Jesper Nielsen | He Slept In His Car For 3 Years… Then Made $350M Selling Pandora

0:00These guys who's buying your companies, they're criminals. You want to let them know what company you created? It's the jewelry brand called Pandora. Pandora, the jewelry brand. Exactly. And how much money did you make when you guys sold Pandora recently a couple years ago? I think we got around$350 ,000. Ah,$350 ,000. $350 ,000. Women think jewelry is very expensive. You think as well, correct? It is only when we go into the gold and diamonds. The rest of jewelry cost absolutely nothing to make. You like the margins. You like the margins. The profits, 88%. Wow. Why are private equity people criminals?

0:29When I sold my Pandora, I sold it at a very high price, I thought. But there was also a bonus attached to it. And then I found out six years later through a whistleblower that they f***ing cheated me. They didn't show me the right numbers. They removed a round s*** from the profit. When you were selling your company, if you could go back and change one thing about the contract within that negotiation, what would you change? I made one mistake. And I can tell you now, in my age, I still regret it. If the four of us sitting down here today were to die tomorrow and you could leave one more message, one more guiding principle with the younger generation, what would that be?

0:58Oh, it's the best decision I ever made in my life.

1:28that came to all your knowledge during the 2010 and onwards. It's the jewelry brand coming out of Denmark, what many people do not know, that's called Pandora. Pandora, the jewelry brand. How many malls would you say around the world right now have Pandora in it? We're registered in more than 6 ,000 malls, so I don't think you can find a mall anywhere, for sure not in America, which is by far our strongest market, that is not carrying the Pandora brand. And how much is Pandora worth today? We got listed in the stock exchange in 2010, We had an extremely run during the zeros where we started up in 01.

2:03And already in 2010, nine, ten years after, we got the possibility to do our IPO in the stock exchange. It's NASDAQ, the biggest stock listing ever in the country of Denmark. And we listed our company at around 3.5 billion euro. And now I think it's a little bit north of 15, 18, 20 million, depending a little bit on what Trump is saying and the silver prices. Yeah, it's about$20 billion, you said. That is the value company. The value company, yeah. And how much money did you make when you guys sold Pandora recently, a couple of years ago? Yeah, you know, we, of course, like every entrepreneur, sell it way too early, yeah.

2:38So we were three guys, and we have our founder, Mr. Ene Walsen, who sits in Thailand. People do not know him, but he was the man who produced the jewelry. And then we were two guys, one in Europe and one in America. And we are considered the co-founders of Pandora. and we sold the company firstly in 2008 to a private equity and later on 2010 we listed on the stock exchange so i think the one who got the most out of it was probably our founder he he would get more than a billion i think out of it and the two co-founders i think we got around 350 350 000 350 million dollars but but where i was a good good payment for nine years of work yeah what's fascinating to me is you didn't come from a family of billionaires your dad was an electrician your mom was a school teacher you grew up in denmark yeah how in the world like what was it inside of you early on that you know led to your capabilities of one day building a billion dollar company take us back to the beginning did you know growing up that you were going to build a company like this i always had a feeling that i was going to do something out of this world because i was actually looking for it and that's of course an important way of getting there is to look for it so i made a decision i was an entrepreneur quite early running franchisees in Denmark.

3:54We had gas stations as a franchisee. So already with 22, 23, 24, I got the Porsche. I got many of my dreams that came out like this. And then I went bankrupt, which is also a nice learning. And then I came back again and decided to become rich again. I got a really good job for like two years in my life, like a normal paid job. It was the worst time of my life because it didn't matter what I did. I would get the same salary. So I broke out again. And then I said, I'm going to pursue a crazy dream. I'm going to borrow my father's car and I'm going to drive to Germany and try to sell jewelry. So basically for three years, I was living in my car and selling jewelry to the German jewelry stores.

4:39And I hunt the German jewelry stores down one by one. I want to just talk about growing up in Scandinavia. Denmark's one of the countries in Scandinavia. What was the business model out there? Like what were the common industries out there? I'd imagine entrepreneurship probably wasn't a super big thing out there, was it? No, but there's three Scandinavian countries, four with Finland, but three of them are very closely related, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. We almost have the same language as well. The Norwegians, they have the oil. The Swedes, they have the iron, and we have absolutely nothing. So that of course means that the entrepreneurship in Denmark has to be significantly stronger than in the other countries.

5:16and we are actually you know famous for building quite famous brands we are the country in the world that has a top 100 global brand as the smallest one what countries what other companies came out of Denmark yeah because we are only 5 million people but actually now there is two brands on the top 100 global brands coming out of the country Denmark and you know normally they come out of the UK or America or India China or whatever France Germany but we have two brands one you all know it and that's lego lego that's incredible yeah that comes out of them was created in 1932 in denmark and then in 2001 came another one a jewelry company called pandora well well

5:58Jesper Nielsen: jesper you know going from franchising gas stations to selling jewelry in germany how did what's the story behind you linking up with the other you know founders and partners in pandora what's tell us the story of like how this came about first of all it's a nice challenge to go to a country where you do not speak the language and try to sell something that you know nothing about and never tried to sell before. That's a real entrepreneurial challenge. But you know, I believe I can do anything. So of course I was going to do that. And it was a coincidence. I had a good friend who was having a little representative of a jewelry brand and he was selling that in Norway.

6:31And I went with him one time to Norway and saw how he did it. And what fascinated me about it, James, he asked me earlier about the profit margins in jewelry. yeah it was the profits it's insane so i asked this man he was not a very clever businessman but a good friend and i said okay what do you sell this for yeah i sell it for seven euro fifty to the jewelry store okay and what do they sell it for yeah they would sell it for 24 i said whoa but what do you buy it for then yeah i buy it in italy for one euro fifty i said what So one euro 50 turns out to 24 in the jewelry industry. I said, I like that industry.

7:10So I decided to go into the jewelry industry only because of the profit margins. Now I can tell you a secret about the business model of Pandora. So when you go to the Pandora stores around the world, we make a huge profit on you. The calculation of a Pandora jewelry piece is 15. That means that we have a 15 times calculation on the product. So we produce it for$140 to$180, the little pieces that you're buying for the bracelets, and we sell it for$20,$25, and just upwards. So the profit margins is, of course, extreme. And that motivated me to say, okay, I don't have to sell very much, and I'm a good sales guy, because the profit margins are enormous in this business model.

7:48So that motivated me. I was very motivated by money in my younger days. You found out that you like jewelry, and that's the industry you want to pursue. I didn't like jewelry. I still don't like jewelry. I don't give a shit about jewelry. You like the margins. You like the margins. And I read that you first came across Pandora at a trade show. Correct, yeah. And what about Pandora specifically made you want to go all in on that brand specifically? It's a beautiful story because actually we did not invent the Pandora concept. You know, the charms bracelet, the ones. It was another company from them called Trollbeats.

8:20And I was walking around that trade fair and there was five companies who carried exactly the same brand. So I said, okay, which one of them do I choose? Because to me, it still, and also at that time, looked exactly the same. I couldn't see the difference in the different products. But one of the guys at one of the booth, he was coincidentally a fan of the same football team as I was. And then you're brothers, you know. There was no problem for me. It could only be Pandora. There was four other companies, but the guy from Pandora, he was a fan of the same football team like I was. So we were brothers.

8:55And that is maybe the most crucial questions that was ever put in the story of Pandora. I asked them, because we were just selling in Denmark at that time, can I try to sell this abroad? And they said yes. And that was the most important yes ever said in the story of Pandora, because the rest is history.

9:15Jesper Nielsen: Jesper, are you a good salesman? No, I'm very good at motivating people. When I sell myself, I'm way too kind. I don't have the patience to negotiate, so I just go, yeah, let's do it. So I create scenarios where sale can happen, whether that's branding or whether it's other things. But as a sales guy, I'm not a sales guy. I'm not the guy sitting with a pencil like Jordan Belfort or something like this. And so how did you kind of take that skill, maybe not being a sales guy, but kind of opening up those conversations, how did you take that of taking Pandora to sell it across Europe? It was very hard for me because I'm introvert.

9:53So for me to start going out to a customer and knock the door, the most difficult exercise you can do in the world is cold canvas. It is by far the one that gives me the most fear. And I'm completely drained from energy by doing it. But I needed to get over that point of view. So I stepped over that line and as soon as I could get out of it, I left it and let professional sales guys do these things for me but I needed to do it myself in the beginning to make this work so very often as entrepreneurs we have to accept to be uncomfortable and do really uncomfortable things I hated it I can't even answer the phones I'm that introvert you know so for me to find the sales and then I became the sales manager you understand and then I got the sales reps running and at the end I run this two, three, four hundred, five hundred million dollar company then you don't need to go and knock the doors anymore.

10:47And just to give the viewer context, when you say canvas, does that mean going door to door to different jewelry stores? Acquisition. In the beginning, you struggled with that. Is that correct? No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, you go into a German jewelry store, you don't speak the language, you don't know anything about jewelry, you're trying to sell. And can you imagine German jewelry guys, they're conservative. They've been having the third generation, you know, sitting in their own house having the newest Mercedes, they're not hungry at all. They're selling Rolex and diamonds and all kinds of things.

11:16And there comes little Jesper, you know, knocking the door and saying, I have something beautiful for you here from Denmark. What kind of Indian shit is that, they tell me, yeah? And that's the one thing I find fascinating is because the jewelry business is incredibly competitive. You know, there is brands that have been around for generations. Hundreds of years. And so how did you get people to actually care about Pandora going against these legacy brands? The good thing about when you say that is I didn't know that. So I didn't know how difficult it was. That can sometimes be an advantage because otherwise I would have given up right away.

11:46But you're right. When it comes to jewelry brands, we are by far the youngest. We are actually created in 1982, but that's just the business. It's not Pandora. Pandora is done in 2001, 2002. And that means that we are very young. When we compare to other jewelry brands like Tiffany, Bulgari, Chopard, they are all in the high end of the level and they existed for generations. but sometimes it's very healthy that a person comes from the outside who has absolutely no knowledge about what's going on and just walks straight into it with all his passion and all his skills and makes something happen that cannot happen because pandora if you put it into an ai today they say that's not possible not what are the chances is there are no chances can you explain how 1982 was how the company was ultimately created it was just a little jewelry store that Mr.

12:35Enevolsen, our founder, he created. So he had a little jewelry store of 18 square meters the first 20 years. So it was nothing. And then came Pandora. And if you ask Mr. Enevolsen, our founder, he never visited a Pandora store because he was the production guy. He was the goldsmith, you know, the handwork. And you need to have a good product. And he was the guarantee that our quality was always second to none. But the key to it was, of course, the sales and the branding, you know, because there was, when we were at our highest, we had a 99 more than 99 100 knockoffs of pandora tedora andora all kind of things but we kept pushing and now today there's only one left that's pandora when you see that bracelet today when the girl and the women see this bracelet they say even you guys know it you know how far you get out when even guys from austin they know it but we can also go to australia and they would know it as well or to south korea they will also know it or we could go to columbia they would also know Okay, so I want to get into the branding in a little bit, but I want to touch on the aspect that what I'm so fascinated is you've got three of you guys.

13:39Somebody's focusing on the American market. You're focusing on Europe. Somebody's in Asia. What were the biggest difficulties in building the company in Europe as opposed to the other two? Like did one country or part of the world take off way faster than the other? Yeah, of course, Germany. And what lessons did you guys learn from Germany? Because I built it in Germany, you know, and two years later, it's always hard to be the first one. Later on, you just put the mirror up to that market and then you start to expand. You cannot build a global brand out of small countries. You need to go to a capital market.

14:08It could be the US, UK, Germany, France, some place where there are some kind of capital revenue. And that's why we were lucky. We didn't know again what we were doing. But I went to Germany. And Germany, I could make 1 ,734 customers. And if I would have done it in Denmark, I would have had 221. and it would have mean absolutely nothing. So again, to get the first market done, that is hard and difficult. That's the hard miles, you know. It's sleeping three years in your car. It's driving 200 ,000 kilometers a year in the German Autobahn and just moving, moving, moving. No, no, no. At the end, get the yes, move on to the next city.

14:48And that's when people talk to me about German geography. I think I could map the cards blindly because I was in every single city in Germany. just working hard and building my business every single day. So the hard mile and why Pandora happens today is because we took the very hard miles very deep down in the heart of Germany.

15:08Jesper Nielsen: Jesper, you brought up saying that you guys sold too early. Why do you feel that that was the case? Some people might say, hey, a good payday is a good payday. But what is your philosophy on that? I still regret it every day. I lost the vote to one. I didn't want to sell. but the two other my two other founders are significantly older than me that means that they're my age what i am now and if i have to be honest when i look at myself now and i if i would get that offer in my age today that we got at that time i would probably also accept it but i was 41 42 living the fucking time of my life you know running the whole jewelry business in europe private jet football clubs handball clubs lounges in all the football stadiums around just flying around having a fucking good time and running a business that I built up myself from scratch.

15:58And you know when you build a business up from scratch, you know it. You know every single movement in the whole company the whole time. So I didn't want to sell. But my two co-founder colleagues or founder colleagues in co-founder, they wanted to cash out. And when you lose a boat to one, you lose. But I still regret it. I miss Pandora every single day when I get up. I continued in the company, tried to continue. after we sold it. But, you know, the difference of being an entrepreneur, running your own business and come into a corporate C25 listed company in Denmark, that was difficult for me.

16:33You know, suddenly I got these from Outlook Express, these meetings and all this shit. You know, I'd never had that for many, many years. I just, yes, but I didn't even have a title for God's sake. There's over 8 billion people in the world. How many people would you say know the brand Pandora? We estimate that 4.5 billion people would know Pandora, Which is one in every two people. Yeah. No pair door. Everybody in the capitalistic part of the world, they wouldn't know it. Our weak spots are still the two big Asian countries where we still see some potential, China and India, and the whole African continent.

17:06Otherwise, there is no country left where you could go to. But you don't get brand recognition to one in two people unless you have some incredible branding tactics that were able to take you there. What did you learn about the branding aspect? because we were talking about this earlier that it's one thing to start a business and a company, but to build a brand is where you create raving fans and customers that come back time and time again. What was the branding aspect of building Pandora that you think enabled the brand to take off and turn into a billion-dollar company? It's actually very simple.

17:34It's crazy because people are writing big books about it and talking about it. But I actually, very fast after I got the yes to say and I can sell Pandora abroad, and I got the first like little feeling of successes, I already, you know, in my head and tried to tell to everybody who was laughing at me, we only have two objectives left in the Pandora business to prevent us to being the biggest in the world. And that is that every woman in the world should know about us and every woman in the world should have access to bias, two simple measures. And every decision we make from here on and every single part of the company every single day when we go to work has to be focused back to these two things so that are the only two objectives that we have to taste every time we make a decision is it helping to get more women to know the business and is it helping to get us to be more accessible to buy accessibility is distribution awareness is marketing how did you create the awareness though because it's one thing to make that you know first of all we had to make it in germany from scratch you know from Absolutely scratch, you know.

18:41And you have to build it off from the beginning because I said I won the German jewelry stores. They were like kings and queens of their local town. So what I did is I started to do local advertising with them. I supported them with a 50 % contribution and when they were doing advertising, giving them more products, making all kind of events in the local city. So you build it off from all the small German cities. Later on, we moved into the bigger German cities like Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich, and all these. and then we slowly grew up. And about 2006, like four or five years into the market, I took a huge risk because we had to go to the biggest trade fair in Europe and I got a little bit traction, but not really yet.

19:22But I took a big chance. I booked four advertising in the biggest fashion magazines at that time, InStyle, Borda and some of the other big ones and it costed like 50 ,000 euro each. I didn't have the money. But I said to them, I booked these pages, but I want you to deliver 100 magazines to me at the trade fair. So I got all my reps standing there and say, see where we do all the advertising. Make it till you fake it, you know. So what the fuck? They're doing in style. They're doing all the big magazines. These guys, they're crazy. And luckily I sold so much. So 30 days later I could pay for these ads.

19:58Maybe some of them was a little bit late and the Germans don't like that. But sometimes you have to take a risk, you know. But that was a part of pushing it all up. And then suddenly the jewelry store saw us completely differently because we were advertising in all the big magazines. Later on, I did the same trick in 2008 where we were stalling at an awareness degree about 40-45%. I used all the mechanisms I could in magazines. So I said, let's try to do TV commercials. Everybody said, nobody ever did TV commercials with jewelry. That's why we have to do it then. So in six weeks, I spent 17 million euro, and I pushed the awareness from Pandora to 40, 41, to 68%.

20:39My stockists, my stores were completely soaked. It was towards Christmas 2008. They were soaked from all the products. So you have to, even when you go, you have to take the chances and spend money sometimes you don't have. It's very dangerous. And sometimes you have to call some of your suppliers and say, I may be a little bit late, you know. I never fulfilled a budget. Ever. I never reached a budget. And I built the biggest jewelry company in the world, but I never reached a budget. I always tried to move further and higher. In the beginning, you were going door to door, probably talking to a lot of mom and pop.

21:19And I got to be speaking very well German at the end, I tell you. Yeah. I'm fluent in German. I love it. And I know you're probably having a lot of conversation with maybe smaller chains, one to two stores. But eventually, in order to get to the scale of where you are today, you have to make some big retail partnerships. Was there any partnerships in the beginning that really stand out to you that really kind of catapulted the company? That's very important. And what are those conversations like? So we go back in the days. And again, I told you about this marketing tool I made with these magazines.

21:48Because at that show also came the big jewelry guys, you know, from the big chains. the biggest change in Europe is called Christ and it's German it has 250 stores in America you will have K K Jewelry's I think it's the biggest and sales it's the same company but you know we have the same in Europe so that was the biggest one and they came and they knocked on my door came can we have a look at it and I said yes you can you know and can you come to a meeting to with us in two weeks I think I find the time to come and I come all by myself you know no suit nothing jeans t-shirt like and they say this is the product they're all talking about yes it is what is it because we're discussing whether we should make the product ourselves or we should actually carry the brand but we could see that you do a lot of advertising all the jewelry stores are talking about you yeah we have a good sellout and blah blah blah yeah can we test it i said of course you can test there's no problem yeah we want to test it in 28 stores in the Rhein-Ruhr area to start with.

22:51I said, yes, let's do that. But we need to be able to give it back if it's not functioning. Of course, no problem. And we need this and this profit. Of course, I said, way too high profit. Normally, I would never give it. But I said, yes. Before that year was over, they had it in all their stores. And I could go to every one of my colleagues around the world and say, listen, guys, we're completely stuck by Chris now. So you think it's difficult than to sell to the guy in Holland, to sell to Strolliore in Italy, to sell to Kay in America. No. So you have to put yourself in a position where they almost come and ask you.

23:25But still, they rip off your pants in the beginning because you have to give them huge discounts, all kind of things, you know. That is the game. And later on, when I look at that deal, it's by far the worst deal I ever made in terms of, and I had to try to get it back later. I couldn't because I promised them. And of course, many of the people that helped me in the beginning, I didn't change their deals going forward, you know, because, you know, they helped me to become who we are. And then you don't come and push back on them. It's some of those legacy contacts where it's like, hey, you scratch my back, I'll take care of you.

23:55I still beat them in Mallorca, you know, they come there. When I think of just this era, especially the 2010s, the first thing I think of is that's really the start of e-commerce. And that's when the massive social media platforms are really starting to hit a stride. you know, Facebook, Instagram. How important was direct response and e-commerce and the growth of Pandora? I never forget our first e-commerce project because that was in 2008. And I was, you know, very innovative and looking into it and made a big, took some of the best ones in the country and then tried to know how is this going to work and all this.

24:31And I tell you, it was one of the biggest failures we ever had, you know. And what we did not know is that jewelry and e-commerce is a very difficult combination. It is the product in the world that sells the most words online. So that means that we need to have these stores. We made that. That's why you see the Pandora stores everywhere. And you probably don't see us that much online. It's because women, they like to touch it and feel the jewelry. Get into the Pandora universe. And, you know, we treat them with the bags and the gift packages like they bought something from Tiffany, you know. Even though it's only a Pandora, which is affordable luxury.

25:07Pandora is cheap. I don't know if you're aware of it, but it's cheap. It's$60 for a bracelet, you know? So basically, we never really touched on that. And if you go in and look at Pandora today's social media pages, compared to you guys, you would laugh your ass off. You guys did something in the jewelry business I don't think had really ever been done before. And I don't even know if a lot of people know this. Not done since. What I want to ask you is that the business model that people actually don't realize with Pandora is when you think about the jewelry business, you think of it as you're going to buy a bracelet, you're going to buy a necklace for a one-off purchase you guys had a subscription model with pandora why did you even think about selling jewelry on a subscription model and was it an effective uh adaptation for the business as well and get a little bit of luck yeah we call it the pandora math as you guys you refer to there yeah because a bracelet i said cost only like 60 but the what is the secret about pandora what the women all know but we don't know is that they need to buy small charms to put on the bracelet.

26:07And that means that they come back in the next 36 months, they will come back 17 to 18 times and buy again. So when we sell a bracelet for$60, we end up having sold for$1 ,400 before it's over. And then 17 % of them, they continue with a second bracelet. And another 5 % continue with a third bracelet. That's what we call the Pandora mat. And the beauty of this is that at the moment, every single day, we are adding another 160 ,000 women to the planet. And they turn 50 in one day again. And what happens then? Then they're back as Pandora customers. 52 % of all women in the world, they like Pandora.

26:45And at a certain point in their life, they will achieve it. So our budgets now is like a clockwork demographic. We know exactly what happens. And the profits, 88%. Still? Still. It's increased. Even with the tariffs and everything that have gone on in the States? We are irresistible to all kind of shit. No financial crisis. We grew our business straight through the financial crisis. You know, if you have a business model that's strong enough, then all these different kind of curves and tariffs and all, it's just bad excuses for bad business model. Yeah. Because if you have a business model that works, there is no, oh, it's because of this.

27:26Why are you coming with all these excuses, I always say? There's something wrong with your concept. It should be resistant to these things. You've got to explain this to me, though, because I can't even grasp the fact that the margins in your business were so good. I know that you said early on with your first jewelry endeavor, right, you'd buy from the Italian manufacturer for a dollar, and you'd end up being able to sell that thing for$24. How, first of all, is that Italian manufacturer able to make and sell it for a dollar? And they also make money. Yeah, like how is this possible? Tell me why the margins, how they're able to be that effective and strong.

27:56Because women think jewelry is very expensive. You think as well, correct? It is only when we go into the very gold jewelry. The only thing, when you can keep yourself away from gold and diamonds, the rest of jewelry costs absolutely nothing to make. And it's very difficult for people to see the difference. The woman would know. But if I would put two rings up here, one with a zirconia and one with a real diamond, I, as a Pandora guy, couldn't see the difference. And that's the problem with the product. and you can't see which brand it is either. You can't see whether this diamond is from Tiffany or from Van Cleef or from Beavers or who they could be from.

28:41But what you can see is a bracelet from Pandora. That you recognize because that is a product segment that we own. The rest is one big battle. And also if you go in and look deeper into the jewelry companies, not the retail companies like Signet, that is the biggest American one. He's not doing that well. I think he ran with an EBITDA of 2%, but the rest of us, we do really, really well.

29:09Jesper Nielsen: You brought up the business model. You know, when I look at Pandora, that's a very durable brand. Like that's a brand that's been around for decades. You made it in 2010 probably. And there's so many, you know, just every day, there's people with merch companies and jewelry companies and just products in general that come and they're kind of like a fad and they're only around for a little bit maybe they catch hot they're a trend and then they go so what was the key that allowed pandora to have such a runway as a company it was the product firstly you know we this product we haven't had any new product in the jewelry business since the 50s more or less because a solitaire ring a diamond ring a necklace you know it's been around forever but the pandora was a whole new segment of jewelry and then we added the branding.

29:56And that I think was the key, that we had the courage or I had the courage to take that into be a brand. That is what makes it exist today. Because all the others that had the same product, they all died because they didn't get the branding done. And branding in the beginning is meaning that you spend, you still stay profitable, but you spend everything else in marketing and branding for the first many, many years of your business. What I always find fascinating is how roles and responsibilities change over time. You know, you go from the guy going to the doors yourself to the sales manager. But as the company grows, so does your responsibilities.

30:38What did your day-to-day look like? The most easy job I had was at the end. To be the CEO is the most easy job in the world because everybody does everything for you. It's very easy. You know your ship, you build it. and you just so at the end I was feeling very bored because you know the business just the model was running to be the CEO of Pandora today is the most easy job in the world it's very easy because it's running you just don't make any stupid things people still do it but just keep it as you go keep it going so I started doing other things I started to to go into football I was longingly involved in the the biggest football club in my country and I created from bottom up there we have a sport in europe called handball and i created the best team in the world from bottom up from league five up to be the best in the world over six seven years also as a side project besides pandora when it got to be too boring so to speak but the the most difficult job was in the beginning by far the most easy job was at the end at the end i sat in my fly bridge in my York and my 30 meter yacht could run it from a SMS because I had good guys doing it.

31:46And I didn't, we're not Elon Musk. We're not building rockets here. We're just selling jewelry. It's not complicated. I think you might be the first entrepreneur we've had on the show that specialized in the jewelry business. So I think this is a very adequate question to ask you because typically when you ask a lot of entrepreneurs about, you know, their best investment advice for people that are making money, wanting to deploy that and make it work for them, you hear oftentimes real estate, you hear, you know, tech, you hear people talk about investing in AI or the stock market. I want to get your thoughts on investing in the diamond markets and gold and silver, because even though, you know, Pandora could be considered low ticket jewelry compared to like what people would be investing in the diamond market.

32:22How do you feel about that whole market and world overall as an investment for people to put their money in and hopefully it appreciates one day? No, stay out. It's not. This business is settled. It's run by clever people, by the Indians, run in Anverm out of the markets with the diamonds and the gold. Very small margins left. Then you have to create something from the very bottom like we did. Create the brand in silver. And the reason why we can be so profitable is because we do silver. And silver profits are extremely high. So unless you have a marketing crazy guy who's willing to sleep three years in a car and go ballistic, then you should stay far away from it.

32:59What culture was the toughest to negotiate with? Which what? Which culture of people was the toughest to negotiate? Again, I didn't know it. Well, of course, it's the Germans, you know. Yeah. So, compared to you Americans, you Americans, you're all about the dollars, you know. The Germans, they are about consistency. They're controlling that everything is working right. The Germans, they find mistakes in everything. In everything they do. So, that's why they build the best cars in the world, because they check everything 10 times. They say, making my life in order is half my life. It's because they really, the Germans, they spend half their life making sure that everything is okay.

33:33You Americans, you run after the first dollar. is not working you're on to the next ones but of course i had a lot of fun traveling all around the world on my journey and meet the different cultures how do the chinese do business how do the indians do business how do the south americans how do the russians do and of course i dealt with all of them and that was very very learnful for you but you guys the americans you're crazy you're crazy and when i came to america the first time doing the business it's a fantasy land here what they're crazy. They're buying like crazy. And just to give you a little bit of numbers on the jewelry industry in America, in Germany, the average spend per head is about$44, 44 euro per capita.

34:15When we go to America, it's$174 per capita. So it's three and a half times more per person. And you're 330 million people plus the Canadians that are semi-crazy. And we are 80 million in Germany so of course when we got to America and we made that work in eight and nine it took off like a rocket you know because that was insane why did you move to Dubai yeah Dubai yeah you've been here for how long I've been here for a couple of years now yeah why did you move here I actually started coming here already back in the first time I was here was in 2012 I went back from I had a layover from Bangkok going back here and I liked it I stayed at the Atlantis It was pretty new at that time.

34:58I came back in 2015 and stayed like six months in the marina. I said, I like it. I like the YPM. My God. But, you know, I was having at that time the biggest tax cases of my country back in Denmark. So I was very focused on, and that's just to say that it's more difficult to win tax cases than to build a Pandora, just so you know that, in a European country. But I got fascinated by the dynamics down here. And then I have lived many years in Spain, in Mallorca. and I really liked it, you know. But I got a push like a couple of years ago and say, let's move down here. And I can tell you now in my age, that's the best decision I ever made in my life.

35:39Because the people who come from the north and live in Spain, they come because they finish their journeys. And a profile like me, an entrepreneur like me, I never finish my journey. I always have a new journey going on. at the moment i'm running the biggest court case in the world i'm spending 24 hours a day with that we're fighting about 1.3 billion in the court now what are you doing exactly we're fighting because when i sold my pandora i sold it at a very high price i thought but there was also a bonus attached to it and then i found out like six years later through a whistleblower that they fucking treated me they didn't show me the right numbers and i and pandora are big numbers you know so we got the CEO and the management to give us the real documents and now we're back in court because you didn't pay me the right amount of money don't cheat me I said so now we are fighting the last two two and a half years and the court the case will come on next year in Denmark it's the biggest court case ever in Denmark and it's the biggest ongoing arbitration case in the world I love this 1.3 billion 24 hours pushing pushing pushing finding whistleblowers you know right now in just two and a half months there's a documentary coming out in Denmark in my home country, three episodes following, they've been following me in this three hours and it comes in the BBC in April where they followed how I found out that they cheated me, how you got the witnesses to get out and tell the truth and all this, it has its own Hollywood movie, this is a crazy story but back to Dubai, Dubai is the place where you as a businessman can feel the most free to focus on what's most important.

37:20Because when you do big business, you have to work with the authorities. You have to work with the techs. You have to work with all different kind of things. Here, they leave you alone. And I can promise you they do it because I haven't heard from them. I moved my companies down here in 2019. I haven't heard from them. And that means that I can focus 100 % in what's really important and not fight the RAS, not fight anybody else, but just look forward and focus on your business. And that is a gift for an entrepreneur because I spent a lot of my life fighting things that was not meaning anything to my business.

37:57So perfectly right. The man who invented this, I always say, I thought that Elon Musk was the biggest entrepreneur in the world. He is still amazing us every single day. But he's not. It's the guy here. Because Elon, he made a car company. He made a space company. He made a grok. He made AI. But this man, he simply built the perfect country. Can you imagine every single aspect of the country is functioning? I can't find one mistake here. Not one. Safety perfect. No tax, lifestyle, fantastic, health, perfect, zero mistakes. So one people can build a whole company, but another man, he can build a whole country.

38:44Just perfect. How much was your personal sale of Pandora worth? 350 when I sold, but now we get another number next year, yeah, because I didn't get the right number in the beginning. So we will see next year, but maybe I'll reach the billion. That's my hope. When you were selling your company, if you could go back and change one thing about the contract within that negotiation, what would you change? I made one mistake. I left. Because the deal that I structured with them was that I got a huge payment. And then I didn't want to leave. So I said I still want to be a part of it. So I got a contract where I still get 49 % of the profit for the next eight years.

39:20And then I made a huge mistake. I left the company. I got angry with the new management. I said, you're fucking idiots. And entrepreneurs, I'm also, it was my own mistake. But I left that company, and I also then gave them the opportunity to cook the books. I was having a court case with them. Firstly, I lost it. That's life. I couldn't prove it. But then, knock, knock, whistleblowers. And they came with the documents and said, Jesper, you want the documents? I would like to see them, I said. What did those documents look like? Two different numbers. So they said one number to me when they had to do my final payment, and that showed a low profit.

40:01And then he showed me the real profit. So they cooked the books. They removed around two billion from the profit. They put it into another place. But he came out and he said, I have it. We were negotiating for six months. He was afraid they were going to kill him. But at the end, we got a negotiation and we got a deal. We got it done. I protected him. I still do. and he testified this year in court. He was in June, he was in the court in Denmark and he told it all, showed the documents in front of the judges. And now next year we go to the final arbitration that's going to decide which extra payment do these equity guys have to pay me for having taken over my business.

40:44If there's a young entrepreneur out there looking to sell their first company, what advice would you give them when it comes to the negotiations of exiting their company? It is about to protect yourself. So talk to other entrepreneurs who've been through this before, because these guys who's buying your companies, they're criminals. Expect that anyone who's trying to come and buy your companies, who comes from the money world, could be a private equity, could be a huge investor, they're criminals. So they would try to outmaneuver you in the contracts. So first of all, try to prevent to sell. Better borrow money, don't give away equity.

41:20And please don't give away 51%. because that is the key. So better than grow a little slower and don't push it and get the devil inside your business because they are bastards. And the second you get over 50%, it's not a question whether you're going to lose your business. It's a question when you're going to lose your business.

41:44Jesper Nielsen: So we get offers for people to want to invest in our company all the time. Of course, you do a great job, guys. It's one of the things where we're just kind of like, man, we don't know if we want to take outside investors because of things like this. Well, it's true. They are criminals. They don't give a shit about any of you. So why are private equities, guys? They should be forbidden. I was going to say, why are private equity people criminals? It should be forbidden because they do not come into your business in order to make your business better. They only come with one purpose, carried from the devil.

42:20and that's the chase for more profit more money and they don't care about you guys whether you have been traveling around the world fighting like crazy to make this happen they the second they don't need you anymore they throw you out the love is gone i always say and i could not even have imagined where pandora would be today if we wouldn't have slept with these devils because they are devils and i truly believe that if i had still run if i would still run pandora today will be having double the revenue and 50 % more EBITDA than they do. They can't run companies, first of all, and they want to come in and try to tell you what to do.

42:58They don't know a fucking shit, these guys. And if you get to know these guys and you really got to know some of them behind the scenes, they will show you how they cheat you. But they have a codex amongst them that they don't show how they cheat the entrepreneurs, but they do it, each one of them. The one who bought our company and he was the biggest private equity in Denmark. He bought about 100 companies. He destroyed 99. And one he won with, that was Pandora. So he had no fucking idea what he was buying. He's blind. He buys everything and hopes that something works. But when we build these brands and these big businesses, it's about human beings, about people.

43:38It's people who does it. So you have to keep them out of your business if you can. I got some rapid fires for you. Come on. Okay? And so how we typically do these is keep it to a sentence or two or less. I know you're a soccer guy. So am I. La Liga or Premier League? Which one is better? La Liga. That's a hot take right there. Why? Because it's better football. Who are the better business people? The Danes, the Germans, or the Emiratis? The Danes. Is it harder to make 100 million or to keep it? Keep it. What's more addictive, making money or spending money? Making money. the best exercise in the world.

44:17What's one luxury you owned that turned out to be completely worthless? My yacht. And if you could have one five-minute conversation with your younger self, what would you tell him? Stay loyal to yourself. Keep fighting. And do not let the barsters take you down. If you could relive one day of your life, what would it be? The day we sold the company. And my last one for you, Jesper, if Pandora called tomorrow and offered you the CEO position, would you take it? The answer is yes.

44:52Jesper Nielsen: I got one too. If not the jewelry business, what business would you go into? It doesn't matter which business as long as the task is big enough. That's hard. They tell him. He's got to pick one. Tell him. You got to pick one though. I want to compete with Elon on the Rockets. Wow. The Rockets. Why that? That is the future. The biggest companies in the world in the future will be the companies that can bring us to other planets. And the beauty, I always had, I had a very famous speech in 2007 at a Pandora convention where I already foreseen what happened, what our revenues would be. And I said, we only have one challenge that we cannot grow unless we find life on other planets.

45:32So I could help doing that.

45:34Jesper Nielsen: Do you think Elon has any competition for that? I know Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin and there's like, you know. I don't have his passion, you know. Yeah. It's all about the passion. So I never felt threatened from anybody in the jewelry industry. I never looked at any of my competitors. They gave me flying fuck what they were doing. Oh, you have to look at your competitors. Why? Do you think they can compete with me? Can they outwork me? They go home at four o 'clock. I'm standing at a jewelry show somewhere telling a new story, you know. So I outwork them all. You know, I'm smarter. I'm harder working.

46:07I'm more visionary. I'm better at getting financing. I'm better at getting everything what you need to do the business. So no matter whether I was running my sports teams, whether I was fighting my tax cases, you know, I won the two biggest tax cases in my country. And everybody said he don't have a chance. I love it when you say it. I love when you say you don't stand a chance because that's when I'm going to outperform you and show you this is possible. How much money did you pay in taxes? is oh my god this is terrible i'm from denmark you know we are the highest tax country in the world you won't even believe how much we pay how much do you pay 56 of our income is tax and then we have 25 that vat you probably paid over 100 million yeah much over my years my god i can't even i don't even want to think about it but uh but it's it's it's crazy what a system you You know, you tax people who actually achieve something.

47:05And in Denmark, they hate us. They hate the rich people in Denmark, you know. It's socialist and poor. It's the end of the world. We will not survive in Europe unless we change our attitude. So what exactly happened with your tax cases? Yeah, they came. I paid my tax. And then two days after I listed the company with the IPO, it says on all the newspaper, Jesper got billions. So knock, knock. two guys from the tax authorities coming sitting six months going through everything they couldn't find anything I just went through to complete due diligence is you know you know when you list a company an IPO you get due diligence till you can't go no further you know they look at every little single piece of paper so I was not afraid of them and then they invented something we simply just invented say but we see this differently that the law says I said what are you talking about we see this differently as losses and I of course I had a huge ego and I didn't I said go fuck yourself you saw the scene in jordan belford in the football wall street that was jesper so fuck you off you're gonna get the fuck out of here you idiots don't do that to the tax authorities i tell you guys fuck sake they came back and they took everything i owned my cars my boats my bank accounts my shares they took everything i owned i had nothing 19th of july 2012 nothing and then I had to show what I was made of.

48:28So I made the money to run the cases and I want it all back again. But I needed to make 7 million euro in a short period of time in order, you have any idea what these tax cases they cost? And first of all, they just took everything you own. But there I showed to everybody what I was made of. You cannot take me down. I will come back. And in front of Supreme Court, I want everything back again. So let them take you down. But you just fight back harder, you know. Don't cheat me. I come back harder after you, you know. And that's what I learned over my life, that I can manage every single situation that happens to me.

49:06How did you spend that day when you won it all back? That was the 4th of October, 2018. Yeah, my family was crying because we're a family business. And it worked like this, that it's, when you get the verdicts in Supreme Court, they will get it, and they say, we will put the verdict that day at 12 o 'clock. And of course, outside my house, my family's house in that time I lived in Mallorca, was all the TV standing, of course. And then the verdict should come at 12, and the whole country was, of course, sitting waiting. What happened in this case? And all morning and all the morning shows, they said, yes, but don't have a chance to win, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

49:44And my lawyer said, also, we're going to win. And I said, we're going to win. and then 1201 a journalist I know very well he sat in the court and he texted me on a text message you win and I said to my family I can't I kind of get the goosebumps when I said I can't tell you now whether it's true or not but this guy from the television he just texted me you won and we were sitting watching the news the Danish television news the like CNN where it comes then yeah and then like one and a half minute later our lawyer calls and says we win and then at the same time it says breaking news in all the tv channels yes but wins the billion dollar court case in the billion dollar danish crones court case in supreme court and my family we completely bursted out in their happiness and joy because what these did to us over the years trying to killers but at the end fight till the end supreme court will give you justice so it's true when they say that that more money brings a lot more problems though oh don't worry a lot of worries you know it was but it was it's the ups and downs and now when i when i reach my age now and i tried all this built this company run the biggest sports teams of my country you know having the biggest tax case i'm now running the biggest tax case again a court case again you just feed your unbeatable, you know, and it doesn't matter what hits me tomorrow morning.

51:07I'll fix it. I'll fix it. Jesper, we like to end these podcasts off with two questions for our guests. I'll start and Jack will end it right here. Jesper, if the four of us sitting down here today were to die tomorrow and you can leave one more message, one more guiding principle with the younger generation, what would that be? Never, ever fucking give up. There is always a solution to win every single battle in this world. I love it.

51:32Jesper Nielsen: And Jesper, with the life and legacy that you've led so far, how do you want to be remembered? I'm just getting started, you know. I don't never see myself on how I'm going to be remembered. I always said when I was a young man that I hope when I die one day, I will get the front page of the newspaper of my country. I don't have to worry about that any longer, you know. But I always just feel I'm getting started, you know. I believe that the journey that I've been through now was meant to be because I had to do something really really big in the future I don't know what it is but I feel I'm just getting prepared for something you know I create huge companies I visited the whole world I fought big tax cases I ran big sports teams I had so much resistance but I keep being more and more resilient all the time so So there's a reason why Jesus Christ, He decided for me to walk through that journey with 57 now.

52:29What is it that I'm made to do later on? That is always the question I put myself, but that's what I'm preparing myself for every single day. Are you a big believer in God? Every day. A lot, a lot, a lot. He helps me every single day. And He holds me by the hand. If you do things right, guys, if you do things right, don't cross the lines, then He will reward you. I don't know whether it's the Jesus Christ or it's the Holy God or it's or karma or what it is but I've noticed in my long life that when I start to touch the boundaries and doing things that is not really good you know in every aspect of life I am being hard punished but when I keep doing things right the whole time towards your family towards your friends towards everybody around you you'll get rewarded some way always so I'm very very calm when I lay my head on my pillow now because I know I do things right and I don't have to worry because I've been taken good care of.

53:23I love it. Jesper, this was a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being with us today. No problem. We appreciate you. Welcome back to Dubai anytime. Yes, sir. And for everybody tuning in right now, be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content coming every week to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. We're going to put the links down in the description for you guys to get access to Jesper's social media. That way you guys can follow along with him and the wonderful things that he's building. And lastly, we're going to put a link down in the description to get access to the School of Mentors, the number one entrepreneur community in the entire world.

53:51We can't wait to see you on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.