Speaker 1when i sit down with ceo's founders and working parents on this podcast one thing that comes up again and again is the more you have to juggle the more important it is that home and shopping for it isn't adding to that load this moment's episode is sponsored by wayfair who understand that the spaces around us should support how we live here is nicola kilner talking about some of the systems that she's built to make work and home fit together better what's your opinion now on university when your children get to that age where they're about to make that decision you've got two young children when they get to 18 years old and if they said mommy i want to be entrepreneur like you what advice would you give them based on your experience
Speaker 2so i actually would always probably recommend doing a few years in a corporate because i have to say at boots i learned so much you know you learn the things that they do really well you learn the things that they do not necessarily wrong but just the drawbacks of being such a big organization so i think you know more than going to university like those two the two placement years i did at boots i learned incredibly so much and depending on the kind of person you are you know if you go to a big corporate it's so difficult to impact the culture there because there's just so many people there's so much history and if you are someone who's kind of got this strong drive to make a change then you know entrepreneurship i think is just an incredible and even if it's not your idea but going to join a startup it's just incredible energy and you just would always be what i would recommend
Speaker 1at that point if there was a key skill or a key set of skills that you took from your time working in a corporate at boots that then proved to be incredibly valuable as you went on what were those skills so
Speaker 2when i was at so so when i graduated i then stayed on and i was an assistant buyer to begin with and then i got promoted to be um a buying manager for them which was really around relationships it was about collaboration it was about looking around the world seeing new technologies finding the innovation new brands and then really hand-holding those which mainly were entrepreneurs to come into boots to actually show them look this is how we could launch uh you know we had a stand it was called latest finds we would launch it and then we would launch it and then we would launch it and then we would launch it a new innovation for a period of three months as a trial to see if it would work would boots consumers like this if it did they would get a listing with boots kind of long term and that just really suited my skill set because it was a very entrepreneurial role because actually you know i i very much guided them with pr agencies and actually how to build the plan and um you know we used to have a saying of like launch and love because actually it's one thing to get a listing it's another thing for your product to actually be picked and taken off the shelf like the listing is just the first thing you know you you have to drive consumers you have to have that entire plan and i think it was just a really good way of actually learning from working with supply chain working with finance doing the checks with legal can we do this what can we say it was a really good sense of actually working with so many different departments and actually starting to understand i think consumer goods learning demand learning how to do this and how to do that so i feel like that role was created which really just suited my my skill set incredibly well and i'm very fortunate for that and then that's also how i met brandon so actually had a huge impact and obviously my my next
Speaker 1stage too and brandon was a business you were maybe he had a business you may be looking at so
Speaker 2he was with his previous business which was called indeed labs and we launched a couple of their products through this program latest finds so i'd worked with him and i remember i was working with him and i was working with him and i was working with him you know and actually when I this sounds alien now so many years ago but you couldn't check your emails when you left the office so often every morning I'd come in and I was dealing with a lot of international entrepreneurs so I'd always come into like an inbox full of emails I always remember like looking for his name because his email was always so full of energy he always signed off smiles Brandon you know just someone whose positivity his passion just kind of really shone through that I'd always go straight to his emails kind of open it and you know the launches that we did with Brandon and Indeed Labs were some of the most successful we did through the through the innovation program and and he was just you know when he used to come to the Boots head office in Nottingham just it was bouncing off the walls with kind of this infectious energy and I remember just from the day I met him thinking gosh I always want this person in my life because he just had this aurora and just someone who you knew wanted to actually also make the world a better place for him and he was just like oh my gosh I want this person in my life to be in a better place and kind of really cared about doing good and and doing things differently
Speaker 1and at some point you start having a conversation with him privately about launching a business your own business and then he's launching his business right
Speaker 2yeah so so I remember he suddenly left Indeed Labs now Indeed Labs he he founded it it was a rocket ship it was kind of doing super well I remember getting this this message from him that he left and just being like shocked as in like what has happened um so then when he was next in London I met up with him and obviously he told me about his reasons for leaving he was going to do this next thing and I'd always kind of had this this viewpoint of wanting to do my own business and ever since I worked in beauty I found that you know I always had friends family everyone asking what's the best mascara what's the best foundation and just how we'd go to TripAdvisor you know to look at kind of ratings and reviews for restaurants and hotels I wanted to create the same thing for beauty that actually ranked the products so I told Brandon my idea I said I want to do this um like what do you think do you have any advice and he told me he wanted to start something called Deciem which was from the Latin word for the number 10 and it wasn't designed to be a beauty engineer at that time there was a beauty concept but there was a technology concept there was a food concept so kind of just lots of different ideas generating but with this viewpoint of doing 10 things at once so he said why don't you come and help do Deciem with me and I'll help do the the beauty we went on to call it beauty wise with you so then obviously I made the decision to leave Boots which um obviously I was at the age of uh 24 23 24 and I remember telling mum and everyone's like oh like you're in a really good business you've got a good like you're already achieving things but I just knew that I wasn't meant to be there forever so I yeah I left 10 years ago and then it was the start of Deciem I've got
Speaker 1to say this idea of doing 10 brands at once seems like it's counterintuitive to all anything you might read in a business book that speaks to the importance of focus um was there any sense in that in your view
Speaker 2so in in actually our office in in Melbourne we used to have on the wall focus is overrated because everyone does tell you not to do 10 things at once and actually there were so many benefits to doing 10 things at once so first of all it was this viewpoint of trying to create this ecosystem of you know how do we have our own manufacturing do our own comms in-house because and again it takes funds to set up that ecosystem but also you know so many entrepreneurs which I understand why they're in this situation but so many entrepreneurs have to outsource everything they go to the PR agency they go to a lab they go to someone to do your R&D and then you're really just coordinating all of those efforts rather than I mean so it was a privilege we could build this this whole ecosystem because then at the table everyone sat there everyone's generating ideas and again you know if I think around like doing comms in-house it's a lot for one brand to pay but if you've got 10 brands suddenly you can look at it as 10% of everyone's salary if I'm flying to Australia to meet a buyer well do I want to 10 brands and also just this you know area of you don't know what's going to until if you're in consumer brand until it starts selling you don't really know what's going to be you can do all the research and all the insights and in the world until something gets traction you don't really know what's going to work so it also just set up this incredible structure that we could fail we could keep trying things we could fail relatively cheaply quickly and kind of start the next thing
Speaker 1what's the downside though of doing 10 brands
Speaker 2so I'd say the downside in in the later years is because the ordinary has become such a thing that it's not going to work and it's not going to work when the ordinary took off the other brands got pushed aside because it's very difficult if you have one brand that's really driving such a huge portion of your revenues when everyone is you know facing high workload that always gets prioritized so then you end up ignoring the other brands versus if they had a dedicated team and it's something now we want to actually restart our incubator engine and actually the only way we can do that is by having a dedicated team to that so our downsides I think the other thing that made a huge difference for us because we didn't have much money as a startup and we obviously wanted to hire all of these people we couldn't afford experience so everyone who was hired was pretty much straight out of of university straight out of college just applied for their first job and actually that meant no one really had preconditioned ideas about the beauty industry about the way things should be everyone was approaching it just with a almost a very practical viewpoint and I think that made a big difference too with actually this how do we think differently how do we do what others aren't doing it was almost never something that had to be discussed because people hadn't worked for the other conglomerates for all the years
Speaker 1soon after you become co-ceos with brandon um I always think about co-founder relationships and you know people being yin and yang and what the kind of right balance is for for co-founders in your case you the way that you came together was quite unique it wasn't necessarily there wasn't an initial interest in being co-founders you were both going to do two separate things you then kind of got drawn towards each other if I put your personality on this side and Brandon's here what are the the differences how are they complementary but also
Speaker 2uncomplimentary so Brandon was eccentric yeah he was you know I'd say we both were both very passionate he was a lot more eccentric and I'm a lot more calm I think would be a big difference but I guess but also from a skill set you know he was um he was so into this like he was a genius when it came to science and he was a tech person originally so he came from things with a very he didn't understand what was going on and he was done great it was black and white and actually that was quite a good way to actually approach the science I think behind beauty products um he was at times short-tempered um I'd be the the kind of smoothing things out and he would kind of be a little bit more hot-headed but again I think it was you know a startup culture is not for everyone but for me those first few years were incredible but he also just had this amazing way of making things fun uh you know like when we would plan trips to go on meetings he would be prioritizing which restaurants we were going to where's got the best ice cream what are we going to go and do here and actually the work was something that came alongside it he also had this you know he had this philosophy he wanted to build a family he'd had you know a troubled upbringing I think he'd always you know he'd he'd actually had this pattern I think of always leaving a business when it kind of just went on the verge of success you know and I think that's what he was trying to do and that's kind of what he was trying to do and I think that's what he was trying to do and I think that's what he was trying to do and each time what hurt him was actually leaving the relationships and the people behind so his viewpoint of Decian was actually how do we build a family like a work family but I think he it was never work and I think that's what so many of us felt weekends evenings like we wanted to be doing Decian because we were all friends we were all eating together we were going to Niagara Falls on the weekend we were going to a theme park in Toronto like we were just having fun whilst we were doing everything
Speaker 1the part you said about he wanted to build a family because he had a sort of troubled upbringing I'm trying to understand there how his upbringing you believe shaped his perspective on how you assemble a company it sounds there like he was building the family he might not have had or there's clearly some attachment challenges there if he wants to sell the brands but not the people yeah and and again leaving these companies was all about losing relationships a lot of that speaks to something that must have happened
Speaker 2early yeah so I think it was around building a family of he never wanted anyone to leave him and he wanted Decian to to be a place of belonging and actually even now we have belonging as our kind of north star like the most important thing anyone in our team should feel is that they belong at Decian whoever they are whatever they believe in like there is a place for them at Decian and I think that really comes from this like sense of family and I think and you know again like I even look at my my husband's world I do think startups because you're working in a very intense environment it does build relationships far deeper than well I ever experienced at Boots and that I think would exist in in corporates so this sense of family I think you know we would have taken a bullet for each other and I think even now like within within Decian you know we're 1500 people now but we still have so many of those early team members sounds like a cult it is but actually a very happy one yeah this morning I did a talk
Speaker 1and I said listen I'm gonna say something here which might get me in trouble I'm like you've got to scale from a cult I was like I always have to disclaimer it and explain cults are really bad of course and you know they manipulate people but this is not what I mean it's that that sense of dedication we're all in this together inspirational founder and I think it's really important that we're all in this together and I think it's really mission you all believe in and you believe you're right regardless of what the outside world says you're on a mission you're sleeping under the tent you
Speaker 2know yeah well it's they always say that you know you can you can did like complain about your parents but if anyone else says a bad word about your parents like no like even if they're saying the same thing you've said and decian's like that you know like you can come play like internally like maybe there's not this process but if anyone says a bad word you come straight to the defense but i think it was just so much love and passion and again brandon cared for all of us like he had so much love that you gave it back and that's where it was so difficult you know when we when we went through the the unthinkable and things became so difficult because it wasn't a colleague like you've just lived this incredible journey of us all traveling together building something so special like just this such a sense of we're all in this together like even when times are hard like we've got each other's backs and things may not work out but actually let's just have fun let's learn things and let's just keep trying like let's never be afraid to fail and let's just do it together
Speaker 1people hear that and they see the outcome so everything you've described there is the outcome you've got this great culture people are dedicated they're loyal they're on this mission what people will be thinking because they'll be sat in their offices now working somewhere or they'll be building a company of their own in fact this young lady came up to me this morning and asked me this question when i was doing this talk she said i've got this small team and i'm trying to create exactly what you've described that kind of real dedicated kind of cult-like um company culture where everyone's in it how how how does one create it it's so it's actually quite difficult to explain how it comes together because in many cases from what i've observed it's not necessarily intentional i there wasn't a it wasn't like a strategic um drawn-up plan to make people really care it was quite a natural thing that resulted in that sort of deep sense of care from the team members i'll offer up one thing which you said which i thought was spot on which people often overlook which is the fun yeah people think of you know people think well we'll give perks and this and but it's all the things that happen outside of the work that seem to do most of the work and creating that cult and
Speaker 2you you come up with the best ideas when you're doing something on the weekend and you're not in that that kind of monday to friday nine till five zone that's when that creativity i think happens and i think you know people spend so long in the workplace and that's why it's so important that actually people enjoy coming in the one thing that i say like it's definitely been like a purposeful shift is i look back at early startup culture and i don't know if it's always kind there's very high expectations and again if you're working you know i'm i'm calm brandon is very high passion and i think it's important to have high expectations you know there's this people feel like they need to work on the weekends and the evenings and is that healthy even though actually it's trying to get that balance and i think it'd be interesting you know and again with my husband who's a different stage of startup i always just find it interesting around like i think especially in today's world like we're so much more aware about mental health and burnout and actually how to be much more respectful of balance which i don't know if we necessarily had back then but equally i think it's important to i feel like again we're pretty much a bunch of young 20 year olds with brandon you know being a little bit older who are all just happy and loved what we were doing and when you start creating things and you start to see the the results of your work then that drives you even further and then that makes it even more exciting because you know you can see what you're achieving is actually meaning something
Speaker 1do you think you could have achieved the success with deciem and the ordinary and the other brands if you didn't have that lack of balance and early cult like culture no and and
Speaker 2again like i think in any in the early days everyone's around the same table you've got predby he's making formulations dion he's doing comms and brand like everyone's just there talking coming up with ideas and that's that collaboration is so special and you know you're you're in whatsapp groups and you're like have you seen this let's do this and also i think you know the other thing in the early days being agile so important and everyone was okay you could work on something and the next day there'd be a change of decision or someone had a different view and you're like oh actually let's go in that direction now that gets harder i think as you get bigger and actually there are many more teams and there's more people involved
Speaker 1so that's interesting um i have to say i agree um with with um any business i've ever been in i i look back at those first sort of 10 20 people and the way they behaved and that's ultimately what we scaled but it's that energy enthusiasm and that's what we scaled but it's that energy enthusiasm that got us from like zero to one does that therefore mean that there's a certain type of person you should be looking to hire at that early phase that maybe can afford to have more of an unbalanced life i think it is you
Speaker 2need someone who's prepared to wear every hat so in our early days we would say yes to it like we'd get an order from booze if we didn't think we could fulfill it we would say yes and we'd figure out how to do it and we'd figure out how to do it and we'd figure out how to do it afterwards and that would often mean brandon myself like all of the whoever was working in the office at the time we'd go and work in the factory we would pull all-nighters making the products and you know back then like I remember with hand chemistry we had like a hand crimping machine like we'd be in but it didn't seal that well and about one in ten actually exploded if you squeeze too hard so we'd be like there at night like making them squeezing them like okay they can pass so you have to have people that are prepared to get on production line to pack the boxes and again like you know my even later on like when it was you know times around November Black Friday which you know more recently we boycotted and we well we have Slovember our campaign but those periods where it's busy everyone gets into the warehouses and they help ship the products out so I think the ability to wear whichever hat is needed for you at that moment is the most important skill set.
Speaker 1What do you think of this concept of work-life balance? You know I had someone on the podcast the other day and it's called Alex Amozy and he was saying that um he was like people need to stop having a conversation around work life balance because it kind of assumes that there is such a thing as a universal balance that we should all be striking whereas as you described it you were happy and you okay your life you might have been slightly one-dimensional but but you were happy and surely that happiness is the most important thing and Alex Amozy says listen I do two things I work and I play video games that's it and I'm happy so stop telling me to do work-life balance I'm happy.
Speaker 2Yeah a hundred percent agree and I think you know it's it comes down to what's what's the right balance to you and it changes at different periods of your life so I was in my 20s I was fine on my maybe sacrificed nights out and kind of doing other things but I was so happy being traveling all the time being in this kind of Decian bubble creating all of these this magic and to me that's such a powerful concept around how do we achieve balance at different periods of your life we're all going to have periods where we can be working every hour and we love it and actually it's a it's our work but also it's our hobby it's our downtime because we just love it so much then you have another period of your life where you know maybe you have a an elderly parent that needs your support maybe you're going through some challenges you've got young children how do we step up and support each other to say do you know what I've got you here you do this bit I'll cover those bits for you because in another few years maybe it switches around and again that's something that I think is is so unique to when we say a family culture that's so unique to when we say a family culture that's so unique to when we say a family culture that I think really actually demonstrates it there
Speaker 1has been a debate hasn't there about the use of the word family in the corporate world people think it means it kind of asserts that there's a lack of boundaries and these are not you know Netflix's whole culture document which is like we're not a family we're a high performance team um and I think I have struggled to figure out where I sit on it because there are many elements of the family culture that I always want in my businesses that sort of care that going above and beyond the way you know a deeper sense of relationship that's non-transactional and then also on the other hand you don't fire your family you know so what what is that balance between family and high performance team so
Speaker 2for me family is about belonging and everyone just really feeling like they have a safe place to be and that they are loved I think kindness sometimes is mistaken for weakness and and also I think there's there's a conflict between the words being kind and being nice being nice is is kind but can be superficial you know you see a stranger on the street you're like hi how you know you open the door it's nice but do you truly mean like how are you or you're just kind of passing it if someone's not performing at work it's not necessarily a nice thing to have that conversation with them but it is the kind thing because if your intention is to help them and the help may be this is maybe a different role that we see in the company which we think you're more suited for it may be that we think you need this coaching this training to get to where you need to be and it may be that look you're in this role but we're not seeing the delivery here we actually think the better option for you is is outside and now when we've done terminations you know we've done things around like how do we do counseling where actually it helps someone to look for another career depending on kind of what role it is and the reasons why we're leaving because to me it's a kind of way we're actually trying to help that person and the other thing you know our business we we were like kind of this and we like had a rocket ship kind of boomed and then then we came to a dim just after after kind of covid it hit me when i realized if our numbers don't pick up again we're gonna have to let people go because actually that is the consequence of business like you're you're there to kind of do many things but ultimately like one factor of that is is that you're not doing the right thing and you're not doing the right thing and you're not to be a business and to make money and if you start to not hit your numbers ultimately like you can't lose money for long people will start to say you have to save money where does that come from headcount and i think that then hit me again that okay we have to perform so to be kind to everyone we have to be a performing team so again i think you can be high performing but by being kind i think you can make everyone feel safe and trusted that again if you have to make the hard decision you're going to do it in the way to be as kind as possible and actually you know have the action to try and
Speaker 1help i heard you say something which was that you um you're the least qualified ceo ever you
Speaker 2don't sound like
Speaker 1the least qualified ceo ever i guess you've been through some shit so i definitely
Speaker 2am and again you know you have to i was there from the beginning and being someone who can you know play a leader for an organized organization of 10 people 20 people 100 people is a very different skill set so you know we are 1500 people we now have a majority ownership from uh sal order companies who are a public company our whole world has changed and rightly so because being a much bigger organization we have to be far more organized and planning and i wouldn't say those are necessarily my skill sets and again when you know the the kind of dip i mentioned was a very difficult period because we'd we'd just been on this rocket ship of you know even when things were difficult the one thing that always we were always ahead of budget targets whatever anyone set for us we always were just overachieving which feels incredible when you're in business like if you hit numbers and everything else just falls into place and i remember like you lose confidence and i remember actually saying to to stefan who um is we report into it elc who's like an incredible person who's like an incredible person who's like an incredible person who's like an incredible person but each time when i used to say like you know this is not going right and i said like i'll resign like i'm not the person but dad was like i need help like i was like i can't do this like i'm i'm not the ceo who understands numbers in the right way who plans like i changed my mind and again like you think about all the things as as a as a startup you can do things you can change if you change your mind on a decision when you now have many more people working on it you demotivate people you become chaos is fun in a startup in a large organization chaos can become demotivating so then i was very fortunate that we did bring in um a very incredible general manager who joined us about a year ago and he has had such a transformation on the company because he can't believe just the basics we didn't have in place and because we'd grown so quickly and it's now to get that balance between us and the company and it's now to get that balance between us and the company you know there's there's areas we don't want any experience but decisions when it comes to like brand and innovation our values things that we are so passionate about when it comes to supply chain and scaling and new markets we need experience so actually having the gm come in that actually could kind of take control of those and then actually allow me to focus on the areas which i'm much more passionate about which is the the brand area our people culture belonging social impact and then actually having the gm come in and actually kind of take control of those it's just made a huge difference to the
Speaker 1business so two things there you offering up your uh essentially resignation from your your role when things were a little bit tricky it's giving me imposter syndrome i like to think
Speaker 2more just like a realist of have you
Speaker 1ever had imposter syndrome because you know saying this quote here about being the least qualified ceo ever what is from like
Speaker 2from a traditional perspective for example if i went and now to you know another company with revenues nearing a billion dollars a year with 1500 employees i wouldn't be a good ceo i think i could be a good people person i think it could help on values on brand now obviously there's an argument of like a modern ceo and i think especially for there's no one more qualified for decim than me because of the history but when i think about just the pure metrics and the size of the business it needed someone with some more experience and again i'm a big believer on you know i'm anyone who thinks they're the expert everything they're not and i think i'm a good person at relationships and hopefully bringing people on for the journey hopefully people feeling how appreciative and truly grateful i am that they choose to kind of be at decim and give their all every day but there are many areas that i'm not good at all and actually having trusted people to support that is amazing and i always do think myself more you know i'm not good at everything but i'm not good at everything You know, it's kind of like the conductor of an orchestra, being aware except i'm not very organized so the bigger you get then suddenly you do need someone that maybe has got more technical skills it's interesting
Speaker 1because when i asked that question about the imposter syndrome thing i immediately reflected upon it and i thought it's funny how imposter syndrome and self-awareness can sound very very similar and and that's in fact from speaking to some of your team one of the things they repeatedly said to us was about your self-awareness and i even reflect going back early to your time at boots where you were considering contemplating becoming a buyer and the first thing you're doing there is saying does that suit my skill set and what makes me happy i mean your team said it they said your quote is that she isn't afraid to to tell you and she instinctively knows what her strengths and weaknesses are
Speaker 2but i think it's the only way to be authentic that you know trying to be something that that you're not or something that doesn't make you happy is not really good for anyone and i actually think that's the only way to be authentic and i think it's the only way to be authentic and i think it's the only way to be authentic and i think it's the only way to be i actually think like authenticity in today's world i think is a value that is is one of the most important because otherwise you you get cooled out it'd be crazy for me to say that i'm good at the finance piece i'm not it's not a strength but we have an incredible vp of finance we've got an incredible general manager that truly understands it so i think actually just playing to your strengths and allowing others to play to their strengths is actually what brings the authenticity i
Speaker 1should probably read this your team said she delegates a lot and very well she very instinctively knows her strengths and her weaknesses she isn't afraid to bring on knowledge and talent for those weaknesses her team says she's incredibly self-aware and also she is literally a ray of sunshine how much did you pay jenny in marketing i'm joking this feels especially relevant this time of year when work picks up and family routines start again wayfair verified helps to take some of the uncertainty and the uncertainty of the future and to take some of the uncertainty out of what to buy it identifies products that have been vetted for quality alongside ratings from real customers so you can make a more confident choice when life is busy go to wayfair.com to start your home refresh today what you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode if you want to listen to that full episode i've linked it down below check the description thank you
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