"Sometimes in life you just have to realize that the mistakes you make won't define you unless you let them."- Jo Malone

Check out this week’s episode of the #NoLimitsPodcast featuring the Founder and Creative Director of Jo Loves, Jo Malone!

Jo Malone didn’t have a typical childhood. On the weekends she worked alongside of her magician and artist father… And during the week she was creating skincare products alongside of her mother and her childhood mentor who also happened to be a Countess. This was all before she was 10 years old. She was a natural born hustler that she says was all in the name of survival. Growing up she was and is dyslexic. She left school at 15 years old and was told she wouldn’t make anything of her life…Well did she ever prove them wrong. Here she is, from London no less, to tell you her story. 

RJ: Jo Malone. Welcome to No Limits! 

JM: Thank you! Thank you so much for inviting me to come and share my story. 

RJ: I love your story. Thank you for doing this from London. This is our first guest from London on the show. Like actually coming to us live from London so that's fantastic. 

JM: Oh an absolute pleasure. Pleasure. 

RJ: So I want to start with your story. As a child you took on a huge amount of responsibility – basically running your household from the age of 10 or 11. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that shaped you becoming a more entrepreneurial person? 

JM: Well I think our childhood and who we are and where we come from really does mold us and good and bad. It can always turn out well. For me, from the age of 8 so I made my first face mask and I used to go to the markets with my father and sell his paintings. He was a brilliant artist but a terrible businessman. So I learned from a really young age what the importance of telling a story, how a product was created or whether it be a painting or whatever. And I used to do all the local markets on the weekends with my father. So I would go and set up the stall, and sell the paintings and as I would walk out the door my mother would say to me “if you don't sell a painting today there's no food. There's nothing in the house.” So in my little kind of young mind that was always the first point – I had to sell a painting within the first hour which was quite tough. So I would send my father off we’d set up the stall, and I sent my father off to go and get breakfast and coffee and bacon sandwiches, and when he was away I would sell the first painting and I would pocket the money so I knew that we had something. And you know what that young kid is still in me today. 

RJ: She’s a hustler.

JM: She's never been called a hustler but... 

RJ: Well if you sell a painting in that first hour while dad's away. I think that signifies a bit of a hustler. 

JM: Probably does. And then on Sunday afternoons my father was also a magician my father was an unbelievably creative human being. He was terribly difficult in many respects but I adored him, absolutely adored him and he was part of the magic circle so I was the magician's assistant so I was also the kid that sat on the stool in the markets but also the magician's assistant so I would look after the rabbits, and the white doves that appeared from pans of fire. I knew how every magic trick worked and I would watch him entertain, and he would then also play poker. He was a huge gambler. So from the ages of 10 I could… I knew what everyone had in their hands because he would play very naughtily with marked cards so I would signal to him in the corner who had the you know the royal flush or the doubles and so an eclectic childhood to say the least. 

RJ: Well it sounds like you had a combination of skills this first you had the ability to be a business woman because you saw the business side but you also had the creative side. 

JM: Growing up it was survival. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs start out to survive, you know we don't start out with this great plan of being this great business person. I was, I am very dyslexic. So at school I struggled and I struggled I was told that I was lazy. I was told that I wasn't clever and I wasn't smart and I'd never make anything of my life and in fact I was dyslexic, I was struggling. So I had to find other ways of being able to learn. And I would watch and mimic, I can't do it so much now but I used to be able to mimic anybody but I would watch them and I would copy. And I think that's probably been a huge part of who I am today. I learn fast and quickly, I'm never frightened to say I don't know how to do something. Teach me and then I master it very quickly and move on. And as a young child I think that was that was where that came from. My mum was also a brilliant parent - both my parents were unbelievably brilliant. They used to fight like cat and dog and I was always the one in between. My mum worked for Revlon as a manicurist and then she went to work for the most amazing woman called the Countess Lubatti. And the Countess Lubatti was a facialist. There were two great facialists in London at that time. Countess Charki and Countess Lubatti whose real name was Doris Hilda Baker which she had created this amazing world for herself and married a Count and had created these incredible skincare products. My mom went to work for her as a young child. So I would spend the weekends with my father and in the week with my mom and in holidays I would go up into this little apartment just off Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes lived called Montague Mansions. And in there I learned how to create face creams and I would watch Madame Lubatti make the face creams. And one day she said to me I was only eight she said Jo, I'd like you to make the next face masks and I watched her for months and months doing it - it was a sandalwood and rose facemask and I took all the little jars out and all the little pestle and mortars, mixed the facemask and handed it to her and that was my first cosmetic and I knew at that point that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. 

RJ: That's so cool. And you. You left school at 15. You talked about how difficult it was. You dropped out. 

JM: I did drop out. I didn't even finish school. It was, when I looked back at that now how on earth did I slip through the cracks? I just don't know. You know where were social services. I didn't go to school for the last year. My mom had had a terrible breakdown so I became her carer and stayed at home. So I never even… I never even finished school it wasn't even dropped out. I didn't even finish it. And I just as though I just wasn't worth bothering about. But there was this little kid of an entrepreneur you know when I think of the tenacity and the strength. And I remember my father giving me for my 16th birthday. Fifty pounds for my 16th birthday and he said I just want you to go and treat yourself. What did I do? I went up to a local warehouse and I bought 125 plain white t-shirts. I did all these designs on them and turned my 50 pounds into 250 pounds. I was it was just it was as though it was the place that I felt safe and when I created it was the place that I felt valued in. When I was able to make some money, and the place that I was able to support and help my family. And so that survival instinct kicked in each time.

RJ: That's brilliant. I think it also speaks to the idea that it comes from a place of hunger too when you are hungry, there's so much more you can accomplish.

JM: Mentally and physically. 

RJ: Right in your case it was genuine. 

JM: Yeah it was. I was never hungry actually. I have to say there was always there was always something in the fridge whether it be eggs or tin of beans or something there was always, I was never hungry. My parents did their best. You know now being a parent and being in my 50s you know parenthood is not always easy. And my parents gave me the best of themselves and I will always be grateful for that but I did have to grow up very quick. I was an adult by the time I was 16 and I remember thinking to myself, you know why carry on school why go to university I know how to make money. I want to build a business. And that is what my first job was in a little flower shop in Pimlico not far from where I reside now. And it was there that I learnt how to be an entrepreneur how to be a shopkeeper. And then I got fired because I tipped a bucket of water over the managers. 

RJ: That sounds like a small thing.

JM: A hustler. 

RJ: Well what happened were you upset when you got fired? Were you worried? 

JM: Well I knew the minute. It was very out of character for me to do something like that and I think something snapped she I'd been in the markets from 4:00 o'clock in the morning buying the flowers I brought back. I’d created a mess in the shop, I'd done something and she just came flying at me and I think it was just all that build up and I just thought that’s it I've had enough and I picked up the bucket of water that I was doing the geraniums in so it was muddy and dirty and I threw it over her. And the minute I can remember that awful moment it was like Tom and Jerry when the water is about to hit her and you think “what have I done, what have I done?” And she stood there with leaves in her ears and she said “you're fired.” And I went “I quit, I quit” And it was just so…

RJ: Beat you to it.

JM: Well yeah. 

RJ: So how did you go from taking that love of the face masks and creating your own therapies to actually building it into a business of your own? 

JM: So I went from the flower shop and I then went back in. My mum was in the skincare industry and she had been desperately ill. She struggled my mum in life with anxiety and depression and so I went to help her. And it was there that I started to really find this unbelievable heart beat and love of the skin care industry. By the time I was 21 I had already been running her business and I wanted to see who I was as Jo on my own I’d just met my husband Gary. Gary was training to be a vicar in Bible school. And I didn't want to be a vicar's wife. I knew that. So he and I started this small little business together. He was working for. 

RJ: You were like I have a better idea: start a business with me. 

JM: Start a business with me. It was it was something that we kind of fell into in many respects but there we were two kids just married and we were setting out together. We rented this tiny little apartment in London in Chelsea. We had I managed to talk the woman into letting me having just one month... You know upfront instead of three to four months I mean that was learning and being in the market place and learning how to get the best that you could from people. And she gave me a month's just a month's deposit down on the flat. We had no more money left for furniture, a bed or anything like that we had a little piece of blue foam and I set about with 12 clients setting up my first skincare clinic and within six months I was up to 100 people, and 500, then 1000 within 18 months I'd closed the books completely. I was looking after members of royalty from all over the world, British royalty, European, film stars, models, pop stars, and it just grew. It grew at the most phenomenal rate. So much so that within three four years we were looking at a business that was starting to backfire slightly on us because it was growing so fast. 

RJ: Wow. And this was all word of mouth.

JM: Word of mouth. No advertising. It was just me! I was the receptionist. I was the facialist. I was the chemist. I was the bookkeeper. You name it, and for somebody that was told in school and this is a really important thing for young people to remember today never be defined in your life by other people's opinions of you. You are defined by your own dreams and your own goals and your own determination and it's a really, I'm a living example that if I had believed what people had said about me I would never be sitting here talking to you today. 

RJ: I love that. And in your book, the mission statement you say “Forget what everyone else is doing go in your own direction. Get it right. But most of all be original.”

JM: Stay true to yourself. You know what. People that try and be somebody else whether it's through their voice, or their behavior, or their lifestyle they’re never happy. Be who you are. Be true to who you are and as creators and I believe everybody in this world has a diamond about them -something that creatively that is their diamond that will be precious in their life, find it. Find it seek it out and then pursue whether it's your hobby or whether it's your job or your career your way of life or whatever it is that it is that, being true to yourself that will really make you make you happy. And it's those people that change the world. 

RJ: The way that you came to sort of what your purpose is, it sounds like you had this creative childhood, you got into the beauty industry because of Madame Lubatti. And yet for many people they’re on this search for what is that creative thing? Do you have any advice for how to think about finding it? 

JM: If I had the answer I would be... I think it's the journey. I think we're not meant to know necessarily straight up front. I think it's the journey of pursuing something and finding who you are and making mistakes. Mistakes are vital. I mean when I look at all of the things I've done in my life some of the greatest things that have happened to me are because I took a wrong turn. 

RJ: Tell me about that. Tell us about one of the wrong turns that turned into the best thing. 

JM: Well some of the greatest products you create are you know, a wrong turn and you add something by mistake and then you smell it and you think “oh my goodness what did I just put in there that smells incredible.” Like penicillin. You know penicillin was created because Pasteur put something on a window shelf and it changed and it changed history. So sometimes those things. When I walked away from Jo Malone and I made that call. I left that business and I realized 48 hours running up to leaving that business I was making the biggest probably mistake of my life. And what was I going to do and who was I. And I’d signed all those pieces of paper with Lauder it was done. And I was absolutely petrified about what was going to happen as I walked away. I wanted to be the last person in Sloane Street in Jo Malone that turned that key and put the product on the shelf and as I walked away I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and for five years. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. But, if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have gone on to do the things that I've done. So some of the adventures I've had now from a dyslexic writing a newspaper column for three years. I wrote a column for The Evening Standard for three years on small business, I would never have done that. I would never have been involved with the government in the great campaign Number 10 and being an ambassador for creativity, traveling the world. I would never be about to help children in education and coming through in entrepreneurism. So sometimes in life you just have to realize that the mistakes you make are not always... They won't define you unless you let them but turn it round and learn from it and allow yourself to travel with the journey and the adventure. And that's when amazing things happen and you find that diamond that I'm talking about. 

RJ: So you just mentioned so you sold Jo Malone in London in 1999 to Estée Lauder you stayed on as creative director until you left in 2006.

JM: Correct. 

RJ: Along the way as you were building that brand. Was there a moment where you felt like “yes this is real we've made it?”

JM: I still don't feel that.

RJ: Really. 

JM: I still don’t feel that and I’ve asked myself that question sometimes, I think that's part of who I am. Because I'm always frightened one day it will be taken away. And so I strive every single day. Listen, I don't have to worry about an electric bill anymore. And if I want to go on holiday for a month I can. It's not that sort of thing but it's something deep within me maybe my own insecurities. But I never I don't feel like I've made it as in “that’s it you can stop now.” It's that continual sort of striving, and there's good and bad in that you know there's the good bit in me which is that work ethic that’s probably where it comes from. I don't want to sit and do nothing I want to work, I want to be active, I want to use my brain and be creative. But sometimes I'm so much in a hurry to move to the next stage that I forget to enjoy the moment and as I've got older I I'm much more along the lines of just hold on a minute take a breath. Pour yourself a glass of wine because you know what? You did good today. 

RJ: I agree with that so much I think a lot about that at my stage in life early on. Every win I just felt like any kind of success needed to be met with me pushing harder to get to the next thing whatever the next thing was. Make sure you don't, that you take full advantage of every opportunity that's in front of you. And I think what happened and I'm very happy and I don't look back with regret but I think what happened along the way is I sometimes missed out on experiencing the moment and fully taking in the excitement and the feeling of the accomplishment. 

JM: Well you and I have learned the same lesson then. And you know what. It's great to feel that and that we can do something about that. And I do now. I actually do really treasure. I was I've been honored this year with a CBE from the Queen and I can tell you that minute when I opened that letter and I thought the letter had gone to the wrong house by the way. I was about to call…

RJ: A CBE from the Queen is a very big deal. 

JM: It's Commander of the British Empire and even now just saying that, it makes me sort of feel...”Jo, look look look how your country see you.” And a few days after receiving the…You have to write back and you have to accept it which of course I did straight away after I realized that it was for me. But then I received this letter and there's one line in this letter from the powers that say, “Our beloved servant.” And it's really struck me that many years ago I received an MBE for the Queen for services to the to the British beauty industry. And I really felt that was for me this CBE, a beloved servant. This is… I need to do something for my country or the world that changes the way it is for other people. I really feel this this unbelievable sense that I'm here to do something far greater than just a bottle of fragrance with scented candles. It's to give back and I feel that that's what that CBE is about. 

RJ: Bravo. So going back to 2006 when you made the decision to leave which has now opened up the door to so much more. How did you come to that conclusion? Because I know there's lots of listeners out there who think about leaving various things and I think it's really useful to hear how people think through those choices. 

JM: Well I made that choice because I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38 years old and when I was first diagnosed I was given nine months to live. Which was a real shock to me and suddenly my life stopped at that very moment. I had a young son who was only three years old and suddenly nothing actually mattered. I didn't care about business. I had I was at that point with the Lauder family. My business had been bought by them. The first person I called was the amazing Evelyn Lauder. And she helped me, she helped me find a doctor in New York City. I came to live in New York. I went to the Memorial Sloan Kettering and was treated by Dr. Larry Norton who, if that man hadn't entered my life I wouldn't be alive today. He was unbelievable. And has and in fact is one of my dearest friends and came to Buckingham Palace with me to receive my MBE from the Queen along with my husband and my son and he's one of those real amazing people in life that give and save lives every single day and I was one of those lives. So I have so much to be thankful for but when I came through all of that treatment I was on chemotherapy for a year. And by the end of it was taking every five to six days so it was grueling I can’t tell you operation after operation and then eventually I remember Larry taking my hand and saying it's time to go back and live your life. And I was so scared. It was like walking a tightrope without a safety net. I want you know, I was going to have to come back to London and I just didn't feel the same person. I didn't feel I related to the business that I built anymore. It wasn't anyone's fault that's just the way it was. I lost my identity. I lost who I was what I could be. I felt that I was not doing the right thing for the business. And I also thought cancer was going to come back and I didn't want to be travelling the world. I wanted to have time with my son well in fact he's now 17 years old six foot two, fences for Great Britain wants to come to university in America and I'm still alive and kicking. So there you go. You can never be defined by other people's diagnosis or opinions of you but it changed me. It changed me and that is the main reason I walked away from Jo Malone and that business that I that I founded. 

RJ: Well I think it's a really very bold decision that you made and one that clearly has worked out very well for both you and your family. You then make the call a few years later 2011 to launch your new fragrance company. Jo Loves, what was it like to have already done this once and then go into it and say “I'm going to do it again.”

JM: It was… Now when I look back. What a brave woman. 

RJ: Yes yes.  

JM: I think if I had my time again I'm not sure I would have done it. It was…

RJ: Really?

JM: It was really tough. It was the toughest thing I think personally I've ever done because…

RJ: What makes it so tough?

JM: I made every mistake in the book. I don't know why, I’d love to tell you that I've worked it all out but I haven't I. I ran back in what I realized about myself was fragrance is not a business to me or my career, it's my best friend. When I create fragrance I am the best, the best creatively that I can be and when I am a shopkeeper I'm happy. It makes me happy. If someone had offered me a job in those five years because I was in a lockout - rightly so I'd been paid a lot of money by Estée Lauder so I was in a lockout. I wasn't able to enter the industry and it was in those five years I realized that if I didn't try again I would have regrets. Rebecca I don't have regrets in my life. Some of the things I’ve said to people or I've done, I regret those. You know perhaps when I was mean to my husband Gary or I did something I wish I hadn't done that. But you know but I don't have regrets. I don't have regrets of the things that I’ve. You know the places and I didn't want to look back at my life and say “If only you tried again what could have happened.” I'm just not one of those people to dwell in that place so I sat around my kitchen table I remember the day so vividly we sat with. We were just sitting having a little family dinner the three of us and I looked up and I said, “I want to try again and see if I can build a fragrance business.” But the mistake I made was I thought I could enter back into the industry where I had left. I couldn't. I had to start from scratch. I thought I could run back into the industry and they would open arms. Well no one knew I'd left Jo Malone everyone thought I was still there. So suddenly there I was. I was Jo Malone the person but Jo Malone London the brand, cream and black box was over there and I was Jo by Jo Loves over here and it was in a red box at the time when we first launched and it was... When I look back now it was me crying out to say “please just let me back.” If someone had offered me a job I would have taken it. I would’ve just done anything to create fragrance again. But of course everybody thought I was really happy sitting on a beach in the middle of nowhere and enjoying my hard work and had no idea because I'm a really private person. So we started out we set the business rolling. We rented a tiny little office and did a first pop up shop in Selfridges over Christmas and I got all the packaging wrong. The juice was right, the fragrances were right. We launched four fragrances and I remember that night so vividly in Selfridges. We'd spent the whole night there putting the pop up shop together to open the next morning and as the pop up shop was going up I realized I hated the way it looked. I couldn't admit that to anyone.

RJ: What do you hate about it? 

JM: The color, it was so it was so sort of if you look back and you Google back you can see those first boxes. It was so hard and it didn't have my spirit and I was trying to be so different from Jo Malone but I didn't. It wasn't me, it wasn't who I was. Anyway about 4:00 in the morning and I had a journalist with me at the time telling the story and it was like “What am I going to do” and I'm a really truthful person, so if you ask me a question I'm going to answer it truthfully. Anyway I went to the bathroom and as I came down the escalator I was face to face with the brand I had created Jo Malone - cream and black box and I felt her look at me. And you may think I'm crazy and that's absolutely fine. I felt this brand go, “what have you done?” It's like I was having a conversation in my head with these two brands and I realized that as I came down the escalator and I put my hands on the counter and I could feel the brand I’d created and I just thought you're safe you're safe I have to leave now because you're going to be safe in Estée Lauder’s hands but I have to go and I will never forget you and I will always love you. But I can't be here anymore and I looked at Jo Loves and I thought “well you know what. We're just going to have to find a way. You and I are going to have to find a way to create a global brand again.” And that's where it started. 

RJ: Did you just totally go back to the drawing board and start over? 

JM: Well I couldn't I was about to launch so I it was a bit like standing on a global stage in your underwear. I had to wear it. I had to I didn't have enough money I had to go back, sell the product, and start again and then and then we repackaged and re-looked our image and I went back to what do you love, Jo and I love whites. I live in a white house so I love I love just that plain white canvas feeling and so I sat there and paid a lot of money to a lot of companies and we worked with someone called Pole Fisher who were amazing and they helped us pull the white packaging together but it was void of emotion and I couldn't find couldn't find my Nike swoosh or my little Apple. And this is again is such a lesson for me. So everyone kept coming up with these weird crazy ideas and I couldn't bear any of them. And I've either got to love something a million percent or I hate it. There's nothing in between with me and I was sitting at my desk I was about to go to Shanghai with a great campaign as one of the ambassadors and someone had sent me a little bottle of red nail varnish called Shanghai red. And I was sitting there with a whole lot of Jo Loves labels. And I picked up a pencil. I dropped it in the red nail varnish and I dropped one drop on each of the label and I looked and it was like there she is, there's your brand because I'm dyslexic. I red dot everything when I have approved it. And it was right in front of me the whole time and it was probably cost me ten dollars not hundreds of thousands of pounds to find and there it was with a little bottle of red nail varnish. And if you look at the bags today and you feel them you run your hand over the red dot and it's raised so that I never forget the moment that that little bottle of red nail varnish changed our brand. 

RJ: I love that. We'll post on Instagram some before and after pictures so our listeners can see the genesis of the final thing. And I think it's interesting too because obviously when you set out to create the initial packaging, there was probably at least some pressure behind the scenes to differentiate from the original Jo Malone London brand. And as a result you probably got pushed in a direction that went very that veered so far away from your original that it just was not true to you. 

JM: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head absolutely. It was me that pushed myself but I knew you know something. I love the Lauder family. I love that brand Jo Malone. I'm not part of it and I don't relate to it creatively anymore. But it does it's not to say that this was never about harming or being going into competition. See I can't I can't see that brand as my competition because it's part of me. But it was I did need to move on and I didn't want to repeat life I didn't want to go back. I don't want to go back. I want to move forward. And Jo Loves, the minute I got that packaging right. Something happened to me. I started to find this brave girl that maybe has been inside me all along. I don't know this brave girl that was just like take risks don't. Don't be bothered with it if everybody agrees with you. It doesn't matter. Be true to who you are and that that I think when people are building brands and especially when they put their name attached to it you know what? It's part of your soul. I remember many years many years ago, one of the best pieces of advice I got was from Oprah Winfrey. I went on her show. I was the only Brit there and it was about million dollar businesses. And I remember saying to her “if you could give me one piece of advice in life what would it be?” And she said “own everything you do. Stamp your identity on everything you do” and that has stayed with me. That was that's probably one of the best pieces of advice business advice I've ever had. And I've tried to stay. And the minute I veer off of that. That's when I make mistakes. Stay true to who you are allow your soul your personality to come through in your business. 

RJ: That is such a great lesson I'm so thankful you shared that with us and from Oprah.

JM: She, I did her show. It transformed my business. 

RJ: What does that do for your business like when you go on Oprah what changes in the business? Is it an overnight thing? 

JM: It wasn't quite overnight but it was a change. We would have coach loads of people drawing up the…You know what I love about that woman though is she's never forgotten her roots. She's never forgotten who she really is and she shares that that wonderful commitment to the next generation and that one piece of advice really did stay with me and it did transform my business without a. And I think all of the other businesses I remember the show that we were on I remember there was Jamba Juice, myself, there was a young girl that created this bacon rack that went into the microwave that made crispy bacon. She was only 13 years old. So you know but what we have to remember is entrepreneurs and as founders and of people who go and create great things is the baton of the next successful generation is our responsibilities to hand over and open the doors. It is a responsibility to the next generation and say “we believe in you just as someone believed in us.” And it's an important responsibility to take hold of.

RJ: Your new fragrance Jo by Jo loves. Just came out. This is the first one you've ever named after yourself. 

JM: Well you can only do it once. 

RJ: What led to you naming it after yourself because all of your other fragrances over the years you typically name them after what they're made of. 

JM: And I'll probably go back to that. There was a moment in your life where you’re…This fragrance is about my past, my present, my future. And I don’t know whether you've ever felt it in your life where they all become one moment where everything you've learnt everything you are and all your dreams and aspirations become. It's almost as though everything you've worked for. You're walking towards the light at the end of the tunnel and you feel the light hitting your face and it's like you're there girl, you're about to do something amazing all over again. And I wanted to celebrate the moment and this is this my past my present and my future told in the story of grapefruit. So it's all the way through my life all those moments that have stopped me and I literally threw every grapefruit I could find in the world in this fragrance. I wanted her in a red bottle. And next year I have been a shopkeeper for 25 years and have built two brands. And who knows what I'm going on to do. And I wanted a moment where I could look at a fragrance and say that was the moment that I knew I was about to change the world again. 

RJ: Wow, I love that. So what along the way has been the toughest lesson?

JM: I think one of the toughest lessons is trusting people who let you down.

RJ: Because you did trust people who let you down repeatedly or?

JM: Not repeatedly. But I think that's one of my life lessons. You see I walk into every relationship and I'm trusting. You know what you see is what you get with me. If I'm happy, you'll know if I'm sad, you'll know if I’m cross, you’ll know. But not everyone else is like that. So I've had to sometimes it's like just stand back for a bit girl just don't jump in there straight away just let it go. But you know you can tell in this interview you know you asked me a question I answer it and I'm like that in business so I think that has been a big lesson to me. I've learned more good lessons than I have bad. And I don't focus on the negative I always choose to turn the page and move on. But I think that's probably a big lesson. 

RJ: It's an interesting point. I was going to say that you know in that circumstance when people surprise you because you're straightforward you're a straight shooter and you say what you need and what you want. And you would hope for the same. It takes so much more energy to not be straight forward and then to respond to people who aren't straight forward.

JM: For me it's not a world I want to live in. You know one bad apple rots the crate and it's so true. It's so true and I think I'm a very direct human being. If I am you will always know where you stand with me. But not everyone is the same and I've had to realize as well that not everyone is the same. So it's not that I've found the right way but it's the right way for me, and I choose to live my life surrounded by people both in business and in my friends and new relationships that share that common decency I suppose. 

RJ: How do you handle that in a relationship or in a business relationship where you realize that somebody isn't a straight shooter you might have thought that they originally were? 

JM: That's part of life isn't it? We've all been in that situation and sometimes you always have three choices in life. People who say I mean, I am a control freak I know am. So always in life I think OK well what should I do in this situation? You can either accept the situation r go along with it. You and can either get yourself out of the situation or the most powerful choice you have is you accept the situation but you change your mindset and that last option is the most powerful because it means you haven't run away from a situation, you faced it. And sometimes it is having a confrontational discussion and sometimes it's not. And you have to gauge which one is it worth this or is it not worth it. In my opinion people are always worth a second chance. 

RJ: Hear hear. Could not agree with you more. So we ask everybody on this show about the worst advice they received in their career what is the worst advice you received along the way? 

JM: I haven't received a lot of bad advice but I think one of the one of the worst things in business was when I came up with the fragrance paintbrush which was launched last year which for me is I'm going to change the way the world wears fragrance and with a paintbrush instead of spraying your fragrance you're going to paint your body. And I remember presenting it and somebody turned around and went, “oh that's never going to catch on it's so gimmicky” and it crushed me. Absolutely crushed me I’d worked for a year and I remember thinking “I'll show you.” Well they were wrong they were. That was the worst bit of business advice. If I listened to that I wouldn't be changing the way the world wears fragrance and that has been the most the biggest catalyst to me creating a global brand it has ever been with that single paintbrush. So if I'd listened to that I'd never be. I'm about to do something amazing which, when it happens I'd love to come back and share it with you. And eventually because boy has it been exciting. So that's the worst bit of business. Personal was somebody once said to me never marry that man Gary Wilcox it will be the worst and you’ll last a year when I've been married for 33 years this year and very happily. 

RJ: I'm very happy to hear that. Why did they say that was it because of his dreams of becoming a vicar? 

JM: I think she was jealous. I think she saw a good looking good man and thought “I'll take him for myself.” I didn't listen. And it has been one of the…He's my best friend. One of the happiest relationships I've ever had in my life. 

RJ: Well I'm so thankful to hear that. Thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us Jo Malone.

JM: Thank you Rebecca. 

Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to "No Limits" to rate and review!

Follow me on Social Media:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram