Jo Malone CBE Readers Ask

When coming up with a new fragrance what is your starting point? Eleanor, South East

In my head, I have a library with all of these fragrance notes. I see it as a big, spiral staircase and it goes up and up, and around it are all these shelves with bottles or things on.

Each one is a memory; a walk in the park, riding my horse, lying on a cashmere blanket in the middle of the desert. I pick those bottles, smell them and start to add it to the fragrance. Each one is a story, each note is words, music or touch.

Then you put together what’s called accords. They’re often single notes, and I’ll take them and twirl the papers round and round. Do they match? Are they a disrupter? Are they a magnet? Do they want to draw and control everything in that fragrance?

If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be? Ali, South West

That’s impossible. I love creating, I love smelling fragrances and I love accords.

But, if I could only take one bottle, it would be ‘Jo by Jo Loves’. I created that many years ago and it’s the story of my life through the ingredients of grapefruit, pomelos, lime and citrus. It reminds me to remember who I am. It was the second business I built and a part of my life where I was really trying to discover again who Jo was.

Or, it’s always the one I’m currently creating. So at the moment it would be ‘Sunkissed Orange’, the code name of my current working project.

What was the biggest risk you took that defined your career and what did it teach you? Andrew, East of England

I think one of the biggest risks was opening our first shop in Walton Street, 32 years ago. My husband and I had this tiny pool of money for rent and for products and all we could think about was “Can we survive?”. And within five years we’d sold that business, so it paid off.

Then, I left Jo Malone London in 2006 and I had a five year lockout, so I was non-compete. After those five years, an opportunity came to me and I missed fragrance so much that I decided I wanted to take it, but that was a risk.

Just because you’re successful once in your life, it doesn’t give you the right to be successful again. You have to go from the ground, and let me tell you, the first two years of building Jo Loves were torturous. I lost lots of money. I got it all wrong.

But often when you take risks in business and you push through, you build business muscle and find different solutions. Never be frightened of risk. It’s always going to come, but we have to push on.

What is one piece of advice that you would give to a young person today, setting out in the world of work? Andrew, East of England

Well, it’s going to be an adventure. I left school at 15 years old. I have no qualifications. I had a whole heap of dreams, I set to work and I have built and helped build great global brands. When I was 15 to 16 years old, my first job was in a florist. I never wasted any opportunity to learn something. Learning that you don’t like something is often as valuable as knowing you love it, because you can eliminate a lot.

Surround yourself with people that you find creative and inspiring and learn from them. If you don’t know how to do it in the beginning, mimic them. Mimic some of their thought processes and conversations. Listen to every word. Read stories of other entrepreneurs.

The next question will probably be: “Well, I don’t know whether I’m an entrepreneur?” You may not be, but you have an entrepreneurial instinct, because the minute you were born, you were born to learn and be creative.