Most Replayed Moment: A Guilt-Free Way to Handle Work and Life
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Nicola Kilner, Co-Founder and CEO of DECIEM, reflects on her transition from a corporate career at Boots to building a disruptive beauty empi
Key takeaways
- Kilner recommends gaining corporate experience at places like Boots to learn supply chain, legal, and consumer goods fundamentals before entrepreneurship.
- The 'focus is overrated' strategy allowed DECIEM to build an ecosystem where 10 brands shared costs for R&D, PR, and manufacturing.
Main topics
- Corporate vs. Entrepreneurial training
- The DECIEM multi-brand ecosystem
Notable quotes
Focus is overrated.
Conclusion
The episode provides a masterclass in authentic leadership, emphasizin
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:03) When Speaker 2 (0:04) I sit down with CEOs, founders and working parents on this podcast, one thing that comes up again and again is the more you have to juggle, the more important it is that home and shopping for it isn't adding to that load. This moment's episode is sponsored by Wayfair, who understand that the spaces around us should support how we live. Here is Nicola Kilner talking about some of the systems that she's built to make work and home fit together better. What's your opinion now on university? When you're... children get to that age where they're about to make that decision you've got two young children when they get to 18 years old and if they said mommy I want to be entrepreneur like you what advice would you give them based on your experience so Speaker 1 (0:42) I actually would always probably recommend doing a few years in a corporate because I have to say at Boots I learned so much you know you learn the things that they do really well you learn the things that they do not necessarily wrong, but just the drawbacks of being such a big organization. So I think, you know, more than going to university, like those two, the two placement years I did at Boots, I learned incredibly so much. And depending on the kind of person you are, you know, if you go to a big corporate, it's so difficult to impact the culture there because there's just so many people, there's so much history. And if you are someone who's kind of got this strong drive to make a change, then, you know, entrepreneurship, I think, is just an incredible area. And even if it's not your idea, but going to join a startup is just incredible energy. I mean, it just would always be what I would recommend. At that Speaker 2 (1:37) point, if there was a key skill or a key set of skills that you took from your time working in a corporate at Boots that then proved to be incredibly valuable as you went on, what were those skills? Speaker 1 (1:51) So when I graduated, I then stayed on and I was an assistant buyer to begin with. And then I got promoted to be a buying manager for them, which was really around relationships. It was about collaboration. It was about looking around the world, seeing new technologies, finding the innovation, new brands, and then really handholding those which mainly were entrepreneurs. to come into Boots to actually show them, look, this is how we could launch. You know, we had a stand, it was called Latest Spines. We would launch a new innovation for a period of three months as a trial to see if it would work, would Boots consumers like this? If it did, they would get a listing with Boots kind of long-term. And that just really suited my skill set because it was a very entrepreneurial role because actually, you know, I very much guided them with PR agencies and actually how to build the plan and you know we used to have the saying of like launch and love because actually it's one thing to get a listing of boots it's another thing for your product to actually be picked and taken off the shelf like the listing is just the first thing you know you you have to drive consumers you have to have that entire plan and I think it was just a really good way of actually learning from working with supply chain working with finance doing the checks with legal can we do this what can we say It was a really good sense of actually working with so many different departments and actually starting to understand, I think, consumer goods, learning demand, learning how to create it. So I feel like that role was created, which really just suited my skill set incredibly well. And I'm very fortunate for that. And then that's also how I met Brandon. So actually it had a huge impact and obviously my next stage too. Speaker 2 (3:38) And Brandon was a business you were maybe... He had a business you may be looking at? Yeah, so he Speaker 1 (3:44) was with his previous business, which was called Indeed Labs. And we launched a couple of their products through this program, Latest Finds. So I'd worked with him and I remember, you know, and actually when I, this sounds alien now so many years ago, but you couldn't check your emails when you left the office. So often every morning I'd come in and I was dealing with a lot of international entrepreneurs. So I'd always come into like an inbox full of emails. I always remember like looking for his name because his email was always so full of energy. He always signed it off, smiles, Brandon, you know, just someone who's... positivity, his passion just kind of really shone through that I'd always go straight to his emails, kind of open it. And, you know, the launches that we did with Brandon and Indeed Labs were some of the most successful we did through the innovation program. And he was just, you know, when he used to come to the Boots head office in Nottingham, just it was bouncing off the walls with kind of this infectious energy. And I remember just from the day I met him thinking, gosh, I always want this person in my life because he just... had this aurora and just someone who you knew wanted to actually also make the world a better place and kind of really cared about doing good and doing things differently. Speaker 2 (4:56) And at some point you start having a conversation with him privately about launching a business, your own business, and then he's launching his business, right? Speaker 1 (5:03) Yeah. So I remember he suddenly left Indeed Labs. Now, Indeed Labs, he founded it. It was a rocket ship. It was kind of doing super well. I remember getting this message from him that he left and just being like, shocked as in like what has happened um So then when he was next in London, I met up with him. And obviously he told me about his reasons for leaving. He was going to do this next thing. And I'd always kind of had this viewpoint of wanting to do my own business. And ever since I worked in beauty, I found that, you know, I always had friends, family, everyone asking, what's the best mascara? What's the best foundation? And just how we'd go to TripAdvisor, you know, to look at kind of ratings and reviews for restaurants and hotels. I wanted to create the same thing for beauty that actually ranked the products. So I told Brandon my idea and said, I want to do this. Like, what do you think? Do you have any advice? And he told me he wanted to start something called Desiem, which is from the Latin word for the number 10. And it wasn't designed to be a beauty engine at that time. There was a beauty concept, but there was a technology concept. There was a food concept. So kind of just lots of different ideas generating. But with this viewpoint of doing 10 things at once. So he said, why don't you come and help do Desiem with me and I'll help do the... beauty, we went on to call it beauty wise with you. So then obviously I made the decision to leave Boots, which obviously I was at the age of 24, 23, 24. And I remember telling mum and everyone's like, oh, like you're in a really good business. You've got a good, like you're already achieving things. But I just knew that I wasn't meant to be there forever. So I, yeah, I left 10 years ago and then it was the start of Deciem. Speaker 2 (6:44) I've got to say, this idea of doing 10 brands at once seems like it's counterintuitive to anything you might read in a business book that speaks to the importance of focus. Was there any sense in that, in your view? Speaker 1 (6:57) So in actually our office in Melbourne, we used to have on the wall, focus is overrated because everyone does tell you not to do 10 things at once. And actually, there were so many benefits to doing 10 things at once. So first of all, was this viewpoint of trying to create this ecosystem of, you know, how do we have our own manufacturing, do our own comms in-house? Because, and again, it takes funds to set up that ecosystem. But also, you know, so many entrepreneurs, which... Speaker 1 (7:28) I understand why they're in this situation, but so many entrepreneurs have to outsource everything. They go to the PR agency, they go to a lab, they go to someone to do your R &D. And then you're really just coordinating all of those efforts rather than, I mean, so it was a privilege we could build this whole ecosystem because then at the table, everyone sat there, everyone's generating ideas. And again, you know, if I think around like doing comms in-house. It's a lot for one brand to pay. But if you've got 10 brands, suddenly