Pick Your Own - with Jane of The Scent Styling Company

Who doesn't love the fragrance of a peachy rose on a Summer's evening, the zest of a freshly squeezed orange, a newly opened packet of coffee beans, walking past a bakery and so many more?

Today's guest, Jane Helliwell must lead the most aromatic life of us all.  As the founder of The Scent Styling Company, Jane specialises in elevating workplace wellbeing and productivity with the power of scent.   

Imagine if you could reach for an energising or calming aroma at any point during your working day - how great would that be?  

Raising the Baa can bring the fragrance of fresh air.  Jane can help you craft your chosen aromas.  Take a listen and find out how...

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Whilst hundreds of companies have brought their teams to a farm to herd sheep with us at Raising the Baa, we know that the field-based exercises are not for everyone.

So we've raised our own 'baa' and created Pick Your Own. A bespoke collection of sustainable and meaningful activities to bring teams together in the countryside - just perfect for everyone's wellbeing.

Thank ewe for tuning in :-)

Pick Your Own brochure - download here

Click here to book in an Exploratory Call with Caroline

Connect with the speakers via LinkedIn:
Jane Helliwell - Founder/Designer, The Scent Styling Company
Caroline Palmer - Top Dog and co-founder, Raising the Baa

What are your main team challenges and desires? Maybe we can help?
Book in a 15-minute Exploratory Call now and let's see.

Transcript

Hi Jane. How are you today? Yes. Good. Caroline, how are you? I'm very well. I'm going to get straight on with it today. I'm just in that kind of mood. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about Jane, a little bit about your background, maybe your career background before we get into what it is you're doing now.

Yes. I've had quite a varied career background, but my main focusing career was over 35 years in the hair and beauty industry. So I worked for some global companies, more the ones that you'd probably know are Wella or Schwartzkopf? I was a technical consultant for those and I'd also had my own salons and I did a lot of traveling with my job, which led me to feeling quite burnt out at times.

And after sort of 35 years in that industry, I felt as if I  to move on, shall we say. And that's how, that was the start of me setting up the business that I still currently have.

Fantastic. And yeah, which is called The Scent Styling Company, isn't it? What was the sort of genesis of it?

Yes. So I started, it was about a year's transition, shall I say, from moving away from the original industry.   I've always been creative. As a child, I was always making things. So I thought, I want to do something. Keep creative.

Obviously hairdressing is creative as well, so it made sense to stick with that. And. I started to look at different things that I could do, and all I can really explain is I fell into the candle making side of things. I thought I'm going to have a go at making and I learned.

Because I enjoyed it, I continued to learn the craft. And then. I started to sell at artisan fairs and things like that, and then I decided it needed a USP really. So I niched down and I went working within the wedding industry, started to scent people's weddings which I absolutely loved. And still do that occasionally now, but as every business you move on, you keep pivoting, you progress.

So then I started to offer workshops, just local workshops in my studio and that was great and people loved them. And that progressed onto then offering sort of online courses so people can take a course online and they can learn how to make candles, turn it into a business. And now more in the present day is where I'm offering those workshops on a bigger scale to businesses.

Interesting. I'm just going to, I'm going to rewind for one second. I, when you said scent weddings, what does that actually mean?

  t's finding a signature scent for that couple. We would do a consultation. I would extract a lot of information from those couples and we would then look at various fragrances, and then we would come to a conclusion of a signature scent.

And once we've arrived at that, then I would take that scent and we would send everything from the stationery, so that's those months before when the guests receive their invitation in the post. It comes with the scent. So that sort of starts it off. And then we scent the whole of the venue, so different areas of the venue that you would come in and out of during the day.

And then a guest will take home a gift. A scented candle, or it could be wax melts or there's various things that we can scent. Even for one wedding we scented that It was going to be so hot. The bride had fans for the ladies and we actually scented those as well.

So as the ladies were wafting the, with the heat, they were getting this gentle aroma of the signature scent. So it's really it's quite an exciting job I do love that side of it.

That's fascinating. I've never ever come across that. And I know that we are mainly focusing on the corporate audience in this podcast, but we're all people at the end of the day and people listening to this might be thinking about getting married.

Yeah. So if you want something different, you might want to bear that in mind too. But let's get back to team building. Now, what do people do at a typical workshop with you then? In our case, they're going to come along to a farm and experience this in a lovely barn, we hope. What sort of things do they get up to?   

We've got two main types of workshop. One being the candle making, and another is essential oil roller balls. So if we were doing a candle making workshop, we would first be getting them to understand that we have lots of different waxes , wicks and we have obviously a whole library of scents. So we are going a little bit into sort of the science, but not too scientific because at the end of the day, this is something fun for them. So we do learn some of the basics that way, and then they move on to choosing their fragrance.

And there's normally about four to choose from in a workshop. The reason being you can go very, what we call nose blind. So if I give you too many fragrances to smell, you're just going to get confused. So I find it's great to limit to about four. And then get to actually make their candle from scratch, which is great because they get to take that home.

And that satisfaction of making something. And then if it's the essential oil roller balls so they're something that, they're a little tool that you can use on your pulse points. So they're things like on your wrists or some people might put them behind their ears.

So we make three different blends of those. But again, we will look into essential oils and their benefits and then. The delegates will get to mix around with the different essential oil blends, make them into their roller balls, and they take away three of those, so different ones.

So there's one uplifting, for focus, for sleep relaxation. And again, it's great because they're taking away that product that they've actually made themselves.

I remember I used to work at the Body Shop a long time ago in my corporate career, and that was where I first came across these little roller balls. I've used the same type of thing ever since. Mainly it's for relaxing. I would say these days if the mind's a bit busy and I'm finding it a bit difficult to go to sleep, I just, as you say, put them on your pulse points and I find it really helps.

So, fantastic. I think that's a great choice there.

And I know you do a workshop, which has the delightful name of the Olfactory Odyssey. I just love saying that. I think it's just such a great name.

So this is really diving deep into the power of scent and the effect that it has on our everyday lives. Because believe it or not, 75% of our daily emotions are generated. By smells, which is huge.

You know, subconsciously we are going around our daily activities and we are linking experiences to smells, which is why you'll know yourself. You can be in an instant, you can be taken back to a time, a place or a person just by smelling something. So we really go deep into that.

Things like just peeling an orange or a lemon or a lime. Think of citrus, the burst of energy that you would get from doing that. We even go into the pairing of foods with smells as well.

So it's a great masterclass. I do love delivering that. But. The main ones are the candle making, and the roller ball ones. It's a little bit more fun, even though the olfactory odyssey is interactive as well. You will get blindfolded.

I think it all sounds fascinating.

At the end of the day, it's down to the team themselves and what they want to get out of it, isn't it? It's down to what their objective is. So we've got some great choices there. 

That's fantastic. What kind of feedback have you had? What kind of findings have you had from people that have taken part in any of your workshops?

 I find the feedback different with the team building workshops to a standard local one. I think more because it does promote that team bonding. So it's a little bit different. They often say that they're talking and laughing in a low pressure setting, which is great. I always want people to feel comfortable in my workshops. And it means that they can step away from their work roles. And I've had how they love to see a different side to their colleagues, the creative side that they've never seen before and how the scents are so subjective and the reactions of their colleagues.

So one. One colleague will smell something in one way and then they will smell it in another, and it creates quite a little bit of of conversation there. And one lady I remember her saying that at the end of it, it was just so really, it was really nice. To take a break from the stress of her daily job.

And she felt completely present and focused on the activity which was a great mental rest, as she said. And, and that's what it's all about. And especially with the smells, the fragrances, you really can you can feel really relaxed and totally switched off, a result of having been rested.

Yes. That's exactly true. And if they're taking, especially taking the the roller balls back with them to the office, then they've got the tools there that if they're feeling that they need that little bit of energy, they can just quickly put some on the pulse points, give that smell.

Few seconds later they're starting to feel different. Or if they need to focus or then when they're going home and they want to just switch off that. That bit they can use the one that makes them help to relax as well.

I think it's a great idea. 'cause as you say, it is something they can take away with them, either to home or back into work.

And that one in itself can be a talking point, can't it? In the office. Oh, what's this? How come this, your workspace smell so nice today? I don’t know if they'll be able to burn candles in their workplace. But certainly the roller balls are definite, aren't they for the workspace? That's fantastic.

Like you, we are passionate about pulling teams together in the most sustainable and meaningful way possible. And sustainability is a really important aspect of our business. What parts of your business, what parts of the the workshops, for example, that you deliver, would you say are are you particularly proud of in terms of the way that they are sustainable in whatever way you want to interpret that word 'cause I appreciate it's very broad.

Yes, in our industry things have changed dramatically over the last sort of two years. And sort of our suppliers of our materials have had to get had to be more sustainable. So I'm quite proud now that all the materials that I source are as sustainable as they can be. I don't buy anything in that's further away from from Europe.

But a lot of our materials are now made in the uk. And especially the wax side of it. There's so many different types of wax. You've probably heard of soy wax, you've heard of paraffin wax. There's a big debate that you might see where they say that paraffin is toxic and it's actually not toxic.

But because of the debate of that, I chose to use a certain wax, which is a blend of rape seed and coconut. Because rape seed is the most sustainable material that we can use in a wax. So we produce that over in the uk. We also produce it in Europe. So the furthest footprint that you will get is in Europe.

But a lot of it actually does come from the uk. And obviously the crops are regrown year after year. So you can be assured that in the workshops we are as sustainable as we possibly can be.

Actually what's your view on beeswax out of interest? You may or may not know that Chris, my partner, who's the co-founder of Raising the Baa he's a beekeeper as well.

It's the one wax that I've never really used, if I'm honest. I admire beekeepers and them being able to turn the produce from a bee into the wax.

And possibly in the future. It's something that I might, have the go at. But I do think that's great. I think by, reusing something,   I just think it's great. I really do. But more on an admiration side that people have got the time to filter it because it's not an easy process to take it from its raw state to, to turn it into a wax.

It's probably more expensive because of that process. I don't know. I'm not the expert, but I would imagine it takes longer. No I was just curious. 

So you are Derbyshire. What sort of radius will you travel in order to deliver these workshops? Just to give people an idea roughly? 

Yeah. I'm lucky I'm right in the centre of the country I will travel. The whole of the UK traveling is in my blood so to speak, with the jobs that I've previously done.

So I, I will travel all, all over the UK. That's fantastic, because we have about 23 venues around England. So that's great news means people could do your, can do your workshop wherever they like. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. Listen, it's been really interesting to talk with you again, Jane.

I really appreciate your time to share your passion for all things to do with scent and I look forward to running some workshops with you. So the combination of people coming out on the farm and herding sheep and then going into a barn and making some candles or something like that.

It's up to people what they do, whether they do it that way round or whether they have half the team doing one thing and half the team doing the other. That's the whole idea of pick your own is a bespoke collection. So whatever way it works for people, we'll look forward to it, won't we?

Yes, it’s exciting.  it'd be great. Great opportunity. 

Oh, brilliant. Thank you again for your time, Jane. Enjoy the rest of your day and we'll speak soon. 

Thank you.