Monte Carlo to Marlow
Ever had a dream to change your life and follow your passion?
Be inspired by conversations with people who have, because sometimes life has other plans for you if you just listen.
We speak to interesting people who have changes in their careers and life, often unplanned and always for the better.
Focusing on people in Monte Carlo and Marlow and beyond...
Monte Carlo to Marlow
How my Different Businesses Evolved with Serial Entrepreneur Krista Madden
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From Influencer to Community Builder: Krista Madden’s Journey of Digital Pioneering and Local Engagement
In this episode of Monte Carlo to Marlow, host Krista Madden takes us behind the scenes of her own entrepreneurial evolution in a conversation with Emma Kisby.
From launching one of the UK's first independent beauty blogs, Beauty in the Dirt, to founding the early influencer marketing agency Handpicked Media, Krista has spent over two decades at the forefront of digital branding. She shares how a major life transition, an international wellness festival in Monaco, and the disruptions of COVID-19 led her to move to Marlow and launch Love MarlowLife.com —a local digital platform championing independent businesses. Tune in to discover the rising importance of user-generated content, organic growth strategies, and why authenticity is your ultimate digital asset.
Key Topics
Krista’s background in fashion, beauty, and early digital media (00:00 - 07:00)
The evolution of her blog Beauty in the Dirt and influence in the fashion and beauty industry (07:00 - 09:00)
Transitioning from influencer to digital agency owner with Handpicked Media (09:00 - 11:00)
The rise of authentic content marketing and user-generated content (11:00 - 13:00)
Her shift to local community initiatives and organizing wellness and lifestyle events, including In Your Element in Monte Carlo (13:00 - 24:00)
The impact of COVID-19 on her projects and her move to Marlow (24:00 - 30:00)
Building Love Marlow Life a community-driven platform supporting local businesses and events (30:00 - 44:00)
Community website supporting local businesses and events
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Instagram: @montecarlotomarlow
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwVSEldi1G2_w_mgaGkFmJA
Hello, welcome to Monte Carlo to Marlowe.
SPEAKER_00And today I'm talking to Krista Madden. Hi Krista. Lovely to talk to you today. And Krista, you are based in Marlowe and you do lots of things with local businesses in Marlowe, but you've also had quite a creative background and you haven't always lived here, have you?
SPEAKER_01So no, I'm a newbie.
SPEAKER_00You're a newbie? Well, yes and no, because you've been here a few years now. About three and a bit, nearly four years in September. Yeah. So you've got a really lovely background with your blogger network. And literally, as we're watching, you've got this, yeah, Monte Carlo. So we're going to talk about all the things that you've done that has now led you to create this business in Marlowe. So would you like to kind of introduce yourself and then tell us kind of how it all began?
SPEAKER_01I'm one of those London people that moved out to Marlowe post-COVID. I was living in central London, very bang central, like off Oxford Street in sort of Charlotte Street, which a lot of people know because it's sort of quite restaurant-y, it's the other side of Oxford Street from Soho. So I started my first, I won't go as far back as I could because we'll be here forever because I'm kind of old, but essentially I studied photography and film at college in at Lunt's College of Printing. So a bit like you, I loved magazines and kind of knew that I wanted to do something in magazines. Really, when I look back, I probably should have been an art director. You know what you think of the jobs that you kind of think that you should have been doing? Yeah, absolutely. So um, so I studied photography, I skipped along a couple of jobs, and the first business that I started was with a friend who was looking after a photographer, and I was working at another hair and makeup agency looking after hair makeup and stylists. So we came together and we started an agency called Time. And it's funny because Sam, um, who actually I'll do a podcast with at some point, she was working for a photographer and found it really hard to tell him that she was leaving. So I remember I was in our first office, which was in just off Cavendish Square, and I was ringing Sam saying, Have you handed your notice in yet? Because we've started our business already, and you're not here. So it took a while for Sam to join. But back then, so we represented um yeah, makeup artists, photographers, stylists, and hairstylists that were working on magazines. So I kind of had my fix of working with them with the mags. Back then there were lots of magazines. Um, so we really were in the sort of fashion and entertainment business. A lot of people, when they think about makeup, you know, think of prosthetics and special effects, but that was always a different kind of industry if you were in like film, television, and theatre. So we had so much fun with that agency. It was a really fun time to be in the fashion industry. There was, you know, lots of money on advertising shoots and pop videos. It was a great time to be in London and it was pre-social media, so people had lots of fun and it wasn't captured anywhere on the camera. It was very kind of 3am girls, if anyone remembers that. They were the like the showbiz stories. We worked hard because you know you have to to generate income for people, and we looked after a lot of people that worked on Vogue and Spice Girls, and we did Scarlett Johansson's first photo shoot, which was a black and white time out cover. It was, you know, a pretty glamorous um industry. And actually, through that, I started a website. Well, I guess it was a blog back then called Beauty and the Dirt. And it was because we were kind of behind the scenes, really, in the kind of work that we were doing, and I didn't want to make it uh, you know, bitchy and sort of tell all and secrets. Um, it was really about what makeup the makeup artist was really using on a shoot, and you know, where the stylist was getting the clothes, and because I lived in central London at that time, it was openings of you know new restaurants and hotels and getting to film premiers, all a bit glamorous. And I made the character of the website a little cartoon character called Mimi, kind of based, and she was a makeup artist. I didn't want it to be about me, but kind of based it on the makeup artist that we represented. And I called her Mimi because it was all about me, me, me when they phoned in for their details and we gave them. And it's funny, I kind of like later on had said back to makeup artists. They were like, Really?
SPEAKER_00Well, we really like that.
SPEAKER_01It's like, yeah, when you're looking after people that are self-employed and they're ringing in and you're creating their diaries for them, it's like being a little PA to everybody. So I started Beauty in the Dirt like 26 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Wow. And it's still out there, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01I can't kill it. I can't kill it. I don't update it as often as I should. It feels like maybe it'll see me out, maybe it will still be there when I'm gone. It was really, yeah, it was really popular at that time because it was, and you're I don't know, you're a little quite a lot younger than me, but back then, you know, magazines didn't have their own websites, few of the newspapers did, they were like paywalled and so I was a bit of a novelty act, really. There was Urban Junkies, Pot Bitch, Chili Candy, Beauty in the Dirt. Were the only four sort of independent websites really that were kind of updating regularly and had you know good content.
SPEAKER_00You had that space then, didn't you, really? And it's exciting. So to have that space is is amazing.
SPEAKER_01Well, there were times when it was thousands and thousands of views of pages, which you would like die for now to get the kind of unique visitors and impressions. But as you say, it's because there wasn't much out there. There were a few American beauty blogs, but there weren't really many people doing what I was doing, especially from the position that I was in, because it it was it was real content, and you know, I could speak to the beauty editor at Tatler or Vogue and say what's in your makeup bag, because they weren't doing that themselves on social media, and they were happy to say because people like talking about themselves, it's kind of fun, it's all tongue-in-cheek, it wasn't bitchy, sometimes it was a bit bitchy, but you know, it was it was always positive and just had like a fun glam kind of side to it. So from Having Beauty in the Dirt, I then became press and I was invited to go on oh god, the amount of amazing press trips and film premieres and trips to the Maldives, and you know, you name it. And I was there with beauty editors from Cosmo, Daily Mail, or yeah, so I got to then know though that sort of crowd of people who were then also happy for me to speak to them. So they almost like some of them became contributors and things. So it was a really it was a brilliant time. I wasn't looking to monetize it, I was just looking for a bit of a hobby, I guess. And the benefits were so amazing that I didn't care about getting any money because I was getting free mascaras and free trips and free dinners, and I'm really grateful. So it was a really, yeah, it was a fun time to have a website, really. But like you, you had to be a bit techie back then and had to learn how to write in HTML and code. There were no photos on the website because it was really hard to load. It was pre-blogger, pre-WordPress. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so yeah, back in the day, dinosaur digital. Yeah, but you learn it all and you were there, and you were one of the beginnings, you know, at the beginning, one of the first, which is a really good story.
SPEAKER_01I hate to say it, but yeah, a bit kind of like one of the first influencers, which I would never like to call myself, but I, you know, I was at that time, and the brands knew it, and the you know, the press were happy to write about Beauty in the Dirt because back then they didn't have their own websites. So I remember the beauty editor at one time saying, Oh, um, it's more addictive than Facebook, and Sunder Times called it the compendium of London call.
SPEAKER_00Because it was cool back then, back in the day.
SPEAKER_01So um, so yeah, it was super fun. And and through having Beat in the dirt, I then would just sort of learn on the job about being digital and social media, as we were uh saying when I was talking to you. Uh, Twitter was really fun then as well, and Instagram sort of came along. So we were saying that Twitter was like 2006, and then Instagram's like 2010, so things started to get a bit more visual when Instagram came along. But because I'd started something that brands were quite eager to suddenly get involved in because they knew that newspapers and magazines sadly were folding. So the digital landscape of publishing was really emerging as like the place that if you had some money, that's where you should be. It was about learning on the job about how to do abborials online. The brands wanted to work with websites, but they kind of didn't quite know who to work with because there wasn't Instagram, they didn't know who was popular. I had everybody coming to me asking me how I could monetize how to build a blog. So it got to the point where I thought, okay, I'm gonna start an agency with everybody under one roof. There were mummy bloggers, film bloggers, food bloggers, and I called it handpicked media because I found myself calling people and saying, I'm handpicking sites that I think go really well together. I got an ops manager and a friend who was working as fashion editor at Wedding and Home. A little gang of us started, and handpicked media became the first place that you could go and advertise with kind of reputable blogs. And it was blogs then, you know, it wasn't you weren't an influence on Instagram then, you were a blogger.
SPEAKER_00Blogs have changed. The term blog has changed an awful lot, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I've always hated the word blogger and blog, but kind of is what it is. People don't realise it means web blog, so that's the shortened version of what it is. Uh it was an unavoidable word. But yeah, so Hampic Media then became the place that if you were a brand and you wanted to try and work with people that were had an independent voice, you could come to Hampic Media because it was a trusted resource in a way. That if you wanted to spend money and do a campaign, we would then approach blogs and say, There's this brand, or it's Sainsbury's, and they want to talk about the new Jamie Oliver knife series or kitchen series. And if you don't like it and you think you'll say something bad about it, don't join this campaign. You know, so we then recruited people that said, Yeah, I'd like to work on that. So the brands couldn't control what was being said. It took a bit of time to convince the brands that actually that was just far more valuable for someone to be allowed to say that they liked your product. And and then, you know, eventually brands did cotton onto the fact that if you just step back a little bit and let people say what they like, it's actually more valuable to you than putting a billboard up because this is real people telling you they love your your product.
SPEAKER_00Authentic, yeah, absolutely. Which in this day and age, it's all sort of reviews on reels and Instagram, and even all on blogs as well, like writing reviews, gifted for reviews. That's what they all want, because they want that user-generated content. It's all comes from that authentic person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the authentic voice. And originally people were writing about things they loved without being given freebies. So, again, that's where that I when I started Beat in the Dirt, I wasn't getting free things. I was writing about beating the dirt because I was having fun experiences and I was working with makeup artists who were on shoots with Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford. Not everything had to be about getting a gift, and I think that's the difference now is that people do switch off. They might follow someone that they love on Instagram, but as soon as they see the paid for PR gifted content, the engagement's not there, and they kind of know that a lot of people have sold out now for gosh.
SPEAKER_00It's a thing, but I think the you mentioned influencer, I think that is a term that people kind of are put off by because as you say, the kind of oh it's ads, it's paid collaborations, it's paid sponsored. I've been paid to say this stuff where the sort of the user generated stuff where it's like just you just go off and do it. Some of it is gifted, but I've noticed that there are also people kind of just showcasing something, set a place that they've been, just because they want to. And again, it's authentic. And I'll do it if I want something from it, but I just think it's valuable for.
SPEAKER_01I genuinely, there's something I love. I mean, back in the day, I was probably an influencer. I do definitely know that I sold things, I definitely know that it went from almost being I knew when I started beating the dirt that because I worked in the beauty industry, and obviously I was working with people who were professional makeup artists, people would say to me, What eye cream should I get? And what's that? And I used to sort of tell my friends, and I always knew that kind of I had so many people that wanted that information from me, that's where I kind of thought, okay, well I'm gonna start beauting the dirt, and my friends want to know, so maybe maybe other people will. But I still find, you know, to this day, I never worked on my Instagram to become an influencer. I was too busy working on the 500 blogs that we looked after at that time. I still find now if I say I really like this, or I get loads of DMs from mostly friends, but even people that don't know me but have followed me for years go, I'm gonna go and get that. That looks brilliant. Thanks for that. And I still know now I'm still selling things on Instagram, even though I don't have hundreds of thousands of followers.
SPEAKER_00You don't need hundreds of thousands of followers because you could have hundreds and thousands of followers, but they're not all seeing your content anyway, because it's just not possible. The algorithm's not gonna show, you know, you're not gonna be shown to all those people. It's just not possible.
SPEAKER_01So you need to be and and that's where it moved to, really, is that originally when people wanted to work with with blogs, you had your Google Analytics and people could see, you know, how many follower impressions. But I think with Instagram, there was that kind of time when the switch went from blogs to Instagram, and then suddenly people were buying their followers, and there wasn't a genuine amount of followers on there, and you could see it, it was so obvious. And that's when I kind of started to sort of be a bit more disillusioned with the whole business because at the beginning it was we called it like the wild west of publishing almost in a way because no one really knew where it was going. I remember I used to go into brands, I remember being in L'Oreal's office and setting up Yves Saint-Laurent and Lancombe on Twitter in the boardroom. But the uh the PR team were like, What do we say? I was like, just say hi, we're on Twitter. So if you went back to that Yves Saint Laurent and Lancombe tweet, that would be the first one that we did in uh Hammersmith. But people didn't understand how to kind of talk online. They were scared about working with people that might say bad things, like I said. But then eventually the brand started to become the story rather than the influence, because they could control their own narrative, really. It's taken a uh quite a long time, really. Influencers are now. Everyone talks about micro influencers. You know, you are just, if not more, influential if you're smaller than the larger ones, because okay, you might have a smaller audience, but the conversion rate is better because people believe you.
SPEAKER_00And also, you know, you look at the big, big influencers, you know that they're getting paid a lot of money to talk about this brand. And you kind of it does work. Yes, it does work. I mean, I'm wearing my Vivo barefoots because Joe Wicks wears them. I will have my Lululemon. You know, it's it it kind of does work. People with you, Lululemon, controversial. I love it, I do love it, but you know, it's at the same time, yeah, it's the smaller ones, a smaller person that you kind of really trust that they're kind of going, actually, yeah, I like that. And even like the ones that say no, don't go to that place. It was it was crap, you know. There are people out there.
SPEAKER_01People love reviews, don't they? You know, do you ever buy anything without looking at Amazon reviews? I don't. Trust pilot reviews. That's what you essentially are, aren't you? You're like an online review.
SPEAKER_00Different way of doing it, yeah, and showcasing it. I think that's the one thing that you mentioned that there wasn't any social media, but now it's all very visual, so you can kind of see for yourself whether, yes, okay, we can make the shots look a bit more flattering and a bit bit better, but you can see actually, that looks like a really good vibe. You know, that restaurant looks amazing, that food looks good, you can't hide from that.
SPEAKER_01I think you've got to also, if you are endorsing something paid or otherwise, you should consider what your reputation is. If you're being paid a lot of money to say something is great and you know it's not, and your audience isn't gonna go there and go, point this is crap. Then are they gonna carry on following you? And are they gonna believe a word you say next time? So you've got to be really careful about your brand, really.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. So you've kind of gone from London, you've kind of lived in Monte Carlo as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I didn't ever live in Monte Carlo. I so I I had Hampic Media, um, which I have for about 10 years, and then eventually I just got really influences, you know, I'll say it did my head in. So um I couldn't carry on working in that industry. It kind of had just changed so much. I'd had a brilliant time, met so many brilliant people, and was really fortunate to be at the forefront of that whole kind of sweep over to digital where I used to speak at a lot of conferences, Guardian, I was on Sky News a lot and got so much out of it and learned so much. But there came a time when you know my head was always one foot in the brand side, one foot into the person I was representing, and I could never lie by the side. And I found myself sort of influencers were just asking for too much money, and I thought I can't ask the brand for that, it's not right. So I I closed Hampicked after it being bought by Future Digital. This that's for another day. That's for some advice on if you're selling your company and what not to do. But yeah, so I closed Hamp Pick Media and I thought, okay, if I'm gonna start a new company, then I it needs to be in something that I'm really interested in. I've always been in the beauty industry, but for me it was always sort of health and wellness side of beauty. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna do something. Um that that time there were a lot of festivals in London, uh, Sweaty Betty Live, Lululemon, some fitness shows. And I thought, well, I've I'll do an event about health and wellness because through a lot of the press events and a lot of the things that I'd been to, I knew Jasmine Hensley, who had been talking about Ayurveda. I knew a lot of people that I was really lucky to go to lots of press events and things and meet people that were kind of at the forefront of the wellness industry. Pre-COVID, um, I thought it would be a good idea to do something in Monte Carlo because I have a place in the south of France. It's a bus journey to Monte Carlo.
SPEAKER_00Right, okay. That's where I I kind of wasn't quite sure, right? So you've you didn't live.
SPEAKER_01If I was living in Monte Carlo, I wouldn't be sat in my kitchen here now. Yeah in Marlowe.
SPEAKER_00But um place in the south of France in Europe. Yeah, no, I have got a place in the yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so I thought if I launch uh a wellness uh festival in Monte Carlo, they've not had anything like that before. And if you launch it in Monte Carlo, it could be somewhere as a like a shishi kind of the inaugural one was here, and it could, you know, go around the world, really. So I called it In Your Element, and so there was fire, earth, air, and water. These were the different elements that were part of the festival. So fire was all the energy and the sort of physical cardio side, earth was the nutrition, being by the sea and health, and sort of being outdoors. And so I I launched In Your Element, it was 2019 in Monte Carlo.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01When I look back now, I think, how the hell did I do that? Because it's quite hard doing something in another country. It's very hard doing something in Monte Carlo unless you've got thousands and thousands of money and sponsorship. Yeah. Um, but I did know that I would have really good people come along and I knew I could put on a really good event. So I had friends that were in England that I bought over, but I also wanted to make sure there were people that were local, so it was a real combination. So yeah, I put on In Your Element in 2019 in July, and it was a whole weekend. Yeah, it was amazing. I was exhausted. As you are. We did Monte Carlo's first ever silent disco, and it was yeah, it was really fun. We had the T, you know, Monte Carlo TV come down and the radio, and it was everywhere because I did it in lots of different places around Monte Carlo, so it was at it's not there anymore, but it was at Stars and Bars where we were on the port doing a silent disco by all the super yachts. We had world-class gym where we had a lot of classes, the Columbus Hotel where we had our talk. So we kind of took over Monte Carlo for the weekend, and yeah, it was brilliant. And by the sort of Sunday, the Sunday evening with the last classes, people were like hugging each other and crying because they'd had this amazing weekend. Because Monte Carlo is sort of maybe more known for Lamborghinis and sequins and cocktails that coming along doing something different, and so yeah, it was super fun to have done it, but um a bit like you with your 2019 story. I had yeah, I I had a second one organized in April 2020, and then the Duchess of Rutland, who has Beaver Castle, her PA approached me very out of the blue and said, Oh, we'd love you to do the event in the castle. And so I had organized that because you know, as we didn't know about March 2020 yet, so I then spent sort of like the part last part of 2019, and Beaver Castle is absolutely stunning. I'd go up on the train and work out where we were doing yoga and Places within the castle to do sound baths. Had Penhalligans and Bentleys and you know people that were sponsoring it. It was all arranged for July 2020. And then yeah, so I flew out to France a month before my second event in Your Element. And um I got to France the day before it went into lockdown. And it was it was at that time when everybody was like, This isn't this is gonna last a couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I remember that. I remember just thinking, even like just sort of before lockdown, people were like, Oh, it's not gonna happen, they're not gonna lock us down. And like, even like I was sort of planning parties and events, and people were like, Oh, we'll still go ahead. And then there are other people going, No, hang on a minute, this is this is gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01I remember going to a press event the night before I was flying to France for my event, and people were talking about it, and I remember it was all very sort of like moi, moi, and if you went to a London event, and I remember going in and going, I'm not kissing anyone, I'm not shaking hands. And they were like, Oh, Krista, get over yourself. I was like, Nope, I I'm flying to France tomorrow and I am not getting on a plane and having a job. And yeah, so I I went to France and yeah, it went into lockdown um March 16th, I remember it. So obviously, then everything cancelled. And uh I sat in my apartment in South France till December. Oh, I mean, not a bad place to be throughout lockdown. So everyone says that, and yes, I'm not complaining, I could see the sea, but we have really strict lockdown rules in France.
SPEAKER_00So then lockdown lifted. So when did you come to Marlowe? When did that happen? So that was that happened before.
SPEAKER_01You're still in London in 2019. Moved in 2022. So yeah, I couldn't move because obviously then the property market was dead because you couldn't have anyone coming to look at your place. I got back to London and um 2021. Then we had another kind of lockdown in London where there was nobody in town, which actually I quite liked. I don't I know that's selfish, but no, no, it was really nice having London quiet. Um and then I moved to Marlowe September, the day after the Queen died, actually. September 9th, 2022. Because I remember I used to live in view of the BT Tower that used to have messages uh around it, if there was if it was Remembrance Day or there was something. I remember the Queen died on the 8th, and I was packing my last things in my flat, and my Wi-Fi was cut off, you know, like when you move everything. I just remember, you know how we're like we obsessively listen to news when something really, you know, huge happens. I remember just having my phone on and listening to the radio because I couldn't watch anything. And in the morning when I left, there was a a big sign on the BT Tower that just said goodbye, Mom. And I was like, Oh, me and the Queen, it's like goodbye, Mom. I've lived there for 30 years. We both left at the same time. So I'll always remember it September the 9th, 2022, is when I moved to Marle.
SPEAKER_00Gosh. And is this no, but that's no, that's really that's quite emotional. But is it a was it a move that you kind of you've never looked back? Although, I mean, you've had a really amazing life, you know, the career. Do you feel like this was I mean, you're still here?
SPEAKER_01So I'm still alive, just about, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm still alive. So it wasn't it wasn't something you regretted, I hope.
SPEAKER_01No, no. I didn't know where to go to. A lot of my friends are all over the world, so there wasn't any one place that I felt like I was gonna move to. I kind of felt like I wanted to be somewhere that had a little bit of something going on. I wasn't expecting to live off Oxford Street anymore, or was like very over that. But I needed somewhere that had a bit of a buzz and something that you know I could walk to a high street and not have to get in a car and have to go somewhere. So that ruled out obviously quite a lot of like beautiful countryside places that maybe I would love to be in, but I wanted to be somewhere that I could walk still. People still say to me, How do you sub how do you survive without a car? You can do it. I've got legs, yeah. Got legs, transform so I can walk to stations and get taxis and walk. So yeah, so Amalo was somewhere that I came to. I didn't know anyone here where I knew a couple of people, but not really friends. And um, I just sort of walked up and down the high street and I had a I remember having a cake outside Strawberry Grove, and I looked up and down, I came with a friend who was driving me to all these places, and um, and we both sat there and I said, I think I'm gonna live here.
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks, Strawberry Grove, for your mood. So I love the fact that you you've had no ties, and that's that's one thing that is kind of helped you to kind of go, right? I can hand again going back to the hand pit, you can hand pick where you're gonna live, and I love that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I probably would have liked to have moved a bit earlier, but it's because I didn't know where I wanted to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it obviously wasn't the right time then.
SPEAKER_01You had to make that no, you're right, it's the timing of life, isn't it? It's not always what you think it's gonna be. And I think because I've got my place in France, which is in a sort of small village, yeah. Um, I knew that as much as I had this very exciting, lovely, buzzy London life, I knew that actually I really enjoyed the quieter village life. I mean, I know Marlowe isn't quite South France, but it's a very beautiful town and you know it's great being by the river. I wish we could swim in it, I wish it wasn't so disgusting. Um, you know, there's beautiful countryside, eight high street, really lovely community, and only like an hour into London as well. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00We're so close to everything around here. We've got so many towns around London. It's yeah, it's it's a good place to live.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I'm very I'm really happy here. I definitely feel like I'm in the right place, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you feel at home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I still go into London and I I still consider myself a London very much. And um, I go into London and I ham out the escalators at Tottenham Court Road and I think still feel like I'm home. Yeah, it's funny, yeah. But it's a long time, spent a long time there. I look yeah, and I feel really grateful that I lived in sort of central London for such a long time because it was such a brilliant experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's allowed you then, as time's gone on, to kind of have a lovely home in Marlowe, which is a very affluent area. It's and it's nice. As you say, you've got the town, everything's all there, and you've got the river. It's amazing. It's a lovely place, it really is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is a beautiful place, Marlowe. It's very special, I think.
SPEAKER_00And quite unique. I think it's unique. I do, absolutely. So then I'm very lucky. You're very lucky. And I think that's it, it's all about gratitude. And we hampicked Maidenhead, and I hadn't even lived here. I didn't even come and check it all out. I just didn't even have a cake in a shop like I did. No, my husband was working here. We were living in West London and um we were renting at the time and we needed to buy. He was working in Maidenhead. He'd lived previously in Maidenhead. He didn't particularly really want to come back to Maidenhead, but I said, no, we're gonna buy a house and we're gonna live in Maidenhead. And the rest is history. So similar to you, but I didn't have to. And no, we're both Capricorns, we know what we want. We know what we want, absolutely. So and then we're kind of going back to the business, and we both set businesses up in our town. So you brought in your elements to Maidenhead. Sorry, to Mark.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had to start from scratch, really. I did a London um event just before I m well, actually, I had moved, it was October 2022. I did the first one after Monte Carlo, and I did it in Eccleston Yards, and I did a women's health day, and I had an amazing lineup of like Katie Brindle, Kate Rohan, Victoria Adams, and it was really it was a fantastic day, and it kind of Victoria Adams before she was not spice, but I I know it's funny. No, I didn't have the uh Spice Girls get back together for that.
SPEAKER_00They jump in the Spice Girls, they used where I live, where I'm pointing, they used to live in a house around the corner, doing them on my next road. All of the Spice Girls. All of the Spice Girls when they were kind of the Cazara manufactured bands.
SPEAKER_01It was be pre pre when I lived here, but um they lived in a house literally on the Well, I remember when I had my hair and makeup agency that um obviously we used to do them for shoots and things, and then one of my makeup artists got the gig of doing the Spice Girls the movie. So, yes, you did your women's health. I did a women's health day, and that kind of gave me my mojo back a bit to think, okay, I do really enjoy putting events together. I must be mad because it is stressful. But I really enjoy kind of curating a day with like brilliant people and thinking people are gonna enjoy this, they're gonna get a lot out of it. So when I came to Marlowe, I thought, okay, I'm gonna do an in your element. It feels like the right kind of place that people would enjoy it, it's the right kind of age group bit. So I didn't know anyone here, so I ended up going up and down the high street because I wasn't sure if I was gonna do a women's health day or just a wellness event like I'd done previously. And because obviously most of the people in the high street that have shops are are women, so I just went in and said, Oh, I've just moved here. Um I'm thinking of doing an event think. Um and it was like, Yeah, yeah, do it, do it. And don't, you know, some people like, yeah, do women's health. And I thought, okay, I'm just gonna open it to everybody. And because I got to know people in the shops, I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna include you as well, because the feedback was that there's a lot of things that go on in Marlowe that are in the park, and it means that people come to Marlowe, just go to the park, and then don't visit the high street, and then really missing out because it's an amazing high street. And so I had Reiki in Jigsaw and Louise at 23 Living did sort of Romotherapy workshops in Arlo and Jacob, you could have a head-to-toe meditation. So I included the shop so that when rather than just having all your classes in in one place, you could also then discover things in different places in the high street, which everyone loved. It also meant that the shops were happy to promote my event because they were also part of it. I had bright blue in your element bags with in your element in gold with their goodie bags up and down the high street, so that was all good uh marketing. It was a really good day, but it's a lot of work, and I think that people aren't that prepared to pay ticket prices because it's not like having something in Pub in the Park where you know you could have thousands and thousands, your capacity's limited to your venue. And I just thought I I put so much into that. The goodie bags were amazing, they were like worth about 160 quid, and they had like a Vader and Walida and tickets were I think about 60 quid, and people were like, some people like complaining about the price of the tickets, and I was like, really? Well, they've got Davina McCall's trainer here doing a class for you. I've got Mariella Frostrop's partner that she wrote Menopause's book with Alice doing a talk and then book signing in the bookshop. I used a lot of local people, but also bought some like very brilliant like Alice Hart Davis, who's Daily Mail, U Magazine beauty editor. There's some brilliant people that came to be part of it because a lot of them had been part of Monte Carlo and the London one and just wanted to stay in the gang, really. Yeah, so um, so yeah, it was it was good, but I thought I'm not gonna earn a living doing this. So, but you you what you are still doing some so I I ended up doing more kind of lifestyle events rather than just sort of health and wellness because the the shops were really up for it, they got a lot back from it, you know. Even when it came to pounds and pence, people would say, you know, I we earned an extra two and a half thousand pounds when we did that, you know. And so I knew I was getting really good feedback from the shops. So I ended up doing sort of like late night shopping events, um, advent with the shops, and with the late night shopping, anything I did, I kind of tried to stick someone in a shop so you could get a tarot reading at Nook, or you know, there was always that element of trying to give like a makeup artist in jigsaw. I always tried to make it rather than just like the shops are staying open late, is to try and make it so that there's sort of things going on to try and attract people to come out.
SPEAKER_00Because Marlowe is it's just all in one place. I love how how it is, you know, it's so easy to go around all the shops and just go in and and do all of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think people from Marlow really like doing things in Marlowe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Tell me what you're doing now. So you're doing something called Love Marlowe.
SPEAKER_01So I've launched a new website and monthly newsletter. Um, and again, I'm really conscious of thinking what you'd said in your, you know, when we were chatting about, you know, you don't want to step on toes um and you want to try and do something that's different and that is of use, that is valuable for people locally. So I I've always been about, I think because from when I was an agent, my hair and makeup agency, and then being a blogger agent, I always feel like I've kind of got that agent kind of mindset. Yeah. And I felt that in all the time I've been here, people have always been sort of coming to me for a bit of advice and how do I do this and where do I go for that? And so with lovemarlowlife.com, it's a kind of quite a it's very community driven. So I approached a lot of people like Vicky Clark, who's an ADHD coach. I approached a lot of people that as individuals and said, Did you want to do a column? Do you want to be part of this Love Marlowe life? And people were really up for it. So, yes, of course, you've got high streets. So I've got Louise at 23 living, writing style tips. And so I really wanted to have something that everybody felt that they were part of. So it wasn't just me saying, This is going on, there's a Santa Fun run, there's a pub in the park. So it's making it quite different in its supporting and showcasing businesses like you're doing in Maidenhead. I think, you know, we often talk about sort of similar issues or sort of challenges that we have with people. So Love Marlow Life, it's new. It launched on March uh on May 1st, and the monthly newsletter will be themed. So the first one, because it was May 1st when The Devil Wears Prada came out, I made it fashion themed. And the Everyman Cinema in Marlowe are giving away five pairs of tickets to me every month for the newsletter. Oh, lovely. And Gales are giving away a sourdough weekly. At the moment, Fizzy Fest uh are giving six tickets. So as a subscriber, you're always going to be entered into a draw to win a prize, which is sort of cool. And it's free to sign up, so you know grain of folks. Sign up.
SPEAKER_00Love Marlow Life then.
SPEAKER_01Lovemarlowlife.com. And yeah, you it's free obviously to sign up. It's early days, but it's been really well received. We could have really enjoyed being part of it. There's a made in Marlowe section for businesses that are made in Marlow. And so that's again supporting. So I think a bit like you, if you want to see what's happening, I'm not I haven't got a directory, I haven't got a calendar of events. That very much is something that other people are doing. But equally, if you thought, well, I I want a solicitor, you know, Blazer Mills are doing a legal column, Amber Rivero doing a financial column, it's about trying to support your local friends and neighbours.
SPEAKER_00You know, be talking about themselves.
SPEAKER_01So if you've got a column, it's you know, a bit like you with your QA's, you get to know the business a little bit before they're all they're talking about what the the subject they name that they know. Yeah, so it's a bit of a try before you buy kind of thing. And uh so yeah, so it's early days, but I feel like I've gone back to my beauty in the dirt days, really, where it's very editorial. So it's about trying to sort of bring lots of smaller businesses together under one roof. Um so you can discover more about what's going on in Marlowe beyond the kind of the very obvious things that are like yearly things that are brilliant, but there's also lots of other people doing new things that maybe miss out a little bit because they're small or they don't quite know where they can, you know, go for an extra shout out. So on social media, there's Love Marlow Life, and I've even got a Love Marlow Life news. So I've got two pages that are kind of I've turned in your element into Love Marlow Life because I found that I was doing more and more things locally. So I may as well have them both pointing to the same place.
SPEAKER_00And it's good not to kind of spread yourself too thinly and just home it in and just focus. I love it. Thank you so much for speaking to me today. Thanks for having me.
