Having spent decades suffering from anxiety, the entrepreneur Jo Malone CBE shocked herself when, in her late fifties, she stumbled upon an extreme cure. Lounging by the pool in Dubai with Gary, her husband of more than 40 years, they began plotting an extended stay in the country when Jo suggested they mark the moment with a sky dive.
“I was suffering badly from anxiety. I had to change something in my world and shock myself out of it,” she tells this week’s Second Act podcast with Ateh Jewel. “As we got into the sky, I said: ‘I’ve changed my mind’. But it was too late. We freefalled for 8,000 feet. To this day, I have never, ever suffered with anxiety again. I left it on the plane and I thought: ‘If I can face this, I can face anything.’ ”
Growing up on a council estate in southeast London, she has said that as a child, she had to look after herself. She also was bullied at school for being dyslexic.
“When I say I grew up on an estate, people say: ‘Ooh, Downton Abbey?’ Absolutely not,” she says. It gave her a drive to work hard, to never get in debt and to create successful businesses, most recently launching Jo Loves, a perfume brand, and Jo Vodka.
Jo became a multimillionaire after selling her fragrance business – and with it, the rights to her name – to Estée Lauder in 1999. She struggled with losing her identity, but credits the sale with saving her life. Evelyn Lauder, the daughter-in-law of Estée and a pioneering breast cancer campaigner, recommended a doctor to Jo when, in 2003, she was told she had cancer. She was 37 and had been given nine months to live, but, unbeknown to Jo, Dr Larry Norton had chosen her at random to be one of 30 women to try out a pioneering form of chemotherapy. She has been cancer-free for 20 years.
“I didn’t realise how badly I had cancer until about six months ago, when he (Dr Norton) came for dinner in Dubai and said: ‘I have something to tell you’. Life is so precious. You have to make the most of it.”
Splitting her time between Dubai and Europe is like being on a gap year in her sixties, she says. “I feel like I’m in my forties again and challenge myself every day. I was made for this moment and I haven’t achieved everything I was meant to yet.”
Her advice for women stuck in a midlife rut? “Do something to change your life. You are in charge of it.”
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