How (& why) to build a second business with Laura Butler-Madden, GROVE England

0:00Laura Butler-Madden:Laura Butler-Madden is an award-winning interior designer with 14 years of expertise restoring and transforming period properties. She hasn't left her design career, but she simply added a second one to it. For anyone starting a business, this may feel like a lot given how many hats you're already wearing. So I was really keen to chat to her about why she decided to move into a whole new sector and start a whole new business. So keep listening to hear her practical guide on how to start your second business after you've already started your first. Hi Laura, thank you for coming on How to Start Up today.

0:37Laura Butler-Madden:Before we get into looking at how you start a second business, I'd love it if you could give a bit of background as to who you are. Okay, so my name is Laura Butler-Madden and I worked for many years with my husband renovating properties just over 15 years. We used to renovate and then flip them on. And then as life progressed and we had a daughter, we shifted and we ended up keeping a portfolio. The plan was to sort of have a luxury high end holiday rental portfolio that we would rent out. And then every couple of years we would probably sell one and do something else to keep our kind of creative juices going.

1:10and the timing of that was sadly kind of hit with the pandemic where we finally had four properties ready booked out for the summer of 2020 and then the pandemic hit and of course lockdown happened and so it was a really interesting moment we've been building towards that perhaps for about 10 years really and it was hugely exciting to see a positive spreadsheet because in renovating it's really hard kind of you spend a lot you have to take a deep breath and be really brave and then you just you know hope and we were very lucky that every time we did do really well in the end it comes back in but then it goes straight back into another property so it wasn't really great for cash flow and life so the idea was having had lily we were going to have these properties that would bring in an income alongside gently renovating one every so often anyway long story short pandemic hit we were then stuck with i think five mortgages because we had home as well we were renovating a house we were renting with friends so we didn't qualify for any of the government support so long story short we were like great our business has been wiped out.

2:06Here we are. We need to do something different. Now, I was very lucky that I'd always had people inquiring about whether I would do interior design for them. And that wasn't something I'd ever done before, but that was the time I sort of decided to take that leap. So throughout the pandemic, we did that. And then I think about three and a half years, we had two lovely clients with two houses each. It was an absolute joy. They were the most gorgeous people. The properties were like the dream properties. By the end of that, I knew that wasn't for me and it wasn't my future it was the stress as you know from doing your own renovation of that because we were renovating as well so we were managing we weren't just doing pretty designs and sort of installing that it was the whole shebang basically managing it all and that stress when you are then the in between person and costs mount and there's so much out of your control just felt really overwhelming and by the end even though we were really happy with the result the clients were thrilled I was like my nerves are in tatters this is not the next 20 years for me well it's just such a lesson

3:05Laura Butler-Madden:isn't it if like just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it and I had that friends like oh you should be doing big luxury brands because that's your past and your background is like but I don't want to I could but I don't want to and it's actually that feeling of no no no I knew in my gut and I just felt really it was a brave move because we'd done really well like financially things were looking great and actually that in itself I've not really stopped to pause and think about that until now. You know, we should be really proud that we pivoted in that way even during a really difficult time and made a success of it.

3:35But in my heart, I just knew that I wouldn't be well and a good mother and a good person to be around if the pressure of that level of management. I mean, they were big million pound builds and things and it was too much. So I knew in my heart that we needed to change. And I took a little bit of time out. I remember at the time thinking I might want to paint, which is actually absurd because I can't paint at all. But I think that was where my mind had gone from this sort of busy chaos, madness, huge pressure, so many things out of my control. I was having to then sort of be the deliverer of the bad news to like just sitting quietly in a room painting.

4:10But actually that translated quite quickly into Grove England. And it was spending time in the garden one day. And I just always loved nature. I've always included a lot of it in my designs. I've always loved the seasons. I'm very nostalgic. There was a lot of that kind of going on in the background. And I also had felt when we'd had the holiday lets that there was a real gap for something made with natural ingredients, but really elevated and luxurious. I found not some wonderful brands, but they just, I wanted something with fine fragrance, the sort of the middle, the base, the top notes. I wanted something that looks Chanel or Byredo in its packaging, but that was natural.

4:47And so I had that in the back of my mind. And then one day I was in the garden and I just thought, actually, I need to do something that links me even more to nature and that's creative. And it was, I then took myself off into this room for about a year and a half and really did quietly create with some consultants and different people, the brand, the idea, the first sort of collection. It all happened in the way that I'd wanted to paint, but couldn't. that I took myself off quietly and had a really nice creative focus that was quite small and narrow and not rooms and knobs and switches and sockets.

5:17You know, it was just lovely actually. And so when did you launch Grove England? So we launched in October 2024 and I think I'd been developing it for about 18 months prior to

5:27Laura Butler-Madden:that. That's incredible because we're now June 2026 and you've just opened your first flagship store in Cotswolds. Congratulations. Thank you so much. is a quick timeline. So what were the first alarm bells that were ringing in your ears of saying, I could do this, but I don't want to do this. And what gave you the courage to step away? I think it's just experience in life. I think I've been through kind of various changes in career. My time was in, I was a journalist first and then in PR and then I made the move into property. So I knew that could happen and that can be a really positive experience and always like just add another chapter to life.

6:03I also just need to trust my gut and my gut was telling me really strongly, even though financially was probably the best shape we'd been in for a while. I just felt that I was for the first time running my own business, I was working for our holidays and our weekends, which I hadn't had before. So like when you're employed by somebody else and you think I've got the big salary, we can go to the Harmas for a week. It was that I was sort of just in my heart about this isn't what Patrick and I have worked really hard to create. We wanted to create something that brought joy every day. And obviously that's a really fortunate position to be in, but to be with Lily, to be totally our own bosses.

6:37And I think a lot of that had gone. And so in my heart, I knew I had to change. And so I just, it was a bold move, but I also, I'm very intuitive and I had a really strong gut feeling that it was right. And then various things happened along the way that confirmed that there were some really serendipitous moments that really showed me I was on the right path.

6:55Laura Butler-Madden:It's interesting you say that gut feeling. I think a lot of people, when they become self-employed they're laser focused on what they're doing and they're a true believer and if you don't believe in your business no one else is going to but how did you into that world of fragrance because it's a little bit of a departure from interiors and renovations flipping properties and i can as completely understand where you're coming from because i'm just about to receive three lows that are coming on a palette and i have no idea what i'm going to do with them so the stress of managing all of that creating a brand from scratch is no mean feat either but I should rephrase that question.

7:27Laura Butler-Madden:What about Grove England and owning your own fragrance brand gives you more joy than property management and managing renovations? I think it was that craving for something calm. And like you say, building a brand is not necessarily calm, but there was a moment where I got to be incredibly creative and search inside me for what it was that I really wanted to do and what brought me joy. And then at the same time, I identified there was a gap in the market for what we wanted to create. And I think the joy has been that there's much more freedom. I feel truly creative again. And I think when moving from renovating for ourselves into working on client work, the creativity really does diminish because so much of client work has to be explained and showed and presented.

8:09So maybe 10 % of my time was the sort of, how am I going to design this room? What colors, what feel, getting out and about, getting inspiration. The rest was online, drawing out things or feeding. I don't do CAD myself, so feeding into somebody to draw that. detail after detail of every room it just the creativity was very small and it's basically a very intensely ad focused job and I think people don't realize that when they look at design from the outside in but it's actually a very you have to almost have more of an architect's mind I think to be an interior designer whereas Patrick and I had always loved properties and I'm a bit of a sort of romantic I guess like I would fall in love with the building and the history and we'd see this potential and feel really sad that no one had done anything beautiful with it and we'd feel emotionally connected to the house whilst we'd bring it back to life with our own team of builders who knew us so well we didn't have to draw everything out we could sketch things on a piece of paper and hold things up to the wall and so for me when I became attached to a computer all the time filling out documents for builders and things I just thought no and Grove has brought me back to that really I feel more creative than I ever have and actually I didn't realize how I guess it's like a whole new skill I didn't realize I had with this perfumery and working with a wonderful master perfumer and we have these visions and actually at the beginning I obviously felt total imposter syndrome as you do with anything I think but particularly with this and I felt more comfortable in Bath & Body so we were going to just launch with that and a candle and as we progressed with everything the scent was so lovely of anemone lots of people had said you must do an eau de parfum and I was like well no I can't I can't do fragrance I've got to link it to the home I'm an interior designer people won't get that and it was only about six weeks before launch that finally we just said no we have to do no de parfum and we added that in and then it's so interesting because obviously like with all these things it's now the thing the purchase point for most people people love i mean we you know all the products are wonderful and sell but the fragrance now is the main core of the business which is yeah it was quite last

10:06Laura Butler-Madden:minute as all good things are you look back and go how do i was it expression experience is what you get after you needed it and you're like of course it's now working but talk to me about the fragrances themselves because you have quite an interesting take on the flowers you've used as inspiration when i started working on the plan i wanted to do something with naturals and fragrance i only wanted to work with one man and the industries were very closed so i didn't know who he was i just knew that i wanted to work with the man who'd created cow shed originally so house because that was genius at the time now i know it's evolved and it's been sold and it's changed but it was so inherently linked to nature and so anyway long story short one day i'd done my business plan and I had booked on a perfumery course and there was lots of things happening in the background and then an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time maybe five or six years messaged me out of the blue and just said look we've moved house we're now in Somerset you've got to meet our neighbor he'd love you you'd love him and he set up cow shed for the Soho house and I was like that is so weird I haven't said anything to obviously his friend oh I said that's so weird because I really need to find him so thank you and then a phone call the next day and he absolutely loved the idea and we just gelled beautifully.

11:16So basically then I spoke to him and I said, look, I have this idea. It might be really silly to create sense for flowers that don't have them. But the other part is that those flowers to me represent a very seasonal moment, a memory, a kind of something that you can like, I wanted to create a mood around fragrance, I guess, a feeling, and that could be visual and emotionally linked to seasonal memories. And so Anemone was the first one and he thought it was a great idea he was like I think it's amazing we've got so much potential because there are so many flowers that are beautiful that don't have it's not that they're totally scentless most some of them are some of them but they're certainly not celebrated for a known fragrance and so we he loved the idea and we chatted it through at length and then yeah then a few months later I went down to start work with him on the first two we did together one of them hasn't come out yet actually we did a bit back to front I had anemone one that's coming next May and then I went back and we did Snowdrop and another one which is amazing for next year but he totally got it and I think there is a real uniqueness in that because the names are unusual and it perhaps is it just is a bit different too but it's that question if you hear Snowdrop and

12:19Laura Butler-Madden:go I love Snowdrops but I don't know what they smell like and it's so simple as well and I think that's the beauty of fragrance when you're trying to market fragrance brands in magazines and podcasts and social media content you can't smell it you have to ride it online challenge of that No, I know. And that's why I mean, always from the start, our visuals were going to be key to the brand. And I also felt that in the marketplace that was lacking. And I understand why, because I'm very lucky I'm married to an incredibly talented photographer. But actually to capture nature, you know, you've got to be on the spot.

12:49You've got to be up at dawn and you've got to be, you know, there at the late night. And if you're a brand saying to a photographer, I want you to capture it, it's just not that straightforward. So a lot of brands will just use a picture in a nice bottle or someone spritzing it and they don't really bring nature in. But we always wanted to have that as rooted in nature and rooted in Patrick's photography. And my Instagram had always been that. It had been the house looking lovely and calm and then the gardens and the scenes and the local kind of beautiful landscapes and things. So that was always going to be a massive part for us of how we would hopefully convey the scent through the images.

13:22And so Anemone, for example, we based it on the Japanese anemones, really, and the autumn, the last flowers, everything else is dying back. And they're just this beautiful, very delicate white top. But then actually at the bottom, they're really quite earthy and the leaves are not a beauty. They're very hardy. And so the fragrance itself is exactly that. It's got this beautiful floral top, but then it has got a lovely sort of quite a green middle and a very earthy base with laden and cedar wood. And when people smell it, you see them now at the shop. I think because it's got a floral name, maybe sometimes people think it might be sweet floral.

13:55And they sound like, oh, wow. No, it's really complex and interesting. and and interestingly actually the shop's been amazing because men buy both and that was something we'd hoped but you can't again convey really online that it would be unisex because until you've really had chance of people to test it themselves but and going given that you had a

14:15Laura Butler-Madden:bank of work experience and I admire people who start businesses at 20 and 22 and to go into it with no work experience I'm grateful for the experience I had before I started my business because I had a general confidence in certain areas. Obviously, the 99 other hats that I had to learn how to wear, I learned along the way, but I knew I was strong in communications and marketing. For you, did you do an exercise where you looked at what transferable skills you might have or you just, I know I have to do this. I'm just going to work it out as I go. It definitely came from more of a place of passion.

14:45And I think, but then obviously I do love a spreadsheet. So quite quickly that came in. I really do. I get very excited about it.

14:51Laura Butler-Madden:They're so important. All of my creative friends, like no no I just want to do this creative thing in the corner and I'm going to not worry about the cash flow I'm like you're not going to have a business you need to love your spreadsheets yeah and I love them and I do and it really when I first discovered them when I was in property development it was like a joy I was like oh my god I forgot that I loved maths at school because I was always slightly more pushed in the English and that way and anyway so I love a spreadsheet but I also love to be creative but I couldn't do one without the other I really and which is why this is perfect for me so yeah I feel like I didn't sit down and do those things I did it I did do business plan of sorts very loose though just and I really researched the market and and then just went with it and just believed just I just had a really strong gut instinct that was what I was meant to do and hopefully it would therefore work I don't really let myself have doubt if that makes sense yeah no I love that because I think everyone told me it's like as long as you're completely deluded that what you're doing is what the market needs but you've done your market research and you've got a gut feeling that you're gonna go and go and go a bit further you'll be absolutely fine And it's like, hmm, this sounds very different from when I worked at Chanel.

15:52Laura Butler-Madden:And it was all very ordered and big budgets and very process driven. And suddenly you're out on your own at the coalface. You're like, I'm just going to make this up. No, I know. And I feel the same when I was at the BBC in the start of my career. Everything was so structured. And, you know, almost like a meeting, about a meeting, about a meeting. And oh God, even at a young age, I just knew that for me wasn't how I worked best. I've always been a little bit impatient and just want to get on with things. And I think that I find extra processes quite frustrating. So work with myself is amazing.

16:21I can control that and decide what's necessary. And I think you can just, yeah, as long as you've got your basics and spreadsheets and things. And it's really useful now, I find, having Chuck GBT to ask things off.

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17:13And obviously a big, big company you do, but running something smaller.

17:16Laura Butler-Madden:I think the luxury of being in a small business is you can see how all the previous big businesses you worked for got it wrong in a way. Because the meeting about meeting, my God, it's just giving me chills because you're in there going, this is such a waste of everybody's time. And the inter-office politics and before COVID when we're in every day of the week, 48 weeks of the year. And I was trying to explain this to my team that, by the way, guys, I commuted five days a week, every week. And they're like, what? No working from home? It's like, no, this is a whole new world now. We have freedom to work flexibly.

17:45Laura Butler-Madden:But yeah, the juggernaut of a big brand where the processes have been set by probably three CMOs ago have never been questioned. When you start your own business, you can get, that's not working. Let's stop. Let's move. Let's change. And it's nice to have that liberation. But I also, the flip side of that is I miss having a boss to go, well done, that's a good job. You have to do that for yourself. Yes, a lot of times definitely I do agree with you. There are times where I know my weaknesses probably are in managing people, for example, and that's just because I haven't really had to do it. And in a bigger company, that's all done for you, isn't it?

18:17And so I've always been able to focus on what I'm up to and what I'm doing.

18:20Laura Butler-Madden:But when it comes to other people, I know I perhaps don't have the patience to take the time sometimes to teach them learning, you know, anything we all are. But yeah, it is, you're right, you are in it on your own when it's a small company. Well, on that, how do you motivate yourself, given that you've had different guises? how do you keep pulling your socks up and keep going because every this is the other thing people think oh self-employed you're so lucky i'm like there is no luck involved in this at all no it's really hard and i think you're right yeah people don't see the hard work and i think resilience is a word that i always would come back to it's the gosh for me the creative part of building the brand was amazing i loved it like i said i was in quietly in here it was all very calm and beautiful and then we launched and I think naively I'd thought oh the hard work is done and obviously I just remember so vividly the week after launch where I was like okay no one knows about this brand except for kind of me and a few people who work with me I can share it on Instagram but that's limiting so I'm not someone who's hadn't shared the journey with my followers because I'm quite private I knew it was quite a jump from what they were expecting from me from interior so I didn't really know and so suddenly there was this moment where I went oh wow it's quite overwhelming I've got to I've got to get this out there and we had a PR team helping a little bit with launch and things like that but I think the resilience needed to get through that first six months to eight months was huge every day wintery miserable January day and you're working away and the investment is big still and slowly orders start to pick up there was yeah there were days where it was really hard and I think you just have to I can't really say what you do to keep going you just have to keep going you just have to keep going recognize a bad day and just rule it off and next day wake up feeling excited again.

19:59And I think that's what I love about running my own business is that you never quite know what the day is going to hold. Some days can be awful, but then there might just suddenly be something that lands in your inbox really unexpectedly that's very exciting or has huge potential.

20:12Laura Butler-Madden:It's that thing I think a lot of people just assume that every day is amazing and you can still have a bad day in your job that you've made up for yourself, which is what I remember my first one was like, oh, this is still a job. This is a great job and I love it most of the time, but you're still going to have a bad day and that's what's hard because you don't have that sort of juggernaut around you to support you and no and you can't hide it's on your lap yeah and if you're feeling sensitive and hormones or whatever if you have and the knocks feel really painful and then the highs are really high but certainly at the beginning of a new brand there's many more lows than highs but as you yeah you've just got to keep going I've always been very I'm a real grafter and I'm resilient I think yes you must be because a lot of people say as long as you're okay with the weight of responsibility and resilience I was like oh I'm the roller coaster those are the three R's everyone talks about that is yeah do you feel like you've built resilience over the years or you're born with it or I should ask it a different way if somebody's listening and they're worried they don't have the resilience what would you advise them to do to go and get some it is hard I don't know if I was born with it or not it's hard to know I think you definitely gain it through experience in life but I also I think perhaps it is partly nature I think some people are just I think perhaps it goes hand in hand with what we were talking about feeling a bit frustrated in those meetings and feeling like this is boring and this is taking too long and having a bit of a drive maybe that also has resilience linked in because you know that you wouldn't be happy doing the other alternative which is totally for another brand or someone else and being able to have the freedom to not feel pressure but equally you lose your freedom in other ways and I think for me I think freedom has always been a big driver in how I wanted to live my life and that did come from loss in my youth I lost friends when I was very young I've had different things and I think you realize that you only have I was very lucky in that sense an awful thing to happen but to be so young and to see that you have one life and it can be taken away I think for me that gave me a lot of drive and resilience potentially and other things happening along the way.

22:12I've always just wanted to make the most of every day and not be somewhere. When you're sitting in a job you don't love and in the old days where you had to get training every single day, the drudgery, I think. In high heels. Yes, the heels. I remember being at events and having to work really late and then having to get up seven because I had to speak to journalists or whatever and just utterly exhausted, but also on a salary that really was just totally unacceptable. But I was expected to be grateful for the opportunity because it was such a glamorous job and I look back on all that and I just knew in my heart in my early 20s that wasn't how I wanted to live my life.

22:45Laura Butler-Madden:That's the assumption that you'll just keep doing it and who are you to question it and I think that's a liberation I had when I was made redundant because I had no choice I was like I've got to start my own business I could have applied for other jobs but it was COVID I just thought I wouldn't find one so I'm quite grateful for the push because there's no way I was such a people pleaser I was like well I'll just work really hard for someone else and I'll try and get promoted and if people are happy with my work that's fine and in PR and cons you're a people pleaser anyway but it was the relentlessness of it it's exhausting yeah but getting older as well you do realize what matters in life and you do have loss in life and you think actually it's got to be bigger than just teasing a cfo that doesn't respect what you do that thing i remember being so exhausted like you say and just but working so hard such a people pleaser and i was in pr at that point and i joke sometimes now with friends that i feel like I gave away all my niceness then in that not niceness but like I know I'm quite no nonsense if someone is rude or I just won't work with them it's just all of these things but I think when you're in that stage like you say and you're just and I remember you're saying about how they don't really care the bosses I remember when I had to I was when I did leave to go out to live in Mallorca which is where we started property renovation because my family had a business and my father couldn't he had a stroke wasn't able to carry on it was I decided having seen some paperwork and issues out there to go and take it over.

24:03And I resigned. I went into the office to resign and it wasn't my boss. It was her second in command.

24:07Laura Butler-Madden:And I remember to this day me telling her this kind of quite long-winded, a bit nervous story about my thoughts had a stroke. Great. She was typing and she didn't look up the whole way through until the end. And then I said, and I said, so I'm going to leave and move to Mallorca and literally barely looked up. But it was so funny. I almost saw myself at that moment in kind of one of those hilarious books by Sophie Kinsella or something where I was just like, is this for real? Oh my God, thank goodness I am the heroine that's taking myself out of this awful place where I've been like working really hard, paid pittance and clearly have no respect.

24:41So yeah, I think all those things build towards I love that.

24:46Laura Butler-Madden:And it's, I don't know, I think I got slightly addicted to resigning jobs. I changed jobs every two or three years because I'd always go for the next one. And I had that imposter thought of I'm actually really good at interviews. And I put myself in these new jobs going, can I actually do this oh I'll work it out it's fine yeah and once you worked it out you got bored probably yes and then go to the next one which I think is why being self-employed works for me because every day is that challenge and it's the variety of people you speak to so like night and day when you're working for one business like the bigger team and you're doing your one role as opposed to when you're self-employed and you're wearing many hats across many different departments if you've got a hunger to learn it's fantastic but then you also get to that point I'm actually really tired now I do need a holiday yeah exactly I know and I do find yeah you do get tired but I think the joy when it's for yourself is different isn't it I think it's just yeah the every part of it is you and so the exciting bits are amazing and the hard bits are hard but I think I wouldn't have it any other way how do you manage that mental load of running your business now that you're in grow full-time and it's clearly your passion and you're obviously loving it and it's going really well do you still have those days where you're like I'm just going to step away I'm going to go and do some gardening or go on a trip for new inspiration like how do you find that balance for yourself yeah I think I do and I have to I always have to force it because I feel that sort of overwhelm and not burnout's a bit extreme but there have been times in the past where there's definitely that has happened so I know and I get the warning signs but I don't relax very easily so I have certain things like I go for acupuncture regularly which is amazing probably every month at least and if I really need to take myself out it's yeah gardening yoga or a massage or something where I actually can't be buzzing around working or even on a device.