A Billion dollar NIGHTMARE! The Disturbing Drama Behind The Scenes Of A Billion Dollar Beauty Business. The Ordinary - Nicola Kilner

In this new episode Steven sits down with the CEO and Co-Founder of DECIEM and The Ordinary, Nicola Kilner. Nicola began her career as a business-management student at Nottingham Trent University, where her sponsored work program with the pharmacy chain Boots led to her becoming one of the company’s youngest buyers. In 2011, she met Brandon Truaxe who would found and launch DECIEM in 2013, with Nicola serving as brand director. DECIEM was a skin-care company made up of 10 different brands, the most popular was ‘The Ordinary’, which was launched in 2013. After Brandon’s struggles with mental health crises, Nicola became DECIEM’s Chief Executive in 2018. In this conversation Nicola and Steven discuss topics, such as: Managing an organisation through the Covid-19 pandemic Recovering from the death of a founder and honouring their memory Juggling pregnancy, motherhood and being a CEO Making a company feel more like a family than a business The skills she implements as a leader and CEO You can purchase all of DECIEM’s products here: https://bit.ly/3MOAjQh Follow Nicola: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3qmYSMY Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Just a tragic story and a tragic ending. It's hard to say if it's regrets, but is there anything different we could have done?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Nicola Kilner. Co-founder and CEO of Decium and the Ordinary. This is the unthinkable, inspirational and tragic story of how she built a $2.2 billion empire.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  I always just had this feeling that the only way to achieve financial freedom is entrepreneurship. And then I met Brandon.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Brandon Truax.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Founder of Decium and the Ordinary.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  One of the fastest growing skincare companies in the world. A success story.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  The minute it launched, we couldn't keep it in stock, producing 400,000 units every single day and valued at $2.2 billion. It truly happened what felt like overnight.

• 0:47Steven Bartlett?

  And this is really where Brandon's behavior started to change.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  He'd gone from someone who there was just so much warmth to just this coldness in his eyes. I was suddenly pushed out of everything and then I got fired. Use of emails were being sent, firing people and copying the whole company in. Everything was played out on Instagram, saying he was shutting down the entire company. The shareholders had to step in, but then things just seemed to keep spiraling. And I don't know what to do to help him.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  We've got breaking news right now of the founder of Decium has died.

• 1:32Steven Bartlett?

  What would you do if the person closest to you, your best friend, your partner, the person you've built your life with, seemingly lost their sanity overnight and went from working with you to turning against you? This story is as profound as it is heartbreaking. It is as haunting as it is heroic. Of all the stories we've shared on this podcast, this is the most chilling. It is the most hard to believe. And right at the end of this conversation, there is a twist that I did not see coming. When you learn in the most tragic way that history is just repeating itself. An incredible business story, an unthinkable tragedy,

• 2:16Steven Bartlett?

  and a formidable entrepreneur that stood tall when most would fall. And a genius lost to the world too soon. So pause, take a deep breath because what comes next is not ordinary. It is certainly extraordinary.

• 2:39Steven Bartlett?

  Nicola, paint a picture for me. Paint a picture for me of where you have come from.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  So I think quite a traditional, you know, because mum stayed at home. So she did do the cooking, the cleaning and just a very caring, you know, she's with my, my children today. And it makes me so happy because I know what kind of mum she was and just knowing that that love that they're gonna have. My dad, father was very, great sense of humour, always very playful, very inspiring, very charismatic, always had kind of big ideas, kind of high energy. And my mum was much more reserved, more of an introvert. My dad was kind of always the, the people person, always kind of very busy socially. And mum was very calm. Dad would have a temper sometimes, but you know, nothing too much.

• 3:32Steven Bartlett?

  And at that age, at that young age, sort of like around that 10, 11, 12 age, what were your aspirations and hopes for your future? If I'd asked you, where did you think you were going to end up?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  It's actually a combination of kind of almost two, well, I don't think these two extremes anymore, but kind of, I think originally would have been seen as two. One was actually a stay at home mum, because I think I'd seen my mum obviously just in that role. And I've always been very maternal. I'd always dreamt of having children, except I always wanted freedom. I never wanted to rely on anyone else. And I think I'd always kind of been interested in entrepreneurship, watched Dragon's Den from, you know, quite a young age. I always just had this feeling that actually, the only way to really achieve financial freedom is probably through entrepreneurship in, in some way. So I always kind of had this dream of almost just doing something of my twenties, kind of making all the sacrifices

• 4:26Speaker 00

  to build up enough freedom that then actually going on to have a family, I could make the choices to really spend my time where I wanted to.

• 4:35Steven Bartlett?

  Is that, is that why you went and studied management studies?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I, it was actually interesting because I never knew if I wanted to go to university or not, because.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  You know, I believe in university very much. If you want to become a doctor, you want to become a lawyer. You know, there are, there are subjects that you really need to learn. Business is one of those where it's always hard. Like, do you learn that at university or do you learn that in doing? So I came across this course, um, which was business management in company, which is quite a unique course, which was at Nottingham Trent University. So it's sponsored by different blue chip companies. So Rolls Royce, Boots, Barclays, Tesco's, companies like that. They take on forty people into this course. We would work four and a half days a week for whichever company are sponsoring us. And then the other half day was kind of our, our study time, although obviously there was much more than that.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  And actually, we were then, we'd go, so I chose Boots. Well, we went through interviews. I had Boots as my first choice and I was lucky to get there.

• 5:33Steven Bartlett?

  Boots, for anyone that doesn't know the story, if you're overseas in America or something, it's kind of like CVS or something, isn't it? Pretty much that's the equivalent. Um, what's your, so if we just pause there then, what's your opinion now on university? When your children get to that age where they're about to make that decision, you've got two young children. When they get to eighteen years old, and if they said, mommy, I want to be entrepreneur like you. What advice would you give them based on your experience?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  So I actually would always probably recommend doing a few years in a corporate, because I have to say at Boots, I learnt 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 organisation. 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.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  And even if it's not your idea, but going to join a startup is just incredible energy. And it just would always be what I would recommend.

• 6:53Steven Bartlett?

  At that point, if there was a key skill or a key set of skills that you took from your time working in a corporate at Boots that then proved to be incredibly valuable as you went on, what were those skills?

• 7:08Speaker 00

  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 Finds. 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.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  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 at 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 have to drive consumers, you had 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

• 8:33Speaker 00

  and actually starting to understand, I think, consumer goods, learning demand, learning how to create it. And 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.

• 8:54Steven Bartlett?

  And Brandon was a business you were maybe, he had a business you were maybe looking at?

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so he 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 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

• 9:44Speaker 00

  were some of the most successful we did through the, through the innovation program. And, and he was just, you know, when he used to come to the Boots Head office in Nottingham, just, it was bouncing off the walls with kind of this infectious energy. And I remember just from the day I met him, thinking, gosh, I always want this person in my life because he just had this aura 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, and doing things differently.

• 10:13Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so I remember he suddenly left Indeed Labs. Now, Indeed Labs, he, he founded it, it was a rocket ship, it was kind of doing super well. And I remember getting this, this message from him that he left and just being like shocked, as in like, what has happened?

• 10:36Speaker 00

  So then when he was next in London, I met up with him. And obviously he told me about his reasons for leaving, he was going to do this next thing. And I'd always kind of had this, this viewpoint of wanting to do my own business. And, 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 Desi M, which was from the Latin word for the number 10. And it wasn't designed to be a beauty engineer at that time. There was a

• 11:19Speaker 00

  beauty concept, but there was a technology concept, there was a food concept, a 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 Desi M with me and I'll help do the, the beauty, we, 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 twenty four, twenty three, twenty four. 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 ten, ten years ago. And then it was the start of Decium.

• 12:01Steven Bartlett?

  I've got to say, this idea of doing ten brands at once seems like it's counterintuitive to all, anything you might read in a business book that speaks to the importance of focus. Was there any sense in that, in your view?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  So in, in actually our office in, in Melbourne, we used to have on the wall, focus is overrated, because everyone just tell you not to do ten things at once. And actually, there were so many benefits to doing ten 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, it takes funds to set up that ecosystem. But also, you know, so many entrepreneurs, which I understand why they're in this situation, but so many entrepreneurs have to outsource everything. They go to the PR agency, they go to a lab, they go to someone to do your R and D. And then you're really just coordinating all of those efforts. Rather than, I mean, so

• 12:58Speaker 00

  it, it was a privilege, we could build this, this whole ecosystem, because then at the table, everyone's 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 ten brands, suddenly you can look at it as 10% of everyone's salary. If I'm flying to Australia to me to buy, well, do I want to present one brand or do I present ten brands? And also just this, you know, area of, you don't know what's going to, until, if you're in consumer brand. Until it starts selling, you don't really know what's going to be. You can do all the research and all of the insights in the world. Until something gets traction, you don't really know what's going to work. So it also just set up this incredible structure that we could fail.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  We could keep trying things. We could fail relatively cheaply, quickly and kind of start the next thing.

• 13:50Steven Bartlett?

  What's the downside, though, of doing ten brands?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  So I'd say the downside in the later years is because the ordinary has become such a huge success. When the ordinary took off, the other brands got pushed aside because it's very difficult. If you have one brand that's really driving such a huge portion of your revenues, when everyone is, you know, facing high workload, that always gets prioritized. So then you end up ignoring the other brands versus if they had a dedicated team. And it's something now we want to actually, we start our incubator engine and actually, the only way we can do that is by having a dedicated team to that. So there are downsides. I think the other thing that made a huge difference for us, because we didn't have much money as a startup and we obviously wanted to hire all of these people, we couldn't afford experience. So

• 14:38Speaker 00

  everyone who was hired was pretty much straight out of university, straight out of college, just applied for their first job. And actually, that meant no one really had preconditioned ideas about the beauty industry, about the way things should be. Everyone was approaching it just with a, almost a very practical viewpoint. And I think that made a big difference too, with actually this, how do we think differently? How do we do what others aren't doing? It was almost never something that had to be discussed because people hadn't worked for the other conglomerates for all the years.

• 15:14Steven Bartlett?

  Soon after, you become co-CEOs with Brandon.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:17Steven Bartlett?

  I always think about co-founder relationships and, you know, people being yin and yang and what the kind of right balance is for co-founders. In your case, you, the way that you came together was quite unique. It wasn't necessarily, there wasn't an initial interest in being co-founders. You were both going to do two separate things. You then kind of got drawn towards each other. If I put your personality on this side and Brandon's here, what are the differences? How are they complementary but also uncomplementary?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  So Brandon was eccentric.

• 15:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  He was, I'd say we're both, we're both very passionate. He was a lot more eccentric and I'm a lot more calm. I think would be a big difference. But I guess, but also from a skill set, you know, he was, he was so into the, like, he was a genius when it came to science. And he was a tech person originally, so he came from things with a very, he didn't understand grey. It was black and white. And actually, that was quite a good way to actually approach the science, I think, behind beauty products. And he was, at times, short tempered. I'd be the, the kind of smoothing things out and he would kind of be a little bit more hot headed. But again, I think it was, you know, a startup culture is not for everyone, but for me, those first few years were incredible.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  But he also just had this amazing way of making things fun. You know, like when we would plan trips to go on meetings, he would be prioritizing which restaurants we were going to. Where's got the best ice cream? What are we going to go and do here? And actually, the work was something that came alongside it. He also had this, you know, he had this philosophy. He wanted to build a family. He'd had, you know, a troubled upbringing. I think he'd always, you know, he'd, he'd actually had this pattern, I think, of always leaving a business when it kind of just went on the verge of success. Desian was his fourth business. He had a tech business and he had two beauty businesses, Uoka, then Indeed, before, before Desian.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  And each time, what hurt him was actually leaving the relationships and the people behind. So his viewpoint of Desian was actually, how do we build a family, like a work family? But I think he, it was never work. And I think that's what so many of us felt, weekends, evenings, like we wanted to be doing Desian because we were all friends. We were all eating together. We were going to Niagara Falls on the weekend. We were going to a theme park in Toronto. Like, we were just having fun whilst we were doing everything.

• 17:49Steven Bartlett?

  The part you said about he wanted to build a family because he had a troubled upbringing. I'm trying to understand there how his upbringing, you believe, shaped his perspective on how you assemble a company. It sounds there like he was building the family he might not have had, or there's clearly some attachment challenges there if he wants to sell the brands but not the people.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:08Steven Bartlett?

  And again, the heartbreak associated with leaving these companies was all about losing relationships. A lot of that speaks to something that must have happened early.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think it was around building a family of, he never wanted anyone to leave him. And he wanted Desium to be a place of belonging. And actually, even now, we have belonging as our kind of North Star, like the most important thing anyone in our team should feel is that they belong at Desium. Whoever they are, whatever they believe in, like there is a place for them at Desium. And I think that really comes from this like sense of family. And I think, and you know, again, like I even look at my husband's world, I do think startups, because you're working in a very intense environment.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  It does build relationships far deeper than, well, I ever experienced at Boots and that I think would exist in corporates. So this sense of family, I think, you know, we would have taken a bullet for each other. And I think even now, like within within Desium, you know, we're 1,500 people now, but we still have so many of those early team members.

• 19:19Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like a cult.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  It is, but actually a very happy one.

• 19:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. This morning, I did a talk and I said, listen, I'm going to say something here, which might get me in trouble. I'm like, you've got to scale from a cult. I always have to disclaimer it and explain cults are really bad, of course, and you know, they manipulate people. But this is not what I mean. It's that that sense of dedication. We're all in this together. Inspirational founder, mission you will believe in and you believe you're right regardless of what the outside world says. You're on a mission. You're sleeping under the tech, you know.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it's, they always say that, you know, you can, you can like complain about your parents, but if anyone else says a bad word about your parents, like no, like even if they're saying the same thing you've said. And Destias was like that, you know, like you can complain like internally, like maybe there's not this process, but if anyone says a bad word, you come straight to the defence. But I think there was just so much love and passion. And again, Brandon cared for all of us. Like he had so much love that you gave it back. And that's where it was so difficult, you know, when we, when we went through the unthinkable and things became so difficult because it wasn't a colleague. Like you've just lived this incredible journey of us all travelling together, building

• 20:26Speaker 00

  something so special. Like just this such a sense of we're all in this together. Like even when times are hard, like we've got each other's backs and things may not work out, but actually let's just have fun. Let's learn things and let's just keep trying. Like let's never be afraid to fail. And let's just do it together.

• 20:46Steven Bartlett?

  People hear that and they see the outcome. So everything you've described there is the outcome. You've got this great culture. People are dedicated, they're loyal, they're on this mission. What people will be thinking, because they'll be sat in their offices now, working somewhere, or they'll be building a company of their own. In fact, this young lady came up to me this morning and asked me this question when I was doing this talk. She said, I've got this small team and I'm trying to create exactly what you've described. That kind of real dedicated kind of cult-like company culture where everyone's in it. How? How, how, how does one create it? It's so, it's actually quite difficult to explain how it comes together because in many cases, from what I've observed, it's not necessarily intentional.

• 21:31Steven Bartlett?

  I there wasn't it wasn't like a strategic drawn up plan to make people really care. It was quite a natural thing that resulted in that sort of deep sense of care from the team members. I'll offer up one thing, which you said, which I thought was spot on, which people often overlook, which is fun.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:49Steven Bartlett?

  People think of, you know, people think, well, we'll give perks and this and that. But it's all the things that happen outside of the work that seem to do most of the work in creating that cult.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  And you you come up with the best ideas.

• 22:00Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  When you're doing something on the weekend and you're not in that that kind of Monday to Friday, nine till five zone, that's when that creativity, I think, happens. And I think, you know, people spend so long in the workplace. And that's why it's so important that actually people enjoy coming in.

• 22:17Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  The one thing that I say like is definitely been like a purposeful shift is I look back at early startup culture, and I don't know if it's always kind. There's very high expectations. And again, if you're working, you know, I'm I'm calm. Brandon is very high passion, high expectations. You know, there's this, people feel like they need to work on the weekends and the evenings. And is that healthy? Even though actually it's trying to get that balance. And I think it'd be interesting, you know, and again, with my husband, who's a different stage of startup, I always just find it interesting around like, I think, especially in today's world, like we're so much more aware about mental health and burnout and actually how

• 23:01Speaker 00

  to be much more respectful of balance, which I don't know if we necessarily had back then. But equally, I feel like, again, we're pretty much a bunch of young 20 year olds with Brandon, you know, being a little bit older, who are all just happy and loved what we were doing. And when you start creating things and you start to see the the results of your work, then that drives you even further. And then that makes it even more exciting because. You know, you can see what you're achieving is actually meaning something.

• 23:29Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you could have achieved the success with Deciem and the Ordinary and the other brands? If you didn't have that lack of balance and early cult like culture?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  No. And again, like I think in the in the early days, everyone's round the same table. You've got Predvy, he's making formulations, Dion, he's doing comms and brand, like everyone's just there talking, coming up with ideas. And that's that collaboration is so special. And you know, you're you're in WhatsApp groups and you're like, have you seen this? Let's do this. And also, I think, you know, the other thing in the early days, being agile is so important. And everyone was okay. You could work on something and the next day there'd be a change of decision or someone had a different view and you're like, oh, actually, let's go in that direction now. That gets harder, I think, as you get bigger and actually there are many more teams and there's more people involved.

• 24:24Steven Bartlett?

  So that's interesting. I have to say, I agree. And with with any business I've ever been in, I I look back at those first sort of 10, 20 people and the way they behaved. And that's ultimately what we scaled, but it's that energy enthusiasm that got us from like zero to one. Does that therefore mean that there is a certain type of person you should be looking to hire at that early phase? That maybe can afford to have more of an unbalanced life?

• 24:55Speaker 00

  I think it is you need someone who's prepared to wear every hat. So in our early days, we would say yes to like, we'd get an order from Boots. If we didn't think we could fulfill it, we would say yes and we'd figure it out afterwards. And that would often mean Brandon, myself, like all of the whoever was working in the office at the time. We'd go and work in the factory. We would pull all nighters making the products. And, you know, back then, like I remember with hand chemistry, we had like a hand crimping machine. Like we'd be in, but it didn't seal that well. And about one in 10 actually exploded if you squeezed too hard. So we'd be like there at night, like making them, squeezing them like, okay, they they can pass. So you have to have people that are prepared to get on production line, to pack the boxes.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  And again, like, you know, my, even later on, like when it was, you know, times around November, Black Friday, which, you know, more recently we boycotted and we, well, we have November, our campaign, but those periods where it's busy, everyone gets into the warehouses and they help ship the products out. So I think the ability to wear whichever hat is needed for you at that moment is the most important skill set.

• 26:02Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think of this concept of work-life balance? You know, I had someone on the podcast the other day and it's called Alex Hamose and he was saying that, um, he was like, people need to stop having a conversation around work-life balance because it kind of assumes that there is such a thing as a universal balance that we should all be striking, whereas as you described it, you were happy. And you, okay, your life might have been slightly one dimensional, but, but you were happy and surely that happiness is the most important thing. And Alex Hamose says, listen, I do two things. I work and I play video games. That's it. I know I'm happy. So stop telling me to do work-life balance. I'm happy.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, a hundred percent agree. And I think, you know, it's, it comes down to what's, what's the right balance to you? And it changes at different periods of your life. So I was in my twenties, I was fine on my maybe sacrificed nights out and kind of doing other things, but I was so happy being travelling all the time, being in this kind of dessian bubble, creating all of these, this magic. And to me, that's such a powerful concept around how do we achieve balance at different periods of your life? We're all going to have periods where we can be working every hour and we love it. And actually, it's our, it's our work, but also it's our hobby. It's our downtime because we just love it so much. Then you have another period of your life where, you know, maybe you have a, an elderly

• 27:22Speaker 00

  parent that needs your support. Maybe you're going through some challenges. You've got young children. How do we step up and support each other to say, do you know what, I've got you here. You do this bit, I'll cover those bits for you because and in another few years, maybe it switches around. And again, that's something that I think is is so unique to when we say a family culture. That to me is an example of kindness that I think really actually demonstrates it.

• 27:47Steven Bartlett?

  There has been a debate, hasn't there, about the use of the word family in the corporate world? People think it means it kind of asserts that there's a lack of boundaries. And these are not, you know, Netflix's whole culture document, which is like, we're not a family, we're a high performance team. And I think I have struggled to figure out where I I sit on it. Because there are many elements of the family culture that I always want in my businesses. That sort of care, that going above and beyond, the way, you know, a deeper sense of relationship that's non transactional. And then also, on the other hand, you don't fire your family.

• 28:25Steven Bartlett?

  You know, so what what is that balance between family and high performance team?

• 28:31Speaker 00

  So for me, family is about belonging and and everyone just really feeling like they have a safe place to be and that they are loved. I think kindness sometimes is mistaken for weakness. And and also I think there's there's a conflict between the words being kind and being nice. Being nice is is kind, but can be superficial, you know. You see a stranger on the street, you're like, hi, how you know, you open the door. It's nice, but do you truly mean like, how are you? Or are you just kind of passing it? If someone's not performing at work, it's not necessarily a nice thing to have that conversation with them. But it is the kind thing, because if your intention is to help them.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  And the help may be, this is maybe a different role that we see in the company, which we think you're more suited for. It may be that we think you need this coaching, this training to get to where you need to be. And it may be that, look, you're in this role, but we're not seeing the delivery here. We actually think the better option for you is is outside. And now, when we've done terminations, you know, we've done things around like, how do we do counselling? Where actually it helps someone to look for another career, depending on kind of what role it is and the reasons why we're leaving. Because to me, then that's a kind of way we're actually trying to help that person. And the other thing, you know.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Our business, we were like, kind of this and we like had a rocket ship kind of boomed. And then, then we came to a dip just after, after kind of COVID. It hit me when I realised, if our numbers don't pick up again, we're going to have to let people go. Because actually, that is the consequence of business. Like, you're, you're there to kind of do many things, but ultimately, like, one factor of that is, is to be a business and to make money. And if you start to not hit your numbers, ultimately, like, you can't lose money for long. People will start to say, you have to save money. Where does that come from headcount? And I think that then hit me again that, okay, we have to perform. So to be kind to everyone, we have to be a performing team.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  So again, I think you can be high performing, but by being kind, I think you can make everyone feel safe and trusted. That again, if you have to make the hard decision, you're going to do it in the way to be as kind as possible and actually, you know, have the action to try and help.

• 30:51Steven Bartlett?

  I heard you say something, which was that you, you're the least qualified CEO ever.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:59Steven Bartlett?

  You don't sound like the least qualified CEO ever. I guess you've been through some shit, so.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  I definitely am. And again, you know, you have to, I was there from the beginning. And being someone who can, you know, play a leader for an organisation of 10 people, 20 people, 100 people is a very different skill set. To, you know, we are 1500 people, we now have a majority ownership from S A L order companies who are a public company. Our whole world has changed. And rightly so, because being a much bigger organisation, we have to be far more organised and planning. And I wouldn't say those are necessarily my skill sets. And again, when, you know, the, the kind of dip I mentioned was a very difficult period because we'd, we'd just been on this rocket ship of, you know,

• 31:49Speaker 00

  even when things were difficult, the one thing that always, we were always ahead of budget, targets, whatever anyone set for us. We always were just overachieving, which feels incredible when you're in business. Like, if, if you hit numbers, then everything else just falls into place. And I remember like you lose confidence. And I remember actually saying to Stefan, who is, we were putting to it, E L C, who's like an incredible person. But each time when I used to say, oh, like, you know, this is not going right. And I said, like, I'll resign, like, I'm not the person. But I was like, I need help. Like, I was like, I can't do this. Like, I'm not the C E O who understands numbers in the right way, who plans. Like, I changed my mind. And again, like, you

• 32:32Speaker 00

  think about all the things as a, as a startup, you can do things quickly, you can change. If you change your mind on a decision, when you now have many more people working on it, you demotivate people, you become, chaos is fun in a startup. In a large organisation, chaos can become demotivating.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  So then I was very fortunate that we did bring in a very incredible general manager who joined us about a year ago. And he has had such a transformation on the company, because he can't believe just the basics we didn't have in place. And because we'd grown so quickly, and it's now to get that balance between, you know, there's, there's areas we don't want any experience but Desiums when it comes to like brand and innovation, our values, things that we are so passionate about. When it comes to supply chain and scaling and new markets, we need experience. So actually having the G M come in that actually could kind of take control of those, and then actually allow me to focus

• 33:36Speaker 00

  on the areas which I'm much more passionate about, which is the, the brand area, our people, culture, belonging, social impact, it's just made a huge difference to the business.

• 33:46Steven Bartlett?

  So two things there. You offering up your, essentially resignation from your, your role when things were a little bit tricky.

• 33:56Steven Bartlett?

  It's giving me imposter syndrome.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  I like to think more just like a realist of.

• 34:03Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever had imposter syndrome? Because, you know, saying this quote here about being the least qualified CEO ever.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  From a traditional perspective, for example, if I went now to, you know, another company with revenues nearing a billion dollars a year with 1,500 employees, I wouldn't be a good CEO. I think I could be a good people person. I think I could help on values on brand. Now, obviously, there's an argument of like a modern CEO, and I think especially for there's no one more qualified for Desium than me because of the history. But when I think about just the pure metrics and the size of the business,

• 34:42Speaker 00

  it needed someone with some more experience. And again, I'm a big believer on, you know, anyone who thinks they're the expert at everything, they're not. And I think I'm a good person at relationships and hopefully bringing people on for the journey, hopefully people feeling how appreciative and truly grateful I am that they choose to kind of be at Desium and give their all every day. But there are many areas that I'm not good at all. And actually, having trusted people to support that is amazing. And I always do think myself more, you know, it's kind of like the conductor of an orchestra, like being aware, except I'm not very organised. So the bigger you get, then suddenly you do need someone that maybe has got more technical skills.

• 35:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because when I asked that question about the imposter syndrome thing, I immediately reflected upon it. And I thought, it's funny how imposter syndrome and self-awareness can sound very, very similar. And that's in fact, from speaking to some of your team, one of the things they repeatedly said to us was about your self-awareness. And I even reflect going back early to your time at Boots where you were considering contemplating becoming a buyer. And the first thing you were doing there is saying, does that suit my skill set and what makes me happy? I mean, your team said it. They said your quote is that she isn't afraid to tell you and she instinctively knows what her strengths and weaknesses are.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  But I think it's the only way to be authentic, that you know, trying to be something that that you're not, or something that doesn't make you happy, is not really good for anyone. And I actually think like authenticity in today's world, I think is a value that is is one of the most important because otherwise you you get cooled out. It'd be crazy for me to say that I'm good at the finance piece. I'm not, it's not a strength, but we have an incredible VP of Finance. We've got incredible General Manager that truly understands it. So I think actually just playing to your strengths and allowing others to play to their strengths is actually what brings authenticity.

• 36:40Steven Bartlett?

  I should probably read this. Your team said she delegates a lot and very well. She very instinctively knows her strengths and her weaknesses. She isn't afraid to bring on knowledge and talent for those weaknesses. Her team says she's incredibly self-aware and also she is literally a ray of sunshine. How much did you pay Jenny in marketing?

• 37:06Speaker 00

  It was kind.

• 37:06Steven Bartlett?

  Two thousand and seventeen, you launch The Ordinary in two thousand and sixteen?

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, the end of twenty sixteen.

• 37:14Steven Bartlett?

  At the end of twenty sixteen.

• 37:17Steven Bartlett?

  And then two thousand and seventeen is The Ordinary's breakout year.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:21Steven Bartlett?

  Breakout year, how do you quantify that? Give us an idea.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  The minute it launched, we couldn't keep it in stock. It was, and again, from, we'd come up, so The Ordinary was the eleventh brand that we came up with a concept for.

• 37:38Steven Bartlett?

  Wait, that violates the name. It was meant to be ten.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  But we don't focus, so we can change our mind.

• 37:44Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  So we kept going and.

• 37:47Steven Bartlett?

  What's the Latin word for eleven?

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe a company name change.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  With The Ordinary, I don't think we ever thought it would, we never dreamt it would become what it's, what it's become today. We launched The Ordinary out of frustration that there wasn't enough transparency in the world of skincare.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  And you know, we took inspiration from the world of pharmacy. If you have a headache, you can go into a pharmacy, you buy paracetamol. You're going to be paying, you know, fifty p to three pounds. It's a very small window. No one can sell you paracetamol for a hundred pounds because you know the ingredient, you know, the milligram. The trust is there because the transparency has been in that industry. That didn't exist in the world of skincare, which meant that if you walked into a beauty hall to pick a skincare product, you may see actually a relatively similar formula being sold for ten pounds, being sold for a hundred pounds. And actually not really understanding what's the difference. You know, is it the marketing you're paying for? We kind of have this assumption, does like paying more mean more?

• 38:52Speaker 00

  But if you go into Boots and you see a new hundred pound painkiller, are you going to trust it? Are you just going to take the ingredient that's safe and effective and trusted? And I think the reason we were feeling frustrated was because for NEOD, we were really using brand new technologies that were very expensive and no one else was using these. It was kind of true innovation. So we said, well, actually, let's, let's take this approach of people. Because again, the, some of the ingredients we use in the ordinary, they may have been around for decades. That's not a bad thing. If something's been around for a long time, there's so much research done. There's so much safety. And again, just like paracetamol, aspirin, we don't always need new if you've actually found a solution that has incredible effects.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  We presented the concept of the ordinary to two significant retailers, two of our, you know, big partners now, who both said no to launching the brand. And this was when we were kind of still at concept stage before we'd even create, like, produce the first product. They said it was too confusing, white boxes will collect dust, you know, you need to just rename the products to be anti-aging serum, radiance serum. Effectively just what everyone else looked like in the industry. And because we had these, this umbrella and we had different brands, it gave us the confidence to say no, because you know, we, we were doing okay for ourselves, like we could cover everyone's payroll.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  We, we kind of had traction with some of the other brands, but we said, no, let's, let's follow our gut, which, again, it's a privilege to be able to say that because I know for so many entrepreneurs, cash flow is, is a killer and it can be so difficult to say no to a listing that you know could be worth significant money. But we said, actually, no, we really believe that actually this transparency is what's missing in the beauty industry. So, you know, we,

• 40:43Speaker 00

  the ordinary launch and it just honestly was a rocket ship that even today, we, and for our VPS supply chain has, you know, we're producing 400,000 units every single day at the moment in our manufacturing in Toronto. We still have retailers, if you go into Boots, you'll still see lots of outer stocks on the, on the shelf. Like we still struggle to keep up with demand six years later since we launched the brand. And that has been, it's just been an incredible story. But I mean, we look back at 2017. We knew we needed kind of more money to scale. So we started looking for investment.

• 41:18Steven Bartlett?

  Which is how many months after launch?

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Um, oh, the ordinary was like three months old. Desiem was four years old. Um, and again, we'd, we were doing okay. Like we had some success stories, not anywhere near the scale of, of kind of where the ordinary went to. We met with different private equity firms. There was like another huge conglomerate who we had lots of meetings with. And we ended up meeting with, um, Essa Lourdes companies in April. And it was eight weeks from our very first meeting to the deal being signed, which was due diligence, negotiations, everything. It was, especially for a corporate with a board, a public company, it was, it was just this huge energy from the moment we, they came to Toronto,

• 42:02Speaker 00

  the, the kind of M and A team, then they were like, we, we need you to come to New York. We want you to meet Leonard. We want to meet you, meet you Fabrizio, our CEO. We want you to kind of meet this team. And I remember seeing Fabrizio, the CEO, who have a huge amount of respect and admiration for. And the deal was done within like thirty minutes of meeting because they just saw this, I think the energy particularly from Brandon, like Brandon and I were in the room, like just this creativity, this passion and the ordering was just starting to kind of create these kind of rumbles. And I think they, you know, ultimately they believed in the concept, they believed in what we wanted to do.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  So they, uh, the deal signed in June, they became a minority investor, uh, they, they took twenty nine percent of the company. And I actually, you know, with Desium today, we have had more time with E L C than without E L C.

• 42:54Steven Bartlett?

  E L C.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  S L order companies.

• 42:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  When acquisitions happen, I think companies go from zero to a hundred percent. You know, we're at seventy, they, they own seventy six percent now of Desium and it will go to a hundred percent um next summer. And actually that process will have been seven years, which actually is one, I think, quite forward. I haven't seen many deals like that done, I think, between kind of a startup and, and, you know, a, a larger company. But actually, it's just been this amazing different chapters of us both getting to know each other, learning each other's strengths, I think, having a lot of respect for, you know, where, where we need help and where we kind of need to be left alone.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  And so actually, it's just been this really nice journey and, you know, Desium, we're in our tenth year uh this year. And in six years of those, we've had the partnership of S L order companies.

• 43:49Steven Bartlett?

  Twenty nine percent they took and I, it's rumored the valuation was about one point five billion.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  In, so in the, the last, in the twenty twenty one investment.

• 43:59Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, okay, right.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, I think, valued at two point two billion US dollars.

• 44:04Steven Bartlett?

  And at, at that early stage, I'm trying to figure out for your four years into Desium, S L order put some money in, what was the valuation at that point when they took the twenty nine percent?

• 44:12Speaker 00

  It had been about a hundred and sixty million.

• 44:15Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, Jesus, okay, super interesting. I mean, it's a, it's a very quick um trajectory relative to most companies in that space to achieve those valuations in such a space of time. We move on then from two thousand seventeen to two thousand and eighteen.

• 44:32Steven Bartlett?

  And this is really where Brandon's behavior started to change.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  It truly happened what felt like overnight. So at the the end of twenty seventeen.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  So so we we closed the investment in the summer. And again, the ordinary at the end of twenty seventeen is is a year old. It's having this incredible. Just people are warming to it. People are loving the concept. You know, I always think the ordinary is like a community brand because it really was. Spread through word of mouth endorsements. And I remember my husband and I, we went to New Zealand and Australia for for kind of the the Christmas break. And then I remember getting this call from from Brandon saying. You know, you need to go straight to the airport with what it like. He was like, have you got your passport? I said, yes. He said, you go straight to the airport now. Book a first class flight, come straight to Toronto on the next flight, turn your phone off, turn your emails.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  He was just like, calm down, let's let's be relaxed, but you need to come immediately.

• 45:33Steven Bartlett?

  So he didn't tell you why?

• 45:35Speaker 00

  No, but I could just sense it was an entirely different person I was speaking to.

• 45:40Steven Bartlett?

  All of a sudden?

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Over that over that break in the holidays. I mean, the flight from Australia to Toronto, I think I was on the plane, you know, travelling for about twenty hours. I cried the entire way because I knew something really bad was happening. And I guess so just kind of towards the end of twenty seventeen. And again, I have to say Brandon is someone who. He he would have like one drink in the month, like he barely drank. As far as I'm aware, you know, we spent so much time together, like wouldn't do drugs was just a he was. High on energy and happiest, just drinking Diet Coke and eating fries with ketchup type person. Towards the end of twenty seventeen, he'd become intrigued, I think, by magic mushrooms and just kind of.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  This idea of, you know, can you access different parts of your brain? And again, this was just something like in Amsterdam where it's legal and it's kind of just this. Almost just this inquisitive, actually, how does how does the mind work? And I knew he'd planned to go to Amsterdam over New Year to kind of. Experiment with some of his learnings on kind of mushrooms and in in different dosages. And I'm someone who's quite anti-drugs, like I've always been kind of, I like to be well behaved. I don't like to kind of break in, break any rules in those senses. And I just had this awful feeling and I came back to Toronto and he summoned, you know,

• 47:07Speaker 00

  around 10 of us to have this meeting in the distillery store, which was one of our desium stores in Toronto that we, we closed for the day.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  And everything had changed and it was just like talking to a stranger. He had this like coldness in his eyes and he'd gone from someone who, you know, the second you see him, there'd be hugs, there was just so much warmth, you know, all of his emails would have hearts on, it was just kind of all of this love in, in messages and kind of just being, it's just this almost kind of zoned out cold person that suddenly almost felt like, kind of just had this like,

• 47:52Speaker 00

  it's like he didn't understand, there was no understanding anymore between him and any of us. He spoke around things where, you know, we've, were, were too caught up now in the concept of time. So for example, he said to me like the, the next day, when, you know, we'd meet for coffee and, you know, our routine for the previous four years has been, he'd text me, he'd like, I'll pick you up at seven AM. We'd go to a coffee shop, we'd get, you know, breakfast and head to the office. And he suddenly was like, there's no time anymore. I'm going to meet you in the coffee shop tomorrow, but we don't need to tell each other a time. We'll just be there when we're supposed to be there. And I remember finding it really hard because he truly was, is such a genius and a visionary. And this has happened so quickly.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  And I remember like ringing, ringing Sean and saying like, does he, does he have a point like, are we too caught up in time? Like, is this just like, are we taking things the wrong way? So I had a lot of confusion just around that. How can something change so quickly? And again, this is someone who, you know, over the four, five years of being like insanely close to him, you know, we, I was in going to Toronto at this point for like three weeks out of the month and we'd have every dinner together, breakfast together, lunch together, every weekend together. And never seeing any episodes of, of mental health or anything changing. So suddenly you have this drastic change.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  If someone you loved, but someone suddenly who feels like he's completely closing the door to you and kind of pushing you out. This was an indifferent person who was angry, shouting, crying, scary. It was suddenly very cold to everyone. And then, so everyone's very confused, very upset. And then there's business things that start to happen. That make no sense, that are actually quite mean, you know, cancelling a brand on Instagram, a big partnership we had done with someone, cancelling a retailer.

• 49:54Steven Bartlett?

  What, so he went on Instagram and told them, said to your following on Instagram that?

• 49:59Speaker 00

  This brand's no longer going to exist.

• 50:01Steven Bartlett?

  Before telling them?

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we'd spent all of this time with Dr Escho, uh, building this brand.

• 50:07Steven Bartlett?

  I know Dr Escho.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then it cancelled, like, Tijon found out on Instagram with everyone else that this brand that he'd put all this passion and energy in was ended. Retailers were ended. It became, it was just horrible. So I did challenge him. And what happened when I challenged him was I got a meanest, meanest response around how I just don't understand him of all the people I, I should understand.

• 50:32Steven Bartlett?

  Gaslighting.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  And just, yeah, and be like, you look back and like, nothing was making any sense. And then I got fired. Because again, and he wasn't technically allowed to, like, you know, you need board approval and all of these things, but there was, there was no ration, rational actions at this time. So this, this just accelerated so quickly. And then it's so difficult because then anyone who's trying to help gets pushed out. So then everyone's, and again, like in the background, like I'm, because it's all of these early team members, like, everyone wants to help him and protect him. And everyone's like, what do we do? And, you know, that's the hardest thing about, you know, mental health and drug abuse, which then like circle together. But ultimately, when it's affecting someone's brain.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  They can't necessarily recognise that themselves. And someone said to me, it's like you're speaking Polish to them. You may think you're speaking English, a common language. There is no understanding in that conversation of what each other is saying. And actually, that that did start to make sense. But it was just very difficult. And I think, you know, again, I got fired in February, so like a month into this. And it'd been the worst month of my life, like truly like horrendous, like so emotionally difficult.

• 51:51Steven Bartlett?

  What happened in that break? Do you know? Have you got any suspicions?

• 51:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he's, well, yeah, he was very curious and I think he he took everything to an extreme. And I think he'd been reading a lot around psychedelics and kind of how to access different parts of your brain. And I think he experimented a lot during that break.

• 52:12Steven Bartlett?

  And do you think that triggered some kind of psychotic episode?

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:18Steven Bartlett?

  So on that point about being fired.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  How how were you fired?

• 52:22Speaker 00

  I knew it was coming.

• 52:24Steven Bartlett?

  Wow, why?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Because he'd I'd gone from being, we were inseparable, to I was suddenly pushed out of everything, excluded from conversation, conversations, emails. He'd came to London. He was in London at the time when I when I got fired. And again, when he'd landed in London, from the minute he landed to the minute he left, we would be together.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  And I I didn't, I barely saw him.

• 52:51Steven Bartlett?

  How did that feel?

• 52:53Speaker 00

  So hurtful because hurtful and confusing and just really hard. And and I guess you have like a whole team who are like, what's happening? Everyone is scared because it's a very strong personality who now could take anything anyone in the team said the wrong way. Kind of someone could be at the end of quite, you know, an explosion of anger, which again was never there before. So it's just a very difficult situation of one where you just, you don't even understand it, which I think is what makes it so hard. But I'd also, I think at that point, we didn't maybe know the extent of how how things were going to spiral from there or how mentally unwell he was.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Because, I mean, six weeks earlier, he'd been, he'd been the Brandon like we all knew and loved. So it was such a quick turnaround and change.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  And I remember getting a call from, from the, the person who ran our H R at the time.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  And I remember just saying, I know, like, he wants to fire me. Then obviously she said, yeah. And then, um. And I remember just like crying my eyes out. And actually at the time. The, um, person from Estee Lauder companies who was on the M and A team. Who was based in New York. Um, he was in London at the time. And I went to meet him. And I remember just saying like, I'm scared because I don't know what's happening. And this is someone who's just entirely changed. And I don't know what to do to help him. And I remember then, you know, the confusion of someone's now acting.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  It doesn't matter what agreements are in place. This is now someone acting irrationally.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  But we've got to act in a certain way because it's someone who is so unpredictable in the way. And again, I think at this point I hadn't really realised how bad things were going to be. And you know, part of you thinks like, maybe it is me like. Maybe I'm not the right person to be there anymore. And maybe for whatever reason, like. He thinks I don't believe in the vision or things have just changed.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  My husband, who's like the most supportive person in the world, but also very calm. Takes such a like relaxed approach to anything, like nothing is a problem to him in, in his world in a very positive way. He like booked us a holiday. He was like, let's just get away and like. You know, it's been like a very hard month. Right now, Brendan like doesn't want you. We can't change that. So let's just focus on just like taking a moment just to kind of reflect. And, and obviously I'd always wanted children. We'd be married for a few years at this time. I'd never wanted them whilst I was in like the busyness of Desi and because I wanted the time to enjoy being. You know, a mum of young children. So we were like, let's, let's try and have a baby.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  So I got pregnant in the March and.

• 55:59Steven Bartlett?

  A month later.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, um.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  But then at that point, things were spiralling with Brendan and, you know, abusive emails were being sent uh targeting everyone. He was firing so many people within the business, firing people and copying the whole company in, copying retailers in, press in. And it became clear like things were really unwell. And I remember, I think being about six weeks pregnant.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  I was being targeted on like some of these emails and I remember thinking, if I tell him I'm pregnant because I know he's so kind. And maybe he'll like leave me alone or if I like impose something. And then he announced it on Instagram when I was like six weeks pregnant.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  And something like that happens.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  You know, someone's not rational. Like, no good human being does that to someone. And then it became really hard because I was still in this situation of loving him so much, wanting to help him, feeling just not knowing what to do. Also having like the company, like having everyone still coming to me, asking me like, what should we do? Because you've got someone saying things that make no sense and being, you know, he was just very, very unwell. So I was still trying to help people in the background, keep things going with the business.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  Obviously, you know, trying to be in the early stages of pregnancy, which now obviously the whole world knew.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  And it was just really, really hard. And I remember when he first got sectioned, feeling such a sense of relief

• 57:56Speaker 04

  that he was finally going to get the treatment he needed to get better.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  And it was actually in in London when he got sectioned for the first time. And then he he was out five days later. And then that was the start of, you know, over that twenty eighteen. He got sectioned five times across London, across Canada, across America. And each time we'd just get released a short period after. And then that's when I started to to almost kind of. You you lose the hope of like, how can? How can we help this person when? He keeps getting into these terrible like, you know, to get sectioned. You're in a terrible situation for authorities to actually come in and remove you for your own safety.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  But then this would just happen again and it's. It's almost like there wasn't even a connection between like the countries and the medical systems and. And kind of like how that all works is is confusing, but he. He asked in the in the June. You know, he was sending me videos crying and just saying like, I need you back. I don't know what I've done. Like, I'm so sorry. And I remember feeling like. I could, I can't help if I'm not there. Maybe if I'm with him, maybe I can help him. So I I went back. And the first week I went back, we went to Morocco because he was like, you know, we need to plan. Like, we need to get the business thing sorted again. And actually. It felt like a normalish conversation.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  So I remember feeling like, you know, maybe. Maybe things can get better. And I remember the week in Morocco, just. Things were worse than ever. Things had got even worse in that time. I'd I'd been away. And it's just. It's a helpless situation and. I have so much empathy for anyone who. Or one, the people who struggle with with mental health and addiction. But also for the people surrounding them because it's a very toxic environment to be in. One, because you're you're you're being abused.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  But secondly, you're losing the loved person. And thirdly, you just feel like you can't help. Because again, with so many other health issues, when you're not battling with the brain, there's more acceptance of treatment to get better. But that just doesn't exist in the same way.

• 1:00:28Steven Bartlett?

  I can tell how much you loved him.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Honestly, he was like, and this is what I find so hard. He really was so kind. And like, would do anything. And again, like, you know, when I talk about Desi and being a family, in his estate, in his will, every single beneficiary is a Desi M employee. Like, that's, that's this family bond that was just so strong. So just to see that go. And again, like, everything was played out on Instagram. Brandon was doing all of these posts in terrible situations. And it's a very hard line. I mean, we'd, we talked to Instagram like this. It's such a free, it's such a difficult, you have free speech, you have someone like it's,

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  it's a platform, like people can, can post what they want, you know, some things would, would get removed, others wouldn't. But it was just an awful situation to be in. And I think everyone just had such a huge desire to help him. And like in this time period, I mean, even like S A Lord companies were behind the scenes, they were so supportive to us. But again, you have, you know, you go on Instagram and you see all these comments, why is no one helping him? What are you all doing? And again, it's, it's so hard because people don't see that situation of it is pretty much impossible to help. And then you have people that say, look, someone has to reach rock bottom, like they have to just reach rock bottom until they get better.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  So then in in October, Brandon had done an Instagram post basically saying he was shutting down the entire company and there would be no more Desi and and obviously that was the point when the the shareholders had to step in because suddenly, you know, there's, I think at that point, we had eight hundred employees, like there was everyone's jobs on the line. And and again, you think, look, maybe, maybe this is the the kind of bottom point he needs to reach to actually understand he needs to get help. So that's when the call order happened to remove Brandon from the company, which again is an incredibly hard situation because no one wants to remove the founder who they care so much about. And, you know,

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  a founder who is such a visionary and is the brand, like to feel like he is being forcibly removed from his own company is very difficult. But you've also got a situation where everything was public. So every email sent had the whole company on C C, had all the journalists, had all of our retailers, had customers on Instagram posts were obviously going to everyone. So you're also living this out in public, which I think also makes it a lot harder. So in October, he got removed as the CEO.

• 1:03:15Steven Bartlett?

  Reflecting on what you said to me at this earlier in the conversation about him wanting to keep the family together and be part of the family based on his own early experiences, maybe his own family upbringing, that must have been particularly painful for him. Seems like he designed designed this company to be a family. And that's clearly one of the most important things for him. So for him to be ousted from his quote unquote family must have been tremendously painful. Did you ever learn about his early years? Did you ever learn about his his own background, his family?

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually, it's interesting because.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  For how close I was to him, when he became unwell, I actually learnt how much I didn't know about him.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  And I think, you know, he just, I think he had a lot of challenges of never feeling accepted for who he was. Which makes me so sad because me as a person, and especially like the destiny that we have now, like, we truly accept anyone and love anyone. It doesn't matter like who you choose to love, where you're from, like, you belong to us and like we are grateful. If you want to be part of the family, you are, you are the family. So I find it hard that he never felt that accept, he never felt like he could be his true self. Which I think I only learnt more when he became unwell.

• 1:04:40Steven Bartlett?

  How?

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Um, like he'd had, we had, he'd had this incredible life partner for ten years that I didn't even know about.

• 1:04:49Steven Bartlett?

  A romantic partner?

• 1:04:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Steven Bartlett?

  A husband, a boyfriend?

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  Pretty much, yeah. And, and again, like those things when, I mean, that's a big thing to hide from someone.

• 1:05:00Steven Bartlett?

  Why was he hiding it?

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  Well, I can only think that was him feeling like he wouldn't be accepted for it. And I mean,

• 1:05:08Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's a man?

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I mean, well, in the world today, but I mean, especially the beauty, like, it's, I'm so proud of the, the, you know, the, the diverse team we have, like, he would have been so accepted, but I mean, he was from Iran. I think he maybe just had, well, I don't know, I can't say the reasons.

• 1:05:28Steven Bartlett?

  Attitudes are different.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And but he clearly never felt like he could share with the world who he truly was. And I mean, that's, that's a huge thing to carry.

• 1:05:38Steven Bartlett?

  What about his parents?

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  So his mother died when he was very young, and I think he had a challenged relationship with his father. But again, I only learnt a lot when he became ill. And I also have a battle with.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  If he didn't want to tell me, he didn't want people to know. So there's kind of a balance of, you know, I have so many things that, gosh, I wish I could ask him.

• 1:06:03Steven Bartlett?

  What are those things?

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  About his childhood, about who he is, about why he felt the need to keep things secret. And then also just to understand, because, you know, people say to me, like, like, did he have any signs of of mental health challenges before? And and again, it depends what you consider traits of mental health. But no, I mean, he was eccentric and he was, you know, high intensity and and many things that I think are are traits often of founders. I mean, I would love to understand more. Like, how do we support people with mental health? Because again, I mean, for someone to be sectioned five times.

• 1:06:43Steven Bartlett?

  Why was he sectioned?

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  He would just be in very bad situations. Police would come and get involved and then.

• 1:06:50Steven Bartlett?

  Drugs?

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Drugs, mental. And again, it's so hard to diagnose.

• 1:06:54Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. Cause and effect.

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  Because, yeah, they they both kind of spiraled spiraled each other quite dramatically.

• 1:07:01Steven Bartlett?

  He was doing meth in the UK, I read as well, but and then he got arrested for.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. And and again, my my limited understanding of drugs, but I think crystal meth is about as as bad as it gets, I think, in in many ways. And so then in in October, he got removed. And again, I remember feeling like maybe maybe this will show him like be the push he needs to to get help. But it wasn't. Things just kept spiraling. And again, what's so difficult in these situations is, at this point, I think he's pushed pretty much everyone away who really loved him. And he's now, because you have to remember, he also had funds, he had, you know, resources, which meant, you know, at this point, he'd was now flying private jets everywhere. And he was kind of surrounded by people that I had

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  never met before and who I don't think were particularly good people for him to have around. But I mean, you don't have control over another human being. And I think that's a thing that I really struggled with, was how much everyone wanted to help him and loved him. But at some point, you know, so by October, I mean, we've had 10 months of so much hurt, so much trying to help him, so much, you know, you have moments when you think. You're getting through and maybe like this is gonna like be a change and then things just fall down again.

• 1:08:25Steven Bartlett?

  So he then, when you've got sort of 700 employees, takes to Instagram and announces that he's shutting down the company. And did he mean that?

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he did. Again, I don't know if he meant it or if he was

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  just wanting to be removed and almost, you know, if that was the reason he was kind of doing some of these behaviours. There had been, things had been very extreme. And I sometimes don't know if he would have thought like, you know, what else do I need to do for someone to just take me out of this? So then obviously at that point, you know, the, the board, the shareholders, there's, there's no choice but to now remove Brandon from, from the company.

• 1:09:12Steven Bartlett?

  Did they contact you after that?

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, they, they.

• 1:09:15Steven Bartlett?

  Privately, I mean, before the, the lawsuit and all that started, they'd said, listen, Nicola, we're gonna have to do something here.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and I mean, throughout this process, there were many conversations because again, you know, every shareholder loved Brandon and cared for him and like, everyone's a good person and it's like, everyone wants to help someone that they've seen this brilliance in and kind of seen this quick, quick downfall. And I think the viewpoint was always, how do we protect Desi M so that Brandon can get better and come back? So it was always just a temporary order. And, and obviously they rang me because it would, it would name me as becoming salty on kind of the interim period. And again, you know, I had this thoughts that maybe, maybe this is what is needed for him to actually

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  get the help because sometimes they say, you know, you have to lose everything to hit rock bottom to then be accepting that you need help, but that, that didn't happen. And I think when, when it, when the court order happened in October.

• 1:10:18Steven Bartlett?

  Which is what, three days after he announces he's shutting down the company? Or was it more?

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  It was a very quick period. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, I think it was within days.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  But then things just seemed to keep spiraling. And obviously, you know, at that point in October, I was seven months pregnant. And so I remember I had like one last travel before I was at the kind of no, no flying stage. So I went to Toronto. And actually, the first thing I did was bringing back a lot of the incredible team members that had gone during the period of 2018.

• 1:10:51Steven Bartlett?

  So I need to pause there because that's pretty astounding. You're seven months pregnant. The founder has been ousted by a huge, like multinational billion dollar conglomerate. And you're thrust in as CEO of the company of 700 people who have just gone through

• 1:11:09Steven Bartlett?

  chaos.

• 1:11:12Steven Bartlett?

  What do you do day one?

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  And so, so assemble the team. So, you know, the, the key people who were incredibly close to Brendan, who had also been fired and kind of pushed out in, in all of this chaos. They needed to come back to the company because they were also co-founders. They were also people who had been there from the beginning, understood the values and we desperately needed. I remember going for dinner with Stephen and saying like, I need you to come back. So Stephen was our CFO at the time. And then we came back as a COO. And again, like, we just needed to get organisation because I mean, in this period of 2018, you have to remember the, our, our demand for the products went through the roof because, I mean, there was a lot of noise around

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  what was happening. And

• 1:12:01Steven Bartlett?

  Did it help sales?

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  Massively, which is frustrating, but you know,

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  because we had such good products, that was also in the conversation. But it was like, have you seen what's happening? Have you seen this Instagram? Have you seen this founder? Like,

• 1:12:16Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I'll be honest with you. The only time I'd heard, because I'm, I'm not a buyer of the, the products, the ordinary products. The only time I'd heard about the brand was I heard a story when I was in New York, I think in 2017, 2018, when I was living in New York, about this founder that had like hijacked the Instagram and was posting like a dead sheep. He posted like a picture of a dead sheep or something. And I remember clicking on, this is so funny, actually, I clicked onto the Instagram to like, see what was going on. It's kind of like being nosy or whatever. And I was like, that branding's cool.

• 1:12:47Steven Bartlett?

  So for the last five years, I've known it from that first moment, but I remember thinking that branding is really on the money.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Well, in 2018, I mean, the brand was only one a year old.

• 1:12:56Steven Bartlett?

  Crazy.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  So actually, you know, many people's first interaction with the brand was probably through, you know, being told, have you seen this person on Instagram? Have you seen this breakdown that's happening in public? So that was, and I think that's one thing I find very hard is that Brandon was an incredible human being. He was so kind. He was such a visionary. He was so high energy. He truly was a genius that I find it hard that people didn't really know him from before. And actually, so many people only learned about him through that period, which is very sometimes difficult to accept. But it is also the reality of just the situation and social media and the appetite for controversy that I think kind

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  of exists today.

• 1:13:44Steven Bartlett?

  Did, when the lawsuit was happening and he was being ousted, was there a point during that, that couple of days, that period where he called you?

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  He, he became on, you couldn't reach him. He turned all his phones off. He didn't go to the court or like, you know, he was obviously sort of in normal world, like would have a representation and would, you know, it was just, just vanished.

• 1:14:07Steven Bartlett?

  So you come into the office, you assemble the team, you pull the people back?

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and again, so then for those next couple of months, you know, we, we did hit like Brandon would sometimes be parked outside the front of our office in Toronto. And again, you have to remember this is people who love him. But now there's a character who is, is still acting at times, um, you know, frustrated, upset. And it's just a very difficult environment to be in.

• 1:14:39Steven Bartlett?

  You've got a responsibility now as CEO. You've got this guy parked outside the office. You're trying to focus the team. There's a guy parked outside the office who's capable of causing chaos to the company, to the team members, to the employees, you know, really not, you know, stable.

• 1:14:56Steven Bartlett?

  Surely you've got a responsibility to

• 1:14:59Steven Bartlett?

  call the police or something or get him out of there, you know, is that, there's a conflict of interest.

• 1:15:03Speaker 00

  It's, it's such a hard, because you, you try everything. And actually, you have to remember as well, during this period, I was back in the UK. So actually, it was even harder because, I mean, at this point, I'm like eight months pregnant, nine months pregnant. So hearing this, but actually not being in Toronto, to actually be there in head office with the team. And again, that's where Stephen and kind of other, other members were incredible. And again, it's difficult because, you know, Stephen, there'd be a conversation with Brandon. And then you'd get to the point where people would just be leaving out the, the back exit to kind of, because it's such a horrible situation. I mean, he's, he's not doing anything wrong sitting in his car on the road. So it's kind of, you couldn't even ring the police unless he was actually acting

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  abusive, but sitting in the car alone, like.

• 1:15:50Steven Bartlett?

  Were you not worried?

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Everything was more just sadness of like how he would be feeling at that time. And then you just get frustrated at yourself because, you know, I think we're, we're so used to figuring out the answer, figuring out solutions. So then when you're in this heartbreaking situation of, you know, trying to be nice, trying to be there, trying to ask if he's okay, being away, being distant. Nothing works. And actually, that feels very hard, I think, to, to actually accept, especially as someone who, you know, I like to find solutions as a problem, like we find the answer. So it was a hard period. And then my daughter was born at December 29th, just four days after, after Christmas.

• 1:16:38Speaker 00

  And then I remember in the January, getting a message. So Dion had, the press had got in touch with us to say, is it true Brandon's died? We had heard nothing at this point. And I remember thinking, surely not, like, we wouldn't be hearing from a reporter asking us the question. So I said to John, look, I'll, I'll ask Stephen to see if he can hear anything. So Stephen went to the police station who confirmed they'd found his body and, and he'd, he'd passed away.

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  I remember Stephen ringing me and I was breastfeeding my daughter at the time and just feeling this shock because you just never think that's actually the ending that's going to come. Like, I think, I always did just think at some point he would get better. And actually, not within a year, someone could go from like, being the person you know and you love and who is normal and is in for them, to a year later that this, this such a fast downward spiral has happened that that's kind of had that ending. And then you also, I then realised that I don't think his partner knew. I don't think any, you know,

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  like, any of our Desi and family, like, no one knew other than that reporter. But if the press know, that means quite quickly, everyone's going to know. So then having to go through this process of ringing his partner, ringing like the people that I knew were incredibly close personally to him, ringing Estee Lauder companies, like, telling the people that had to know, and then quite quickly having the email drafted, because also, you know, this press inquiry has gone to our general media at Desi and inbox, which means the team are already knowing that this inquiry is out there. So suddenly it's like, okay, gosh, like, I need everyone to hear this in, in the right order. So trying to,

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  like, make those phone calls, send those messages.

• 1:18:41Steven Bartlett?

  Did you process it yourself?

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  No, I think I went into, I remember just the shock of, I really didn't think it was going to end in that way, all that soon. And then I think it was just, okay, let's, like, go through the motions, like, who do we need to tell, like, how do we handle this from here? And then...

• 1:19:07Speaker 00

  Remember like then being like, I need to get meal or a passport because we flew to Toronto five, like five days later. Um.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  And yeah, just go into like. How do we, because again, it's not just a company that's left a founder, it's a family, it's a friend, it's someone who's so close to all of us. And it's also hard because it's just such a, just a tragic story and a tragic ending. And you know, and I think back to sometimes like our family bond and especially the bond that we still have now. So only people who were there at the beginning, but I mean, we lived through this, like, we had this year. We're messaging each other around, this has just happened, what do you think we should do? How do we handle this situation? Like, we lived that pain together, which I think is, is probably why there is a bond

• 1:19:57Speaker 00

  that I think is still incredibly strong, that wouldn't normally exist because it, it does strengthen when you go through those tough times together.

• 1:20:07Steven Bartlett?

  He was, he was on his own when he passed away?

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, he, he posted Instagram videos on, on that night. So, you know, we, we know from various things that he was obviously still in this cycle of drug abuse and then kind of mental health. We don't know, no one was there. He, he fell off the balcony. I don't believe it was suicide with an intention to end his life. Because he'd have, I believe he'd have left a note, he'd have sent an email, he was, he was big on words, like he always had something to say. That I find it hard to think that he would. And again, you know, even if it was videos, like there was, there was always kind of

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  communication coming from him. That I find it hard to believe he would purposefully end things without having a last kind of voice in the world. But again, you know, when you are in that situation, I don't know if he was sat on the edge and kind of

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  felt he, he was a high floor apartment, there was kind of huge storms and winds that night, but I mean, none of us were there, so we'll, we'll never truly know what happened.

• 1:21:26Steven Bartlett?

  As well as your job to sort of communicating this to your team and dealing with the after effects of his passing, when do you process it? This is someone you love. This is your friend that you've just found out has died. This is your co-founder, your former co-CEO, someone you've been on an incredible journey with. When do you have a chance to stop and just really work through the emotions?

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  I actually don't know if I ever have even to this day because it's just hard when, you know, work was, Desia was so busy because we've just gone through this year of turmoil where demand has gone through the roof, yet behind the scenes, you know, people have done an amazing job at holding things together, but it'd also been a year of no leadership, kind of decisions being made in the wrong way, a lot of chaos there. So you suddenly have this situation of like, there's a lot to fix, there's a lot to sort out. And I'm, and I'm not talking even from like culture and emotions, but just actually from

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  like business practicalities, because this is a brand that's exploding with this kind of soaring demand that's had this chaos, but now needs stability, it needs kind of all of this love put back into it and back into the team and people. And then obviously I also have a newborn baby at this time. So I feel like almost just that period since then, like things have just been so busy. And I'm just a big believer in like, there are, there are, you pick the times in your life when you're ready to focus on something. And I know there's a period in my life, I want to sit down with a psychologist and just go through everything that happened to have a better understanding of it.

• 1:23:19Speaker 04

  But I feel like that's, it needs to be at the right time when I'm ready and actually to really like, I'm someone that when I put my energy into something, it becomes such a big focus and you know, I want to do it right. And I know at the moment with everything going on, I wouldn't have the right time to dedicate to it. And also probably partly healing, like it's still, you know, it'll be five years in January since he passed away.

• 1:23:45Speaker 04

  It's coming to a time when I think it maybe gets easier, but it's also still very raw because I think.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  It's hard to say if it's regrets, but you always have those feelings of, is there anything different we could have done? Because you feel so helpless about how things just spiraled.

• 1:24:09Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I was, I was, I was going to ask is upon getting that news, the

• 1:24:16Steven Bartlett?

  people often talk about this when they talk about the passing of a parent or something. They look back on the relationship from a new perspective now because as you said in your own words, you didn't ever envisage it would end that way. So when it does end that way, your perspective on the situation can shift to what you, as you said, you know, thoughts of regret or words unsaid or things that maybe we could have done and and that can be quite, um,

• 1:24:40Steven Bartlett?

  that can consume one's thoughts. Wa- was there a lot of that during that time?

• 1:24:46Speaker 00

  I think because, you know, the year 2018, I'd had a lot of reflections of maybe we weren't as close as I thought because, you know, if you could have this life partner and all of these things and not even feel comfortable to tell me, then maybe I thought we were this close as that we actually weren't. You start to kind of question those things.

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  And actually, the, the area which I then kind of got the comfort back that it was genuine and it was the love that I felt that he, he felt was when we, when we got a copy of, of his, if his estate, of his will, of his kind of last wishes. And when it said around the decision on what should happen with his body, it first went to his partner of 10 years. And then it said, and in absence of, of that person, I want Nicola to decide what happens to my body. And actually, that was a very comforting thing because I mean, there's nothing more personal than to, and to trust someone with, if something happens to me, this person can decide what happens to like my remains.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  So that then actually gave me the comfort that like, it was genuine, it was a true love. Like, he did see me as that, other than his, his, his partner, like, his kind of best friend, his partner, someone who was incredibly close, who he would feel like that was the right person to make that decision. So I'd, I'd kind of gone on this cycle of feeling, you know, very pushed out, very targeted, very, maybe, maybe it wasn't all real, maybe I was just a colleague and kind of it was just business, to actually know it was family, it was love. So I kind of had that reflection and I think that gave me a lot of comfort.

• 1:26:33Steven Bartlett?

  Do you miss Brandon?

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  Incredibly much. You know, it's quite lonely, because when you've gone from having someone where every decision, you're, you're texting, you're together, you're kind of, you're doing it together, gives you the confidence that you're going in the right way. So it's very difficult to lose that. And, you know, it's like you go from a two parent to just one parent and you feel responsible for this incredible child, but also a child that's growing very fast. And, you know, you, you want to do the best by everyone. And it's, and, and also like, it's, it's a huge change. I mean, the company we are today is very different. And, you know, like with any, any kind of fast growth business, you have to try and

• 1:27:19Speaker 00

  find the balance of, you know, never compromising on, on our values and things that are so core to our purpose. But then finding a way that you can, can actually grow and scale.

• 1:27:31Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:32Speaker 00

  And, and actually, you know, when we, you know, early years, we'd never had a strategy and it was kind of never anything for that I thought we would do. But then obviously you grow to a size that you start thinking about these things. And it was interesting because the first time we did strategy.

• 1:27:47Steven Bartlett?

  I think it's worth pausing there and just highlighting what you've just said. You had a philosophy early on where you didn't, you didn't have a company strategy.

• 1:27:53Speaker 00

  It was never plan, never have a strategy.

• 1:27:56Steven Bartlett?

  That was your ethos, why?

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  We actually, again, we had all of these slogans in our offices and one was strategy is also overrated. And you need to be agile as a startup. And again, I think, you know, a big thing, Brandon was a big believer in this. He always used to say, we've got to be the small rabbit running into the holes that the big elephants can't get to. And the big elephants have obviously been the, the big conglomerates because they've got far more money than us, far more resources. There is no point us doing what they're doing, but with far less. Let's find the holes and, and part of that is again, being agile. I mean, again, you think the ordinary was the 11th brand. And as much as we had like elements of success before then, you know, the ordinary, it took 11 attempts to really get it right.

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  Now, a strategy can't plan for that because our strategy was to keep failing until it got, until we kind of got it right. Now, as you get bigger, it changes because suddenly, you know, you,

• 1:28:56Speaker 00

  you need to articulate things in a different way. But it was interesting because when we did our first process of strategy and obviously I'm still very, at this point was very on the fence of, I don't think we're a company that kind of needs a big document, et cetera. So it's quite nice after we'd kind of had all these conversations, we came down to basically having our entire strategy was, build growth, power good. That was the strategy because almost it was, and again, I'm very proud that I feel like we're more than just a beauty company. We want to have a good impact on the world. We believe in making incredible products, but also having a good impact on the planet. You know, I believe the world of skincare is now a better place because people, there is more transparency.

• 1:29:40Speaker 00

  There's more awareness in regions like neonicinamide. I think there's better price points. I think there is, you know, we talk about quality, equality. And actually within skincare, I think that's something that now is much more accessible to people. So I, I believe like we are having a good impact and I think that businesses can do that. And you know, I, like, if you ever get the chance to come to Toronto and, you know, I welcome anyone to come look around our offices, our production facility, because the warmth you find from people is unlike anywhere I've ever, I think could exist.

• 1:30:15Steven Bartlett?

  If I was to ask you then, again, we're looking there at like the finished painting, I want to know the colors that went into the painting. So how, and you were there the whole time. So you got to see what, what created that end product. If I'm a startup founder, listening to this now, and I go, okay, Nicola, I'm at the very start, and I want that end product. I want to be 10 years in, super successful, and everyone's happy. What are the most important things for them to understand, embody, and sort of implement into their companies? Just maybe like topline?

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  So from a business perspective, product quality is the only way to be successful. And therefore, I mean, the only reason we're now in a position where I think we can invest so much in sustainability, social impact, and people is because if we started with science, we made the very best product that people know they get results with, which ultimately has allowed us to grow. And again, it comes back to this, the more we build growth, the more we can power good. And this is a continuous circle that we're now in that I think is just the bigger we get, the bigger impact we can have, which I think is very powerful.

• 1:31:24Speaker 00

  And then I think from, from a people perspective, I mean, any founder can now write the new rules. And again, for us, it's around like belonging. Everyone belongs at Desium. Like that's our North Star. Like we have so much work on how we make people feel belong.

• 1:31:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why does that matter? I'm playing devil's advocate here, obviously. Why does that matter? Why does that help me be successful?

• 1:31:46Speaker 00

  Because you, you want humans to feel supported, to feel safe, to feel trusted to, if you want to get the best from someone. And also, we have such a diverse workforce. I mean, even 50% of our team, 50% of our leadership's BIPOC, and we continue to kind of strive to do more. But I think that diversity, like the more different viewpoints you have in a room, the more you're going to drive innovation, you're going to drive creativity, you're going to move things forward. And actually, a favorite quote I had of Brandon's was he said, Which I always just find fascinating, like people are skeptical and then one day planes do fly. And again, if you think back to like, there would have been a point where someone would say, what, we can fly in an airplane in the sky?

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  And it's, you know, like, that would have been baffling. And then it happens. So actually incredible change and advances can happen. And it starts with small changes. It starts with some, you know, we always say like, we started as a group of just good people, having fun, wanting to do the right thing.

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  And then it's kind of led to where we are today.

• 1:32:53Steven Bartlett?

  What are your non-negotiables? You know, because you're now the, you're the chief disciple of Deciem. You're the one that knows exactly what a Deciem person is, how they behave, what a Deciem decision looks like, what Deciem behaviour looks like. What are your non-negotiables?

• 1:33:09Speaker 00

  Definitely kindness. And I also always say like, you have to do the right thing, even when no one is looking. And for me, that's like the authenticity piece. And then that's also the difference, I think, between being nice and being kind is that actually, even if someone's not looking, you're always just doing the right thing. Caring about the small things, because actually the small things become the big things over time. So I think really nurturing that. And and just thinking differently. And again, it's something where if you're taking inspiration from the industry or category you're already in, there's no point because you're just going to end up doing what everyone else is doing.

• 1:33:52Speaker 00

  You need to take inspiration from everywhere but the industry and category you're playing in because, you know, as I said, like the ordinary inspiration came from pharmacy, from healthcare. If we took inspiration from the world of beauty and skincare, we'd have just done what everyone else is doing, but with far less resources and and kind of ability behind us. So I think where you take inspiration from is very important.

• 1:34:17Steven Bartlett?

  I'm going to do a little bit of a quickfire here. I hate quickfires in interviews because it's so shitty and inauthentic, but I just want to make sure my stats are correct. How many staff do you have today?

• 1:34:26Speaker 00

  Just shy fifteen hundred.

• 1:34:28Steven Bartlett?

  How many stores have you got?

• 1:34:30Speaker 00

  We've got thirty two of our own stores.

• 1:34:33Steven Bartlett?

  How many of the positions in your company are held by women?

• 1:34:37Speaker 00

  We're over fifty percent.

• 1:34:41Steven Bartlett?

  The vast majority of your products are still under ten dollars?

• 1:34:44Speaker 00

  Um, yes, our best selling ones are.

• 1:34:48Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:34:52Steven Bartlett?

  You're the most searched skincare brand on TikTok.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  Yes, we're very proud of our TikTok virality.

• 1:34:59Steven Bartlett?

  You're the most popular skincare brand in Boots as well.

• 1:35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, maybe on on dot com.

• 1:35:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know how many products you sell a second? A lot of stuff like that.

• 1:35:09Speaker 00

  I lose track, is it two a second?

• 1:35:13Steven Bartlett?

  I've no idea. Yeah, I don't have it in front of me, I was just curious.

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  I thought you had it there.

• 1:35:16Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no.

• 1:35:17Speaker 00

  No, I think with Neosinamide, it may be two a second.

• 1:35:20Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:23Steven Bartlett?

  Looking back at the career you've covered so far,

• 1:35:27Steven Bartlett?

  what's the advice that you wish someone had given you? Let's say, let me say, the day you met Brandon. If I could have just, ring, ring, your phone goes and it's you at

• 1:35:42Steven Bartlett?

  thirty four years old, you are?

• 1:35:44Speaker 00

  Thirty four now, yes.

• 1:35:45Steven Bartlett?

  Thirty four years old. And you you got to speak to Nicola back then on the phone, sixty seconds, you get to give her some advice.

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  Stay calm, always find the positive in everything because I think that positivity is what's infectious and actually makes other people believe in what you want to do and kind of can get you through the toughest times by just being calm, being kind and just, you know, have belief in the end game. Like, we're on this planet for such a small amount of time, some things you can control, some things you can't, life isn't fair. You have your own situation and I think I've always found coming to things just with a an air of calmness has always been the best way. Okay, I don't get stressed out and I think that's an important quality.

• 1:36:34Steven Bartlett?

  It's not easy.

• 1:36:36Steven Bartlett?

  Don't get stressed out.

• 1:36:38Speaker 00

  Takes a lot.

• 1:36:40Steven Bartlett?

  What is your mother think of everything that's happened in your career?

• 1:36:45Speaker 04

  Incredibly proud and I'm incredibly close to my mum, like I see her every week and you know, what's also been nice is she's travelled so much with me, you know, she's so often my childcare, kind of looking after them when we travel and you know, Shaun's parents, they're very close to you. But yeah, I think she's just incredibly proud of how everything's turned out.

• 1:37:07Steven Bartlett?

  Your father passed when you were...

• 1:37:09Speaker 04

  When I was twenty. And again, it's very hard because probably sees some similarities, I think, between kind of what happened back then and I guess just the uncontrollability and the ability to help the situation because, you know, up until the age of, well, when I was eighteen, like two years before he passed away, I mean, he was healthy, he was well, he liked to drink, but you know, not to the point of being an alcoholic. And then very quickly, things spiraled.

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  So he loved being a radio presenter, like that was his life. But I think it is a hard industry where suddenly you're not current anymore and there's younger presenters coming through. And he'd, you know, he'd gone from presenting on the radio station for literally twenty-five years or something, you know, he started at eighteen and he'd been very successful in kind of the, in, you know, the big kind of South Yorkshire radio station. And suddenly it was taken away from him. And I think that created just a spiral and, you know, he also, I think, had challenges with his upbringing and alcohol just became a coping mechanism. And again, I think

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  it just, both times, it surprised me how quickly it can happen. And again, with two years, my father had gone.

• 1:39:01Speaker 04

  I wouldn't be a guest if I wasn't cracking.

• 1:39:05Speaker 04

  My grandma died on Monday as well, so it's just extra one of all the emotions.

• 1:39:11Steven Bartlett?

  You're okay?

• 1:39:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:12Steven Bartlett?

  We're gonna get you some tissues. Jack, have you got some tissues then?

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:39:26Steven Bartlett?

  The conversation around addiction, we don't, it's taken us some time to understand its relationship with mental health, right? And in that situation, what you describe is the loss of your father's purpose and how that turned him to alcohol. And then within a short period of time, I'm guessing there was an alcohol-related death.

• 1:39:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Steven Bartlett?

  When you were 20, the world wasn't in, it certainly wasn't in a place, that's sort of 14, 15 years ago, wasn't in a place where it would have understood alcoholism in the same way. Were you able to understand the causes of your father's behaviour at that time?

• 1:40:08Speaker 04

  I was, I felt like I could understand it as in in the way of, I remember one of the doctors saying to us, because he was in hospital quite a few times, like, you have to treat this as a terminal illness because even if he gets better, it's there and it can come back within the brain at any time when it's a severe addiction.

• 1:40:34Speaker 04

  So I think I kind of understood what was happening. Again, found it incredibly difficult of being helpless in terms of, can you go from someone who you love and who loves you and who would do anything for you and for their family? Just suddenly, again, this not talking the same language and again, it's very hard, I think, with addiction. And any of it, like alcohol abuse, because.

• 1:41:03Speaker 04

  You find it hard, like, why can't they just stop? They love us, like, why, why do they want to be in this situation? And again, it takes like the rethinking around, like, they can't help it, like, this is an illness, just like cancer, like other diseases, like their brain is ill. And they can't think of anything other than how they can get the next drink. And I think it's just a hard, it's a hard thing to accept feeling helpless when there isn't a medication, you know. Again, in this, in the UK, you can't put someone into rehab unless they want to go. But they've got their brain battling with them that won't allow them to make that decision.

• 1:41:47Steven Bartlett?

  And when everything happened with Brandon, it was like history repeating itself again. You watched someone you love slowly slip away into.

• 1:41:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was. I guess the, one of the differences with my, with my dad, he never became, he was still very loving and kind, even though, you know, he, he couldn't stop. Whereas I think with Brandon, it was

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  things were much more, it was more anger and it was kind of more.

• 1:42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:25Speaker 04

  My dad always still had the love and the kindness coming through, even when he was ill.

• 1:42:31Steven Bartlett?

  Were you, were you able to process that, your father passing? Did you, did you take the time? Did you get the support? Did you have any, anyone there to speak to about that?

• 1:42:43Speaker 04

  Probably not really.

• 1:42:47Speaker 04

  I think I've always just, I just keep busy and actually I'm a very,

• 1:42:53Speaker 04

  I'm generally a very like positive, calm, happy, like, I truly have a high level of happiness in my life, despite all that tragedy that has happened.

• 1:43:06Speaker 00

  And I get so much joy and so much love and I can have so much support from my husband and my mum and my sister and, you know, some of the best friends in the world who've been my best friends since we were in school. That I've just, it's strange to go through everything that's happened, but actually still feel very just secure and loved. Which I think, you know, I often say this, like, despite what happened, I mean, I had eighteen years of probably a very boring, but very stable, loving, happy childhood that I think really does set the foundations for later life.

• 1:43:48Steven Bartlett?

  And now we're here. And you've got a wonderful husband, you've got two gorgeous, wonderful, beautiful children that are happy and healthy, and then you've got one thousand five hundred children.

• 1:44:00Steven Bartlett?

  At Decium, who are doing just great as well.

• 1:44:06Steven Bartlett?

  How are you feeling?

• 1:44:08Speaker 00

  Honestly, very privileged, very lucky. I mean, to be like thirty four and I feel like actually I've accomplished so many of my dreams, like having my children, having an incredible husband, having an amazing home and amazing life together. And then also like, I mean, how lucky that it twenty four Decium came into my life and I've met the most incredible people, I have best friends now from the company. I get, I live in such an exciting world, like, you know, I get to work with one of the best brands and companies in the world. And, and also actually, I like to think influence and set the footprint for actually what business

• 1:44:53Speaker 00

  can be like. It can be a place where, where leaders can be kind. They don't, you know, again, if you think around business from. Twenty, thirty years ago, I'm probably the polar opposite to what would be expected to be a leader.

• 1:45:07Steven Bartlett?

  You don't have a big glass box. You don't sit in your own big glass office above everybody else. I heard you hot desk. Your team, your team told me you hot desk with them.

• 1:45:15Speaker 00

  I've never had my own desk in any office at SEM, probably the only person to never have my own desk. And actually, I love it. First of all, because I'm travelling and, you know, whenever I'm somewhere, I always want to spend time with people. So normally I'm in meetings that I want to be in, just getting to know everyone. And if I do have time on my desk, hot desking is far better. Like, who's not in today? I'll go sit in their desk because then you get to talk to another team, you get to be around people. And so I've always kind of just enjoyed the, the floating piece of just getting to know everyone in the team.

• 1:45:47Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast, as you know, because clearly you just said you'd watched an episode before. So this is, um, this will not be a surprise. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. This is a bit of a long one. Um, the question is.

• 1:46:06Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, okay. I've been trying to figure out what this word is. That's why I was mumbling around because I was like, I can't. Okay, stasis is a lie. In every moment, we are either progressing towards the better self within or regressing. So the question is, who are you becoming?

• 1:46:27Speaker 00

  I think I'm becoming

• 1:46:32Speaker 00

  someone who is just accepting of who they are and actually just being very content and being happy with who I am. And I think, you know, like people always ask me like, and I have no plans to leave Desi, but people will say like, after Desi, and what do you want to do? And they always don't believe when I say like, I just want to be a mum. Like, that's so important to me. Like, and again, I talk about chapters in life. Like, if that's that period. That I get one chance at life to do, then I want to prioritize that. And I think, you know, it's sometimes people associate, well, because you've been like business and you've been driven, that becomes a conflict. And that, but it doesn't, because also I think the qualities

• 1:47:18Speaker 00

  that make me want to dedicate so much to my children and being a good mum. I probably also what actually makes the culture what it is at Desi M today. So I think just accepting that actually we're all unique and

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  I am very content at this moment in life. I feel

• 1:47:40Speaker 00

  I don't particularly have any regrets. I want to know more about if things could have been differently in this, you know, the, the bad situations that have happened. But I think because I've always feel like I've approached things with kindness. That I've been true to myself, that actually that's something that I kind of want to continue to be.

• 1:48:03Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you certainly do embody kindness and you, you know, your team described you as being a ray of sunshine. That is my experience of you. That is also my experience of your husband, who I met a year ago. Um, who is also a wonderful human being. Um. Thank you. Uh, thank you for so much. Thank you for the inspiration. You really are an example that in order to be a successful leader in business, you don't need to be what we used to see in movies. Which is like screaming and shouting at people and throwing things from the glass box and being cruel and being selfish and and being a leech on society or, or the earth or whatever it might be. You, you, you are one of those shining examples that, that success and kind aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, and clearly in your case, from speaking to your team and seeing how much they adore you.

• 1:48:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's additive to the, to the outcome of success. It doesn't deduct from it. But your story as well, that, that it, it should be a movie. And I'm sure you're gonna, I'm sure it will be a movie someday, or at least an incredible, incredible series of books. Is one that is so incredible, so inspiring, so, um.

• 1:49:08Steven Bartlett?

  You know, unthinkable at times. And the way that you share it with such wisdom and vulnerability is going to induce so much light and inspiration and liberation in everyone that's listened today. So sometimes when I do this podcast, I realize that I have to thank you on behalf of the listener, because I realize the listener is at home and they are going to DM you and all that stuff because they do that a lot, which is fantastic. But I would really like to thank you on behalf of everyone that listened to this conversation. Because I know how many of them in so many ways that you'll never understand. You'll see maybe 1% of it. You'll never understand how much you've helped. And you don't have to. You don't have to come and do these things and share the way you do and open yourself up like this. You do have a choice in that and you've chosen to do that.

• 1:49:53Steven Bartlett?

  And I know why you've chosen to do that. And it's because of the value that you've shared today. So thank you, Nicola. It's been a pleasure to meet you. You're very much the reason why I do what I do here is to find the stories like this and to share them with the world. And you'll continue to inspire me for many years to come through all those chapters of your life that you described.

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  Amazing. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening.