Tell me about you and your family/where you live
I live in High Wycombe with my partner and my daughter, Nahla, who’s 18 months.

What's so good about the local area? Where are your favourite places to go?
I love that it’s a great place to raise children, my mum always believed that the best way to raise children was by letting them dig holes and get muddy, and there’s an abundance of open spaces and places to go on walks. There also a great community spirit here – it’s nice. In my family we LOVE food, cooking it and eating it. Our favourite place to go is a little eatery called Tin Kitchen. They cook amazing local produce, and their French toast is super-yummy. When we go we tend to order one of everything.

Tell me about your business
Neroli & Co is a luxury mobile massage service – we service an area I would class as
South Bucks. We offer a range of six treatments: Rebalance Me, My Mind, My Spirit,

My Body, My Mummy and Us. When starting Neroli & Co, I wanted to not only create

a service but give an atmosphere. I want people to feel like they can have a spa in

their own home but without the large cost that brings. We use quality massage tables, provide cotton linens and have six of our own organic blended oils to choose from for your treatment.  

Have you always been interested in doing this? What do you like

about it the most?
Massage has always been in my family. My mum is a massage therapist and an aromatherapist, and she has been for over 20 years. I guess it was always going to be my path when I was brought up around it. What I love about massage the most makes me sound a bit hippie like, but I love the connection you have to your client. Massage is personal. When you are given a massage by someone who doesn’t want to be there, you feel it. A bit like a bad hug. I like only giving really good hugs.

What prompted you to decide to take it that bit further and start your business?
My mum was definitely my inspiration. It made sense for me to follow the same

path and be a therapist myself. Eventually, after I had my daughter, Nahla, I knew

I wanted to start a business. I had all this free time on my hands and I was aching to do something with it. There were many business ideas; Gourmet doughnuts, A food truck, Children's patterned jogging bottoms and selling ex-store clothing on eBay

– none of which made sense because they were all just slight hobbies of mine. Then

it dawned on me in the middle of a 4am feed: massage. From then on it’s been an

exciting journey.

What did you do before?
Before moving to High Wycombe, I had a Nail Bar in London and worked for a Beauty Salon. When I moved, I was a Spa Therapist at Danesfield Hotel & Spa.

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Did you have to do any business courses or training for your business?
I didn’t need to but I did anyway, I had already done a large portion of it beforehand. It was a 12-week community business course run by a company called Enterprise Cube. They were great in helping me understand my direction, number stuff and sometimes just being around like-minded people helped with sparking ideas. Even if we were talking about accounting, it would spark a marketing idea, or a treatment idea for
me. I would recommend it.

  

What's your fave product/treatment?
My favourite product is our oil ‘The Favourite’ because well if you haven’t guessed
I like it. A lot. It is blended with Ylang Ylang, Clary Sage and Pimento Berry – it smells sweet and yummy. It makes me feel happy and energetic. My favourite treatment is Rebalance My Spirit – it’s a hot stone massage that uses basalt stones to warm and massage the body. It’s a real treat.

Who is your idol?
Sara Blakely, the creator of SPANX. She started her business with her $5000 savings. She had amazing confidence and conviction in her product and she is now a very wealthy lady. Plus her product is one I use myself when I need to squeeze into something I used to fit into.

Anything else we don't know about you?
I am a serial box-set watcher – I will watch box sets back-to-back in the evenings.

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