March 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Kilee Nickels never set out to be a CEO, but when her first pair of custom-made earrings became a huge hit, she knew she had to turn her passion into a business. From that moment, Nickel & Suede was born. But the journey hasn’t been without challenges — early on, Kilee faced everything from growing pains to a near $20K scam that could’ve ended everything. On today’s episode, Ben is joined in the co-host seat by Eunique Jones Gibson, founder of Because Of Them We Can and Culture Brands. Together, they sit down with Kilee to dive into the realities of scaling Nickel and Suede, exploring the power of vision, authentic leadership and staying true to your brand’s core values while growing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ruby
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Just a few months after Kilee Nickels launched her company Nickel & 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 had a great year with banner sales and they were winding down for the winter.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So it's holiday season.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We're busy shipping fulfilling orders, but we're also wrapping up
the year and finishing things out.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Their accountant had gotten an email from Soren, his boss, and the COO of Nickel & Suede. The message was urgent, I need you to go wire twenty thousand dollars
to this account, like immediately.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
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."
Speaker 2 (01:05):
They'd been scammed. And for anyone, but especially for a
small business, twenty thousand dollars is a ton of money,
but it was just one of many problems plaguing the
early days of Nickel and Suede. Welcome to The Unshakeables
from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm
(01:27):
Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. On The Unshakeables,
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
Kilee Nickel's 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. Eunique Jones Gibson is
(01:49):
CEO of Culture Brands and Happy Hues, Eunique. Welcome to
New York City. Welcome to the Unshakeables.
Thank you, great to have you here, Happy to be here.
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
(02:10):
business owner yourself. In fact, you've built a couple of them.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
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
(02:37):
content and campaigns.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
What does culturally relevant mean?
Speaker 4 (02:40):
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, okay, 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 fund it
(03:00):
same day and I had full distribution in Target within
six months.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Wow, that's amazing, Do you still own that company? I do.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
It's one of my brands and it is still in
Target stores. The name is Culture Tags.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Culture Tags all right, Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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 guests today now not only
have you done it once, but you're doing it again
right now with happy hughes. 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. Nickel
(03:39):
and Suede from Kansas City, Missouri.
I love Kansas City, and I was excited to meet Kilee,
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.
(04:01):
She created something new right in her own home.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That might be how a lot of small businesses start.
But Kilee didn't really want to run her own business.
What she really wanted was a pair of earrings.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
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 would usually wear the same earrings. I had a pair of silver, just big teardrop earrings. They're 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, "That gold leather looks exactly like this metal, so let me see if I could create something similar."
(05:25):
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. 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 clean, classic. And so we just saw an opportunity and said, "How can we make more of these?"
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's amazing to see all the little steps that can
lead to a business. Kilee 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
(05:48):
it meant Kilee had leather laying around. When opportunity arose,
she was prepared to meet it.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I really felt like, these are so unique and so cool,
I've got to tell the world about them. And I
remember writing my first blog was about it was almost
like I had discovered a new dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm like, I have to tell you about the coolest
discovery I just made.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The next person she told was her husband, Soren, and
he was.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
And he was like, "First of all, they look actually terrible because you used scissors and there's better ways to do this, but this is a good idea." And then it just kind of spread like wildfire. No one had seen anything like it. We only did one shape, the classic teardrop, and so it just looked good on everybody.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So you start making these earrings, you're getting demand. How
are you selling them? When it first starts? Are people
calling you? Or are they placing orders? Are they emailing you?
Like what's going on?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
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 twenty fourteen, we launched our own website
and that same day my husband actually came home later
and he's like, well, I quit my job and this
(06:56):
is what we're doing now. We jumped off the cliff
literally the day we launched our website.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I'm sorry, Kilee, I have to stop. 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 hyperpole, that's
actually what happened.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
He actually quit his job.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We figured out how many earrings we need to sell a month to replace his salary, and we did it in the first month.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
So we're in our small starter home in the Midwest
where half of the basement is the garage, half as
our little 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
(07:51):
house and bring back finished product to us.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So your sales are not the problem, which you know
said no startup ever, so that's great.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
We kind of went backwards, and it was really for
in the beginning that we had all of that, because
there were so many other things we needed to figure out.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Later.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
What Kilee needed was to find her own supplier. Luckily
Soren had been researching.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
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 too,
Like we're going to fly to Italy.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
But we did it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
We got off the plane Milan and the convention we
go in and it is a massive I'm in it
is bigger than any convention center I've seen in the States.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
It's just block after block.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
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. "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. Then they're just like, "Oh my gosh, you guys know nothing." Then we'd tell them, "This is for jewelry," and they're like, "What? That doesn't make any sense." We had to narrow, narrow down who was willing to actually talk to us and then figure it out with us.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Did you find one?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
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. Kilee needed a fully dedicated workshop and
staff if Nickel and Suede was going to grow.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
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 neighbor was like, "There's a sheriff parked outside your house," and we're like, "We know. He's inside shopping for his wife." We just had people picking things up all the time. I had 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 the renovation,. 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." We got the candle right, we kind of got the whole ambiance right for the time and it did really well.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It sounds so bad, but it did feel like we
were printing money back then. We were one of the
fastest screen companies in the US. By twenty eighteen, we
were one hundred and twenty seven on the INC five
hundred list. We were doing over a million in sales
by year two, and then it went up to two three.
We were double every six months. It was a ton
of earrings. So we had to get scrappy and find
(11:06):
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 Soren anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Okay, Eunique, 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 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.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Yeah, she struck gold right out the gate, which is
why it was very difficult to figure out how do
you keep it going.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You've made a consumer product. Talk to us a little
bit about what's really involved in manufacturing a consumer product.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's a lot of trial and error, it's a lot
of testing. It's almost like a science for a project
where we 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.
(12:10):
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
(12:30):
with the Happy Used 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.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
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
and just being the brand and the sales. Where do
you come out on that, what's the better path?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I think it depends on the person you are and
also your approach. I think the difference with Kilee 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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So she's a maker at heart.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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 Kilee. 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 it.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It was basically the creative team and then the production team,
and then Soren tried to cover all the other bases.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Which is impossible for anyone, even Soren. So he made
the first formal internal to Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
We nailed the first one.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
He was an accountant because my husband was like, I'm
an accountant, so I know how to hire one and
then I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Don't have to do that part anymore. And he helped
us with so much.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Our accountant got an email from Soren, I need you
to go wire twenty thousand dollars to this account like immediately.
And at the time we didn't have automatic wire 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 gonna go do that wire
right now, and Soren kind of give him the thumbs
(14:41):
up back. So he left, he went to the bank,
he wired twenty thousand dollars to this account, and came
back and said, okay, I took care of that thing
that you wanted me to do. And Soarn was like
what thing? And he's like, what are you talking about?
Oh you know that wire you wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Me to send And it was an instant.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh no, it was a scam. Their accountant got an
email that looked very much like Soren Soren at NickelandSuede
dot Co. That's co, not com, but it wasn't Soren.
That was twenty thousand dollars gone in an instant. So
what did you do. What happened.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
We were able somehow to reverse it or catch it
before it had finally gone through. O.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Wow, you got lucky. You found it so fast, because
when wires go, they're gone.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Right, it was so quick. I think it was a blessing.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I think there are probably a few prayers said, and
it was just a tender mercy that we were able.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
To catch it so fast.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
What did you learn from it?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Well, we went and bought all of the rest of
the nickel and suede dot anything so that those.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Weren't available anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So fraud, we I think can all agree, happens more
often than it should. And the fact that Kilee 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.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
This is a really big topic when we honestly can't
cover in full detail today. But what should listeners take
away from this conversation?
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Yeah, unfortunately, that's right. I mean, look, small business owners
are busy. You have a lot of things going on.
You hire vendors or help and you assume and hope
they're doing the right thing, and usually they always are
and will point out. One thing Kilee 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
(16:49):
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,
(17:11):
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
(17:32):
a really big one.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Let's talk about some of the things that people can
do about it.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
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. Sure,
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
(17:58):
it as well is education.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Thanks, Ben appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
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. All right,
let's get back to Kilee. Part of the reason this
scam almost happened was because they had no protocols in
(18:28):
place for how they ran Nickel 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'd 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,
Kilee was just not prepared to be the CEO of
(18:50):
Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
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
(19:13):
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 were so good at selling.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
At first, they brought in outside help so Kilee could
stay focused on the creative side of the business.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
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 of years.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
It was just too frustrating. There was too much friction.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
We ended up letting him go, and that was hard
because I don't think as business owners we really understood quite.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
What had gone wrong.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It was just like we're not on the same page
and we don't know how to fix this.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That particular employee didn't work out so well, so Kilee
turned to filling out her own experienced management team.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I really felt like I need to hire some experts from industries that were tangent that could help me create more of a culture and set up the business. So someone from Stella & 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 surround myself with people who had been in the industry and knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Kilee still didn't want to lead Nickel and Suede, so
she hoped these new hires would take the reins.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
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't 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 Kilee'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.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well, this is going on. Kilee 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 Kilee Nickels, her blog, persona and brand as
an influencer wouldn't overlap with Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
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, Kilee, 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 out 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.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
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 and scaling like
a totally different challenge than we typically hear.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
It's been a I'd say a personal journey for me. Really,
it's kind of been like how fast can Kilee learn
and growth?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It's been frustrating on a personal level of Gosh, I
know it's my fault. I just don't know enough yet.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
But I've also learned there's nothing you can do about
that except just go through it and keep learning.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I want to talk a little bit about Kilee'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. Absolutely? What has
(23:14):
changed about you as a leader over the last ten years.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
I've become a lot more decisive. I didn't have a
lot of boundaries in the beginning. I really resonated with
Kilee 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
(23:37):
pertains to the decisions that I make. You can be
kind without allowing people to kind of run over you
or being a pushover.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I always tell people, not telling people the truth is actually a different form of being unkind. 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. 100%
Let's hear what Kilee did next. Kilee didn't know how
(24:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
We hired a business coach. He was actually a former P&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 dollars 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 objectives for the year and what's our goal. Of course, our goal is always to make more money, but that's not really 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.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's not embarrassing, it's just you learned, right, I learned.
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.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Don't see what you're talking about. I do not enjoy leading.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
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
(26:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
What were the most important things you got from the coach?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Do you still get nervous when you have to give feedback? Yes,
how do you deal with that?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I do it really early.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
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 miss that, instead of oh, just ignore it.
So I do try to give it really early when
it's not a big deal at all.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And Kylie finally found the connection between her personal brand
and her business's brand.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It did come back to me and being what I
love to offer and recommended people is just the right thing.
Everything I make is intentionally. 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 caring about people and
helping people feel beautiful and like how they look and
(27:19):
feel trendy and stylish is like the same thing I'm
trying to do over here Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
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 Kilee.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
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 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 it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Nickel and Suede is growing again and almost as quickly
as it was before.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
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 clothing brand. And she does licensing for colleges. And she's like, "You make earrings. 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 things. And turned out really cute. I was like, "Okay. I think the sports jewelry, actually, there's something to it."
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Kilee 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.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
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 beg and I was like, I'm going to
be in Utah next week. Can i just have fifteen 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 eighteen school now,
(29:00):
so we're just kind of cooking on sports hearings.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Go sports.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You're the only person from Kansas City I've ever met
who says I'm not really into sports. I thought the
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I know, this is the one thing about being in
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 tea and
graphic sweatshirt and sports apparel market is gangbusters here in
Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Let's end on this. Tell me about your vision for
the company. Where do you want to take it.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
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 Kilee doesn't know what she's doing.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
She learned how to do this herself.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
She was like me and keeping that message of those
core values I think will translate through whatever products we
continue to shift into.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
All Right, So you heard the interview with Kilee. What'd
you think? I thought it was really cool.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
I thought she was very candid and very transparent about
some of her challenges, and a lot of them really
resonated with me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah, there was this recurring theme of not having confidence
or not wanting to do the 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 a step into
that CEO role.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Because a founder someone who identifies a problem, identifies the
absence of something, and decides to come up with the 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 P and L, to actually have
to hire employees, or conduct interviews like she said, or
(31:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
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
(32:14):
new areas. So how have you dealt with that in
your businesses? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I always say you have to know when the three p's,
when to push, when the pause, and when to pivot. Okay,
for me, it's 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
siders 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
(32:40):
new life to your product? Push pause, pivot, figure out, Okay,
this is working, it's worked well. It's also known when
a sunset a product. It's also knowing when the pivot
to something different.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
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,
are 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. One is
(33:12):
to have the right distribution. Really, I mean, there's lots
of ways to play that game, but you should assume
that if you're making good margins, someone else sees that
and they would like a bite please.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
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 and they don't have the
brand on it. I made that up. Could be any
brand you want, But brands matter. Brands are emotional, and
when there's an emotion attached to a product, there's more
(33:51):
margin in it.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
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 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.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
We ask every guest we have on the show, Kilee,
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.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
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 of 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 thirty minutes on a call with them,
and it opened it up to me that like people
(34:45):
will help you and you can ask questions and it
can really really make you move so much quicker.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You can learn so much faster.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Kilee, 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 Unshakeables.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
All five thousand units come off the line and they're just.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
Broken, Like the product would lock up the mechanism inside
the tube and they wouldn't propel.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It was a nightmare. 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.
Ruby
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Just a few months after Kilee Nickels launched her company Nickel & 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 had a great year with banner sales and they were winding down for the winter.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So it's holiday season.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We're busy shipping fulfilling orders, but we're also wrapping up
the year and finishing things out.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Their accountant had gotten an email from Soren, his boss, and the COO of Nickel & Suede. The message was urgent, I need you to go wire twenty thousand dollars
to this account, like immediately.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
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."
Speaker 2 (01:05):
They'd been scammed. And for anyone, but especially for a
small business, twenty thousand dollars is a ton of money,
but it was just one of many problems plaguing the
early days of Nickel and Suede. Welcome to The Unshakeables
from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm
(01:27):
Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. On The Unshakeables,
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
Kilee Nickel's 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. Eunique Jones Gibson is
(01:49):
CEO of Culture Brands and Happy Hues, Eunique. Welcome to
New York City. Welcome to the Unshakeables.
Thank you, great to have you here, Happy to be here.
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
(02:10):
business owner yourself. In fact, you've built a couple of them.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
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
(02:37):
content and campaigns.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
What does culturally relevant mean?
Speaker 4 (02:40):
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, okay, 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 fund it
(03:00):
same day and I had full distribution in Target within
six months.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Wow, that's amazing, Do you still own that company? I do.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
It's one of my brands and it is still in
Target stores. The name is Culture Tags.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Culture Tags all right, Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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 guests today now not only
have you done it once, but you're doing it again
right now with happy hughes. 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. Nickel
(03:39):
and Suede from Kansas City, Missouri.
I love Kansas City, and I was excited to meet Kilee,
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.
(04:01):
She created something new right in her own home.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
That might be how a lot of small businesses start.
But Kilee didn't really want to run her own business.
What she really wanted was a pair of earrings.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
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 would usually wear the same earrings. I had a pair of silver, just big teardrop earrings. They're 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, "That gold leather looks exactly like this metal, so let me see if I could create something similar."
(05:25):
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. 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 clean, classic. And so we just saw an opportunity and said, "How can we make more of these?"
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's amazing to see all the little steps that can
lead to a business. Kilee 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
(05:48):
it meant Kilee had leather laying around. When opportunity arose,
she was prepared to meet it.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I really felt like, these are so unique and so cool,
I've got to tell the world about them. And I
remember writing my first blog was about it was almost
like I had discovered a new dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I'm like, I have to tell you about the coolest
discovery I just made.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The next person she told was her husband, Soren, and
he was.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
And he was like, "First of all, they look actually terrible because you used scissors and there's better ways to do this, but this is a good idea." And then it just kind of spread like wildfire. No one had seen anything like it. We only did one shape, the classic teardrop, and so it just looked good on everybody.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So you start making these earrings, you're getting demand. How
are you selling them? When it first starts? Are people
calling you? Or are they placing orders? Are they emailing you?
Like what's going on?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
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 twenty fourteen, we launched our own website
and that same day my husband actually came home later
and he's like, well, I quit my job and this
(06:56):
is what we're doing now. We jumped off the cliff
literally the day we launched our website.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I'm sorry, Kilee, I have to stop. 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 hyperpole, that's
actually what happened.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
He actually quit his job.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We figured out how many earrings we need to sell a month to replace his salary, and we did it in the first month.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
So we're in our small starter home in the Midwest
where half of the basement is the garage, half as
our little 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
(07:51):
house and bring back finished product to us.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So your sales are not the problem, which you know
said no startup ever, so that's great.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
We kind of went backwards, and it was really for
in the beginning that we had all of that, because
there were so many other things we needed to figure out.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Later.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
What Kilee needed was to find her own supplier. Luckily
Soren had been researching.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
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 too,
Like we're going to fly to Italy.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
But we did it.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
We got off the plane Milan and the convention we
go in and it is a massive I'm in it
is bigger than any convention center I've seen in the States.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
It's just block after block.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
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. "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. Then they're just like, "Oh my gosh, you guys know nothing." Then we'd tell them, "This is for jewelry," and they're like, "What? That doesn't make any sense." We had to narrow, narrow down who was willing to actually talk to us and then figure it out with us.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Did you find one?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
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. Kilee needed a fully dedicated workshop and
staff if Nickel and Suede was going to grow.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
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 neighbor was like, "There's a sheriff parked outside your house," and we're like, "We know. He's inside shopping for his wife." We just had people picking things up all the time. I had 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 the renovation,. 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." We got the candle right, we kind of got the whole ambiance right for the time and it did really well.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It sounds so bad, but it did feel like we
were printing money back then. We were one of the
fastest screen companies in the US. By twenty eighteen, we
were one hundred and twenty seven on the INC five
hundred list. We were doing over a million in sales
by year two, and then it went up to two three.
We were double every six months. It was a ton
of earrings. So we had to get scrappy and find
(11:06):
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 Soren anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Okay, Eunique, 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 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.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Yeah, she struck gold right out the gate, which is
why it was very difficult to figure out how do
you keep it going.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You've made a consumer product. Talk to us a little
bit about what's really involved in manufacturing a consumer product.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
It's a lot of trial and error, it's a lot
of testing. It's almost like a science for a project
where we 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.
(12:10):
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
(12:30):
with the Happy Used 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.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
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
and just being the brand and the sales. Where do
you come out on that, what's the better path?
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I think it depends on the person you are and
also your approach. I think the difference with Kilee 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.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So she's a maker at heart.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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 Kilee. 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 it.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It was basically the creative team and then the production team,
and then Soren tried to cover all the other bases.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Which is impossible for anyone, even Soren. So he made
the first formal internal to Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
We nailed the first one.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
He was an accountant because my husband was like, I'm
an accountant, so I know how to hire one and
then I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Don't have to do that part anymore. And he helped
us with so much.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Our accountant got an email from Soren, I need you
to go wire twenty thousand dollars to this account like immediately.
And at the time we didn't have automatic wire 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 gonna go do that wire
right now, and Soren kind of give him the thumbs
(14:41):
up back. So he left, he went to the bank,
he wired twenty thousand dollars to this account, and came
back and said, okay, I took care of that thing
that you wanted me to do. And Soarn was like
what thing? And he's like, what are you talking about?
Oh you know that wire you wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Me to send And it was an instant.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh no, it was a scam. Their accountant got an
email that looked very much like Soren Soren at NickelandSuede
dot Co. That's co, not com, but it wasn't Soren.
That was twenty thousand dollars gone in an instant. So
what did you do. What happened.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
We were able somehow to reverse it or catch it
before it had finally gone through. O.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Wow, you got lucky. You found it so fast, because
when wires go, they're gone.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Right, it was so quick. I think it was a blessing.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I think there are probably a few prayers said, and
it was just a tender mercy that we were able.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
To catch it so fast.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
What did you learn from it?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Well, we went and bought all of the rest of
the nickel and suede dot anything so that those.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Weren't available anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So fraud, we I think can all agree, happens more
often than it should. And the fact that Kilee 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.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
This is a really big topic when we honestly can't
cover in full detail today. But what should listeners take
away from this conversation?
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Yeah, unfortunately, that's right. I mean, look, small business owners
are busy. You have a lot of things going on.
You hire vendors or help and you assume and hope
they're doing the right thing, and usually they always are
and will point out. One thing Kilee 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
(16:49):
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,
(17:11):
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
(17:32):
a really big one.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Let's talk about some of the things that people can
do about it.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
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. Sure,
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
(17:58):
it as well is education.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Thanks, Ben appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
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. All right,
let's get back to Kilee. Part of the reason this
scam almost happened was because they had no protocols in
(18:28):
place for how they ran Nickel 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'd 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,
Kilee was just not prepared to be the CEO of
(18:50):
Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
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
(19:13):
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 were so good at selling.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
At first, they brought in outside help so Kilee could
stay focused on the creative side of the business.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
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 of years.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
It was just too frustrating. There was too much friction.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
We ended up letting him go, and that was hard
because I don't think as business owners we really understood quite.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
What had gone wrong.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It was just like we're not on the same page
and we don't know how to fix this.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That particular employee didn't work out so well, so Kilee
turned to filling out her own experienced management team.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I really felt like I need to hire some experts from industries that were tangent that could help me create more of a culture and set up the business. So someone from Stella & 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 surround myself with people who had been in the industry and knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Kilee still didn't want to lead Nickel and Suede, so
she hoped these new hires would take the reins.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
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't 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 Kilee'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.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well, this is going on. Kilee 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 Kilee Nickels, her blog, persona and brand as
an influencer wouldn't overlap with Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
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, Kilee, 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 out 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.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
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 and scaling like
a totally different challenge than we typically hear.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
It's been a I'd say a personal journey for me. Really,
it's kind of been like how fast can Kilee learn
and growth?
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It's been frustrating on a personal level of Gosh, I
know it's my fault. I just don't know enough yet.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
But I've also learned there's nothing you can do about
that except just go through it and keep learning.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I want to talk a little bit about Kilee'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. Absolutely? What has
(23:14):
changed about you as a leader over the last ten years.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
I've become a lot more decisive. I didn't have a
lot of boundaries in the beginning. I really resonated with
Kilee 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
(23:37):
pertains to the decisions that I make. You can be
kind without allowing people to kind of run over you
or being a pushover.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I always tell people, not telling people the truth is actually a different form of being unkind. 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. 100%
Let's hear what Kilee did next. Kilee didn't know how
(24:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
We hired a business coach. He was actually a former P&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 dollars 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 objectives for the year and what's our goal. Of course, our goal is always to make more money, but that's not really 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.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's not embarrassing, it's just you learned, right, I learned.
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.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Don't see what you're talking about. I do not enjoy leading.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
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
(26:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
What were the most important things you got from the coach?
Speaker 3 (26:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Do you still get nervous when you have to give feedback? Yes,
how do you deal with that?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I do it really early.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
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 miss that, instead of oh, just ignore it.
So I do try to give it really early when
it's not a big deal at all.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And Kylie finally found the connection between her personal brand
and her business's brand.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It did come back to me and being what I
love to offer and recommended people is just the right thing.
Everything I make is intentionally. 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 caring about people and
helping people feel beautiful and like how they look and
(27:19):
feel trendy and stylish is like the same thing I'm
trying to do over here Nickel and Suede.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
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 Kilee.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
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 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 it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Nickel and Suede is growing again and almost as quickly
as it was before.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
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 clothing brand. And she does licensing for colleges. And she's like, "You make earrings. 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 things. And turned out really cute. I was like, "Okay. I think the sports jewelry, actually, there's something to it."
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Kilee 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.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
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 beg and I was like, I'm going to
be in Utah next week. Can i just have fifteen 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 eighteen school now,
(29:00):
so we're just kind of cooking on sports hearings.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Go sports.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You're the only person from Kansas City I've ever met
who says I'm not really into sports. I thought the
whole thing.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
I know, this is the one thing about being in
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 tea and
graphic sweatshirt and sports apparel market is gangbusters here in
Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Let's end on this. Tell me about your vision for
the company. Where do you want to take it.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
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 Kilee doesn't know what she's doing.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
She learned how to do this herself.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
She was like me and keeping that message of those
core values I think will translate through whatever products we
continue to shift into.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
All Right, So you heard the interview with Kilee. What'd
you think? I thought it was really cool.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
I thought she was very candid and very transparent about
some of her challenges, and a lot of them really
resonated with me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah, there was this recurring theme of not having confidence
or not wanting to do the 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 a step into
that CEO role.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
Because a founder someone who identifies a problem, identifies the
absence of something, and decides to come up with the 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 P and L, to actually have
to hire employees, or conduct interviews like she said, or
(31:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
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.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
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
(32:14):
new areas. So how have you dealt with that in
your businesses? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I always say you have to know when the three p's,
when to push, when the pause, and when to pivot. Okay,
for me, it's 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
siders 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
(32:40):
new life to your product? Push pause, pivot, figure out, Okay,
this is working, it's worked well. It's also known when
a sunset a product. It's also knowing when the pivot
to something different.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
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,
are 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. One is
(33:12):
to have the right distribution. Really, I mean, there's lots
of ways to play that game, but you should assume
that if you're making good margins, someone else sees that
and they would like a bite please.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
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 and they don't have the
brand on it. I made that up. Could be any
brand you want, But brands matter. Brands are emotional, and
when there's an emotion attached to a product, there's more
(33:51):
margin in it.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
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 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.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
We ask every guest we have on the show, Kilee,
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.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
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 of 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 thirty minutes on a call with them,
and it opened it up to me that like people
(34:45):
will help you and you can ask questions and it
can really really make you move so much quicker.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
You can learn so much faster.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Kilee, 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 Unshakeables.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Thank you for having me really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
All five thousand units come off the line and they're just.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
Broken, Like the product would lock up the mechanism inside
the tube and they wouldn't propel.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It was a nightmare. 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.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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