Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Joanna Jensen, Founder of Childs Farm, a sensitive toiletry brand for babies and children, and all over my house. Seeking toiletries to soothe her daughter’s eczema, Joanna was shocked to find that treatments available hadn’t improved since she herself suffered from eczema as a child. It was either steroids or petrochemical based emollient creams but Joanna wanted prevention not disguise. With an obsessive, as she says, interest in natural medicines, Joanna decided to give it a go and create homemade remedies using homeopathy and essential oils. The positive results and a belief more people could benefit from her treatments led to her launching Childs Farm in 2010 from her farm in Basingstoke, which still incidentally, is her headquarters today. Their natural, sustainable, sensitive skincare and toiletry products, including their adult range, Farmologie, are now sold online, in stores and exported internationally and in March this year they were acquired by soap manufacturers, PZ Cussons, with Joanna remaining, very much, as brand ambassador. It’s so lovely to meet you.
Joanna Jensen
Thank you and it’s lovely to hear we’ve, another family converted.
Elliot Moss
It is, it is and the reason, you know, often for the entrepreneurs, the founders that come on this programme, some say hello, we’d love to come on, truthfully, and some we go out and find and people recommend them. This was from my home, a recommendation from my wife, saying you’ve got to meet that person, whoever it is and here you are. 2010, you weren’t an entrepreneur, you hadn’t been an entrepreneur and you then started to become one. The belief you must have had came from somewhere, to do this thing, where do you think it came from?
Joanna Jensen
Oh I know where it comes from. I know, I’ve always been incredibly driven and that’s largely down to my family. My grandparents, my grandmother was an entrepreneur, during the War she had a string of hotels and extraordinary successful woman, who my grandfather was amazing in supporting and my mother was a single mum in the seventies and so, for her, you just got on and did it and so for me, when I realised that there was something missing, particularly for my youngest daughter, Bella, and she had terrible eczema when she popped out in 2008, I was horrified to discover that the market hadn’t moved on and when I had eczema in the seventies, it was all emollients and steroid cream and I thought, I’m not putting that on my baby and I had never had any doubt and I think there’s two things behind that, one of those things is necessity, necessity is the mother of invention and I needed something for my child and anyone who’s a parent and their child is in pain or in agony, you know you will do anything to prevent that happening, especially a little baby that can’t really communicate with you. So, that was one huge, huge driver and the other thing was just blind faith. I knew that there were other people like me that needed something for their children and I’d been brought up never that it had never even occurred to my mother that we were girls and therefore life would be a little bit trickier, we were just determined young women who got on with life and we’d never doubted our ability to do anything, so I have to say all roads do lead back to really my mother, if I’m being honest.
Elliot Moss
And your mum worked in the NHS.
Joanna Jensen
Yeah, mum was an NHS nurse initially and then she was a health visitor when we were little because that worked with her bringing us up, so she could work part-time but she was also, well I always describe her as being a bit of an old hippie, probably less of the old, she is 83 though so I think I can say that. But everything that we did, was done holistically. I mean, I think we were the only family I know that had brown spaghetti in the seventies, it still gives me nightmares, but everything we did, she treated us holistically about everything so, it’s what you ate, what you put on your skin, you know even the clothes that you had. For us, you know, sustainability wasn’t something you talked about, we lived it, we had chickens, we grew our own vegetables, you never had a plastic bag, you always used a basket, so it was something that was embedded in us and for someone who worked for the NHS, I think she was fairly enlightened about alternative therapies and remedies and also the importance of food on your body, on your mind and on your skin and her mantra had always been just moisturise my eczema, just moisturise it and also keep out of the sun and that has stayed with us and is actually the core part of Childs Farm and our mantra for anyone who’s got sensitive or eczema prone skin is moisturise, moisturise, moisturise and whilst that comes from our paediatric dermatologist, Jennifer Crawley, it also originally came from mum so, three cheers to Mummy Dover.
Elliot Moss
What a brilliant start. Joanna Jensen is my Business Shaper and she’s the Founder of Childs Farm, they make things that make life easier for your children’s skin and they smell nice too, by the way.
Joanna Jensen
They do, don’t they.
Elliot Moss
They do, they really do, yeah. Sort of a strange thing to say but it’s absolutely true. You were talking about your mum and what she brought you in those, you know that kind of basically get on with it and go and do it. In those early years, I mean you hadn’t, you may have been on the other end of really useful advice from your mum but you hadn’t set up a business, you hadn’t gone and looked at the homeopathic kind of ingredients and all those other things, how did you piece together those first products? Where did you get advice from?
Joanna Jensen
Yeah well actually, mum even though she worked for the NHS, we were always treated homoeopathically and we made loads of hedgerow tinctures, you remember when you’d sort of go out and pick the rosehips and you make yourself cough mixture, we’d do that all the time and so I’d always had a really profound interest in natural remedies and natural solutions and even though I sort of swerved and I was an investment banker for many years, every country I went to my first port of call would be the local pharmacy and I would see what their solution was for certain ailments and I still had sensitive skin and so I still continue to have that treated homoeopathically and when I lived in Hong Kong I had quite a few Chinese remedies too. I’m just very broad minded.
Elliot Moss
But putting those together and actually creating a product for yourself, how did you do that initially?
Joanna Jensen
Yeah. Well that was, I’d love to say it was trial and error but it wasn’t really. Because I knew so much about cosmetics and about personal care products, I actually made my first formulation at home and used a couple of core ingredients and things which didn’t have, I was very clear about ingredients I didn’t want to include in the formulations and very clear about the ones I did want to include, you know things that people have used for years, shea butter was used by the Egyptians against windburn and sunburn, so I knew what I wanted to use, I made up a lot of concoctions. The other thing I wanted though was fragrance because as I child I would never been allowed anything with fragrance, I wasn’t allowed scent, I wasn’t allowed a bubble bath and so…
Elliot Moss
Did you make rose water when you were a kid? I used to do that or my sister, we used to get the petals and rub them really hard and then the smell from that.
Joanna Jensen
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we’d make lavender bags for people for Christmas as well. So you would always be using, scent for me was really important and I can pick up a fragrance at a thousand paces and I love fragrance. We talked earlier about the really fantastic smells of the Childs Farm products, well the first ones were made using organic orange essential oil because in our house we used to call it Happy Juice because every time you smelled it, you’d smile because it was the satsuma in the bottom of your Christmas stocking, it was a really lovely exotic summer holiday and it was one of those hotels you’d go to and they have that machine that squeezes the orange juice and all of those things make you smile and for me, having had poorly skin myself and looking at little Bella with her poorly skin, I wanted to turn that frown upside down, I wanted to make that whole experience a joyful experience rather than a miserable one.
Elliot Moss
And now I’m just going to jump to the first time you’ve now got your package, you’ve got your name and you’re selling it, what did that feel like when you actually saw it happening?
Joanna Jensen
Do you know, it’s, it’s funny and I’m sure other people have said this as well. Because you are so far ahead of when things happen, you’ve already experienced it before it does happen, if that makes sense. So, you know what the, when it’s going to go on shelf or when you’re going to take it to a school fair and everything’s done on autopilot. There are moments, and this is something we, you know, you talk about celebrating success a lot as a nation and we should do it a lot more but I remember when I saw the soaps, the first bottles come out and I was so chuffed but my mind was saying right, how am I going to sell them and so you sort of have this sort of moment of woo, look, I’ve done it and then you’re saying oh god, I’ve got 10,000 bottles of this lot and I’ve got to shift them because again when you start a business, nothing costs what you think it’s going to cost, everything costs so much more and as my grandmother once said to me, it’s all about turnover, turnover, turnover, you just keep turning over what stock you’ve got, the last thing you want is to be lumbered with stock.
Elliot Moss
Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise, turnover, turnover, turnover. There you go.
Joanna Jensen
I’ll think of some more.
Elliot Moss
I’m sure. I love it and they come in threes, it’s great, we’re going to at least get one more. Much more coming up from my guest Joanna Jensen in a couple of minutes. Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Victoria Pigott and Dr Rebecca Newton, Organisational Psychologist and CEO of Coach Advisor, discuss the impact of women in positions of leadership and on boards.
All our former Business Shapers await you on the Jazz Shapers podcasts and you can of course hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice. My guest today is Joanna Jensen, Founder of Childs Farm, a sensitive toiletry brand for babies and for children. Just going to throw back to 2014 because 2022, great year, you know the sale and all of that but 2014 as I understand it was a very difficult year for you where the business could have gone kaput. How did you mentally deal with that at the time and how did you come through it because many people that run their own business, and you talked about revenue, revenue, revenue, turnover, turnover, turnover, sorry, I’ve just added revenue in there, turnover, turnover, turnover same thing. How did you deal with the issues then and did it make you stronger?
Joanna Jensen
Ooh, do you know, 2014 was a hideous year for me because we actually sold our house, I got divorced, I was incredibly ill and an investor pulled out four days before it was due to sign and I’m one of those people that doesn’t linger, I will deal with an issue, I’ll have a damn good cry and then I pick myself up and brush myself down and get on with it and that year was all about, 2014 was all about doing that. I’m also a great believer in one door closes and another door opens and I mean, you can probably sense, I’m super, super, super positive and when that investor pulled out and I had a weep and used lots of very rude words but I hatched a plan about what I was going to do next and this is when the people that you least expect it, surprise you and I went to see Boots that following Monday, he pulled out on a Friday, I went to see them the following Monday expecting them to say to me look, listen, we’ve pulled your listing and I walked in and my category director had arranged for a roomful of people who could help me to be there and they said what can we do, we think you’ve got an incredible brand, what can we do to help you and it was extraordinary, it was just what I needed, it gave me hope and actually, I turned round and said do you know, just carry on with the listing, I will find the money, and I did and that’s when I met my business partner, Andrew Leek, the day after we moved into our new house which I’d rented, I had enough money to pay for the rent for a year so I didn’t put any more pressure on myself and he turned up the next day, he fell in love with the brand and he and another friend of his and family and friends, invested in the business so we could launch in Boots and Waitrose as planned in June of that year and the rest, as they say, is history. I mean, we did it on a shoestring, we also launched our cartoon, 20 episode cartoon, that we ran on the Turner Media channel, which was a huge success and you know, yeah there were some sticky moments, the divorce, the going to hospital and having a last-minute operation but it taught me about resilience and I think this is something that any founder will have in common is you’ve got to have this resilience, you can’t take things personally, you’ve got to have rhino skin to a certain extent but you’ve also got to have this amazing self-belief because if you don’t believe in what you’re doing or you don’t believe in your brand, no one else is going to, it is up to you to project that positivity and it’s up to you when you get rejected, to pick yourself up and dust yourself down and go after the next one and I would never accept no as an answer and I swear the Sainsbury’s buyer practically took out a restraining order on me because I wouldn’t leave her alone but it’s that resilience, it’s that persistence that allows you to be successful and you can’t be faint of heart, you can’t be shy, you’ve got to have that self-belief and you’ve just got to go for it.
Elliot Moss
You talked very eloquently about 2014 being your annus horribilis, okay, and everything that went wrong and you said resilience is important and I absolutely can see you did just hunker down but people listening might go, how do you manage when you’re, the personal stuff is really seeping into the, the work stuff because that’s often the thing that actually upends you. As you get older you realise that the thing that really upsets you is much more what’s going on outside of work rather than inside it. How did you manage to compartmentalise the two or didn’t you?
Joanna Jensen
I mean we talk now about work-life balance, I mean I simply didn’t have one and my lines were incredibly blurred. I mean, the office was you know an old barn next door to the house, the kids were in and out the whole time, I mean they were very little and I was bringing them up on my own as well, I mean it was, it was you know I’m also a great believer in that you just get on with life and there’s always someone who’s much more unfortunate than yourself and we had a roof over our head, we had food in the fridge and we had some people that were amazing and helped us out in our sort of hours of need but I knew it was sort of like that red rag to a bull, if I didn’t make this business work, there was so much that would lose, everything was invested in Childs Farm, you know, the children’s future, my future, and it’s just what drives me I suppose, this absolute bloody minded determination.
Elliot Moss
Do you think that founders need to have, to be really good founders, to be really good entrepreneurs, need to have unbelievably high stakes like that? Do you think those, the consequences of failure need to be enormous for it to work?
Joanna Jensen
I think mine were slightly exceptional and I wouldn’t recommend it but I think there has to be risk and you’ll find as an investor and now I’m an investor, I look for people that you know are prepared to put skin in the game themselves, they’ve got to have some risk there otherwise how can you ask someone else to just handle all of that risk and I think I was, I was just quite determined and I, when I see people that sort of are looking for a fundraise and you say how much are you putting in and they’re sort of saying nothing, I’m just intellectual property and you know my brilliance, it doesn’t turn me on. Someone who turns round and says well actually, you know, I’ve put this amount of cash in and I’m going to put this on standby and you know my pension I’ve converted, that says to me you truly mean it, this really matters, you’re determined for this to be a success. But it is horses for courses, people are motivated by so many different things. For me, I didn’t have a choice, I had two small children who I needed to feed and water and that is one huge motivator.
Elliot Moss
You just, you had to get on with it.
Joanna Jensen
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
But the other end of it and you mentioned this about celebrating success. 2022, a year, this year where you go a big thing happened, the business gets bought for a really significant amount of money as well, how have you come to terms with succeeding rather than struggling? Is success actually harder to take for you than dealing with tough stuff?
Joanna Jensen
Do you know, that’s such a good question. I, I think I’m quite an anxious person underneath everything and I’ve only really realised it in the last few months since we sold the business, partially because I’m so attached to Childs Farm still and it matters a great deal to me and that’s really the anxious piece about ooh, why are we doing this or couldn’t we do that and I’m not running the business anymore and I’m not part of the business anymore and so, I’ve got to just come to terms with that and carry on my ambassadorial role, which I love and continue to talk about the brand but the other side of that success is the best celebration I could have is spending more time with my girls and I have to say, my eldest daughter did her GCSEs this year and finished on the 10th of June so I had her for the best part of three months, I’ve never spent so much time with my kids and I just feel like I’ve just started a whole new part of my life, which is being a full-time mummy and that I am there and when they’re in their teens, as you know, they need you more than they ever needed you before and so it offsets all those missed plays, those you know forgotten events and that running late for absolutely everything, I’m now just absolutely enjoying every moment with them and in fact when I leave here, I’m straight on a train back to watch one of them play hockey at school and that I could never do and so, I also am extremely fortunate, look I did as you say, I did a remarkable sale for my investors and for myself and I thoroughly want to enjoy the rewards of that but also it’s opened a door to another career for me which is doing other things that matter to my heart as well.
Elliot Moss
Which we’re going to find out much more about in my final chat with you. It’s Joanna Jensen, just in case you haven’t caught and she’s the Founder and now brand ambassador of Childs Farm. There’s going to be some Marcus Miller in there for you too, which are pretty good reasons to make sure that you don’t go anywhere.
Joanna Jensen is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. You talked about and now I’ve got this next stage, this next chapter, including being a full-time mummy almost but it’s not quite because I know you’re doing many other things as well. What are those other things? What, where has your heart and your head told you to go with this sudden time that you’ve got, which is obviously the most valuable commodity?
Joanna Jensen
Yeah, well obviously remaining an ambassador for Childs Farm, which is really, really important to me and talking everything to do with skin and also a bit more naturopath, homeopath lean to all of that but the other two strands really is all about female founders and I’m really lucky, I’m an advisor to a wonderful new community called Buy Women Built set up by Sahar Hashemi and Barny Macaulay to celebrate all female founders because we can do many things with our time but actually, to support our female founders, we can actually buy their products and that allows their businesses to grow so, I’m an advisor to that business, helping them with some corporate sponsorship which I am absolutely loving, I have never met such enthusiastic, dynamic, wonderful female founders as I have through this group, every day is a joy and it’s just a joy for me to celebrate how many brilliant female founders there are out there, with all the everyday products that you use, so obviously everything I wear now is all from a female founder, I’m literally putting my money where my mouth is. And my other great passion has always been firstly, Riding for the Disabled and the Paralympics GB and in fact with Natasha Baker, who is one of our Paralympic dressage riders, I own half her horse, Lottie, who went to her first Paralympics in Tokyo and got two slivers and a gold, has just come back from the World Equestrian Games and got a silver and a bronze, so we’re utterly thrilled but I’m doing more with Paralympics GB because I think it’s so important we celebrate everyone and everyone has a skill, we can all do anything and I don’t care whether that’s you get four As at A Level or whether you get two Cs, if you’ve done your best then you’ve achieved and so when we go back and talk about celebrating success, the best and the most wonderfully joyful successes I’ve ever celebrated are with our Paralympians because what a diverse bunch but the one thing they have in commonality is their resilience and their sense of humour and their drive, it’s absolutely, it’s awesome, it’s awesome to behold so I am going to be doing a lot more with them.
Elliot Moss
Fantastic. Brilliant use of your time, I mean extraordinary. And thank you today for bringing the smell of orange and invoking the smell of the satsuma in the bottom of the stocking. Just before I let you whizz off, what is your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Joanna Jensen
My song choice, well I love, love, love Nina Simone and anything by her I find it utterly uplifting and liberating but for me, my song choice today is going to be Feeling Good by Nina Simone, which just is one of those songs that you can just, you can drift into and to me, it’s how I feel, right now I’m feeling pretty good. Life has been pretty good to me and you know, in spite of everything that we know is going on with the economy and with Ukraine, I feel that I’m in a position now to do better and greater things, not only for my own family but for others so, I’m feeling good.
Elliot Moss
That was Nina Simone with Feeling Good, the appropriate choice for my fantastically uplifting Business Shaper today, Joanna Jensen. She talked about necessity being the mother of all invention. She talked about the importance of resilience and managing both the personal and the professional. She talked about risk and saying that it is fundamental and core to the nature of being an entrepreneur and also the importance finally of celebrating success, something that we should all do much, much more. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to Mishcon.com/JazzShapers.