The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 36 - How To Create Great Ideas: Marcia Kilgore

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Marcia Kilgore is responsible for revolutionising the beauty industry through the multiple multi-million dollar businesses she’s founded and built. She’s the woman behind Beauty Pie, Fit Flops, Bliss spas, Soap and Glory and Soaper Duper. Clearly Marcia isn’t short of a good idea, but how do you come up with good ideas? In this moment clip, Marcia reveals how her ability to connect the dots became the secret to building her beauty empire. Episode 99 - https://g2ul0.app.link/g4g9MAiA0lb Marcia: https://www.instagram.com/marcia.kilgore/?hl=en https://twitter.com/marciakilgore

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. What is it about you that made you successful? mean i've picked up on one which is really high standards the other one i've picked up on i picked up on the minute you walk through the door which is you're just a very pleasant human being and i'm like all of these things if you if they compound over like 30 years you're going to get to a really good place but is there anything else

within you know some people are visionaries they are you know whatever is there anything else where you say do you know what that's probably a trait of me that made me successful. Yeah, I connect the dots in new ways. So if that were to be kind of my thing, it's about, have you read the book? It's called Originals by Adam Grant. Yeah, it's on there. Yeah.

So someone gave it to me. Actually, the art teacher in my son's school gave it to me and said, this sounds like you. And I read it and I was like, oh, you know, when you think you're special. And then you read a book and you're like, nope, I'm not special because everybody, he's got it down. Like every chapter is like, oh yeah, this is me. Oh yes, this is me. This is me. talks about in the book about how you become an expert in your area, right? So you are very deep in expertise in one particular area, but then you're very curious about all this other stuff, which is me. I scan everything, right? Whether or not I'm really interested in it, I got newsletters coming out of my eyeballs and I just kind of scan and I'll click on things. And sometimes I'll just

force myself to read something that I have no interest in at all just because there might be something in there um and and I think from doing that I find new ideas that's what creativity is isn't it yes I think but you have to feed it yeah exactly top of funnel mid funnel bottom of funnel right and so if you don't have enough top of funnel you dry up at the bottom where you know there's nothing that comes through And then being able to kind of edit a good idea from a mediocre idea, right? I guess if you come up with a lot, so the more you feed the funnel, then the more stuff you have to look at. And then being able to know which one is the one that is actually going to resonate with enough people

that it's actually a business. Because a lot of people I think can be quite navel-gazing and I have this idea and people will care. So I can also be quite brutal with my own ideas and just go cares. You think about it for a couple of months and then you have to be able to not fall in love with your own ideas. Kind of like with writing. So writers will say a really great writer is like,

you can't fall in love with your own words. You need to be able to go into your writing and just chop it out right just so it's succinct and you like you can't love what you did you have to hate what you did and cut it all down so that just the crispy parts are there and i think it's the same with ideas you can spend a lot of time on stuff that nobody cares about and so you have to be able to edit so interesting i completely agree i think about the the successes i've had in my life and it was just a process of like multiple sources from multiple disciplines pull one little dot as you've said from those different disciplines and then when they come together so it could be like cryptocurrencies music and my knowledge of social media and then you come together and you go oh

together it makes something new and interesting and valuable as a these three different points of inspiration um i was going to ask you the question when we're talking about that i was like can you teach someone in your experience to be better at thinking of good ideas uh i think you can provide the uh environment okay right but not everyone's going to be able to do that. So there is going to be a cohort of people who just don't think of new ideas and they're probably really good at other things. And that's okay because the world needs all of them, right?

It's like Switzerland, like they, you know, some people are plumbers, but they still make a hundred grand a year and everybody's happy. So if we put people in the right seats on the bus, there's such a position. And that of course is management, isn't it? It's trying to find when someone has talent, but not in a particular area, you make sure they're doing the right thing. But I think you can, you see this a lot in business school. Not that I've been there, but I've sat on a lot of panels

with people who are entrepreneurs, right? And they're entrepreneurs because they have done a business plan or they've done a business model. They've modeled out what we can do. They haven't come up with, oh, wait, just like you said, if I connect this and this and do it this way, then I can make this happen. They've said, well, I've gone to Harvard and now I'm going to model out this business plan. And I think if we do this and that, we can make this happen. They've said, well, I've gone to Harvard and now I'm going to model out this business plan. And I think if we do this and that, we can make, oh, look, it's a profit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so there's two ways to come by it. And I guess both are valid. And especially these days, there's so much money in the universe that people will invest in so many things that you could actually get to a good result by just putting a business plan down. You're having tons of money. And having gone to Harvard, which is much easier to get money.

Yes. Being in Silicon Valley and being a white male. All that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it works. Yeah. Is it full of passion? Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe if you're passionate about making money, that's a passion. It's not my way to do it because I just have to be passionate about whatever it is I'm making or selling or, you know, whatever. I think I'm improving. If it's improving people's existence, then I'm passionate about it. And it was like, so amazing to be at bliss and have people coming in and walk out the door after their treatment, feeling like so happy and you could see it. Right. And they just had such a great time. And you thought, well, I'm responsible for that. And what a great thing to do all day. And then the same with beauty pie, right. Is wow.

People open up these boxes that they get delivered and it is like, it's like a fairy tale and it didn't cost them much so they can treat themselves because everybody needs a little lift once in a while. And to be able to get this incredibly deluxe stuff for such a, an affordable price, you know, every time one of those boxes opens up that somebody is just feeling thrilled. And that is a reason to like show up in the morning, right? Yeah.