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- [00:03]
Ruby
Ruby.
- [00:08]
Ben Walter
Just a few months after Kylie Nichols launched her company, Nickel and Suede, she made her first major hire. It was an accountant. And she and her husband Soren were thrilled to have someone to share the heavy load of running a small business. They'd had a great year with banner sales, and they were winding down for the winter.
- [00:27]
Kylie Nichols
So it's holiday season. We're busy shipping, fulfilling orders, but we're also wrapping up the year and finishing things out.
- [00:35]
Ben Walter
Their accountant had gotten an email from Soren, his boss, and the COO of Nickel and Suede. The message was urgent.
- [00:43]
Kylie Nichols
I need you to go wire $20,000 to this account, like, immediately. We're behind on something. So he left. He went to the bank, he wired $20,000, and came back and said, okay, I took care of that thing that you wanted me to do. And Soren was like, what thing? And he's like, what are you talking about? Oh, you know, that wire you wanted me to send? And it was an instant. Oh, no.
- [01:06]
Ben Walter
They'd been scammed. And for anyone, but especially for a small business, $20,000 is a ton of money. But it was just one of many problems plaguing the early days of Nickel and Suede. Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. On the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring moments of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. You just got a small taste of Kylie Nichols story, but before we hear more, I'd love to introduce you to someone who will be joining me on this episode of the Unshakeables. Unique Jones Gibson is CEO of Culture Brands and Happy Hughes. Unique, welcome to New York City. Welcome to the Unshakeables.
- [01:56]
Ruby
Thank you.
- [01:56]
Ben Walter
It's great to have you here.
- [01:57]
Ruby
Happy to be here.
- [01:58]
Ben Walter
You have so much knowledge that I'm thrilled for our listeners to be able to benefit from. But I want to start with you first. A lot of the experts we've had on the show spend their time working with small businesses. And that's great. But you are a small business owner yourself. In fact, you've built a couple of them.
- [02:14]
Ruby
Yeah. So a lot of my businesses came out of a desire to create what I didn't see or what didn't exist. And it was really inspired by my sons. And so I started a media platform by the name of. Because of them, we can saw a lot of brands that wanted to tap into that and so grew that into an agency, which is now Culture Brands, where I work with brands and organizations to develop culturally relevant content and campaigns.
- [02:39]
Ben Walter
What does Culturally Relevant mean?
- [02:41]
Ruby
It means campaigns that resonate. Right. That speak to where we currently are, that might be nostalgic, but that allow you to be seen, heard, and feel valued.
- [02:50]
Ben Walter
Okay.
- [02:50]
Ruby
And so doing that, but then also created CPG products, like a game by the name of Culture Tags. And after that, I launched a Kickstarter and it was funded same day, and I had full distribution in Target within six months.
- [03:06]
Ben Walter
Wow, that's amazing. Do you still own that company?
- [03:09]
Ruby
I do. It's one of my brands, and it's still in Target stores. The name is Culture Tags.
- [03:13]
Ben Walter
Culture Tags. All right.
- [03:15]
Ruby
Yeah.
- [03:15]
Ben Walter
That's amazing.
- [03:16]
Ruby
Thank you.
- [03:17]
Ben Walter
I'm so excited to have you join me specifically for this episode, because you created a product that took off right away, and you had to just figure it out. How do you grow it, how do you scale it? And that's just like our guest today. Now, not only have you done it once, but you're doing it again right now with happy hues, so you know you've got the touch. So let's hear some more of those pearls of business wisdom. Let's dive in on today's episode. Nicola and Suede from Kansas City, Missouri. I love Kansas City. And I was excited to meet Kylie, and I was more interested in learning about her journey as a small business owner when I heard that she'd launched her company in her kitchen. There's something about that situation that feels so emblematic of an American small business. She created something new right in her own home.
- [04:05]
Kylie Nichols
Yeah, I did. At the kitchen counter with a pair of scissors. So don't recommend it. That's not how you should ever cut leather. But that was what I had at the time. Business started kind of by accident, like a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs start.
- [04:18]
Ben Walter
That might be how a lot of small businesses start. But Kylie didn't really want to run her own business. What she really wanted was a pair of earrings.
- [04:27]
Kylie Nichols
I had a fashion blog, and it was one of the things I really enjoyed and spent time doing as a young mom. And so every day I'd get dressed and have to go out in front of my garage and take my outfit picture. Every day, I usually wear the same earrings. I had a pair of silver, just big teardrop earrings. They were heavy, they were inflexible, but they just had the right look. So one day I needed a gold pair for an outfit, couldn't find it. And I remembered we had some gold leather in the house, so I thought, you know, that gold leather looks exactly like this metal, so let me see if I could create something similar. So I traced the earrings, cut them out, put them on hooks, and it was an instant. Oh, my gosh, this is so much better. They were so lightweight. They were flexible, like I could nap in them. It was just such a different feel when it looked the same. And so I thought, why isn't anybody using leather this way? They were always using leather for fringy things and boho and beads, and this was like clean class. And so we just saw an opportunity and said, how could we? How can I make more of these?
- [05:26]
Ben Walter
It's amazing to see all the little steps that can lead to a business. Kylie started blogging as a young mom because she was bored and wasn't sure where her career was going. And she had gold leather in the house because she had a small Etsy store selling belts for toddlers. That's another episode. But the gist of it is baby pants have baby belt loops, and there were no baby belts. The belts never really took off, but it meant Kylie had leather laying around. When opportunity arose, she was prepared to meet it.
- [05:54]
Kylie Nichols
I really felt like, these are so unique and so cool. I got to tell the world about them. And I remember writing my first blog post about it. It was almost like I had discovered a new dinosaur. I'm like, I have to tell you about the coolest discovery I just made.
- [06:07]
Ben Walter
The next person she told was her husband, Soren.
- [06:10]
Kylie Nichols
And he was like, first of all, they look actually terrible because you use scissors, and there's better ways to do this, but this is a good idea. And then it just kind of spread like w Wildfire. No one had seen anything like it. We only did one shape, the classic teardrop. And so it just looked good on everybody.
- [06:25]
Ben Walter
So you start making these earrings, you're getting demand. How are you selling them when it first starts? Are people calling you? Are they placing orders? Are they emailing you? Like, what's going on?
- [06:34]
Kylie Nichols
It was everything. They were ordering online on Etsy and things. And then we're shipping them. They're coming to our house to pick them up at all hours of the day. Because it was just like, well, yeah, come get them. Like, we want to sell. People are shopping our basement. And then June 2014, we launched our own web. And that same day, my husband actually came home later, and he's like, well, I quit my job, and this is what we're doing now. We jumped off the cliff, literally the day we launched our website.
- [07:03]
Ben Walter
I'm sorry, Kylie, I have to stop you. So Soren literally comes home one day and says, I quit my job. Like, not. You hadn't talked about it specifically. That's not hyperbole. That's actually what happened.
- [07:15]
Kylie Nichols
He actually quit his job. We figured out, like, how many earrings do we need to sell a month to replace his salary? And we did it. In the first month.
- [07:22]
Ben Walter
Nickel and suede was off to the races. They started making as many pairs of earrings as they could, and even then, they could barely keep up with the demand.
- [07:31]
Kylie Nichols
So we're in our small starter home in the Midwest, where half of the basement is the garage, half is our little, like, workshop that we've created. And there's just a lot of days and nights of us just making and shipping earrings. Things picked up pretty quickly. We started to have friends come over to help. We had friends who would take kits home to put earrings together at their house and bring back finished product to us. Yes.
- [07:54]
Ben Walter
So your sales are not the problem. Which, you know, said no startup ever. So that's great.
- [07:58]
Kylie Nichols
We kind of went backwards. And it was really fortunate at the beginning that we had all of that because there were so many other things we needed to figure out later.
- [08:05]
Ben Walter
What Kylie needed was to find her own supplier. Luckily, Soren had been researching.
- [08:12]
Kylie Nichols
My husband came to me one day and he's like, I found this leather show in Italy that I think we need to go to. And I was like, no way. That is so extravagant. That seems like such a crazy leap to go from, like, buying it in the back room of some, you know, leather shop in southern Missouri to, like, we're going to fly to Italy. But we did it. We got off the plane, Milan, and the convention, we go in, and it is massive. I mean, it is bigger than any convention center I've seen in the States. It's just block after block. It was really embarrassing for me because I don't want to be a fish out of water. And we couldn't have been more fish out of water. Like, what kind of leather is this? Well, that's a dumb question at a leather show. And we don't know what kind of leather we're looking for. We knew what it felt like, but we didn't know what it was called. And they're just like, oh, my gosh, you guys know nothing. And then we tell them, this is for jewelry, and they're like, what? That doesn't make any sense. We had to, like, narrow, narrow, narrow down who was willing to actually talk to us and then figure it out with us.
- [09:07]
Ben Walter
Did you find one?
- [09:08]
Kylie Nichols
We did. We found a few. And over the years, now we have an agent in Italy. We can go to the show with her and she'll translate, which is awesome.
- [09:16]
Ben Walter
Oh, that's awesome. The business was cooking with gas, and for a while, the homemade approach worked. They had leather, they had a garage workshop and friends helping out. But that's a temporary solution. Kylie needed a fully dedicated workshop and staff if nickel and suede was going to grow.
- [09:34]
Kylie Nichols
We were having people come pick up packages at our house at all hours of the day. We had a sheriff that had driven up and our neighbors, like, there's a sheriff parked outside your house. And we're like, we know he's inside shopping for his wife. Like, we just had people picking things up all the time. I had, like, little babies. I was like, I can't do this anymore. We needed space, and so we found a place to move to. And it was kind of a building being renovated down in our small town. And in the middle of renovation, the building actually collapsed because it was such an old building. And the structure just took a hit and somehow it all fell down. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. And when that space fell through, we decided, you know what, let's just do a retail store. Our products are very good in person. So we opened a little store in a little basement spot on our hometown square, and it went gangbusters. People just brought their friends, their family. You've got to see this place. Like the smell. We got the candle right. We kind of got the whole ambiance right for the time, and it did.
- [10:38]
Ben Walter
How did you make that leap? It's a big deal to go rent space, build it out. That's like, we're pulling life savings. We're going in.
- [10:45]
Kylie Nichols
It sounds so bad, but it did feel like we were printing money back then. We were one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. by 2018, we earned 127 on the Inc 500 list. We were doing over a million in sales by year two. And then it went up to two, three. We were doubling every six months. It was a ton of earrings. So we had to get scrappy and find a warehouse and figure out how to set up a business outside of our home with real employees. And that was really where things kind of got real. It wasn't just me and Zorin anymore.
- [11:18]
Ben Walter
Okay, Unique, I want to bring you in here. She had something we don't always see, which is success out of the Gate. Right. So she created this product and it just started selling like wildfire. We hear a lot of stories from people who are like, for the first two years, I didn't know how we were going to make it. I couldn't make a sale. Money was going out, not coming in. She had the opposite, which is she couldn't keep up.
- [11:37]
Ruby
Yeah, she struck gold right out the gate, which is why it was very difficult to figure out how do you keep it going?
- [11:44]
Ben Walter
You've made a consumer product. Talk to us a little bit about what's really involved in manufacturing a consumer product.
- [11:50]
Ruby
It's a lot of trial and error. It's a lot of testing. It's almost like a science fair project where you had this hypothesis and you're going to test it, whether it's materials, whether it's how the market will respond to it. So you're really trying to figure out how do you do something at the least cost. Right. So that you can charge something to make good margins and profit, but then also, how do you create something that's scalable? And so it's a very challenging experiment as I like to approach it. And I think the biggest thing is your manufacturing partner is super important to have someone that understands your vision and is willing to work with you. Someone who will answer your email, especially when you're doing something new. A lot of times, for instance, with me with the Happy Hues company, when I was emailing people and saying I wanted to create this diaper brand, nobody responded. It was really only one company that responded back to me and it happened to be a reputable company. But it's really hard to crack through when you have to find the right manufacturer and then you have to figure out what's going to really resonate with your consumer based on your brand and your packaging.
- [12:51]
Ben Walter
So talk to us a little bit about, you know, she's completely vertically integrated. Right. She makes her product physically in a factory herself versus finding someone else to manufacture it. And just being the brand and the sales, where do you come out on that? What's the better path?
- [13:05]
Ruby
I think it depends on the person you are and also your approach. I think the difference with Kylie is she said that she started off in the DIY space. So she was a maker, her husband's an engineer. She was on Etsy for eight months before she even created a website. So she's a maker at heart. Everyone isn't a maker. Some people can go the Steve Jobs approach and go and create a vision and have people execute it. I really Think it's just all about how you're built and what really appeals to you.
- [13:32]
Ben Walter
Yeah, you really have to know yourself and know what you like doing. I'll check back with you soon. But for now, let's get back to Kylie. She solved the retail and production issue, but the team was still really lean. She'd hired people to help her make the products and a few to take their photos and things like that. But that was about was basically the.
- [13:49]
Kylie Nichols
Creative team and then the production team. And then Soren tried to cover all.
- [13:53]
Ben Walter
The other bases, which is impossible for anyone, even Soren. So he made the first formal internal hire to Nickel and Suede.
- [14:02]
Kylie Nichols
We nailed the first one. He was an accountant because my husband was like, I'm an accountant, so I know how to hire one. And then I don't have to do that part anymore. And he helped us with so much.
- [14:11]
Ben Walter
He got them through one of the busiest times of the year for them. Holiday shopping season. They were winding down for the year when something weird happened.
- [14:20]
Kylie Nichols
Our accountant got an email from Soren, I need you to go wire $20,000 to this account, like, immediately. And at the time, we didn't have automatic wires set up. We had to go to the bank to do it. And so he got up and he went out and he looked through the window and saw Soren in a meeting or on a call, and he gave him the thumbs up, like, hey, I'm going to go do that wire right now. And Soren kind of gave him the thumbs up back. So he left. He went to the bank, he wired $20,000 to this account and came back and said, okay, I took care of that thing that you wanted me to do. And Soren was like, what thing? And he's like, what are you talking about? Oh, you know that wire you wanted me to send? And it was an instant.
- [14:58]
Ben Walter
Oh, it was a scam. Their accountant got an email that looked very much like Soren. Sorenickleandswade co. That's co.com, but it wasn't Sorin. That was $20,000 gone in an instant. So what did you do? What happened?
- [15:18]
Kylie Nichols
We were able somehow to reverse it or catch it before it had finally gone through.
- [15:22]
Ben Walter
Wow, you got lucky. You found it so fast. Cause when wires go, they're gone.
- [15:26]
Kylie Nichols
Right. It was so quick. I think it was a blessing. I think there were probably a few prayers said and it was just a tender mercy that we were able to catch it so fast.
- [15:33]
Ben Walter
What did you learn from it?
- [15:35]
Kylie Nichols
Well, we went and bought all of the rest of the nickel and suede dot anything so that those weren't available anymore. We've honestly, we didn't have a protocol back then and so that was probably one of the early protocols that was on. Was just starting to let new team members be aware of, like, hey, we just got a phishing email coming through this way. Like, it sounds like this. Make sure you don't respond.
- [15:56]
Ben Walter
So fraud, we, I think, can all agree, happens more often than it should. And the fact that Kylie got her money back in this case is terrific. I mean, usually when the money's gone, it's gone. But because this topic is so crucial, I wanted to bring in an expert to discuss it in more detail. Darius Kingsley is the head of banking practices here at JP Morgan Chase. Darius, thank you for joining me today.
- [16:16]
Darius Kingsley
Thanks, Ben. Appreciate it.
- [16:18]
Ben Walter
This is a really big topic, one we honestly can't cover in full detail today. But what should listeners take away from this conversation?
- [16:25]
Darius Kingsley
Yeah, unfortunately, that's right. I mean, look, small business owners are busy. You have a lot of things going on. You hire vendors and or help and you assume and hope they're doing the right thing. And usually they always are. I will point out one thing Kylie did right was soon as she caught it, she contacted the bank. A lot of people sit on this. You probably have your business banker contact information. Call them immediately, go to the branch if you can. The sooner you act, the better the chance of stopping the wire. For business owners, you're really seeing a lot of the business email compromise scam. It's really easy these days to fake an email and it looks just like someone that you're used to transacting with. And they'll often ask you for payment details, for account details. Other ones that we see businesses fall for phony invoices. So it's very easy as well these days. Much easier than ever to copy an invoice. You can change an invoice that a vendor sends, change the wiring instructions on it, change the payment information on it, and it looks completely realistic. That's a very common one. Stolen identity, that always remains a really big one.
- [17:34]
Ben Walter
Let's talk about some of the things that people can do about it.
- [17:37]
Darius Kingsley
There is a lot. I'd start with cyber hygiene. I mean, first of all, even within your business, you should all talk about it. Everyone should be aware that you're a target. Talk about it with all of your employees. Right?
- [17:49]
Ben Walter
Sure.
- [17:50]
Darius Kingsley
Not all businesses have the resources to have a full cyber program, but there's a lot of some fairly basic things you can do, but a very large part of it as well is education.
- [18:00]
Ben Walter
We could talk about this all day. There's just so much more to learn. Thanks very much Darius. It's great to have you on the show.
- [18:06]
Darius Kingsley
Thanks Ben. Appreciate it.
- [18:08]
Ben Walter
And I want to dedicate some proper time to this to get into more detail, so we're going to include my entire conversation with Darius as a bonus episode in the podcast feed. Check that out for more.
- [18:19]
Unique Jones Gibson
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- [19:27]
Ben Walter
All right, let's get back to Kylie. Part of the reason this scam almost happened was because they had no protocols in place for how they ran Nicole and Suede. And not just protocols, they really didn't have much of anything you need to run a business. Her company had grown so fast, they never really stopped to talk about everything else that comes with running a company. There was no mission statement, no business plan, no processes. Even though she founded the company, Kylie was just not prepared to be the CEO of Nickel and Suede.
- [19:57]
Kylie Nichols
I think the managing people and turning an idea and one product into a business was actually incredibly frustrating because I was so bad at it, I knew nothing about it. And so I had gone from being this influencer who knew how to take pictures and be an influencer and people liked me and I was good at what I was doing to now I'm someone's boss. I'm Having to interview people, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to write a business plan or any kind of plan whatsoever. Soren is a great executor, but it wasn't his baby. It's not his customer base. I just want to ship the earrings that we're so good at selling.
- [20:32]
Ben Walter
At first they brought in outside help so Kylie could stay focused on the creative side of the business.
- [20:38]
Kylie Nichols
We actually did hire somebody to come in as kind of a coo where he had corporate experience and he was a friend, and we thought, okay, he's going to help. It was good on paper, but it didn't really work out very well because it also wasn't his vision. We didn't have company values aligned all the things. So it kind of crashed and burned after a couple years. It was just too frustrating. There was too much friction and we ended up letting him go. And that was hard because I don't think as business owners we really understood quite what had gone wrong. It was just like we're not on the same page and we don't know how to fix this.
- [21:10]
Ben Walter
That particular employee didn't work out so well. So Kylie turned to filling out her own experienced management team.
- [21:17]
Kylie Nichols
I really felt like I needed to hire some experts from industries that were Tangent that had helped me create more of a culture and set up the business so someone from Stella and Dot, a product manager from Lee Jeans and someone who'd run production for Origami Owl and their fulfillment centers. And so really trying to, like, surround myself with people who had been in the industry and knew what they were doing.
- [21:40]
Ben Walter
Kylie still didn't want to lead Nickel and Suede, so she hoped these new hires would take the reins.
- [21:46]
Kylie Nichols
I learned a lot from them while they were here. They were all older than me. I felt like I don't have any business managing them. I'm sure they know best, and that's also a horrible way to lead. But I didn't know how to do any better. And that also didn' work. There were a lot of things I didn't take time to learn myself before I hired somebody to do it. And so I really didn't have a way to train them because there wasn't a set Kylie's way of doing anything. Eventually the culture got toxic enough that sometimes it's not very fixable with that person especially. I know this is my fault because I don't know what I don't know, and I don't know how to fix it any faster.
- [22:23]
Ben Walter
While this is going on. Kylie also still didn't have a sense of what her brand was. There was no real cohesive identity. And she made it a point to make sure Kylie Nichols her blog Persona and brand as an influencer wouldn't overlap with Nickel and Suede.
- [22:38]
Kylie Nichols
I don't know if I made the right call early on with that distinction. I did feel like they needed to be very separate, and part of that was Soren and I thinking, well, surely this brand has got to be able to continue on without you being the face of it constantly, Kylie. So let's see if we can kind of have it be its own thing. And so I continued blogging and doing my own personal thing, and then I was running my brand over here and keeping them very separate. And it was a lot. I ended up having to stop blogging, and that actually dried up a lot of customers and growth. I kind of didn't realize that my customers were there for me originally and because of the values that I put on on the Internet and all of those things. And I just didn't know how to organize those thoughts. I really didn't know how to organize myself into a brand.
- [23:23]
Ben Walter
It's really interesting hearing you tell your story, because a lot of people we meet, they have to figure out how to sell a product because they don't know, or they have to figure out how to make the product because they don't know. You had those two right out of the gate. Your challenge was management scaling. Like a totally different challenge than we typically hear.
- [23:38]
Kylie Nichols
It's been a. I'd say, a personal journey for me. Really. It's kind of been like, how fast can Kylie learn and grow? It's been frustrating on a personal level of, gosh, I know it's my fault. I just don't know enough yet. But I've also learned there's nothing you can do about that except just go through it and keep learning.
- [23:56]
Ben Walter
I want to talk a little bit about Kylie's journey as a manager, but more as a leader. When she talked about her experience, I thought the most interesting part was her realization that her own development was the speed limit on how fast the business could grow. Have you found that in your own entrepreneurial experiences?
- [24:17]
Ruby
Absolutely.
- [24:18]
Ben Walter
What has changed about you as a leader over the last 10 years?
- [24:22]
Ruby
I've become a lot more decisive. I didn't have a lot of boundaries in the beginning. I really resonated with Kylie when she talked about not wanting to hurt people's feelings. I was the type of person that extended a lot of Grace. But I also realized that making the right decision for the business doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. And so I've become a lot more resolute as it pertains to the decisions that I make. You can be kind without allowing people to kind of run over you or being a pushover.
- [24:50]
Ben Walter
I always tell people, you know, not telling people the truth is actually a different form of being unkind.
- [24:55]
Ruby
Yeah.
- [24:56]
Ben Walter
Nobody wants to be in a job that they're failing in. Nobody wants to do things wrong. If there's feedback that needs to be had, it can feel like you're being unkind to give the feedback, but actually not giving the feedback is in many ways more unkind.
- [25:06]
Ruby
100%.
- [25:08]
Ben Walter
Let's hear what Kylie did next. Kylie didn't know how to turn the business around, so she decided to make one more call for outside help. But this time the call wasn't to hire someone.
- [25:20]
Kylie Nichols
We hired a business coach. He was actually a former P and G executive. And when he started working with us, I still was not wanting to learn how to be this full leader, but working with him was really great. And he was like, you're not having meetings, you don't have job descriptions, you don't have these things. We had spent almost a million million building out a warehouse facility. And we still didn't have the basics of. Here's your job description. Because we just were like, well, you do this and you do this and if everybody just helps, it'll work. Production was going. We had manufacturing happening. But as far as one to ones, I didn't know how to run one and just having, like, objectives for the year. And what's our goal? Of course, our goal is always to make more money, but that's not really like a vision people can go towards. And I really didn't know where I wanted the business to go. And honestly, that's also embarrassing. You just can't lead like that.
- [26:13]
Ben Walter
It's not embarrassing, it's just. You learned, right?
- [26:15]
Kylie Nichols
I learned.
- [26:17]
Ben Walter
It took a lot of guts to say this is a really important part of the business that I don't feel like I'm very good at. What's the balance between, you know what, I'm the boss and I got this and I know what I'm doing and wow, I'm really still in over my head. And this is a lot.
- [26:32]
Kylie Nichols
I've been very dramatically on the negative, but I do. I think that's the best part about life right now, is how confident and comfortable and fun work is. Our coach would Always talk about the joys of leadership. And I was like, jeff, I don't see what you're talking about. I do not enjoy leading, but now that's probably my favorite thing, is working together with my team. Working together towards something harder and bigger than what we have is fun. And everybody's working towards the same goal because for the first time in my life, I set objectives for the year. I set the goals for the year. I'm forecasting the daily sales. And so that feeling of I love having my people but I don't need them has been probably the most transformative. Like, it's humbling to have had to have that confidence journey, but we've just come so far and it's great.
- [27:20]
Ben Walter
What were the most important things you got from the coach?
- [27:23]
Kylie Nichols
I think management of people was probably the biggest one. Learning how to give feedback, how to set somebody up for success when they start a job, how to be ready for them and give them expectations and talk to them.
- [27:37]
Ben Walter
Do you still get nervous when you have to give feedback?
- [27:39]
Kylie Nichols
Yes.
- [27:40]
Ben Walter
How do you deal with that?
- [27:42]
Kylie Nichols
I do it really early. I do it, like, as soon as I can. And I'm very nice about it. It's very easy to be nice and soft about it when it's a tiny thing like, hey, you missed that, instead of, oh, I'll just ignore it. So I do try to give it really early when it's not a big deal at all.
- [27:57]
Ben Walter
And Kylie finally found the connection between her personal brand and her business's brand.
- [28:03]
Kylie Nichols
It did come back to me. And being what I love to offer and recommend to people is just the right thing. Everything I make is intentionally like, it's just the right thing for the moment. Through a lot more self reflection and probably getting older, I realized the mission is basically the same, like, what I care about with. With caring about people and helping people feel beautiful and like how they look and feel trendy and stylish is like the same thing I'm trying to do over here at Nickel and Suede.
- [28:28]
Ben Walter
Over the last few years, Nickel and Suede opened another location in Kansas City and one in Dallas, Texas, that sadly did not survive Covid. But that meant more learning and more growing for Kylie.
- [28:41]
Kylie Nichols
It was a good learning experience to have the store there. We worked really, really hard. There were some months and years that went well, but it felt really personal, like a personal failure to admit defeat and to close the store. So I think I cost us a good amount of money on my pride yet again. But we did eventually decide to close.
- [28:58]
Ben Walter
It nickel and suede is growing again and almost as quickly as it was before.
- [29:05]
Kylie Nichols
The culture's gotten so much better. The hires are really great. I feel much more confident. But now how are we going to continue to grow? And so 2022, end of 2022, I ended up getting a text from a friend who has a cloth, and she does licensing for colleges. And she's like, you make earrings? Like, could you make some that coordinate with the clothes? Sure. I said, I don't know anything about sports, but we did the project together. We did a couple of things and turned out really cute. I was like, okay. I think the sports jewelry, actually, there's something to it.
- [29:34]
Ben Walter
Kylie decided to go all in on sports and licensing. She went after colleges first and wanted her first partnership to be with her alma mater, Brigham Young University.
- [29:44]
Kylie Nichols
I emailed them, I sent them some products, and I said, can we get into the bookstore? I got an email, just, sorry, we just don't think, like, not quite right. And I begged, and I was like, I'm going to be in Utah next week. Can I just have 15 minutes? I just want to talk to you in person. I learned the entire industry in a weekend, and then we just started pursuing licensing. So we have 18 schools now, so we're just kind of cooking on sports area. Go sports.
- [30:10]
Ben Walter
You're the only person from Kansas City I've ever met who says, I'm not really into sports. I thought the whole.
- [30:14]
Kylie Nichols
I know this is the one thing about being Kansas City that I'm like, I was made for somewhere else because sports is life in Kansas City. And so I've. I have adjusted. But, yes, the graphic tee and graphic sweatshirt and sports apparel market is gangbusters here in Kansas City.
- [30:32]
Ben Walter
Let's end on this. Tell me about your vision for the company. Where do you want to take?
- [30:35]
Kylie Nichols
I just see us continuing to evolve, which is really important with fashion, but keeping our core business of leather and custom and creative and just being, like, a symbol of confidence, too. That's one of the things that a lot of my followers know about me and about our products is Kylie doesn't know what she's doing. She learned how to do this herself. She was like me. And keeping that message of those core values, I think will translate through whatever products we continue to shift into.
- [31:03]
Ben Walter
All right, so you heard the interview with Kylie. What'd you think?
- [31:06]
Ruby
I thought it was really cool. I thought she was very candid and very transparent about some of her challenges, and a lot of them really resonated with me.
- [31:15]
Ben Walter
If I compare her to our other guests. She felt really self aware compared to many of our other guests. She was vulnerable, she was self aware, proud of where she is. But I saw she was pretty open about the things that she's had to learn along the way.
- [31:27]
Ruby
Yeah, there was this recurring theme of not having confidence or not wanting to do the secret CEO thing, which I think is a very real thing that entrepreneurs struggle with. Like, it's easy to be a founder, it's easy to be a creator, but it's really challenging to step into that CEO role.
- [31:45]
Ben Walter
Okay, I'm a CEO and not a founder, and being a founder seems really hard to me. So tell me why you think that seems so much easier.
- [31:51]
Ruby
Because a founder is someone who identifies a problem, identifies the absence of something, and decides to come up with a solution. They come up with a product. She came up with the earrings. That's an idea coming to fruition. But to actually manage the idea, to actually know what it's like to look at a pnl, to actually have to hire employees or conduct interviews like she said, or give people feedback real time, those things are a little more challenging because you're dealing with people versus a product or service that you're trying to create.
- [32:22]
Ben Walter
So I'm going to take a little different point of view. I think it depends who you are. Right. So for someone who's worked in corporate my whole life, I think creating something out of nothing, when there's no infrastructure and you have to just figure it out from the beginning seems way harder. So maybe it's about the personality and the kind of background you have and what you want to do.
- [32:38]
Ruby
I think there has to be some determination there, no matter what. But I think that when you don't have a blueprint, it's easier to stumble your way to success versus having a blueprint or having a guy or having all these books where it's like, this is how you should manage, this is how you should run a company. And not really knowing how to tap into those things versus just creating your way as you go along.
- [32:59]
Ben Walter
One of the most interesting things about her story is that she's experienced something that actually larger businesses deal with all the time, which is commoditization. Right. So she came up with a product. It was innovative at the time. No one was doing it. She was crushing it. She had high margins. And then a lot of other people figured out there was some margin there and they came after it. And she's had to pivot to look for new areas. So how have you dealt with that in your businesses?
- [33:23]
Ruby
Yeah. I always say you have to know when the three Ps, when to push, when to pause, and when to pivot.
- [33:28]
Ben Walter
Okay.
- [33:29]
Ruby
For me, it's been been really interesting as an innovator, whenever you come out with something that's new, you're going to inspire people. There's going to be excitement. But the opposite side is there are going to be a lot of copycats. So I think that the biggest thing is just constantly innovating and creating and figuring out how do you give new life to your product. Push, pause, pivot, figure out. Okay, this is working. It's worked well. It's also known when the sunset a product. It's also knowing when to pivot to something different.
- [33:55]
Ben Walter
I always tell people, assume your product is being commoditized at all times. Now, there's different ways to deal with commoditization. One is to get more scale and get lower cost, and so you're better at manufacturing it than other people or better at selling it than other people. One is to create an aura and a brand around what you do to protect your margins because yours is better than the cheap knockoff copy of what you do.
- [34:16]
Ruby
Right.
- [34:16]
Ben Walter
One is to have the right distribution. Really. I mean, there's lots of ways to play that game.
- [34:20]
Ruby
Yeah.
- [34:20]
Ben Walter
But you should assume that if you're making good margins, someone else sees that and they would like a bite, please.
- [34:24]
Ruby
Yeah. How do you think you set yourself apart, though, in a market where you have like, your Amazons, your TikTok shops, your Sheins and all these other different outlets for products that are similar to yours?
- [34:34]
Ben Walter
If you can't manufacture cheaper than they can, then you better manufacture better and you better put a brand on it that's aspirational and that's differentiated. Right. Someone can make a pair of Prada shoes that look just like Prada shoes, but they're not Prada shoes.
- [34:46]
Ruby
Yeah.
- [34:47]
Ben Walter
And they don't have the brand on it. I made that up. Could be any brand you want, but brands matter.
- [34:51]
Ruby
Yeah.
- [34:51]
Ben Walter
Brands are emotional. And when there's an emotion attached to a product, there's more margin in it.
- [34:57]
Ruby
One of the things is relatability. And so I think one of the things with Kylie, and I know one of the things with my brands is a lot of times you see these big brands, there's no person behind it. There's no one to really connect to. And so when you have, like these other outlets and you're able to really personalize your story and get people to emotionally tap into your success and your win. I think that helps you to kind of grow beyond the challenges as well.
- [35:20]
Ben Walter
We ask every guest we have on the show, Kylie, if you had just one piece of advice that you could give to an aspiring entrepreneur or business owner, what would that one piece of advice be?
- [35:29]
Kylie Nichols
My advice would be to ask questions to everybody that you can. I wish I had reached out to more people to ask for help. A couple years ago, I started messaging female CEOs that I admired of companies that I wanted to be like. And it was amazing that I actually got responses back from them. And I was able to get 30 minutes on a call with them. And it opened it up to me that, like, people will help you and you can ask questions and it can really, really make you move so much quicker. You can learn so much faster.
- [35:57]
Ben Walter
Kylie, once again, thank you for being with us today. We're expecting great things from you and it's been so nice to hear your story on the Unshakables.
- [36:04]
Kylie Nichols
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [36:09]
Ben Walter
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Unshakeables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it. Our next episode is one for glasses wearers like me. One man was almost driven to madness by his glasses slipping down his nose during sweaty Tennessee summers. So he decided to do something about it. His first attempt. It didn't go well.
- [36:30]
Darius Kingsley
All 5,000 units come off the line and they're just broken. Like, the product would lock up the mechanism inside the tube and they wouldn't propel. It was a nightmare.
- [36:41]
Ben Walter
I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. We'll see you back here soon.