The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Most Replayed Moment: A Guilt-Free Way to Handle Work and Life

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

What if the right work-life balance looks completely different at every stage of your life? Nicola Kilner is the Co-Founder and CEO of DECIEM, the company behind The Ordinary, one of the world’s most disruptive and successful beauty brands. In this moment, Nicola Kilner reveals what the earliest days of building DECIEM really looked like, why the traditional rules of work-life balance didn’t always apply, and how an intense startup culture helped shape the company it became. She also explains why knowing exactly what you’re not good at can be one of a leader’s greatest strengths and the lesson she learned when the skills that helped build a startup were no longer enough to lead it at scale. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/qzeuYcCBF6b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/uzyOKKoBF6b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Nicola Kilner: https://theordinary.com/en-gb/about-us/our-founder.html Wayfair - Visit http://Wayfair.com to start your home refresh

I sit down with CEOs, founders and working parents on this podcast. One thing that comes up again and again is the more you have to juggle, the more important it is that home and shopping for it isn't adding to that load. This moment's episode is sponsored by Wayfair, who understand that the spaces around us should support how we live. Here is Nicola Kilner talking about some of the systems that she's built to make working home fit together better. 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 18 years old, and if they said, Mommy, I want to be entrepreneur like you, what advice would you give them, based on your experience? So I actually would always probably recommend doing a few years in a corporate, because I have to say at Boots, I learned so much. You know, you learn the things that they do really well. You learn the things that they do, not necessarily wrong,

but just the drawbacks of being such a big organization. So I think, you know, more than going to university, like those two placement years I did at Boots, I learned incredibly so much. And depending on the kind of person you are, you know, if you go to a big corporate, it's so difficult to impact the culture there because there's just so many people, there's so much history. And if you are someone who's kind of got this strong drive to make a change, then, you know, entrepreneurship, I think is just an incredible area. and even if it's not your idea but going to join a startup, it's just incredible energy. And you just would always be what I would recommend.

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 app boots, that then proved to be incredibly valuable as you went on, what were those skills? So when I was it, 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. 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 a saying of like launch and love because actually it's one thing to get a listing of boots. it's another thing for your product to actually be picked and taken off the shelf. Like the listing is just the first thing.

You know, you have to drive consumers. You have to have that entire plan. And I think it was just a really good way of actually learning from working with supply chain, working with finance, doing the checks with legal. Can we do this? What can we say? It was a really good sense of actually working with so many different departments and actually starting to understand, I think, consumer goods,

learning demand, learning how to create it. So I feel like that role was created, which really just suited my skill set incredibly well. And I'm very fortunate for that. And then that's also how I met Brandon. So actually he had a huge impact and obviously my next stage too. And Brandon was a business you were maybe, he had a business you were maybe looking at? 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 it off, smiles, Brandon.

You know just someone who's positivity, his passion just kind of really shone through. I'd always go straight to his emails, kind of open it. And, you know, the launches that we did with Brandon and Indeed Labs were some of the most successful we did through the innovation program. And he was just, you know, when he used to come to the Boots Head Office and Nottingham, it was bouncing off the walls with kind of this infectious energy. And I remember just from the day I met him thinking, gosh, I always want this person in my life because he just had this aurora and just someone who you knew wanted to actually also make the world a better place. kind of really cared about doing good and doing things differently. 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?

Yeah, so I remember he suddenly left in DUD Labs. Now, in DUD Labs, he founded it, it was a rocket ship, it was kind of doing super well. I remember getting this message from him that he left and just being like shocked as and like, what has happened? So then when he was next in London, I met up. up with him. And obviously he told me about his reasons for leaving. He was going to do this next thing. And I'd always kind of had this viewpoint of wanting to do my own business. And ever since I worked in beauty, I found that, you know, I always had friends, family, everyone asking what's the best

mascara, what's the best foundation. And just how we'd go to TripAdvisor, you know, to look at kind of ratings and reviews for restaurants and hotels. I wanted to create the same thing for beauty that actually ranked the products. So I told Brandon my idea and said, I want to do this. Um, like What do you think? Do you have any advice? He told me he wanted to start something called DesiM, which was from the Latin word for the number 10. It wasn't designed to be a beauty engine at that time. There was a beauty concept, but there was a technology concept. There was a food concept. It's kind of just lots of different ideas generating, but with this viewpoint of doing 10 things at once. So we said, why don't you come in help do Desiom with me and I'll help do the beauty.

We went on to call it beauty wise with you. So then obviously I made the decision to leave boots, which obviously I was at the age of 24, 23, 24. And I remember telling mum and everyone's like, oh, like you're in a really good business. You've got a good, like you're already achieving things. But I just knew that I wasn't meant to be there forever. So yeah, I left 10 years ago and then it was the start of Deciam. I've got to say, this idea of doing 10 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? So in actually our office in Melbourne, we used to have on the wall, focus is overrated because everyone just tell you not to do 10 things at once. And actually, there were so many benefits to doing 10 things at once. So first of all, it was this viewpoint of trying to create this ecosystem of, you know, how do we have our own manufacturing, do our own comms and has? because, and again, 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&D. And then you're really just coordinating all of those efforts. Rather than, I mean, so it was a privilege we could build this whole ecosystem because then at the table, everyone sat there, everyone's generated, ideas. And again, you know, if I think around like doing comms in house, it's a lot for one brand

to pay, but if you've got 10 brands, suddenly 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 10 brands? And also just this, you know, a 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. We could keep trying things. We could fail relatively cheaply, quickly and kind of start the next thing. What's the downside, though, of doing 10 brands? 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 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 pre-conditioned ideas about the beauty industry, about the way things should be. Everyone was approaching it just with an 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. Soon after you become co-ceos with Brandon. Yeah. I always think about co-founder relationships and, you know, people being ying and yang

and what the kind of right balance is for co-founders. In your case, the way that you came together was quite unique. It wasn't necessarily, there wasn't an initial interest, and 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 uncomplimentary?

So Brandon was eccentric. Yeah, it sounds like you. He was, you know, 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 also from a skill set, you know, he was, he was so into the science 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 gray 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 and 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. 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 prioritising 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 actually had this pattern, I think of always leaving a business when it kind of just went on the verge of success. Desiom was his fourth business. He had a tech business and he had two beauty businesses, Uoka, then indeed before Desiom. And each time what hurt him was actually leaving the relationships and the people behind. So his viewpoint of Desiom 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 Desiom 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. The part you said about he wanted to build a family because he had a sort of troubled upbringing. I'm trying to understand 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. 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. Yeah, so I think it was around building a family of he never wanted anyone to leave him.

And he wanted Desiom, 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 DESEM. Whoever they are, whatever they believe in, like, there is a place for them at DESEM. 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 start-ups because you're working in a very intense and very, very important.

environment, it does build relationships far deeper than, well, I ever experienced a boots than 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 Desiom, you know, we're 1,500 people now, but we still have so many of those early team members. Sounds like a cult. It is, but actually a very happy one. You can't say that. 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 they manipulate people. But this is not what I mean. It's that sense of dedication. We're all in this together. Inspirational founder. Mission you all 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. Yeah. Well, they always say that you know, you can, you can, like, complain about your parents. But if anyone else has a bad word about your parents. They're like, no, like even if they're saying the same thing you've said. And Desceum's like that, you know, like, you can come play, like, internally, like, maybe there's not this process, but anyone says a bad word, you come straight to the defence. But I think it 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 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 traveling together, building 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. 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 similar 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 does one create it?

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. I, there wasn't, it wasn't like a strategic, um, 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. Yeah. People think of, you know, people think, well, we'll give perks and this. But it's all the things that happen outside of the work that seem to do most of,

the work and creating that cult. And you come up with the best ideas when you're doing something on the weekend and you're not in that kind of Monday to Friday 9-5 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. 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 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 interesting around like, I think especially in today's world,

like we're so much more aware about mental health and burnout and actually has 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 were pretty much a bunch of young 20-year-olds with Brendan, 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 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.

Do you think you could have achieved the success with Desiom and the ordinary and the other brands if you didn't have that lack of balance and early cult-like culture? No. And again, like I think in the early days, everyone's round the same table. You've got Predby, he's making formulations, Dion who'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 is you get bigger and actually there are many more teams and there's more people involved. So that's interesting. I have to say I agree. With any business I've ever been in, I look back at those first sort of 10, 20 people in 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's a certain type of person you should be looking to hire at that early phase that may be. can afford to have more of an unbalanced life? I think you need someone who's prepared to wear every hat. So in our early days, we would say yes to it. Like, we'd get an order from booze. 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. But it didn't seal that well. And about one in ten actually exploded if you squeeze two hearts.

And we'd be like there at night, like making them, squeezing them, like, okay, they can pass. So you have to have people that are prepared to get on production line to pack the boxes. 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 Slovember 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. 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 Amosie, and he was saying that 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 you were happy. And surely that happiness is the most important thing. And Alex Hamosi says, listen, I do two things.

I work and I play video games. That's it. And I'm happy. So stop telling me to do work-life balance. I'm happy. Yeah. A hundred percent agree. And I think, you know, it comes down to what's the right balance to you.

And it changes at different periods of your life. So I was in my 20s. I was fine on my maybe sacrifice nights out and kind of doing other things. But I was so happy being traveling all the time, being in this kind of Decian bubble, creating all of 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 work, but also it's our hobby. It's our downtime because we just love it so much. Then you'll have another period of your life where, you know,

maybe you have an elderly 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 pit, I'll cover those bits for you because in another few years, maybe it switches around. And again, that's something that I think 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. 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 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. You know, so what is that balance between family and high-performance team? So for me, family is about belonging. And everyone just really feeling like they have a safe place to be and that they are loved. I think kindness sometimes it's mistaken for weakness.

And also, I think there's a conflict between the words being kind and being nice. Being nice is kind but can be superficial. 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 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, 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 outside. And now when we've done terminations, you know, we've done things around like, how do we do counseling? We're 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. were actually trying to help that person. And the other thing, you know, our business, we were like kind of this and we like had a rocket ship kind of boomed and then we came to a dimp just after kind of COVID. It hit me when I realized 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 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 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. I heard you say something, which was that you, you're the least qualified CEO ever.

Yeah. You don't sound like the least qualified CEO ever. I guess you've been through some shit. So I definitely am. Again, you know, you have to, I was there from the beginning. And being someone who can, you know, play a leader for an organization of 10 people. all 20 people, 100 people is a very different skill set. So, you know, we are 1,500 people. We now have a majority ownership from SA law to 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 kind of dip I mentioned was a very difficult period because we'd we'd just been on this rocket ship of, you know, even when things were difficult, the one thing that always, we were always ahead of budget, targets, whatever anyone's set for us, we always were just overachieving, which feels incredible when you're in business, like, if you hit numbers and 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 at ELC who's like an incredible person

but each time when I used to say 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 can't do this like I'm not the CEO who understands numbers in the right way who plans like I changed my mind and again like you 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. 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 deciums 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 GM come in that actually could kind of take control of those and then actually allow me to focus on the areas which I'm much more passionate about, which is the brand area, our people, culture, belonging, social impact.

It's just made a huge difference to the business. So two things there. You offering up your essentially resignation from your role when things were a little bit tricky, it's giving me imposter syndrome. I like to think more just like a realist of... Have you ever had imposter syndrome? because, you know, saying this quote here about being the least qualified CEO ever, what is... 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 a good 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 decimmed than me because of the history.

But when I think about just the pure metrics and the size of the business, 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 decim and give their all every day.

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. 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're 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. But I think it's the only way to be authentic. You know, trying to be something 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 one of the most important because otherwise 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 an 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 the authenticity. 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, I'm joking. It was kind.

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If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.