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From family breadwinner at 11 to world-famous perfume entrepreneur

Ms Jo Malone CBE is a British perfumer and founder of the Jo Malone London and Jo Loves perfume brands.

Mike Green, CNBC

British entrepreneur and renowned perfumer Ms Jo Malone CBE has opened up about her tough upbringing and how becoming her family’s breadwinner at the age of 11 planted the first seeds of entrepreneurship.

Malone, founder of successful fragrance brands Jo Malone London and Jo Loves, appeared on an episode of CNBC’s “Executive Decisions” podcast with Steve Sedgwick, which aired Tuesday.

Acquired by Jo Malone London The Estee Lauder The companies earned the founder undisclosed millions of dollars in 1999.

But long before she became a millionaire, Malone recalled growing up in council housing in Kent, UK, with a mother who worked in the beauty industry and a father who was an artist as well as a gambler and poker player.

“From the age of 11 onwards I really asked, ‘Do we have enough money for electricity and gas meters?’ I was the adult who said. Because I knew if he gambled away all the money there would be nothing left to eat,” Malone told Sedgwick.

Before Malone hit puberty, his mother had a breakdown and he missed school for almost a year while trying to find a way to provide for his mother, father, and younger sister.

Drawing on his mother’s experience and teaching, a savvy Malone copied the face creams she used to sell; he took them to London on the train and sold them to customers for £4.50 ($5.90).

“That’s how I kept our family together, and my dad would pop in and out of life whenever he felt the need to come home,” she said.

“I think I was created in those moments and no matter what happened to me, I always found a way out. I found a passage, I found a tunnel or a staircase and I think: ‘OK, how am I going to earn the next £20?’

Malone recalled selling his father’s paintings on Saturdays because the family needed money for food and he tended to squander it. He attended poker games alongside her on Sundays, where he taught her how to read marked cards.

Now Malone is a successful entrepreneur, she looks back on those challenging experiences in her childhood as a period that shaped her into the resilient businesswoman she is today.

‘In the beginning it was survival’

“I kept saying to myself, ‘When I grow up, I’m not going to live like this. I’m not going to have a family like this,'” Malone said. he said.

“And I remember being in my bedroom one day and we didn’t have any central heating. It was very cold, there was ice on the window, and I remember scraping the ice with my finger and looking outside and thinking, ‘I have to change my destiny’.”

Malone says he was lonely in his youth because he couldn’t do ‘normal’ things like play sports with his friends. Instead, she was at home doing laundry, cooking dinner, and picking up her little sister from school.

It was only as he grew older that he realized that his independence encouraged his entrepreneurial drive.

“At first it was survival,” he explained, describing his first few jobs at a flower shop, washing dishes at restaurants and walking people’s dogs.

“I was never ashamed of doing dishes or doing any of those things to survive, and I think when I started my first skincare business, I knew I was in charge of my own life and I had to make that happen,” Malone said.

“That’s when entrepreneur really took hold, even though I didn’t know what the word entrepreneur meant,” he said.

Malone, who is no longer associated with Jo Malone London, now lives in Dubai and launched luxury spirits brand Jo Vodka this year. She also has a fragrance business called Jo Loves.