in the Four Seasons in New York City, in the hotel one morning. And I found something just on my kind of chest bone. I went back home, went to see the doctor. And that night, I, as I sat, when they'd done all the tests, and I looked at the nurse's face and I looked at the doctor's face, and I knew it was really bad news. I just could feel it. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I'm terribly sorry to tell you,

• 58:12Speaker 01

  but it looks like you have a very aggressive form of breast cancer. And we think that you need to get your life in order. They were, he was basically telling me I didn't have long to live. And I just, I watched poor Gary just collapse on the floor. And I was, it was a weird, it was such a weird moment because I was dressed to go to this big party in London called the Serpentine Party. And I remember fiddling with my earrings in my pocket, thinking, okay, well, I'll just get through this and then I'll go to the party and I'll. And then I suddenly realized that someone had given me a death sentence. And it started to sink in. And then, then all I could think about was Josh and Gary. That's the only, I didn't care about any of the rest of it.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  But my son and my, and I just remember thinking, God, I'll never see him grow up. I'll never see him go to school. I'll never see him go to uni. I'll never see him get married. You know, it was always awful, awful, downing thoughts. And then I went home. Gary was just in pieces, complete pieces, and trying to be strong. And I sat on the end of my bed and remember thinking, Jo, you've never listened to a word anyone has ever told you in your life. Why on earth are you going to listen now?

• 59:28Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Jo Malone's battle with cancer leads her to walk away from the brand with her name for good. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 1:01:28Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2002 and Jo has just received the news of her cancer diagnosis. And almost immediately, the Lauder family connects Jo with a specialist in New York to start her treatment.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  So we all moved out and we ran the business from New York City and Gary would commute backwards and forwards. Josh was tiny, so he was very easy to maneuver around. But I was, I was really suffer, I just suffered so badly through it, but I kept telling myself that Grin and Beric, Grin and Beric, you can come through this. And I had, I mean Larry Norton just was the most incredible, incredible doctor.

• 1:02:06Guy Raz?

  This is your doctor, Sloane Kettering, yeah.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's one of those people in my life that without him, I wouldn't be sitting talking to you today. And so I did, I did one mastectomy, then we got through all of the chemo, then I had to do chemo all over again. And then on that last bit, when I thought it was all over, they found something else in the other breast, so I had to go through it all again. I can't tell you why I was, the chemo had really taken over by that point. And then one day Larry walked in and said, it's gone.

• 1:02:36Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  It's, it's time to go home, go back and live your life. And I said, will it come back? And he said, I don't know, but will you have to go back and live your life? And, and my life was back in my hands again, and I knew that I had to do something remarkable with it.

• 1:02:54Guy Raz?

  Which, I mean, I think for anybody who goes through an experience like that, where you are so close to death, it puts your life into perspective and you.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Sure does.

• 1:03:08Guy Raz?

  And you came to a conclusion, I think 99% of people would come to, including myself, which is work and that part of me isn't important. It's my family, it's taking advantage of life and living it to its fullest, and you decide that you've got to leave work. You want to leave because, for obvious reasons, I mean, I think, right? Because you, you, you went through this experience.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  I think, well, I'd, the chemo had taken my sense of smell. I hadn't told anyone that. And I couldn't smell properly.

• 1:03:42Guy Raz?

  And that was your superpower, your sense, your sense of smell.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  It was, and I hadn't told anyone that um at all. I was too scared to even admit it to myself and I was standing in um in the shop in Madison Avenue. And I just didn't feel as though I belonged anymore. I'd I I was so concerned for everybody involved. I didn't wanna do anything wrong with the Lauder Corporation and the Lauders because they'd saved my life.

• 1:04:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  I didn't wanna see one person lose their job because that was their lives. But I knew I couldn't stay as the person I was. So I went to Leonard and um I explained to him and he they all tried to change my mind and said, please, think again, think again. And I was so determined, Guy, to to to walk away.

• 1:04:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  So I flew back to London. And as I got nearer to that day of leaving, I knew I'd made the biggest mistake of my life.

• 1:04:37Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Because I started to realise that

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  it wasn't a job, it was my best friend.

• 1:04:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it was your it was you, your identity.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  It was everything. It was about the creativity. And I realised that I would never create fragrance again and I would never do all the things that I loved and and everybody was running and getting everything ready and Gary was doing all the forms and and I wanted to scream and say, please, can we just stop? And I know if I had, it would have done. I know Leonard would have made it stop. And I said to him, can I be the last person to turn the lock in the key on that last day? And he said, yes, you can. And I sobbed and sobbed as I put the bottles on the shelf for the last time. And I realised who on earth was I ever gonna be again? Who? What what had I done?

• 1:05:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  What had I done? But I still couldn't smell and I'd signed a five-year lockout.

• 1:05:33Guy Raz?

  A non-compete.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  A non-compete for five years.

• 1:05:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  And I suddenly felt this big, heavy noose coming tighter tighter and tighter around my neck. And then a month into it all being over, I woke up one morning and I could smell. And I could smell like I'd never smelled before. And of course, that's when I started to really suffer from anxiety.

• 1:05:57Guy Raz?

  This is an important point because I think a lot of people hear stories on our show like yours, where people sell their businesses, whether it's Bobby Brown, or Kate Spade, or Marcia Kilgore. And they might think, well, now she's got it made. She's sold this company, she's financially secure for life, and she can go and travel and do whatever she wants. But people forget that businesses aren't about money. They're about your identity, they're who you are, they're the things that animate us. It was those late nights in the apartment in Chelsea, eating pizzas and making lotions and getting clients.

• 1:06:39Guy Raz?

  And it was all those things that made your life, gave your life meaning up until that point.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you're right. I'd laughed with the business, I'd cried with it, I'd built it, I'd seen it. All the emotions that you have with a human being, I'd had with a business. I know that sounds weird, but that's...

• 1:06:57Guy Raz?

  No, no.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  And I was suddenly, I was suddenly walking away from my best friend. It didn't have two arms and two legs, but it had a heartbeat and it taught me things. And when I walked away, I couldn't even walk past the shop. I could feel myself getting choked up and I felt resentful, I felt angry, I felt hurt. What I now know, I was going through the five steps of grief.

• 1:07:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  I was grieving. But, you know, and people listening to this will say, well, come on, Jo, you had enough money in the bank. But all I wanted to do was make a face cream and sell it. And I'd signed five years of...

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Shackles and and it was it was the most miserable five years of my life.

• 1:07:40Guy Raz?

  So how did you, I think you call it your wilderness years, or it's been it's been called that. What did you, how did you navigate those five years? What did you do?

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  I went, I helped other people with their businesses. I sat on boards and all I wanted to do was was to come back. All I wanted to do was create.

• 1:07:58Guy Raz?

  Was make fragrance and.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. But of course I was living this smiley mask and crying every single night and just thinking, and I kept. I had my first anxiety attack and I thought I was having a heart attack and often anxiety is connected with energy. And when your adrenaline starts to come back and I realized that's what was happening to me, my body was starting to tell me, come on, you know, get ready to run again. It's time to do something. And I made a television show, actually for the BBC called High Street Dreams. I formulated it and sold the idea to the BBC and we made that. And I was, I was standing in a garden with a pair of Wellington boots on. And I was filling bottles of chili sauce with this family.

• 1:08:44Guy Raz?

  And you were doing this, this show for aspiring entrepreneurs on the BBC and and and one of the aspiring entrepreneurs was a a family that was making like a hot sauce, right? Like a chili sauce.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  That's exactly. I was filling these bottles and I could feel the liquid and screwing and I just felt this, come on, just try one more time. So I made it, made my my mind up that day, standing in that garden, that I would try one more time and see if I could do it.

• 1:09:11Guy Raz?

  While you were kind of helping them out, you all of a sudden had flashbacks to the excitement of filling bottles up with stuff?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just took me, just took me back, I think. It was this, it was just filling bottles. It was that whole simplicity in that simple act, but it reminded me of who I'd been, who I was and who I really wanted to be again.

• 1:09:34Guy Raz?

  Once that five-year period, that sort of non-compete period, ended, you were free to start a new business. But presumably, you couldn't use your name. And this is, I mean, this happens with like Famous Amos Cookies. Like Wally Amos couldn't, he couldn't use his name. And Bobby Brown can't use her name for a business in quite the same way. So presumably, you could not use Jo Malone for the next business that you wanted to start.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  I couldn't use Jo Malone. I couldn't, I still can't. I'm able to use it as the person and as my voice, but I'm not able to use it in any other capacity in beauty or whatever. But I was allowed to use Jo. So that was, I was, felt like I was kind of halfway there. But I had to make sure that the consumer wasn't confused. So one night at dinner, I was sitting with my son Josh and Gary, and we were looking at all kinds of names. And he'd obviously been listening to this in the background. And he just looked at me and he went, "Mum, why don't you just call it Jo Loves? Because you really love fragrance and fragrance really loves you." And it was just so profound, you know, out of the mouths of an eight-year-old or 10-year-old, I think he was at that time.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  So we went back to the lawyers and it went backwards and forwards. And before we did anything and we showed anyone or anyone saw anything, we took it back to the legal team at Lauda and showed them. And said, "This is what we want to do."

• 1:11:00Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you launched this new company, a fragrance company called Jo Loves in, I guess, 2011. And I mean, obviously, you were established. You were known. But I mean, did it still feel, I mean, I don't know, were you nervous? Were you like, were you kind of?

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  I was beyond nervous. I felt I was standing on the stage in my underwear because the world had seen me on a global stage and assumed I was still there. Nobody knew I'd left. And when we first set out with Joe Loves, we ran straight into doing a pop up in Selfridges. And we moved in there overnight. And four o'clock in the morning, we were there with all the builders and I was watching it and I hated what I saw. I hated it. I just could feel it inside and I thought, why have you done this? Why have you put yourself in this position, Joe, you idiot?

• 1:11:48Guy Raz?

  What did you hate? What, what?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  I hated the way it looked.

• 1:11:51Guy Raz?

  You hated the colors?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  It was, if you look at some of the images in the beginning, it was all this red and black and it's harsh and it's. It's almost like a teenager that's dyed her hair red and comes into dinner screaming. That was, that was the only way I can describe it. That's what it felt like that I'd done.

• 1:12:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  The packaging was all over the place. The, the team weren't, I mean, it was, it was such a mess when I think about it. And I thought, you've got to open tomorrow morning and you're going to have to face it and you're going to have to work through this. Cause if you really want to do this, you're going to have to eat a little bit of humble pie and you're, you're going to look a bit of a fool for a minute. So we opened the next morning and we just couldn't get traction in this business. And it didn't matter what we tried and what we did, we could not, we just couldn't get those sales. And for two years, I struggled.

• 1:12:42Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I regret. So every single day I sat and I regretted building this business. Cause it was bleeding money, number one. And I had no sales, number two.

• 1:12:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  And nobody knew I was there. It was, it was ludicrous when I think about why I ran. Like I sprinted into, onto that arena, thinking that I had, thinking I had the right to go back in where I'd left. That was, that was the biggest lesson for me. And it got to a point, I was coming up to my birthday. And Gary comes in one morning and he hands me this little box and he says, happy birthday. And I looked and I opened it, it was a key and I just thought, what's he done? Anyway, we jumped in the car, we drove down. And he says, happy birthday. Go be a shopkeeper again. Gives you an absolute nightmare.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  And I opened the door and I said, you've no idea where we are. And he said, yes, I do. And I said, no, no, no, you don't. He said, yes, I do. You've come full circle. And I said, yes. It was the shop where Justin de Blank taught me to be a shopkeeper.

• 1:13:52Guy Raz?

  It was a flower shop that you worked at as a young woman.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  It was the delicatessen.

• 1:13:56Guy Raz?

  The delicatessen.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  It was the deli. And it was where I fell in love with shopkeeping. I put the key in the door and I couldn't believe, I just couldn't believe that I was back home. We spent a year, year doing the shop, creating it. And the day we opened the door, the same, the queue was there as I came, as I pulled up on that first day, it was, it was happening again.

• 1:14:19Guy Raz?

  Wow. So it really took you opening that shop up to

• 1:14:25Guy Raz?

  get people to know, to know about the brand because it, it, it's

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:29Guy Raz?

  Because I guess you were doing pop ups and you were, you were sort of selling it at different, you know, cosmetic stores and, but really the shop was your best advertisement.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Well, it always, it's your home, isn't it? You know, if you invite someone for dinner and you sit on the outside pavement and you eat fish and chips, you know, it, it, if you invite someone home to your brand, it's got to have four walls. You've got to feel, you've got to feel the warmth of that brand. And it was a huge responsibility because of course, if a pop up doesn't work, you move on. If you sign that lease, you've got to make it work. So I had that nervousness. I had that fear because I'd had two years of feeling an absolute failure. I think having those four walls and as I walked through, I said to Gary, um, we, we've got to do it differently. I, I can't, I don't want to, I didn't want to walk in the same footsteps as I'd done before. I didn't,

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  I'd grown up. I was a different person. My, my life felt very different and my creativity was much rawer, much braver than it had been, you know, 25, 30 years previous. And he said, what does that mean? And he looked at, I mean, Gary sometimes looks at me and I can see him thinking, oh, here we go. She's off. And I said, I want to create a brasserie and he No, that's it, that's it. And I said, no, no, no, listen, he said, no, I'm no, it hasn't got a food license. We're not doing a brasserie as a pub next door. And I said, no, I want to create a brasserie for your nose. I could see it all in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And that's exactly what we did. We created a brasserie for your nose.

• 1:15:58Guy Raz?

  And you can go in, just to describe how it works. You go in and you get a bunch of different like things to smell?

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Yes, you sit as though you're just about to eat. You have a menu, you have, and it's known as a tapas bar for your nose. And your tray comes up with a, um, a tajine and your bath cologne, though, is in the tajine. You have chopsticks, um, with cotton wool. So you think you're about to eat dim sum, but in fact, everything is about the sense of smell. Your body lotions, uh, appear from volute guns and we paint you with hot paintbrushes all over your body. Everything is about twisting and turning the experience and causing your sense of smell to be the predominant sense. And it's still with us today. It's very much part of our storytelling. And when we go around the world, we take a portable tapas bar with us and we entertain with, with our fragrance.

• 1:16:48Guy Raz?

  How, how much? I mean, a lot of, a lot of times when, you know, you meet people, I'm sure this happened to you and Gary, where people would say, how could you work with your partner? How could you work with your, your spouse? But I've done a lot of interviews with partners, with married couples who built successful businesses and in some cases divorced and continued to run the business. But it sounds like in your case, like the partnership between you and Gary was really the kind of the secret of what made this work. That both of you brought different skillsets and you both respected each other's strengths and weaknesses. And that was really what enabled you to be successful.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  We haven't always respected each other's, you know, opinions. We've, we've had some really humbling. Actually, we're businesses concerned, though, he and I, I would say 99.9% of the time are always on the same page. We come at it from a very different perspective, but we always meet at that point where we agree. I look at him and things that come out of his head and his mouth are so smart and things that I could never possibly do. There's a, we're. Best friends.

• 1:17:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  We trust.

• 1:17:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  If we stood back to back, we know that each other would look after each other. But yeah, sometimes it's hard, you know, sometimes I remember in the very beginning, I would talk all weekend about about work. And he would say, okay, you've got five things this weekend. Then once you've done your five things, you have to stop. Well, nine thirty Saturday morning, I'd used up my five things because I'd already spoken about it. And I used to get so frustrated because I had to wait until Monday. And then we realized that that just didn't work. But work to us is not a job or business or our career. It is part of our lives. It's been part of our marriage. It's been part of our family. It's part of our relationship. And I think we both actually, it's like a drug. I think we both love it.

• 1:18:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Jo, you had been through the process of starting a business and a successful brand and then selling it. And and watching that brand grow, right? All the resources that Estee Lauder had to to really scale that brand. Jo Malone is at shops all around the world and it's ubiquitous. With with your brand now with Jo Loves, what, I mean, do you have those kinds of ambitions? Do you see it as as a as a global brand one day? Or are you are you kind of happy with where where it is now and and sort of?

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  I absolutely saw it as a global brand. I'm passionate about what I do. And it's not about just creating fragrance. I had this crazy idea that once in my life, I wanted to completely challenge and change the way the world did something in fragrance. I never didn't know what it would be, but I was determined I was going to find it. And a couple of years ago, it was sitting right by the side of me and it was in the form of a paintbrush. And I created a fragrance paintbrush where you can paint your body.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  And this little fragrance paintbrush, when I first presented it to my marketing guys at the time, they all looked at me and said, oh, it'll never work. It's such a gimmick. And I was so humiliated in that meeting and I was so angry and I thought, I'll show you it works. So I put the prototype together. I went to the factories myself and I created everything within it. Do you know what? That paintbrush has been like a golden ticket because that is the point in brands today, you have to find that part in your imagination and that part that connects with the consumer and the world that says, we are going to do it differently. And that paintbrush now is going around. That's the thing that is

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  converting China. That is, that is the one single product because they've never seen it before.

• 1:20:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  And suddenly this younger generation are like, it's art for your body. I can paint my body with fragrance. So I think Jo Loves is, is all about this springboard of creativity. It allows me to, to go jump with all my crazy imaginative ideas and trust me, there's hundreds of them still there. And I run at this business and I jump and I use her as like a, like a laboratory to say, what if?

• 1:20:56Guy Raz?

  I'm looking at it right now on the internet and just to describe it, it's like, it's another way to apply perfume, right? It's, I guess it's like a sort of a gel formula with the fragrance in it and you can just paint it on your body and instead of spraying yourself with perfume, it's just another way to apply perfume. And people are super into it.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  They all say, I want to be a scent artist. So they pick it up and of course they're able to use two or three different, you know, painting different parts of their bun to layer it on. It's the creativity and it's being able to engage with fragrance and a whole, with a whole different perspective.

• 1:21:33Guy Raz?

  Jo, I'm looking at a photograph of you kneeling before Prince Philip when you received your CBE. You are a commander of the British Empire, which is obviously an honorarium, but I mean, not just a big deal for, for anyone, but I mean, given your life story, right? Like you grew up in a council flat, like. You know, you had a really difficult childhood. You guys had no money. I mean, you were from a really working class background. You built this super high end luxury brand called Joe Malone. And then a second one now called Joe Loves. And just considering like where you came from and how you started, right?

• 1:22:18Guy Raz?

  Do you just sometimes, I don't know, and Gary too, right? Like, do you just sometimes sit back and just say, this is nuts? Like, this is totally crazy?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Every day. Every day I get up and I think I wasn't meant to be here. I really, I think as I, when I was younger, I was so impatient to get to the next step. And as I've got older and realized, actually, you've got to take time and enjoy them. When something good happens or something bad happens, just take that time out. Don't be such a hurry to get to the next step and the next thing because you miss the moment. You miss the part that you've learned or the part that you've enjoyed or the part that you've worked for. I took my son to university last year. So a little choke there as well. And I never dreamed I would see that day.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  That day when I was diagnosed with cancer, I never thought I would see him go to school, let alone go to university. And I cried a lot during those times. But I realized that life is, you have to treasure the moment. Memories and moments are so, they're Solomon's riches. They're the things that we should be really holding on to in our lives. And whether it be building a business or, you know, transforming a school or watching your son go to university or whatever it is, or staying married for 36 years, treasure it. You know what? Treasure those moments because they are what make us.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  And that tenacity and that strength and that resilience is a valued part of a human being.

• 1:23:55Guy Raz?

  How, how much? When you think about all of the things that got you to this point, right? And I think it's fair to say you've had a pretty successful life. Do you attribute your success to how hard you worked and your intelligence? Or do you think more of it had to do with just being lucky?

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  A little bit of everything, I think. I think a little bit of all of those things. I think hard work, people who work hard are some of the most successful I've ever met. Um, I'm afraid nothing happens without hard work and determination and that resilience. My intellect, my intelligence, um, I started out with very little and I wouldn't consider myself an intellectual in any way, but I can hold my own in most conversations and in any conversation, you can learn something from somebody else. Um, and I do believe in a higher power. I believe that I was, I was given a second chance at life to do something remarkable. And I'm determined

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  to fulfill that. And, and luck, I've been, there's too many times in my life, I've been at the right place at the right time and exactly the right moment for that to be coincidence. And I think as I've got to this part of my life now, I'm a little bit more, a little easier on myself, should I say, than I have been, I think, all the way through. I'm not so, I'm not so hard, yeah, I'm not so hard on myself, but I feel I've earned a lot of money, but it's time now to do something with it. We've learned from it, we can enjoy it, but, but what are we gonna do?

• 1:25:31Guy Raz?

  That's Jo Malone. She's the founder of Jo Malone London and Jo Loves. By the way, Jo's shop at 42 Elizabeth Street recently reopened to the public after being closed down for two years during COVID. And she's actually named a fragrance after the shop. It's called Number 42 with top notes of green leaves, peony and mandarin orange. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, our email address is h i b t at i d dot wondery dot com. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at how I built this and mine is at guy raz. And on Instagram, we're at how I built this and I'm at guy dot raz.

• 1:26:14Guy Raz?

  This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Sarah Sarason with research help from Raini Toll. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Liz Metzger, Kerry Thompson, Alex Chung, Josh Lash, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.