A Billion dollar NIGHTMARE! The Disturbing Drama Behind The Scenes Of A Billion Dollar Beauty Business. The Ordinary - Nicola Kilner
Nicola Kilner, Co-founder and CEO of Deciem and The Ordinary, shares the inspiring and tragic story of building a $2.2 billion empire. She discusses the unique culture, the challenges of a co-founder's mental health spiral, and her leadership philosophy centered on kindness, authenticity, and product quality.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Nicola Kilner's Early Life and Entrepreneurial Aspirations
Learning Business at Boots and University Philosophy
Meeting Brandon Truaxe and Founding DECIEM
The Philosophy of Building 10 Brands at Once
Co-founder Dynamics and Building a 'Family' Culture
The Rise of The Ordinary and Early Investment
Brandon's Sudden Behavioral Change and Mental Health Crisis
Nicola's Firing and Brandon's Public Spiral
Brandon's Removal as CEO and Nicola's Return
Brandon's Death and the Aftermath
Coping with Loss and Unanswered Questions
DECIEM's Evolution: From No Strategy to 'Build Growth, Power Good'
Core Values and Non-Negotiables for Business Success
Reflections on Personal and Professional Journey
The Impact of Personal Tragedy on Leadership
Embracing Authenticity and Contentment
6 Key Concepts
Focus is Overrated (Startup Philosophy)
This philosophy, embraced by DECIEM's founder, suggests that for a startup, doing multiple things at once (like launching 10 brands) can be beneficial. It allows for creating an in-house ecosystem, leveraging shared resources across brands, and enabling cheaper, quicker failure and iteration until something gains traction.
Business Family Culture
This concept, central to DECIEM, emphasizes building deep, non-transactional relationships where employees feel a strong sense of belonging, care for each other, and are dedicated to a shared mission. It fosters loyalty and mutual support, especially during challenging times, akin to a personal family bond.
Kindness vs. Niceness
Kindness is defined as having the intention to help, even if it means having difficult conversations, such as addressing underperformance. Niceness, while polite, can be superficial. Being truly kind in a business context means making hard decisions with empathy and support, aiming for the best outcome for the individual and the company.
The Ordinary's Transparency Model
Inspired by the pharmacy industry, this model focuses on transparently listing active ingredients and their concentrations, offering effective skincare products at accessible price points. It challenges the traditional beauty industry's lack of clarity and high markups, building trust through clear information rather than elaborate marketing.
Agility in Startups
In early-stage companies, agility is crucial, allowing teams to quickly change direction, experiment, and adapt. This contrasts with larger organizations where changes can demotivate teams and lead to chaos. Agility enables rapid learning and iteration, which was vital for DECIEM's early growth.
Build Growth, Power Good Strategy
This is DECIEM's overarching strategy, signifying a commitment to growing the business while simultaneously making a positive impact on the world. It implies that financial success enables greater investment in sustainability, social impact, and overall improvement of the industry and planet.
8 Questions Answered
Nicola recommends spending a few years in a corporate environment before pursuing entrepreneurship. She believes this provides valuable learning about what large organizations do well and their drawbacks, offering more practical experience than a traditional university business degree.
Launching multiple brands allows a startup to create an internal ecosystem (e.g., in-house manufacturing, comms), share costs across brands, and enable rapid, relatively cheap experimentation and failure. This approach helps identify what gains traction without significant upfront investment in a single idea.
The main downside is that if one brand becomes significantly more successful (like The Ordinary), it can overshadow and deprioritize the other brands. This leads to them being neglected as resources and attention are diverted to the high-performing brand, making it difficult to restart innovation for the others without dedicated teams.
Such a culture often emerges naturally from shared passion, a strong mission, and a focus on making work fun, especially through activities outside of formal work hours. It involves fostering deep relationships, a sense of belonging, and a collective drive where everyone feels they are 'in it together' and dedicated to the company's success.
Nicola believes 'work-life balance' is highly personal and changes throughout different periods of life. She emphasizes that happiness is the most important factor, and if someone is happy dedicating significant time to work (which can also be a hobby or downtime), then that is their balance, which should be respected and supported by the team.
The Ordinary succeeded by addressing a lack of transparency in skincare, taking inspiration from the pharmacy model to offer products with clear ingredients at accessible prices. Despite initial retailer rejections, its concept resonated with consumers, leading to rapid word-of-mouth growth and high demand.
Nicola focused on practicalities and supporting the team, delaying her personal processing of grief and trauma. She prioritized stabilizing the business, bringing back key team members, and maintaining a sense of family and purpose. She plans to address her personal healing when the time is right, acknowledging the ongoing impact.
Her non-negotiables include kindness, doing the right thing even when no one is looking (authenticity), caring about the small things, and thinking differently by drawing inspiration from outside the immediate industry or category.
12 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Product Quality First
Focus on creating the very best product with strong scientific backing that delivers results, as this is the fundamental driver of success and enables future investments in social impact and sustainability.
2. Embrace “Focus is Overrated” for Startups
As a startup, consider developing multiple ideas or brands simultaneously to create an ecosystem, share costs, and allow for cheap, quick failures until something gains traction, rather than focusing on a single venture.
3. Hire for Fresh Perspectives
Actively recruit individuals straight out of university or college who lack preconditioned industry ideas, as their practical viewpoints can foster different thinking and drive innovation.
4. Cultivate a “Family” Culture (with Kindness)
Build a company where everyone feels they belong, are loved, supported, and safe, fostering deep relationships and dedication. Remember that true kindness involves difficult conversations for growth, not just superficial niceness.
5. Know Your Strengths and Delegate Weaknesses
Practice self-awareness by understanding your personal strengths and weaknesses, then empower trusted, experienced individuals to manage areas where you are not an expert to maintain authenticity and effectiveness.
6. Seek Inspiration Outside Your Industry
To innovate and differentiate, draw inspiration from diverse fields outside your immediate industry or category (e.g., pharmacy for skincare), rather than replicating what competitors are doing.
7. Gain Corporate Experience Before Founding
Spend a few years in a corporate environment to learn effective practices and identify drawbacks of large organizations, which provides valuable insights before venturing into entrepreneurship or joining a startup.
8. Hire Adaptable Team Members
In early startup phases, prioritize hiring individuals who are prepared to “wear every hat,” meaning they are willing to perform any task necessary, from production to packing, to ensure agility and meet demand.
9. Define Your Personal Work-Life Balance
Recognize that work-life balance is subjective and changes throughout different periods of life; prioritize your happiness and adjust your commitments accordingly, rather than adhering to a universal standard.
10. Adopt a “Build Growth, Power Good” Strategy
Frame your business strategy around the idea that building financial growth enables greater capacity to “power good” through social impact, transparency, and accessibility, creating a continuous positive cycle.
11. Maintain Calmness and Positivity
Cultivate an air of calmness and consistently find the positive in every situation, as this infectious attitude can inspire others, build belief in your vision, and help navigate through challenging times.
12. Utilize Hot Desking for Connection
As a leader, practice hot desking or floating between different desks to engage with various teams, fostering personal connections and a deeper understanding of company operations.
8 Key Quotes
I always just had this feeling that actually the only way to really achieve financial freedom is probably through entrepreneurship in some way.
Nicola Kilner
Focus is overrated because everyone does tell you not to do 10 things at once. And actually there were so many benefits to doing 10 things at once.
Nicola Kilner
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...
Nicola Kilner
I'm a big believer on, you know, anyone who thinks they're the expert at everything, they're not.
Nicola Kilner
I always think the ordinary is like a community brand because it really was spread through word of mouth endorsements.
Nicola Kilner
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.
Nicola Kilner
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.
Nicola Kilner
People are sceptical and then one day planes do fly.
Brandon Truaxe (quoted by Nicola Kilner)