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Killers of the Flower Moon Producer on Authentic Leadership with Niels Juul
197 Plays2 months ago
In this captivating episode of CPO PLAYBOOK, Felicia Shakiba interviews Niels Juul, the founding member of Von Dutch and CEO of No Fat Ego Productions. Dive into Niels’ extraordinary journey, from his beginnings in Copenhagen's advertising scene to shaping a globally iconic fashion brand. Explore the Von Dutch success story and the pivotal role of authenticity in its rise. Niels shares valuable business insights on leadership communication, the challenges of brand misalignment, and how to maintain a cohesive company culture during growth. With practical tips on building employee engagement strategies and balancing creativity with business, this interview offers essential lessons for anyone navigating the complexities of business growth. Catch this episode to learn from one of the fashion industry’s key figures as Niels Juul shares his unique perspective on leadership and brand values!
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Transcript
Introduction and Listener Appreciation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, before we dive into today's episode, I just wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you for tuning in. It's because of you that CPO Playbook has skyrocketed into the top 10% of podcasts globally, and all within our first year. Seriously, that's incredible, and I am so grateful. Today we're wrapping up season 1 with something special.
00:00:25
Speaker
our very first video recorded episode. So if you're up for it, you can catch this episode on YouTube as well. But don't worry, the audio experience is just as good. As we take a little break before season two, this is the perfect time to go back and re-listen to all those early episodes. Trust me, I've done it and there's always something new to take away.
00:00:48
Speaker
And hey, if you haven't started from episode one yet, now's your chance to binge like a pro. I'd love to hear from you during the off season, so feel free to DM me on LinkedIn. Whether you've got a guest you'd love to hear from or there's a challenge you're facing in your organization that you'd like us to tackle, let
Introduction to CPO Playbook
00:01:06
Speaker
me know. All right, that's enough from me. Let's jump into today's episode. Enjoy.
00:01:12
Speaker
I'm Felicia Shakiba, and this is CPO Playbook, where we solve a business challenge in every episode.
Impact of Misalignment in Organizations
00:01:26
Speaker
Misaligning organizational values with company brand is a critical issue as it can lead to significant problems, including decreased employee engagement, higher turnover rates, and a damaged reputation. This misalignment often occurs due to poor communication,
00:01:44
Speaker
lack of clarity in values or inconsistent leadership behaviors. Embedding values into every aspect of the company's operations can help bridge the gap between values and brand, thereby enhancing both employee satisfaction and overall business performance.
Interview with Niels Jewell: Brand Revival
00:02:03
Speaker
To tell us more, today I'm thrilled to interview Niels Jewell, founding member of Von Dutch, an American multinational fashion brand,
00:02:13
Speaker
and globally renowned executive producer, founder, and CEO of No Fat Ego Productions. Niels, welcome to the show. I am so excited to chat with you today. Thank you for having me, really Felicia. It's a pleasure to join you. Niels, I would love to learn how did you get started with Von Dutch? What was your role, and what's the story behind its rise in the fashion industry?
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, my background was in advertising early days in Copenhagen. I was sort of the done draper of Copenhagen in the eighties, mustached, long hair. And I had a number of accounts where we did something special in advertising. And then I was in luxury goods. I worked on the branding side on multiple brands like Cirrucci and I worked in.
00:03:01
Speaker
multiple places around the world. I was in Australia, Japan, France, England, et cetera. So my career sort of had a weird path to it already coming from advertising into luxury brands, to being on the branding side and companies. And then my friend had bought this little trademark called Von Dutch and it was an absolute mess. They had 500,000 in revenue and no business plan whatsoever. And they had already lost a bundle of money. And my friend, I was living in London at the time, the
00:03:29
Speaker
Being a father of two kids having a stable life and a great income and a big company over in the UK and my friends says, help, help, what do I do? I bought this brand, I'm losing money. And I've literally flew over to Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and there was a guy on a guitar, a guy smoking weed and three other people and they were doing jeans and some hats.
00:03:51
Speaker
Sounds like Melrose. Exactly. You used to be a local until you went up to Palo Alto, damn it. We miss you already. But yes, that was Melrose in the late 90s, early 2000s. Melrose Avenue Los Angeles was really the epicenter of everything.
00:04:06
Speaker
weird and quirky, but also setting trends that went around the world. I'll let the locals know that an Erewhon was just popping up like a little tiny little biodynamic boutique down the street from us. And those were the days where these pioneers of brands that were early on, they came up and we were one of them. And then I said to them, let's do a business plan. That might be a good idea. And let's just see what this brand can be and let's take
00:04:32
Speaker
the authenticity of something you have, which was amazing, which was rebel counterculture. It was California Rock and Roll. It was James Dean, Dennis Hopper jeans that were rolled up. What you call salvage jeans and white t-shirts. Then somebody had a great idea saying, hey, let's do a trucker hat. We're like, yeah, let's do a trucker hat. We put a logo on the trucker hat.
00:04:55
Speaker
Well, within a couple of years, we were really on the map. And then we took the brand from, I think we went from that 500,000 when I joined, and at our highest peak, we were $400 million as a worldwide brand. So yeah, that was a meteoric rise. And in that, I learned probably some of the biggest lessons of my life, which we know in our careers, I don't know about you, Felicia, but I think my most important lessons is what the mistakes I made and errors I did along the way, and how not to repeat those again.
00:05:24
Speaker
I love sort of like this learn as you go kind of thing. And with Von Dutch, we certainly had a lot of learning
Balancing Growth with Authenticity
00:05:31
Speaker
curves. So it's a super interesting ride and I'm very glad I was part of it. Well, based on your experience, you were a leader at Von Dutch. What would you say comes to mind as the one or two biggest lessons that you've learned?
00:05:49
Speaker
The number one thing is to maintain brand authenticity and make sure that whatever that core amazing thing was that these few guys had created, they were rocket rollers, they were motorcycle riders, they were pinstripe artists, they were
00:06:05
Speaker
the culture. They lived the culture. They were not faking the brand. They were actually living the brand. So one Dutch was this counterculture image of California in the 1950s. And he literally was himself the guy behind the fashion of James Dean. Remember James Dean in East of Eden, you have the white t-shirt, you have your rolled up jeans, et cetera. And he's the one that created that look. And so he was a trendsetter in the 50s. And these
00:06:29
Speaker
Venice guys in Los Angeles, you know how they are, they were like, hey, this is cool shit. So we'll put a logo like we honor Von Dutch and then we have a flying eyeball and things like that. And little by little, they had created a following amongst the people that matters in that particular side of the business. So we had authenticity, we had believability, we had street cred.
00:06:53
Speaker
And for anything, you want to do anything in a brand, whether you're skate, surf, whatever you are, the day you lose your credibility and your authenticity, you're not the brand that you say you are. And that's when things get softly. So I think what we had was the ability to extract a lifestyle, make it aspirational.
00:07:13
Speaker
and take it out to a broader audience that wanted to tap into that lifestyle. Because your 26-year-old cool New Yorker girl who goes into Bloomingdale's, she will never ride a motorcycle, but she wanted to feel a little worth her all. So by buying a
00:07:28
Speaker
Thank you very much. $85 tracker hat and a pair of $250 jeans. Thank you very much. She got a little of our deluxe California rock and roll lifestyle and that's really it. And so we did that pretty well. And then we of course did gorilla marketing better than probably anyone has done before or ever since because we literally didn't speak, spend a dime on advertising, not a dime.
00:07:52
Speaker
We got it out there absolutely organically using celebrities. So we invented the celebrity marketing with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and Madonna and Jennifer Anderson. We let the celebrities be our spokespeople because we made them love our brand. And thereby we created that following and then we exploded of course, with Britney Spears famously wearing our jeans in a Super Bowl commercial, I mean, Super Bowl halftime show and off we went.
00:08:19
Speaker
Wow, what an incredible ride that must have been. I want to take it back to aligning the values of the organization to the brand. How do you accomplish that? Is that important? What does that look like? What you've done in your career, Felicia, is where it gets really, really interesting as you grow a brand and you grow a company. And how do you maintain culture?
00:08:42
Speaker
Like if a brand has to maintain authenticity or a company, even as its philosophy and its culture, which is what you're selling in fashion or really anything, you're selling a feeling and emotion and aspiration that you will have customers tap into something that you represent.
00:08:58
Speaker
And as we grew, the big challenge of course was, well, how do we make sure that that is implemented in the organization that started with literally six people over a garage in Los Angeles to ultimately being all around the world with hundreds of employees and stores around the world. How to manage that and how to make sure that we navigated in a way that our growth went hand in hand with what the brand was.
00:09:25
Speaker
and how through all sorts of now middle management, et cetera, that we translated that throughout the organization so that one Dutch in Los Angeles was also the same in one Dutch Hamburg or one Dutch Tokyo or one Dutch Moscow. And that was a bigger challenge that we had imagined.
00:09:43
Speaker
I could imagine that there's some subcultures within those areas or regions which are appropriate. But at the end of the day, organizational values have to be consistent in order for the brand to feel consistent on the other end to the customer or the client. Is that right?
00:10:00
Speaker
Yes, exactly. And you're touching on something that gets very interesting, because when I go out and teach sometimes on seminars, et cetera, it's that whole thing where there's a serial feeling to corporate. Like, oh, here comes middle management. Here comes HR. Here comes, oh, no, we don't want to be corporate. We want to be rock and roll. We want to be free.
Reflections on Brand Dilution
00:10:18
Speaker
We want to do freedom shit. We would just want to do it organically. Well, hang on. We can't, because there's a casual consideration.
00:10:25
Speaker
simple business things that you have to apply as you're growing within an industry that requires an enormous amount of care when you deal with department stores, for instance. I mean, the truth is you really got to be well equipped financially to do department store business because you're operating really as their bank. Your government might be hanging there and they might have paid you, but you're getting chargebacks and markdowns at the end of the season and you need to absorb those things and you need to understand. So there is no way around.
00:10:54
Speaker
doing corporate structure. There's no way around having management to navigate its growth. And thereby, naturally, in something like a rebel fashion brand, culture starts to clash between the people who are coming in to try to provide the structure and the people who are resisting that structure saying, hey, hey, we're about rock and roll and freedom and we're just loose.
00:11:15
Speaker
And that's why I sat in the middle as a CEO saying, well, we got to do both, everybody, and let's do it right. And we succeeded on some areas, but certainly we failed on others. Were those areas, or you could tell where you maybe failed and where you were able to be resilient? The greatest lesson I learned in brand and company growth was patience.
00:11:39
Speaker
Had we been more patient, had we grown slower, we would have been a billion dollar brand today, I'm sure. I choose to be honest about this because I see a lot of brands still these days that are all about growth at the fastest pace. But if your organization cannot keep up with you,
00:11:56
Speaker
If you're a cashflow and you're a structure and you're an engine that really has to feed this business, because it's a business, you can't get around it. I don't care if you're a rock and roll rebel brand, at the end of the day, it's about bottom line. You cannot get around whether it's red figures or black figures. And because it's such a cashflow sensitive business in fashion and well, everywhere else, if you don't grow sustainably and well and maintain the authenticity of the brand in the meantime,
00:12:25
Speaker
you lose control. And we did. Simply we lost control because we grew too fast in too many countries, too many retail stores, too much going on. The brand started having its own life because I equated to, I said before, it's like you take a tiger and it's like a needle in his butt and you hold on to the tail and you see what happens. Then eventually the tigers could come back and bite you or it's going to get away and it did. All right. And so in certain countries, we became a brand that wasn't, you know, equivalent to what we were. And then.
00:12:55
Speaker
Because of Castro, we needed to tap into a little lower market places where we didn't want to go, but we had to shoot into G.J. Maxx and the rest of them to sort of generate the cash required to sustain the upper market. So in order to have stores on Bodeo Drive or Bond Street or Via de la Spiga in Milan and things like that, you need to turn over things at a pretty fast pace.
00:13:18
Speaker
And then secondly, within the company, we had certain disagreements about how broad should the brand be and how quick should it go. And you could see so many examples of brands that have a quick rise and a quick fall. And we had a very quick ride and then we sustained it for a little bit and then it didn't last. Frankly, it didn't last because
00:13:38
Speaker
It became too diluted. It became too spread out because the cash requirement to sustain the organization meant so that we would have to compromise on retailers that we didn't want to be in. And that was a huge lesson for me. And I frankly left the company over that because I didn't want... I thought...
00:13:55
Speaker
we were sort of selling it out. And I thought that if we had just kept the organization in better shape, slowed down the growth, been more organic, didn't have to go and do all the license deals and the franchises and selling a hat license and a bag license. And God forbid, and that was a big mistake, a kid's license. Don't do kids clothes. I said to everybody, we're not going to do kids clothes. Are you kidding me? The minute you do kids clothes in a fashion brand, that's cool.
00:14:19
Speaker
nobody's going to want to wear what your little brother's wearing. And so these kind of things. And that's the lessons I've taken with me in all the brands that I've consulted for, I've been running since and into the film world is slow down, slow down. Do it like the great brands like Hermes. Like I'm such an admirer of brands like that. Paul Smith, the people who are sustaining their growth and they're not really looking at the revenue, they're looking at that brand in checkery.
00:14:47
Speaker
They're looking at relevance. And if you start to sell out on your brand relevance and your authenticity and your core value, you start losing the core customers that love your brand, your authenticity, and the game is over. Because unfortunately in that business, once it's going down, it's over.
00:15:05
Speaker
I think that patience is such an important competency in leadership, especially when you are feeling like you are riding the wave of success and everyone is loving your brand and your product. And I work with a number of entrepreneurs who have done this same mistake. They're selling out like crazy, whatever their product is. There's so much chaos going on inside the organization.
00:15:31
Speaker
that you need to really bring everyone with you along with the ride. If you leave anybody out, if they're not trained appropriately, if you're not onboarded appropriately in the right amount of time, if they're not like assimilated and understand the vision and the leadership and the direction.
00:15:46
Speaker
You're all rolling in different directions. But funny enough, everyone does it because I think it's human nature just want to be big, particularly men. I mean, we're very guilty of that. We want to be the biggest gorilla in the jungle. We're born that way. We're like, hey, I climbed a bigger tree than you did. And we do it, right? And I don't want to diminish it by saying, oh, everybody ran around and got Ferraris and stuff, which they did. It's not the lifestyle. It's more that fast growth because what you're touching on here is the organization has to keep up.
00:16:16
Speaker
and everyone has to keep up. And you can't expand all of Asia and all of Europe and all of South America at once and expect that you can manage all that and translate the brand rightfully up there. And particularly, and here's the big part, when you deal with like internal communication and the hiring that you do, because unfortunately when you hire too fast, too quickly, you hire wrong.
00:16:40
Speaker
You inevitably hire wrong, and you don't have the infrastructure and the management, particularly in HR and other places that can actually take and say, hey, what's your vision? Where do you want to be? What are you about? And let's go and find the right people that we can make that growth with, that can make you grow authentically at the level you want to be in five years.
00:17:04
Speaker
Because the right now business in fashion and everywhere, it's just a very dangerous game because you're cash sensitive. And one big mistake, or one small mistake even, you're dealing with Isaton in Japan, for instance. There's one little inch wrong on a stitch. They'll send back the whole goddamn thing. And you've got like 20,000 units coming back at X amount of prices. Or one mistake at a factory does this, that, and the other, or a markdown or something that went wrong. You've got to be ready for it.
00:17:33
Speaker
And when you're not, the SaaS is right around the corner. And then also, of course, again, on the hiring side, if you grow too fast, I think it's impossible to get the manpower required to keep the authenticity of the brand.
Transition to Film Production
00:17:49
Speaker
Okay, so you've helped build this incredibly successful, at least at one point brand, and I would consider it very successful. How did you get into executive producing? What happened there? Where did you go?
00:18:08
Speaker
You've built yourself a reputation. And so in Von Dodge, I did that and I did something for El McPherson and I turned around a few other brands that were in similar situation of Von Dodge where really what I always say is like the machine didn't match the front end. And I think one thing I pride myself in doing
00:18:28
Speaker
is make the machine room in the boat match what it looks like on the outside and what we say. And that's really it. Does the company as a whole, does the actual operation match the ambition? And can you at any given day deliver on the promise of whatever brand you have and whatever you want to do? And in learning that, I started getting approached by a lot of people or companies that was in the similar situation, either had lost their way and needed to be resurrected,
00:18:56
Speaker
things that needed to be fixed, companies that needed to be realigned. And so I became the turnaround guy.
00:19:03
Speaker
I don't know why I got that brand, but I became that. And so I got offers. And one day I got an offer, knock on the door from this huge Italian-American film company who had done Life is Beautiful, El Pastino. They had one of four Oscars. They had done 200 movies. And they say, hey, can you turn around the film company? And I said, yep, again. And I was like, no, I can't. I don't know anything about it. But it sounded too interesting and too good to be true, because I've always been fascinated with the film business. And truthfully,
00:19:33
Speaker
When you work with creatives, which I definitely want to say, you got to respect the creatives because if you do not. Respect and nurture the creatives in any given industry, right? That is reliant on the voices or the artists. In my case, designers, you will fail. You will definitely fail. And if you don't get the best of the best and you give them.
00:19:53
Speaker
room to grow, but you manage them as well. You manage their output. You manage their expectations. You keep people on time, on budget. That's the whole thing. The art of as an executive.
00:20:04
Speaker
In any business that is creative, it's on time, on budget, deliver the good stuff. And since I got that reputation, I took on the CEO role of that film company. And in doing so, I ended up through a weird labyrinth of rights and things of working with Martin Scorsese on the project.
00:20:25
Speaker
then I became an executive producer because it's the same. As an executive producer, you're really the CEO of a film production, right? You're sort of the one pulling it all together, and you're the one responsible to investors, which we call them shareholders on the other side, and here it's investors, or studios, or rights holders, or whatever, for everybody working towards the same goal, and again, on budget, on time, and deliver what you say you're going to deliver.
00:20:53
Speaker
Are you going to deliver a Martin Scorsese award-winning movie? Are you going to deliver a hardcore brand with authenticity based in rock and roll lifestyle? Whatever it is, you as a CEO, you as a leader, you as an executive producer are responsible for both things. A, the creative output, meaning the authenticity of whatever you say you're going to do.
00:21:14
Speaker
managing the creatives and be looking for the investors interest, the shareholders interest that is actually going to be a business that generates money and not just great art because there's plenty of those too. And you lose, I mean, and in the film business notoriously, of course, people lose homes, homes and girlfriends and wives and cars and helicopters. Exciting life.
00:21:36
Speaker
for some, but then there's also a lot of husbands in that world, and they lose the bank. And so that's, I guess, what I got hired to do. And then I was relatively successful in that, so I've been put on multiple bigger production to try to manage those, and particularly also from a monetary perspective, but also making sure people behaved, really.
Leadership Driven by Culture
00:21:55
Speaker
No Fight Ego is our company, and we say no beers, no drama, and it's called No Fight Ego because we say, take the ego out of this equation. You really gotta do that.
00:22:04
Speaker
Because on a film production with 600 people and it takes six years on average to do a $100 million movie, the last movie I did, Kill Us at the Flower Moon was a $200 million budget. You can lose and throw away a lot of money in that business if you're not careful. I enjoy it and I love it and I love working with the creatives of the world and I've been fortunate to work with some of the best designers and directors and writers in the world and I'm super happy to do it.
00:22:30
Speaker
But then also I'm hired because I don't mind being the a-hole, because somebody's got to be the general. And I'm a nice a-hole. So I get away with not yelling at people, but telling them, enough, you delivered. I call the guns and roses, Felicia. That's my philosophy. With creatives, you've got to do guns and roses. Don't just do guns, because they're going to be very mad at you. And they're going to go into a corner and go, no. Like with our kid, no.
00:22:56
Speaker
right? But give them a little roses as well and make them deliver. And then I have this thing that when I teach film students and design students, I say the creative curve always goes like this. It goes up and then it goes flat and it goes down.
00:23:12
Speaker
And unfortunately, a lot of creative designers and directors and writers, they start to sink. And your job is to harness when it's at its peak and say, no, it's fine right now, like a good wine grape. You say, no, we're picking it now. We're not waiting any longer because that's more money that's not on time that's wasted. And so that's where I think the art of producer as a producer or running a fashion company is to say,
00:23:38
Speaker
I got the best of value now. Go home, you delivered, don't overthink it, and we're going to take it from here. And that's it. Taking a step back and looking at the work you've been doing at Von Dutch and other organizations, you've had a healthy career and also jumping into the entertainment world. These are very quite different industries, different requirements, different structures.
00:24:06
Speaker
What are the consistencies? At Stanford, we've talked about this concept called modeling behavior and being able to be authentic and create routine and it being observable where people can really understand and learn leadership behavior and then therefore
00:24:27
Speaker
shape their own behavior. How do you keep those consistencies, that authenticity, being in multiple industries and then being able to create and deliver this incredible brand or product? It's such an interesting question and I think you're touching on probably the most important subject matter on any successful brand or organization.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I think it's about culture. That's about leadership, because if your leadership is driven by culture or philosophy or purpose and not just money, you can be successful at that. But if it's only driven by money, you will never be successful, in my opinion. If your parameter of success is bottom line and Excel spreadsheets, in the creative industry, eventually you will fail.
00:25:15
Speaker
because you will sell out and you will not translate whatever greatness there was in a brand through something that everybody will understand throughout the way. I just saw the Steve Jobs movie recently. I hadn't admitted, unfortunately, the one with Michael Fassbender in it. And you're seeing this, of course, larger than life, amazing character. I work with Apple, so I'm going to be careful here. But he was also a real a-hole. He was not necessarily a nice guy. But he was definitely able to translate his enthusiasm
00:25:44
Speaker
and vision for something greater than everybody else thought of.
00:25:48
Speaker
in a way that people would follow him through his a wholeness. And I think because perfection and he set the standard super, super high for what he wanted to do. And he knew exactly what brand it would be. He's one of those that you just have to admire as anybody who was aspiring to be as good as leader as he was. He was definitely not perfect by book. Every management company in the world would probably have fired him a long time ago. I mean, God forbid today he would have said the shit he said, but yet look at the company.
00:26:18
Speaker
And I think Apple is a great success. I knew Ingva Kembrad at IKEA. I happened to meet him once. I worked there for a million years ago. I mean, look at IKEA. It's a brand where people seem to be really happy to work there, even though they're wearing goddamn yellow shirts. Who wants to be happy in a yellow shirt? And you're dealing with furniture where there's always a screw missing, but somehow...
00:26:39
Speaker
You walk into Ikea, and you go, it's a nice place to be, and the people seem happy. And I know Inver Kembert's culture, what that was, and it was clean philosophy. Ikea does it in such a great way, explaining it internally, what are we about? And they do implement it really, really well, and so did Apple, I think, and Steve Jobs, and it happened to me, Tim Cook, who had just so admired as a human being how we take over from a guy like that.
00:27:03
Speaker
He of course knew what Apple's culture was, and I'm just staying in these iconic brands right now, but I can say Giorgio Armani was also very fortunate to meet him.
00:27:12
Speaker
I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy because he is the master. But you know, I mean, he is what he is. He's a perfectionist, he's a calm, beautiful individual with a brand that always moved, always survived. Paul Smith, another great example, a guy who bikes to his stores in London, he bikes around on a bicycle and he goes into his stores and checks, hey, how are you doing? And ask the employees and looks at the fabrics and how is it hanging? They care.
00:27:37
Speaker
I think that's what it is. If you care about your employees, if you care about your culture, not just the bottom line. See, I think that's the differential here. And I think what you're saying up at Stanford, I think is absolutely 100% correct. Because the Steve Jobs of the world, Tim Cooks of the world, Inva Kimbroughs of the world, Post Smith of the world, George Arvanis of the world, they think product first.
00:27:58
Speaker
They think innovation and culture and what we're about. They do not think bottom line first. They really don't. Sure, they like it, but it's not the essence. But they're really, really good at telling the story because they're great leaders. I'm saying that I'm mustering the most humility I can, and it's not a lot. I mean, my company's called No Fan Ego, so I'm not really allowed to say. But I do think I know how to sort of translate a brand, a story, a vision of a rights holder, entrepreneur.
Advice for Leaders on Growth
00:28:27
Speaker
you know, idea maker, because often creative idea makers are pretty bad at business, you know, in terms of managing companies, because unfortunately, what I've also learned is a lot of people are afraid of conflict. A lot of people are afraid of saying no.
00:28:44
Speaker
And the one thing that I'm treated good at these days, I used to tell, no, we're not doing like that because you've got to have leadership that also says, no, we're not doing that. Nope. You can forget about it. And we'll do the tough stuff and fire the people that do not sit in the organization. I think you have to be a little bit ruthless on that side as well, even though you're a great leader and you're
00:29:06
Speaker
bring your brand up because without taking out the weeds along the way of growth, you're not going to be successful either. You're going to be a car that doesn't run on the right engine, on the right fuel. And so you've got to have to change the cylinder sometimes. I think you've got to have that blend like Steve Jobs did. He's probably the most iconic person in that regard.
00:29:27
Speaker
If you were to give entrepreneurs, CEOs, executives, people in leadership positions, how do you marry their leadership within the culture? How do you marry that with the brand and the product? What would be your advice? I think the first thing is patience. I really do think it's patience because, again, that goes back to cash flow and growth and also how do you feel?
00:29:54
Speaker
Because the other thing that I've seen along the ways of a lot of entrepreneurs is stress and not even being able to breathe, like think good thoughts and enjoying what you're doing. Because I think the day that goes out of the world and out of the equation,
00:30:10
Speaker
and the pressure starts building, you inevitably become not as good as leader as you were supposed to. And get your head out of the little stuff and the worry about the little things. As you know, with any business will say it's the 80% problems you can get rid of because it's actually only the 20% that matter of all the things you worry about. On your revenue side, it's usually a few things that you do right and a lot of things you do wrong. And those that you do wrong, get rid of it.
00:30:37
Speaker
And the wrong comes, I think, sometimes from the desperation of growth and doing it too fast and that not being able to rely on a core group of people that really understand how to translate your vision. Because you hire too fast, too much, you lose that ability. And I think patience is my number one advice. Stay authentic is the second one because are you who you say you're going to be? Are you who you say you were originally? And I think if I want to
00:31:06
Speaker
be corny here and translated to us as human beings, I think as human beings, we're always supposed to go back and feel how we were as a five-year-old.
00:31:15
Speaker
Like, how were we? Who were we? And we try to look for ourselves as we grow, and where our life happens, this, that, and the other. We as human beings also need to look at ourselves and say, am I my authentic self, or am I my adapted self, the one I learned how to be? And I think the lesson as a brand, as a company, is the same thing. What I was burning for when I started out, what I loved to do when I started, am I still that, or did I shell out?
00:31:40
Speaker
to growth and I don't do anymore anything that I don't enjoy doing. I really don't. If it's for money, I mean, yes, do I like great wine? Sure. But do I need a Lamborghini or no, not really. Would I want one? Sure. And I might have a fast car at pole, but.
00:31:57
Speaker
That's not it. It's never it. It's the brand. It's the company. It's the joy of creating. And it is also the joy of having people around you grow with you and enjoy part of that success and spread the joy out.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:32:11
Speaker
So I think that's my biggest advice.
00:32:14
Speaker
Nils, I am just floored with the amount of storytelling you've been able to share with me and our listeners today. Thank you so much for your time. It has been such a pleasure to meet you. I cannot wait to meet you in person. One day, I'm sure. Hey, you're the one that left us down in Southern California. I know, I know. I bet you're going to become a Giants fan and all sorts of things and abandon the Dodgers. I'm going to be very upset.
00:32:43
Speaker
You're welcome, my way, any time. And yeah, thank you again for all your time and contribution today. I really enjoy you and I enjoy what you stand for in your company. It's been wonderful to talk to Felicia. And I will come up and say hi, and I'll wear my Dodger hats when I come out there, OK? Dodger hats, welcome.
00:33:01
Speaker
People took it. Lovely to speak to you, Felicia. I really enjoyed that. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Yeah, pleasure is mine. That's Niels Jewell, founding member of Von Dutch and founder and CEO of No Fat Ego Productions. If today's episode captured your interest, please consider sharing it with a friend or visit cpoplaybook.com to read the episode or learn more about leadership and talent management.
00:33:28
Speaker
We greatly appreciate your rating, review, and support as a subscriber. I'm Felicia Shakiba. See you next Wednesday and thanks for listening.