I built a $2bn Company By Paying Everybody The Same As Me - Nicola Kilner

0:00In a world of glossy beauty marketing and corporate facades, Nicola Kilner built a multi-billion empire by doing the exact opposite. Radical honesty about everything from pricing to personal tragedy. As CEO of Decium, she transformed a startup into a global phenomenon through controversial moves like plain packaging, scientific product names, and publicly calling out industry pricing BS. She shared the heartbreaking story of losing her co-founder, Brandon, while building Decium. But that turned out to be just the beginning of her extraordinary journey. Now, Nicola is finally ready to reveal the raw truth about leading through trauma, transforming corporate culture, and what it really means to build a billion-dollar company with kindness at its core.

0:45And why, after all this success, she's stepping down as CEO. Nicola, you were holding a three-week-old baby when you got a call that changed everything. Tell me about that moment. So, you know, we'd been through an incredibly hard 2018, and I think it's very it's just the worst possible situation when someone you love like things are happening that you can't even articulate or describe because you're not quite sure and because that's what's so difficult about mental health there isn't a diagnosis where everyone comes to you someone gets cancer at least like there's a diagnosis there's typically a treatment plan that everyone gets behind when it's mental health like there's never that point of you know a blood test or a scan that says okay this is what you have is it's so much speculation and effectively you're you know the person you care about has a brain who's telling them something entirely different to what you think you're seeing so 2018 had just honestly been like the year from hell um and something that was so unexpected like never saw it coming um so then obviously towards the end of 2018 in in October we'd kind of reached rock bottom and obviously that was when the court order happened when then Brandon was removed as from the company but when that happened it was very much a this is temporary it was just a temporary order and I think everyone still had this hope that okay you know they always say you have to reach rock bottom so everyone's like okay maybe this is what he needs and then once he gets better like he can come back into the company so you know before then I was obviously co-CEO and that was the point when I was made sole ceo but just temporary like and it was always like just until brandon's better and obviously during this point i was obviously heavily pregnant with with mila so then mila was born at the end of december december 29th um and then you know in january it's been it's very difficult unless anyone's been through this when someone you love is suffering and and actually since i've started talking about it like so many people have reached out to me and actually like it is a very big thing where and again I think it's one of those situations because there's no one that we feel more sorry for than actually the person suffering and I think because we all just care so much about that person we often don't talk about the suffering of others but I think since being a little bit more vocal on this topic the amount of people that have reached out that actually like it's their husband their wife their mother their brother their sister like someone in their family and actually it really does take such an impact um so we'd obviously just been through such a tricky period and you know there's it was on my mind 24 7 like I'd cry all the time just thinking like gosh like how can we help him what can we do and we we got a press inquiry through saying can you confirm the reports that Brendan's died so I remember our PR this just came to like our general press inquiries so I remember it getting forwarded to me and and I was just like no can't be like surely not but anyway I sent it to Stephen who's our CEO just saying like look this has just come through like I don't even know how to try and verify what they're saying and I think for me this was probably about lunchtime so it's maybe like 7 a.m in in Canada so Stephen said look I'll go to the police station on the way into the office and just see if anyone knows anything and then this was obviously all on text and then you know maybe 30 minutes later he rang me and you know as soon as you see someone ringing when you have a text message relationship I was like no I just knew and I remember I just like had me on me and I just remember crying but but actually just being in disbelief and shock because it's kind of even though you know it you know we're all gonna die one day you still just never think it's going to happen well it's also out of the blue yeah but But actually, I think more than even just processing it, I think I just went into what do we need to do?

4:42Because I was so conscious that, okay, if the press know about this, I'm like, does his partner, like, do his friends, do our team know about it? Like, this is going to leak very quickly, especially because, you know, it's already, like, within our team members who've ever seen this email. So I remember just grabbing my laptop, like, writing the comms, like, ringing Estee Lauder, like, telling them that what happened. and you kind of just go into this i don't know like it's so strange like with even thinking you're thinking somehow your brain just knows what to do and like i look back on the email i sent the team like even the next day i had no recollection of writing it you're kind of just in this gotta get through it mode and then i mean thankfully i'd already got a passport for mila like you know the day she was born i think it was like register like get to get to the passport office um because you know we had to fly out to toronto just a few days later um for his service and and again i think what was very unique about our situation and ultimately part of what made decium you know when we talk about the family culture we had like brandon wasn't just a colleague or a founder like he was a family to all of us um and like even in his passing you know like when we we saw his will like every person he'd left anything to was decium like that was his family and I think you know so often we hear this like family mentality at work but like this was truly someone who like was he'd employed his friends his friends were he'd made friends with people through work so it's just very difficult when you lose someone but then I don't know it's interesting how your your body and brain just without thinking you just kind of act in the way that you know is needed for that moment so most CEOs get such a long time in preparation often to become CEO and so what were the first key decisions that you actually had to make um so so in October the the first kind of couple of things I did which Desi wouldn't be here without making these so two of the most like just people who've had the biggest impact on the company was Stephen Kaplan our COO and Dion Cullinan our chief brand officer and in the year of 2018 everyone got fired multiple of times including myself and you know it was part of just what we were going through you'd get an email and then you know maybe the next day it'd be forgotten you'd be like hang on am i am i fired am i yeah being fired by your co-ceo is a lot yeah i'd be pretty livid if joel fired me well in the first you know like when things first happened i was like you know and i obviously had like a couple of months out of the company then i came back and and again like when you deal with someone in this like you're getting emails when they they make no rational sense then the next day it's forgotten you're kind of just you but you're you're afraid as well like i mean these emails as well are like cc to the whole company they're being posted on social media everything is so public you you see that you've been tagged in an instagram post you're like oh my god like what am i about to open and you're quite a private person generally speaking for sure and you know and it's difficult when you know things are being posted and you know there's no truth in them but then you know there's a whole like there's no smoke without fire but you're like actually this is so absurd some some of this and again i think that's one of the the challenges around like mental health and how we perceive it particularly on the suffering of kind of those around um but anyway steven and dion have been two of the people who'd also been like in in and out and at that moment they were out um and also partly just because you know some people couldn't continue working like it was a very chaotic you would never put up with that environment in any business other than the fact it truly was a family and therefore you you kind of don't abandon your family so it's kind of been this mixture but bringing back Stephen and Dion and actually one of the things I'll always be so grateful to Stephen for and I think it's it's the way that I feel like leadership and work could be but sadly I don't think we'll ever be but I remember him saying to me so you know Stephen's in his 60s and obviously I was having a tiny baby and he was like i will cover i'll cover your work he was like my children have left home i'm you know he's very happy his wife danielle's incredible but he was like i'm i'm happy to work every hour god sends he was like you be like a mom and i'll like do the extra work yeah and for me that's such a sense of one you know when they say it takes a village to raise a child and you know we think about that support network at home but no one really thinks about that support network actually in the workplace and again i think back to you know the the 20 year old version of me who did work every possible hour and I was happy to work every evening every weekend to travel to now you know the the 35 year old mum of two version of me where I'm like actually no like I need this time back and I think wouldn't life be good where you know everyone has different periods of life where you can give 110 % to work or you can give 70 % because you know maybe you're caring for an elderly parent you're just going through something that imagine how good the world of work would be if you actually just covered for each other in those periods, which is what Desian was.

9:41And Stephen was, I couldn't have got through those years without Stephen being like, I will do the extra work so you can actually like be a mum too. So bringing back Stephen and Dion, like that was a key thing for the company and they really made it what it is today. It's interesting though, because I think we often talk a lot about this whole, like you mentioned, business is a family metaphor, metaphor where actually it's it can be a very negative metaphor because really it's a team you know there's a hilarious meme i saw recently which is you know uh the michael scott from the office with his other his boss and being like welcome to the family and like me shaking the hands with all the other the 67 other families i've interviewed with this week yeah it's a good example of i think when that stuff is true yeah it's an amazing unique example but in your experience I'd love to know, do you actually feel like that is a practical, is that practical CEO advice to other listeners leading to try and build a family?

10:41Or is it better to run a team and you happen to have been in a family? So I think there's a big difference. I think a startup can absolutely be be that kind of family. And like you, again, like when I think about the early years of Decium, like we couldn't afford any big salaries. So because of that, everyone was straight out of university, out of school, very little experience. So I think naturally, you know, everyone was in their early 20s so therefore we were traveling together you know like life was just so blended in one and particularly because that was also Brandon he'd be like why should we go for dinner like let's go to Niagara this weekend you know that was his kind of life that brought us all together so I think you know there was kind of a unique situation of the humans that were together then I also think what we went through with Brandon you know they always say like trauma bonds you in a way that you can't even imagine in a way of life so I feel like there was that true sense but I am very conscious of DesiM today and you know I don't particularly use that you know in the early days I'd be like you know hello our DesiM family and I don't do that anymore because it's very different we're 1500 people like people now come for a career they're here for a job and you know I still think we we care and we have kindness which obviously you know we we can touch on but yeah I don't want anyone to feel like cringe like I don't want to be you know you can't just because you get a job you're part of a family like it was something very unique to those early days It's just the culture we're in.

11:58So I think startup, it can work if you've got people that are really aligned and living and breathing it together. But I think as you get bigger, you can take values, but I don't think it's as much of a family. It's a double-edged sword as well. You know, I love my team at heights, but I can't stand my family. So it'd be an insult to them. I've heard so many people listening resonate with that. It's so true. Honestly, my family's awful. My team's fantastic. If I start calling them a family, they know they fucked up. the challenge is i think it can it can ultimately be weaponized can't it like the expectation is higher of the person because like we're a family and you should be you know in it but i think there is a unique thing at the beginning of businesses where a group of often similar age people come together on a shared mission and therefore they kind of all know that they're not getting the salaries but there's a long-term vision and so it does bind you more um and so yeah it's a it's an interesting one as companies get bigger how they they weaponize family um but you you said something interesting um which is that if the decim ceo job role was posted now you would be unqualified for the role even though you know you led the company to 1.7 billion exit and so how do you square that what do you view as the sort of traditional ceo so i think that the biggest thing i like i'm which is odd because i was very good at maths and i did at A-level, but I'm actually not that good at numbers.

13:23I think it just doesn't interest me. Better than Chris. You didn't even correct him when he undervalued your exit, which is, you know, over 2 billion. It's 5 billion Canadian dollars. I'm saying. In the last round. Yeah. He's still. Well, you're having a lot of debate about this, but it's okay. It's all right. If it makes you feel better, it was over 40 billion Vietnamese dong. Wow. Yeah. I did not know that. No. So you were saying. And, you know, so I think, for example, I couldn't go and be the CEO of any other company that had our revenue size and our employee size, because truly my skills are, and I feel like I've just kind of been winging it in many ways, but, you know, I'm just someone who is an internal optimist, someone who generally does care.

14:05And like, I know people say like, no, kind, but I generally do think I'm a good people and just good person that cares about people and kind of doing the right thing. And I love Decium as if like, it truly is my other child. and so I think those things are so unique that actually has made me be the CEO I am and I think I've also been very quick to recognize where my strengths aren't and again like it's always a little bit difficult I think about imposter syndrome and I think I'm actually just more of a realist of actually you know all of like the other you know we have pretty be our chief scientific officer Dion chief brand officer so many just incredible people they are 10 times better their pillar than I will ever be which again is then kind of just like a strange place to be a CEO because you know typically as you like have a different type of career you're normally more qualified than the person you know below you that's kind of how the ladder works you move up once you learn and you go to the next skill was I think because you know I became co-CEO when there's like 10 of us and then suddenly you become 1500 and you kind of missed that you know CEO training that obviously a qualified CEO would have.

15:13But I think I've just been always so fortunate that we have had the best team around us. And even like, you know, the numbers where, you know, you couldn't just give me a balance sheet or a P &L and I could understand it in the way a CEO should. But our VP of finance, Jessica, is the most phenomenal woman and she'll just sit me through and actually have that relationship where she can answer any of my questions, talk me through, like, where's the challenges, where we should be. So I think I've always surrounded myself with the expert matters and but yeah it just amazes me when i feel like i am just a happy good kind person that it's got me so far what's the what's super you must have there must be something about you that stands out well but then that's like i just don't know if it's you know like when i the team often like the they are so kind to me in their words and it's always about like my compassion my empathy how much i care but i don't know if any of that should be unique because i'm like that's just should be human nature what about decision making are you good at quickly making good decisions i don't know on that i think i too much see i see every side of things which isn't always a good thing i'd actually say one superpower which i feel like is you know well undiagnosed except on a probably a website when i did a survey but i probably would have adhd in terms of just a mind where's constantly thinking about so many different things you and all ceos well and but i read it's like 29 % of entrepreneurs have ADHD I'm like it's the best superpower you could have like ADHD like I'd be over the moon if my kids had it in terms of like actually there's so much good that can come with like having a mind that thinks about lots of different things but that can also be difficult on a team if you you don't you kind of lose focus and stuff which again I think is where it's good to have a team that don't necessarily have that same skill set like my I have the energy and I have the ideas and I have the passion.

17:00But then there's an incredible team that actually execute things. But yeah, probably decision making, actually. I don't think I'm that good at school. Were you good at school? Yeah. I'm like your solid, wouldn't revise and would easily get B's, some A's. Right. We are very different ADHD, me and you. But I would never revise. Like the thought, like to kind of have that focus, I would find hard. But I would try so hard. Right. I'm that ADHD. I tried really hard, but cramming. which worked for me yeah and i find like i'm so curious like when we we just went to south africa and we did the robben island tour um and and honestly on this tour it's like you know ask questions and i honestly counted there were 18 questions and i asked 17 of them and i had like 50 more questions you know when you're like you don't want to look like you and i'm like yeah i I mean, you did ask 17 out of 18.

17:49Yes. Why? Why? Like, this is an adult or a child. Like, this is an ex-convict walking you around the prison that Mandela spent 18 years in. And, like, this person was in prison with Mandela. I'm like, how does no one else have a hundred questions that they want to ask? I'm like, I want to take this guy for dinner just to, like, continue the conversation. He probably would have said yes. Yeah. But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, you just, that sense of curiosity. I don't know. I don't understand where well curiosity is definitely superpower yeah and definitely in a CEO role I think one thing that you know I've said to you in the past which I think always does come through in general is a lot of the successful female CEOs that we see are quite well known for not having necessarily stereotypical female traits right that sort of strength brashness abruptness you know the horrible part where people get called bossy for just doing exactly the same thing that men do these are not adjectives that anyone who spends even a minute with you would ever spend time you know they're just not you in any kind of way and i think that's the real i think that is your superpower is you uh you make people feel super comfortable super quickly um and i was so curious about like from the people that work with you you know there must be a downside to all this stuff there must be what is your what is your dark side i don't know you must feedback what is the most challenging bit of feedback you've had about that has made you feel like oh am i like that do you know i actually hate to say it because it's probably a bad thing but i don't think i've ever really had really the more i feel like i just i'm quick to self yeah i think i'm quick to self-reflect and i've always just put good good people around me like treated them fairly and and ultimately like i think you know part of being a good leader is probably relationships and communication i think are like two of the strongest things which i would say things that I'm good at and I think you know I think about my leadership style like it's definitely more servant leadership where like I'm here to like serve others and empower them they can make decisions um and you know like I was also quick to recognize you know we brought in a general manager two years ago because I was like actually you know we'd got to the size where supply chain there were just things where I couldn't offer the the decisions that I think were needed which was also when Steve and our CEO retired I think we lost you know he really was the expert in that area and you know even though he didn't have the title of a co-seo he probably was the co-seo in terms of looking at that side of the business so i think i'm also quick to recognize where there is a gap that i'm not and kind of bring someone in like i definitely i hate when people say they're low ego but i truly have like no you definitely are low ego and just um like with servant leadership just a question on this because um when joel and i failed our last business we felt we did a lot of self-reflection and coaching and stuff and we sort of felt like uh we were probably just a bit too confident we were younger we're like you know do this do that this is the thing people always come to you for answers and you think that your job is to answer the question so you the inexperience that we had led us to be like i'm gonna go quickly read that blog or listen to that podcast and find out the answer and then and then tell you what to do um when we started heights we really wanted to focus on the opposite as people often do if they fail something they're like this is the reason i'll do the opposite and became really interested in servant leadership and i think servant leadership served us really well for a while until it didn't and then we actually felt like actually you know we should be a bit more authoritative on a whole bunch of other areas and i think like looking back so far the reflection is um it's probably very idealistic to imagine that you can just have one leadership style serve you through the different stages of the company because they do require you know this whole are you wartime or peacetime ceo and all of those things so what's been your reflection on that have you always been able to survive with servant leadership or have you had to have some harder what it was even tough nicola look like so i i think of my style never has probably changed too much but i do think i recognize why we need something else so for example bringing a gm in that was because actually our fill rates were terrible like i think you know the commercial relationships we we needed organizing we were going from being a startup where actually you know it didn't matter so much where we were anniversaring year on year and kind of that side of it to you know being now part of a public company and having budgets and targets and if we don't meet those and it's going to ultimately impact our people and there was just a big change happening and again as you get bigger there's more strategy there's more process there's more documents and and you love all that right those are just things that have to come come into play um when you get to like 1500 people and again that's just not my strength like i'm actually not that organized.

22:31And again, that's not that easy for the team. So I think by bringing someone in that was actually good at that, I guess that's probably how I serve doing a different leadership style rather than actually just myself. I think I just complimented it by bringing someone else in. But actually, I think another point that I should bring, you know, when I say like I'm an unqualified CEO, I think maybe the only other strength that I would say to being an unqualified CEO and I often think about this as we as we hire experience is an interesting thing just like insights and and data because sometimes the more you know the more it hurts you and actually naivety can be a really good thing because what you don't know you kind of I don't know you're not conditioned to do things in a certain way and we actually often have a saying about just using common sense because it's amazing how much common sense is overlooked in the world of business and brands and and i think you know had we even in the beginning of decium if we'd had a super experienced team we'd just be doing what everyone else is doing and like whenever we get told you know if we were ever encouraged to look at insights and data i always say to the team like take this with a pinch of salt because if you're looking at insights you're looking what everyone else is doing and of course it's going to influence you and you're going to end up doing what they're doing too which means then the industry just all looks the same whereas actually if you can just ignore it and actually just kind of use a bit more creative thinking so i think that can be a benefit too but you do reach a size where you also do just need someone who has got a bit more experience in those processes getting the right team in place and to make sure that you know you come for full orders so you equalized all the c-suite salaries can you talk us through like the the thinking there so everyone only gets paid five million dollars a year I wish.

24:16So when we did that, you know, well, my thinking was, I mean, these were the people doing everything. So at the time, this was Pridvi, our chief scientific officer, Dion, chief brand officer, Stephen, chief operating officer. And they were running like they were the three big pillars, like really running the business. It didn't feel right for me to earn more than them. And as much as I was, you know, I always used to think my role was a little bit more like the conductor, you know, It's the person who's kind of just making sure we're all going in the right place and, you know, everything's working together in the right harmony.

24:48But each one of those, I would never really disagree with any of their decisions because they were the expert. I don't know more about science than Prudvi does. Like if you meet him, he's a genius. There's no one who can build a brand like Dion. And I definitely don't know finance and operations and supply chain like Stephen did. Maths A-level though. Maths A-level. so actually it was kind of just a sense of like why should I be earning more when I felt like they were actually contributing more I was the one pulling it together but to me that didn't feel like it was an elevated position to what they were doing another thing we did in the early years which I really loved but some of these things are just so hard to sustain so when we first introduced a bonus program we introduced it and it was 7 % for every single employee of their salary and this was if the whole company hit targets it was kind of based on everyone would get seven percent and this was whether you worked in you know production or you were in c-suite everyone got seven percent which you have to remember is already actually benefiting those in the higher positions more because seven percent of a higher salary is of course more than seven percent of a lower salary but actually i just felt like it was just a good message but then obviously as we you know then got bigger and we're trying to like recruit good people into into the business it was then difficult because then you're competing with obviously everyone else in the world of business where higher positions have much higher bonuses as a percentage so it's then like significantly bigger because it's a higher percentage of a higher salary so we did have to then adjust our structure because we just couldn't retain we couldn't attract any people by only offering seven percent but there's stuff like that that i was just really proud of in the early days and again it's just not sad but sometimes you do just have to actually align a little bit more with i think your superpower might actually be low ego as in it feels like you're just getting out of everyone's way the whole time yeah and i would be hard to do yeah yeah i actually genuinely don't think i've met many people that i would say that about yeah it's hard to do i mean and people would like to do it but it's very hard yeah and also even if people say they're not like super ego they normally actually are yeah and like the one thing as well I think like whenever there's been a challenge, the team is so quick to just come because again, like there's never like no one would ever be afraid of me of like.

27:08Also, you've got their back. A hundred percent. And they are the right team. And, you know, we approach challenges together. And like I said to you earlier, like sometimes you do have to adjust your way of thinking because you soon realize that any decision you make ultimately impacts your people. And if you care about your people, there are certain ways that, you know, it's ultimately a business. and I have been told before, Nicola, we're a business, not a charity. So sometimes I have been reminded of that, which is... Because I'm sure that your... Softness is the wrong word, but maybe perceived softness or, you know, just your general demeanour.

27:44I'm sure people have taken advantage of that. It's interesting. Or tried to. There's definitely a hard side there. I was going to say that I will be quick to stand up for our values and you know ELC have been the most incredible partnership and I can't speak highly enough just of how it's worked together but we think very differently on things and obviously there's time you know when we've been coming together over the past seven years and I'm never afraid to say well I'll say it in a very polite smiley way but I will say if I'll fucking kill you fuck you I very much disagree no honestly I say this to my husband all the time I don't understand in politics like if I if I if I wanted to work the hours I would love to enter politics except I don't want to work that hard again but I'm like why doesn't a politician just say like you know I see your point like there are benefits to that but actually I think this way is better I'm like the way that they come out and they just shit talk at each other I'm like that's so alien to do that so I feel like I'm always most of them don't work in business and most of them haven't had to manage yeah it's so true they don't have the experience of going through it like they don't they don't know that you know you don't just speak from authority day one totally they're just like vultures with each other so immature yeah and like you know most policies like of course you can see like the pros and cons of both ways but i'm like why doesn't why don't they just acknowledge that more so i do think i'm always happy to disagree with people and not necessarily our team because like i say like everyone we've ever really hired in leadership in the early years actually we probably did have a higher turnover because i think we did hire some people that want a culture fit and i think that's very hard in a startup but i'd say in later years we've actually been much better at hiring and then we are so lucky that we've truly had the best team and i think again it's understanding so like if i think about tiktok where we have the most incredible uh person uh alessia although hopefully no one's going to go and steal her when when i say what's her surname but again she's an example of someone where you know tiktok i don't think you can hire someone with decades of well you can't because it's not been around but even if someone had decades of experience in different social media marketing they would never be as good as actually the person who is living and breathing they're on every day but again i think you know where i think we've done very well on tiktok as a brand but i think that's because alessia has always been empowered like she sees a trend that day she'll create the video and post it without if she wants to run it by she can just whatsapp it to you know d on the sheet like it's someone at the highest level just like i'm posting this but most of the time she won't even check in because she's just empowered like she knows a brand she knows this whereas i think other brands would have a you know they'll come up with six months most brands don't work like that it gets it has all of this hierarchy like you can't work like that in in tiktok and and again i think one of the the challenges when we've had to adjust is going from being super agile and quick to suddenly actually you have 1500 people and retailers all around the world that you can't move as quick as we used to but understanding the areas where we can be really agile and actually really maintaining that i think it's been important one of your big breakthrough moments was going viral and i'm sure you know as you probably know investors often go wait just go viral like oh actually that's a great idea i'll just do that i'll think about that um i think if heights went viral, I don't I know, it's so annoying.

31:06Can you just not go viral? Two servings of viral, please. I'm sat at those board meetings. And dessert. I don't think it would be a good thing for heights to go viral. I don't think we'd be able to handle it. So, what, like, is that is it as exciting and good as it sounds? In the moment, it's the best feeling. Is it really? But how do you handle demand that you never planned for, genuinely as a consumer brand that's the thing if you're not a digital product yeah like i can't see how it's not the single most stressful fucking period of your life sorry i'm saying it's amazing our supply chain team are probably like the biggest headache in the world yeah she's like i saw an extra couple of zeros it felt okay um but yeah i think when a product's gone viral like it's exciting like that buzz if actually just and again you feel lucky because you feel like you're not even doing anything and you just have this audience that are creating the demand and in the first few years of the ordinary i mean we were probably viral for about three years and we were out of stock for three years which created this frenzy because you could just never get stock of the products because as soon as we were making more it was selling we we almost never knew where the level of demand was because each time we'd like okay maybe let's add on 30 we'd do that and we'd still be out of stock whereas obviously now you know supply chain isn't in a much better position but we still have products that go viral and again i think it's you know something that businesses will have to adapt too and again i see both sides so you know we're obviously part of a different structure now where when you're part of a public company you know everything's about you everyone's looking at year-on-year growth of that before of that company and you know elc is is obviously quite diversified with with other brands but if you have all brands that have these viral moments then you'll have investors saying well why are you down year on year and it's very hard when something's completely out of your control and the only way I can think of you know trying to to mitigate that is you almost need different brands in different categories so if skincare is not having its moment maybe you have a fragrance brand where actually people are obsessing over fragrance you can kind of win but I feel like it is a bit of a game of you know poker you're just gambling a little bit and hoping because it's so out of control and again that's a very different to a world of brands where in the past you know promote like everything could be more planned but the consumer has more power than they ever have through social media which is also why you see so many new brands starting so i think it's great that actually the the barriers of entry have certainly lowered but it does make it much more difficult when you're planning as someone who has created a global sensation brand worth billions but not spent your entire time instagramming the whole experience what is your view of influencer-led brands so influencers who build an audience first but then build product it's a tricky one i think it depends what brand they're building i think it's very difficult you know when it comes to skincare my view on skincare is science leads everything it's all about the ingredients so when you see like a celebrity doing a skincare brand it's like do you do you really understand the ingredients like what's your point of difference were you just putting your name to to a brand i think that's different to you know if a content creator created a fashion brand and you've been following them because you You love their style and you love their taste.

34:24And I think that can really easily actually apply to something like fashion. So I think it depends what you're following, what their values are and how that actually translates to the business. I guess if they're actually doing it. Yeah. Because even down to his stories of Kanye West, even at his level of fame and stuff, he just quit the whole thing and learned fashion and then literally did it all himself like properly every day. And you're like, OK, fair play. But not many people do that. like actually i say i am a student i want to learn this stuff yeah and i mean i do think it's it's amazing i mean so many celebrities influence everyone's becoming an entrepreneur but as an entrepreneur i love entrepreneurs and i think it's just exciting that more and more people are are entering and getting into business and and again probably to to the to the benefit of the creators you know they they create money from everyone else by doing these advertising deals so the fact that they've decided actually i want to earn more of that value and actually create something myself like fair play to them like we're all trying to to make a way in life and trying to make success um but i think it just depends what it what it's in and you know they're never you won't ever particularly see an influencer being like i'm going to create medicine and for me skincare is similar in terms of it's using a very active ingredients and it's kind of really about the formulas and understanding that deep science and biology so i feel like it makes sense much more when it's something which is more about aesthetics because what again depending on the content creators but so many content creators are great at the aesthetics like I don't do much on social because I feel like my post just you know some people get photos look amazing I'm not taking them I'm like this just looks crap I feel like I need a Instagram photography course so we were talking about uh remote work a bit earlier uh and you've said that you think that remote work might be quite harmful on women's careers can you give us a bit of flavor on why that is so I've been reading a few studies and kind of insights from people and there's a real risk of like proximity bias which is around like typically from like the more you're seeing the more you tend to progress within the company and when when remote working is optional and that means you know it's maybe encouraged or you know you're either told you can work two days a week in the office the rest at home or it might be a full choice typically what we see is men often are choosing and again this is just largely stereotypical men are like great i'll go into the office five days a week like you know i want to be away from home i want to be out i want to be doing that women typically i'm not one of those men i literally love home yeah women are typically the ones feeling a bit more conflicted where if it is a choice they're like oh well maybe i should work from home because you know they're still typically doing more of like the housework the children runs etc and actually if you have an office where suddenly you're having more men in five days a week and women are just in two days a week that's going to start creating a boys club again where um and again i've heard stories of not not not us or well hopefully not so much in our industry because we luckily are quite kind of female empowered but you know if you i've heard stories about um it was a company in in in cars where apparently on fridays it's a boys club in the office because it's just men in there so that's actually a risk you know we've made so much progress I think with gender in the workplace that I feel like there's a balance on if a company is particularly more male dominated or if they're seeing that trend then I think if they are doing a hybrid approach it should almost be a forced yeah everyone is in three days a week and everyone must work outside of the office for two days because again I know when women are giving the choice again they're feeling guilty like you know they have so much to do again typically speaking not in every household and but for the women who are still taking that burden they have this should i be doing the extra of commute when i could be ordering school uniform i could be doing this i could be doing that um so i think it's something that businesses really do need to be conscious of yeah it's interesting and it is also very industry specific right like i think in my space it's probably more female dominated yours must be female dominated my last company was in fashion that was insane and we were the only men pretty much you know it's like it's so interesting because I always hear these things, but I don't have the experience.

38:31I keep picking female-dominated industries and then being like, where are all the men that are supposed to be in all of these offices? But I totally get it, right? There's probably not that many industries like that. It probably is beauty, fashion, you know, health. Those are definitely the industries. Luxury was very female. Yeah, luxury, that makes sense. But there's also probably an age thing as well. You know, probably largely women in their 30s when they're in that period of actually just raising a family and having so much on because, you know, we're... And aging parents at the same time.

39:01Yeah, just to be careful. You know, when you're in your 20s, like we have so many young people, they love coming into the office because, you know, a lot of them are working from a room in a shared house. Like they would prefer to come and like building those relationships and stuff. And it's just fun as well. Like I, in my 20s, I worked on Brick Lane from about 21 through like 27, 28. I look back at it as like the funnest time ever. I was best friends, and I still am best friends, my business partner of the time. and we went out with the team all the time but then when you get a little bit older one you don't want to go out all the time until you're sort of set in your life you're like comfortable whereas all the youngsters in the company are what you were then and so i'm always like you know they they're going to want it more yeah what change do you want to see in the workplace what do you think we actually need to do to freshen it up um so i actually think the working week needs to be completely reinvented start on sundays exactly well but like the five day you know eight hours a day five like that was from the henry ford era which actually at the time was you know a step forward because people working six days a week for like 16 hours a day so that was progress back then but that was also based on typically a household where the woman stayed at home the man went to work and therefore the woman had you know the time to raise the children and do everything else we're now in a world where you know typically like both both two people in the household are working and then we're expecting them to raise children do just life admin as well as have fun and everything else and they're two days a week or you know four weeks maybe a little bit more holiday a year i think the balance is completely off and my hope for the world would be i feel like with ai coming like if we can actually increase people's efficiencies how this probably won't happen but how amazing if that time was actually given back to people to actually have more balance but i'm sure it'll just probably go into do you see that really funny uh like meme where someone was like i don't want ai to take over my like really creative writing and fun like i want it to do my house chores you know like i want to do the fun bits and i want the ai to do the boring bits and it is so true my bloody laundry not write faster email for me that's why we'd need elon's robots yeah true you know get some of those in uh so you think what four day work week is the one i think more flexibility generally and i think one of the things that i've what do your overlords at elc think about your radical changes how's that going down again it's a challenge like there's a lot of people and you know when you think a lot around fairness as well it's it's easier i think to consider this from an office perspective and find ways you know i'm sure there's always some inefficiencies in meetings and things you can do to take the time it is harder in a store environment or manufacturing where there's kind of a physical output to each hour so i think that's where it does become more challenging um and again we've always tried to kind of have a similar approach for our office teams as those working for us in in production and we tell so there are many complexities but i just hope in in general that we can kind of get there and again to schools like you know kids a four-year-old shouldn't be going to school five days a week Like, it's just insane.

42:09Like, I think there is so much progression that could be made. And I do think, you know, with generations like millennials, Gen Z, like, I think there is more and more this emphasis on life and actually kind of not just being part of the system, but actually just enjoying and having more experiences. So I feel like a change will come. And obviously, you know, COVID, as much as I think there are things we need to be concerned around in terms of the hybrid working in general, it's good. because before then the majority of people were being forced into an office five days a week so it has given us flexibility but i think it's interesting how much further that flexibility can go and just for me personally obviously working for a global company i've always enjoyed the fact that i could you know take my kids to swimming lessons in the morning because i know toronto starts at two and i can do some calls in the evening and and actually being able to have that flexibility really helped my life and i just wonder like how much more of that we can bring into the workplace because you know and i say a lot of this being a mum and for this period of the life where like you do only have little kids for a period and i want to be present for that and you know if people are working from nine till five and plus their commute you know well no one should see their kids for two hours a day but the flip side of that actually is when your kids are in school that it that does that does match up nicely as in whilst your kids are in school and you're because then you are literally seeing your kids for the available time that you have well except the 18 weeks a year school holidays yes like i still think there's kind of like a a gap that and again like what i was saying earlier around like how amazing would it be if just we found a way for you different chapters of your life to blend because again i'm someone who overworked to my 20s i'm happy maybe to overwork again in you know my 40s 50s 30s for me is about like family and just being really present yeah but it doesn't always work because i think again for many people on the career ladder 30s and when they're actually starting to get the promotions they're starting to get the big people aren't all you know overachievers in their 20s and you're you know you're massively finding yourself in in your 30s and and you know certainly in my experience and speak you know speaks for a lot about this it's your 20s are a lot for discovery and trying to find your place with 30s really trying to cement down some of that um understanding of what you can be good at and where you can apply yourself and that is so challenging for all the reasons you just stated which is you're often becoming a parent and getting married and looking after parents who are aging it's like your life is in the most chaotic brilliant period of your life but also your career formation is then that's so hard and actually i don't think we maybe talk enough about actually what a super opportunity decade your 20s are yeah and i know everyone's in in different situations but if you have any of the privileges of either you know being able to like live at home for an extra few years if anyone's interested in entrepreneurship like there's no better time to start than when you've kind of got nothing to lose true um you know start in your early 20s you can take the risk like as soon as you start having mortgages you have children like life's very different and it's very difficult to then leave you know if you've worked your way up in a career and you've got a good paid job like that's a difficult decision to make you're a very rare one hit wonder though as in it's very rare for someone to start a company in their 20s and it's going to have so much success like i started multiple companies some went well some failed but same lesson which is good it was valuable totally yeah yeah yeah i think i the thing people always say i started my first business very young like 15 and i failed loads and uh the thing people always say is it's like like incredibly bold and i'm like they're like taking those risks and i'm like what was the risk yeah what was i risking corporate job i hadn't i had nothing you know nothing on it completely and then at university you often get a university loan which if you're smart with that you can kind of live yeah but the thing to remember though we you know i don't think we were necessarily just a one hit wonder because we had 10 brands that failed before the ordinary the ordinary was the 11th brand we launched so actually we kind of had our failure but like within our umbrella company like we just kept trying and doing different things and you know still in the same industry the same team but we definitely you know it wasn't like we just came up with the ordinary we we started in 2013 and the ordinary launched at the end of 2016 so we had three and a half years of trying and i know i don't want to say they all failed but nothing to what the ordinary yeah not failed but certainly not success like most of them aren't around today yeah fair play yeah so your lesson for people in their 20s is start now i think i do think it's the best decade to start something there is an alternative view to that though which is that uh it is all consuming um entrepreneurship and your 20s is also an unbelievably fun time to just enjoy your life so i'm always torn between these two messages to be honest because um i had such an awesome time in my 20s i didn't really start properly i don't think until i was 26 so you know there is not entrepreneuring i think so yeah roughly i did a couple of things that i wouldn't really call you know they were dabbling more than thing and you know i've got people that i meet who are so unbelievably impressive at 22 23 but they're really just not going out you know they're doing all the sacrifices that you do you end up having to do yeah you're always basically i reckon she was balanced you're always going to pick you're always going to sacrifice so the question is when do you sacrifice what's that what's the right sacrifice in my 20s i sacrificed a lot in terms of missing nights out like you know and i remember like going from like a girl's hendy but flying late because we'd had a new york meeting and you know i feel like i made many more sacrifices in my 20s than probably a lot of my friends and peers definitely and now i see her at 35 and like yeah you can do whatever you want i'm very fortunate that i have freedom now for the rest of my life to travel like and i think that's something i always strive for like that feeling of just no one being in control like and it's really like you know you think about what motivates you and i always just remember like and like i grew up in middle class you know like my mum stayed at home my dad worked but we definitely didn't have excess money like that was my mum staying at home was like a sacrifice that the family made but I always remember like when we'd go out for dinner like I love desserts and my parents would never say I couldn't have one but I would never order one because I just felt like I didn't want to like make them spend that extra money and I remember like getting a letter for the ski trip from school which I'd have loved to go and I didn't even show my parents a letter because I just had this feeling of like it was a lot of money and I didn't want them to feel like that they would have to pay that for me so I always knew that I wanted freedom but I was like I never want to rely on husband for you know I don't want to rely on anyone else to ever have a control on a decision like if I want to buy something if I want to go on holiday like it's my decision and I never want to ask anyone for permission yeah which is incredibly so funny that at that I mean yeah your your superpower is clearly somewhere between like low eq high empathy like high consideration curiosity somewhere there because like for a kid to worry about the the ski trip for their parents is amazing i was cheeky enough i'd have just gone and asked my rich friends parents so as i understand that you've now stepped down as ceo of decium can you talk us through that decision yeah i think it something that's been on my mind for a while um you know having young children i speak a lot about like everyone but i truly adore my children and you know every instagram i realize see when it's like you only have such a small window like at 10 you lose them i just cry and i'm like like i'm always sending them to my husband like but i think i'm just so aware of like this time in my personal life and again like there is maybe been an acknowledgement of you know what we've built at DesiM has been like phenomenal and of course like I've been fortunate enough to you know create certain wealth for myself which means like I can have some freedom now to just make decisions based on on kind of personal desire and I think as well a feeling of you know at some point there's always a time when you're kind of ready for a change and to just you know I don't want to say step back and take it easy but certainly you know being a CEO is difficult it's time consuming and even just that responsibility pressure you feel 24-7 it just felt like the natural time for a change and I think you know we we brought in Jesper who's our general manager two years ago who's just been a fantastic addition to the team and now just feeling like actually there there's a leadership team that I think can really run the day-to-day in a way much better than I can actually because again we are much bigger now the size of it the scale of it and everything else and then actually like when I think about you know the strengths that I do think in terms of actually just being there for our people our kindness like I love sharing our story and telling everyone what an amazing brand we've built that stuff I think can be much more actually related to just being the co-founder title so I'd been like back and forth a lot you know you have like is it time to walk away and then that just would make me cry every time like I even considered this and you know I'd have conversations even with the us you know I honestly would be in floods of tears because I was like I don't know what to do but I just know it needs to be a change and and I'm just so grateful you know Stefan de la Fevere, he's obviously their new CEO, but he's been our long-term partner.

51:15And, you know, we've reported into him ever since the majority acquisition happened. He honestly is the most incredible person in the world and just feel like incredibly blessed for his support. And actually the way they were like, look, we can just find a way to make it work. They were like, just tell us, like, what do you enjoy doing? What do you want to keep? What do you want to get rid of? And what do you enjoy doing? What do you want to keep? What do you want to get rid of? So I love our people. I don't want to lose the people, the connection, just like you know every day someone emails me it's like a store just like any level of the company and I love those interactions and the fact that they feel like I am accessible and you know if there's challenges we can find a solution together um and actually sorry maybe we'll do a section on belonging just because I feel like I have a lot to say about that being our North Star but I think that sense of just being good and creating this kind of sense of belonging for the team something I'm passionate about sharing like the story of the brands you You know, when we do market launches, actually just going there to hopefully make people feel like this is what we're trying to achieve.

52:14This is why we do things the way we do. This is what we believe in. And then, you know, being involved a little bit more in like just the values and kind of that long term vision of just making sure we are staying on track as we do get bigger and there's pitfalls we can fall into. And I think that's actually easy when you're a little bit more removed. Like when you're in that day to day firefighting, you sometimes don't see that bigger picture in the same way. and so the stuff I hate is all just process you know I like being with people but there are many meetings that I feel like I just don't add value to all the CEO stuff basically all the CEO stuff this was basically just the the perfect thing for me for the company I think for everyone when actually like step down from being CEO and actually just retain the co-founder and everything that comes with that what does belonging mean so belonging is something that we is our north star in terms of like what we want our people to feel and I think this was something that was really like when I think a lot about what we went through with Brandon it makes me just so sad that I feel like he felt he didn't belong in this world because there was only so much that I learned afterwards after the past about his sexuality his family just stuff that he he'd obviously felt he'd had to hide from everyone and you know I'm very lucky like I'm very boring in many ways but you know I was I maybe don't understand how I would have felt if I had to tell my parents I was you know um gay or something like I've never really had to I guess but I feel like the fact that it breaks my heart that someone would feel like they can't just be themselves and like know that they would be loved for that and it's interesting because when I look at Desi you know even from the beginning as probably the least diverse people like we were a very diverse team and I actually think some of those early hires from Brandon was probably for the talent but actually I think he always had this sense of like building this diverse family and making Decium a place where everyone could belong and I think that's because that was something that he never felt he hadn't in the world and I think it's something that I'm so conscious of you know like when you hear those terrible jokes or comments or just like the things that you might not even realize are having an impact on someone feeling like they can't show off and be who they are that day we have an amazing sarah who leads all of our diversity equity inclusion and she really drives our mission of belonging and actually creating a team that celebrates diversity but truly just whoever you want to show up and be that day at desi m you will be loved and heard and supported for being you um and we you know one of my favorite things about desi m is we have all of these different google chats um where we have you know the everything from like the pets of which honestly if i show you the pets of decim chat it's constant of like people's dogs and just and like the love and you're on all these chats yeah you know and sometimes i come on i'm like gosh there's a lot of alerts but we have like one for parents like one for like just different groups so everyone can find their community because again i think you know with well we're a global company but obviously you know covid has had a whole impact on on the workplace and probably one of days is you miss the kind of coffee chats where you're actually just chatting about life and you know I'm a big believer that most people who I have actually a close working relationship with you know if I look at whatsapps it's it's equal amount of how are the kids of this you know personal did you see this as what are we doing on here like what do you think on this because like just being human I think is so underrated and I think is actually for those that want it Like, I think it can be such an important part of the workplace.

55:49But yeah, we, I think, do a lot around belonging because I think if someone feels like they don't belong, that has such an impact on their mental health. And I think with branding, we didn't see it for years until it exploded and then just had the most devastating ending. So I'm always just conscious around like how, you know, we started Desium, but hopefully the world will become better at just creating this environment of belonging. now you're no longer the ceo what is an uncomfortable truth you can finally reveal about leadership or you're like this is what i really think how much actually hard work it is and long work and i and again i think it's interesting because you know i think to be a good ceo like you are doing 60 hours a week because i mean i i look at the ceos that i see around and like the travel because again to be a good ceo you want to connect with your people and if you're a global business that means you're going to see the teams in australia in korea in Europe and in North America so you have to factor all of that travel in the fact that there are just so many things you need to be involved in you know I don't think many CEOs are probably working less than and actually working as in travel or working 60 hours a week which I don't want to do that anymore like it's it's just a long commitment and and I think it's going to be interesting when we see CEOs coming more from like millennials Gen Z when everyone now is prioritizing life like is they're going to be more part-time CEOs is they're going to be job sharing CEOs which I actually think would I would love to drop share like I think it's so interesting to like bring someone else and you know as much as you can do that with co-seos and stuff actually being like two and a half days you know like really sharing the workload because then you're actually getting another person's ideas passion and it's just like how many of the top companies have job sharing CEOs or and again like we think about women getting those top jobs and you know everyone makes their own choice but we know a lot of women do want to choose to have more time with their family and be present so the more job sharing or part-time CEOs the more we'll actually allow access I think for females to get those top jobs if you're interested I'm happy to job share with you two and a half days no problem I'm honestly happy to share with anyone at this point you know any listeners want to jump in two and a half days so after after like the most incredible career thus far like what is next for you um it's interesting and i'm not quite sure yet because what i'm going to say definitely conflicts with my ADHD but again i saw something on instagram the other day which always impacts me and it was saying about people grow up and they see successful women and productive women and they're like but they've never seen a relaxed woman and they're like they see all these relaxed men like playing golf just like living their life so now it's like i want to be a relaxed woman i love that i know no i don't know if i'll achieve it because i'm also like i want to write a book and i want to do this and i want to do that so maybe the adhd will take over i think i'm quite calm and relaxed anyway in no way am i you know trying to try and give someone like you advice about life but i feel like the the biggest downfall from leaving one single company that you commit a huge amount of time to is that afterwards you get an unbelievable amount of optionality and you've got to be so careful with what you commit to because i think there are moments in time where actually everyone wants a piece of you always and they want you involved in everything and it you as an entrepreneur and someone who's self-identifying is having adhd and so forth will want to be interested and involved in so much and before long you'll be like wow i'm kind of across 20 projects and you're like oh you know i've now not chill anymore whereas as dan was saying at the beginning i'm like fully committed to trying to be chill that's like my whole my whole my whole thing like he's doing a bloody good job of it very inspiring genuinely and i don't imagine i'd ever get close to where you are how are you doing that well i've said no to so much stuff yeah and then i'm saying no to all new opportunities yeah uh and then i i basically have set myself this weird rule that if i have an opportunity that i really like i have to love it the same amount a month later before i commit to anything and that is amazing because as an as an adhd you can go so far down the hole on something so exciting etc and then sit back and you think okay i could i could invest in it and i could not be involved in it or i could actually just not be involved in it um and then the thing about the phone is like set rules around the phone and i've actually just been keeping to the rules on the phone yeah uh but like i want to spend all my time i'd say late i want to spend all my time with my wife walking around dunwich or like on holiday or playing sport or tennis or paddle and then obviously work becomes yeah and work becomes like being very good at decision making which doesn't take that long yeah that's what is the practice anyway yeah and i know we we had this conversation earlier but like with a phone now actually like and my husband's an entrepreneur too but like everything's on on whatsapp and like he's very quick at making decisions and actually again like as much as there's challenges with phones actually the benefit that you can now just work whilst you are out and about is a huge benefit totally yeah i remember when i used to work at boots many years ago and actually when i first started they were on the emails was on lotus and when when you left the office you couldn't see your emails till you went like back on monday morning wow and i look back and i'm like wow that honestly feels like an unconceivable time in history yeah but you could I mean, if you had the discipline, you could put your phone away on Friday evening and pick it up on Monday.

1:01:12Or do the brick thing. Have two phones. So I have two phones. Yeah. That's good separation. I mean, mastery. Honestly, I'm so far away from this. I just genuinely, I'm trying. My first step is just to leave my phone downstairs before I go to sleep. And even that feels like you're getting a divorce with your phone every night. It's hard. Thank you so much for joining us on Secret Leaders. It's been a pleasure. I've definitely enjoyed it. Thank you.