Nils Leonard of Uncommon London
Who do you want on the ride with you?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 188: Nils Leonard
Here’s a question. Who do you really want to join you on the ride?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Nils Leonard. He’s one of the co-founders of Uncommon London. They describe themselves as a creative studio, building brands that people in the real world actually wish existed.
Nils has been on the show before. He was one of my early guests on the podcast and that conversation came in the early days of Uncommon, and he was very open about his ambitions and his expectations for himself and his company.
Four years on and it’s hard to see the gaps between what he said back then and how he talks about the company today.
“We've never had passenger clients, we've never had passenger people and we won't. And I think that marks us as different. And that can sound cold, and I hope it doesn't. It's just deeply honest and it's like, we're right for some people, not right for others. It doesn't mean you're good or bad, we just know what we're about. And I think not enough people, maybe are ferocious enough about the people they bring on.”
In my experience - both as a company founder and as a coach - there is one aspect of leadership that brings many to their emotional knees.
Firing someone.
When to acknowledge that the fit between the person and the organization doesn’t work.
On a human level, we all want to belong and the fear - conscious or instinctive - that we might one day be on the receiving end of this conversation, makes many leaders do everything they can to avoid that moment. The one in which we say out loud, to someone’s face, “We don’t want you.”
Even now, as you’re listening, if you hit pause and say out loud, “We don’t want you,” there will be a feeling in your stomach that you hope goes away fast.
But there are three other parts of this that don’t get enough weight in the emotional wrestling match.
First are the hopes, needs, and expectations of all the people that work for you who are contributing so much that they will never be part of a conversation like this. Whose talent and efforts and commitment to you and to the business are subsidizing the person who doesn’t fit.
Second are the needs of the organization as a whole, which has no agency and no ability to help itself, and which is as reliant on your protection and care as an infant.
And third is the person who is receiving this news. Who knows, in almost every instance, in my experience, that this job isn’t a fit, that these people are not their tribe, and that they are, to use Nils’ description, a passenger on someone’s else’s ride.
They say that life is a journey. And so is building a business.
Who gets to go on that ride is perhaps the most important decision that a leader makes.
Here’s Nils Leonard.
Charles: (03:11)
Nils, welcome back to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Nils Leonard: (03:15)
Thanks for having me. I love talking to you, man. It's cool.
Charles: (03:19)
Tell me how you think we've changed as result of the last couple of years. What's different now?
Nils Leonard: (03:25)
Wow, okay. Some things aren't different, that I do know. I think what the last years have taught is, particularly from an Uncommon point of view, is that the ones who will dig you out of any hole will dig you out of any hole. And the hole's been huge. We talked about this a little bit before, which is Uncommon's point of view on the world and the type of people we tend to attract. But it's absolutely true that, you know, you have to kind of create energy. And if you are in the business of what you consider to be just a job, I think it's incredibly hard during the period we've just had, to maintain that energy in our game and genuinely be creative and not just wake up every day, try and go through the motions.
So I've been very grateful for some of the people around me who just have that kind of fire and the one— and frankly, the hatred of being beaten, and the desire to go and give, you know, illness and shitness a black eye, I'm really grateful for those people. You know, a lot of whom I work with, and they're just like, "No, I've had enough of that, and we're going to do it like this." And you kind of need that energy sometimes. it's been a, it's been a time of fear and hesitation, and most recently in the UK lives, much to our frustration. So I think that similar trait that I've always adored has never been more valuable.
You know, what's changed in business? Oh, I would say this, wouldn’t I? I think it's removed a lot of the passengers from our business this time. I think this, like any time of stress or change or challenge, I think if you're not really in it because you love it and you really want to do it, I think it just strips away those people in that sentiment. And I think that's true of companies as it is of individuals, you know, and I think you're seeing a lot of the companies that were arguably maybe ‘getting away with it’ in inverted commas or going through the motions or relying on things, maybe that weren't the offering. I think they have been slightly wrecked by all this, you know?
I don't know whether this is true or not, but this is how I sort of feel, which is, a lot of our game, we steered the talk of, "Yo, they're not that good, but they put on a hell of a show and they, you know, built an elevator for this brand or took everyone skiing or made these limited edition bags with whatever." I think all that sort of guff's dead a little bit. I think our game is now about what you can bring as a product, which is what it should always have been about, the creative product, what you bring to the table, what's the leap you've made, the intellectual power of what you've brought, has never been more important. So, I'd like to believe that that's got massive bearing and weight placed on it like never before. And I think that's leveled a lot of tables. You know, we've seen that as a company. We picked other accounts ordinarily I would've argue maybe two years ago, we would never had a chance of talking about.
Charles: (06:07)
And given the kind of energy you're describing is so fundamental to the success of your business, and given that the pandemic and our response to it has worked so hard to keep us apart, how have you confronted that challenge? How have you been able to tap into that kind of energy and aggregate it? How have you created the energy, the group dynamic energy around it, despite the fact we've all been held at arms length from each other?
Nils Leonard: (06:28)
It's hard. Well, I don't know, you know, we've all tried our best to do it. You know, my co-founders including everybody else Uncommon, I guess genuinely ,to everybody's credit, if you rely solely on the leadership of your company to bring that to bear and bring that energy to work, it's a very, very difficult time to do that. And there were a few people who were as sick of it as I was and wanted to get through it as much as I did and saw Uncommon as a path for that. You know, Uncommon was a tool for a lot of these people in the way it's a tool for me and they were like going, "You know, I fucking had enough of this. I love what we do. I'm not having it. I'm going to do this, this and this." And I think that energy was clear.
You know, we tried to celebrate. We tried, we did... You know, you'll hear all these stories about people who did all that. And we also tried to rally around problems and issues. And I don't know how well we did on all that, being honest with you. You know, I think probably mixed, like everybody, I think, we were better with some people and less good with others and all of the above. But I would say that we were busy enough and in demand enough and had enough momentum that everybody felt like they were still on a journey. And that was the critical thing. And that whole Zoom thing, which I've always hated, it feels like you have life of brackets in Zoom.
So you'd ordinarily be able to turn up in the office, bring the energy and everyone would overhear it, oversee it, by lunchtime the place be buzzing, the fucking music would be going. You can't do that on Zoom. You just go and you start again. Every meeting's like starting again. And so you got to bring that energy to every meeting. And what I found is actually, if you got it right and you hand-grenaded the first couple of meetings, the people in those meetings could then take their energy and it would do the same sort of thing, and you would get a sense of it, you know? WhatsApp became like a temperature gauge for the studio, because if it was just dead, you were like, "Fuck, it's just dead.”
Whereas it would be like, "Ah! I'm really pissed off about this!” or “Will you email this?" And I'm like, "This is a good sign." People are like, "Fuck! You know, I'm really worried this won't be great or whatever." I'm like, "Great, great, great, great. We got it. We got it," because the trepidation, the anxiety, the frustration, all those brilliant things are really, I suppose, our food.
Charles: (08:23)
I've already come to see the pandemic as not a moment in time, but the beginning of something that's completely different. I think the change is caused by the fact that for 150 years, we've been living under expectations, rules, practices that were driven by the industrial age. And suddenly we've been liberated from all of that. And people have realized we don't have to do that anymore.
What I'm hearing from you is the caliber of the people, the energy of the people, is the thing that has driven the company forward, which to me says, for everybody moving forward, who you hire, the kind of people you hire, is going to be more and more important because we cannot predict what the structure of business or society is going to look like. I think it's going to be almost impossible to say, you know, five years from now, it'll look like this. So given, if you believe that, if you agree with that, that hiring the right people has never been more important, how do you look for the right people? What's the thing that you are looking for when they walk in the door, virtually or otherwise?
Nils Leonard: (09:18)
Okay. I'm going to say some quite provocative things. So energy really. Ordinarily, a lot of the best, even, particularly in creatives, a lot of the best creatives here at Uncommon didn't arrive with a portfolio that looks like their portfolio now. And it's a common creative thing, which is, you know, ‘I'm better than my book,’ is a truth. Certainly true of me for years, you, you know? And I would say that believing deeply in my own fucking self, listen to me, but it's true. I think creatives know that they want to play over here. And a lot of the time, the canvas in front of, and the clients in front of them, the company in front of them have not allowed them to achieve that, and I think that's the truth. But what you do have is ferocity and ambition and energy and a fuel from somewhere else. You can feel that in every conversation you have, whether that's digital or physical, so we always look for that.
What I will say though, in complete candor and honesty is, not many companies talk enough about the fact that when they do bring on people, if those people aren't right, what do you do about it? What do you really do about it? I would argue a lot of places settle, and I think that for Uncommon, I just don't think we do. And I think we call it quite early. And I think we say, "Look, we're not sure this is working out, or we're not sure this energy's right," and we talk about it and we put it out in the open. And I think that's a common thing people do. And you end up with passengers, right? We call them passengers. And there's passenger people and there's passenger bits of business and they breed each other.
And you remember, I'm sure, you know, lots of people will chime with this, when you go to an agency or you're working in an agency and someone says, "Oh, give it to the B team," you know, or, "Those guys keep the lights on." What is that? That's like saying that these people are less good than these people, and the moment you do that, you're basically saying that we're a two speed company, and you're basically saying that our vision isn't, isn't true. And so Uncommon has never done that. We've never had passenger clients, we've never had passenger people and we won't. And I think that marks us as different.
And that can sound cold, and I hope it doesn't. It's just deeply honest and it's like, we're right for some people, not right for others. It doesn't mean you're good or bad, we just know what we're about. And I think not enough people, maybe, are ferocious enough about the people they bring on. You did raise something interestingly though, when you brought up your question, which was like, you know, things are not going to be the same, and are we entering this... Do you remember or does anyone recall, and I'm not a historian, the… do you remember the period after the plague?
Does it have a name, like, because the reason I say it is someone sent this fucking meme around and it was merciless. Right? But it was true. And they went, "This is absolutely horrific." But during the plague, the actual reality was a guy drove past your house with a car and said, "Bring out your dead." And you would take your loved ones who had died and put them on a fucking wagon and someone would drive them off. That was it. And I look back and go, "All of this stuff has suddenly become real." I don't know about you into my mind, because of COVID, because I couldn't quite believe COVID would happen. And I didn't really believe history. How many of us really believe or understand history properly, you know, where we feel it? I certainly didn't.
Charles: (12:11)
I think that's a great point. And I think, honestly, I think we're living through history in a way that we've never been conscious of. People who are less than 65 years old have never lived through a global issue, right?
Nils Leonard: (12:22)
No.
Charles: (12:22)
So to your point—
Nils Leonard: (12:23)
No, that's right.
Charles: (12:24)
... we are being changed. We are changing and being changed in real time. And I think what's fascinating about this, and one of the reasons why I have really come to value this podcast, for me as much as anybody else, is because the ability to explore this in real time with thoughtful, considered people like you, is really meaningful to me because we are making choices. And if we're not conscious that we're making choices that are going to have lasting ramifications, we should be. And to your point about companies with multiple tiers, I look at companies like that and you're right, they are everywhere. Most businesses are built like that. And I go, "This is your life that you are just—
Nils Leonard: (13:00)
Yeah.
Charles: (13:01)
... minimizing—
Nils Leonard: (13:01)
Yeah.
Charles: (13:01)
... every day by deciding to settle, right, whether you are—
Nils Leonard: (13:03)
Yeah.
Charles: (13:04)
... whether you are responsible for the business or not." I think we are living in history and we need to be conscious of that fact that we have a opportunity, if not a responsibility.
Nils Leonard: (13:12)
And I think awareness as a company sounds so funny. It was super rare, I think, talking about our make-up when we started four and a bit years ago, to be aware, not of your industry, by the way, or your category, but of the world, was unusual. And it's, like, mad. You know, the only other agency I'd never heard talk about it was Howell Henry who said, "All we have is how we see the world." And I just thought that was fucking it, man. That is it. And I think that's massive, you know? I also sort of go, there's something even worse, in that tier thing, which is yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, do you have passengers in your company as a leader? Yeah, right. If you're a passenger, you know it. I've been a passenger. You fucking know it. And you got to say to yourself—
Charles: (13:56)
Absolutely.
Nils Leonard: (13:56)
... at that point, you know, you've got to say to yourself at that point, "Okay, come on. I'm… you know, you're human and that's not good enough." You know that. Yeah. Anyway, the original creative idea right there, time is ticking. You know, that is the one, that is the one. So you kind of just go, "Enough, man. We don't have forever." And you just got to say to yourself, "Right. Let's go." And that's almost the most tragic part of it for me is I don't believe that these companies are full of people that don't understand their place. I think they do. And I think that's the point at which you just go, "Christ, come on. If this hasn't given us all a kick in the ass to change things up, then what has?" I think.
Charles: (14:30)
I agree. So as you look forward to the next 12, 24 months, what are the challenges you think you're going to have to confront to keep this going? I mean, Agency of the Year after what, three years of existence? One of which you spent in a complete lockdown state, so…
Nils Leonard: (14:47)
Yeah.
Charles: (14:47)
Right. I mean, you've set yourself a pretty high bar. So what are the challenges you think you're going to have to overcome as you look forward?
Nils Leonard: (14:54)
I feel very lucky with what we've built. I know that my other two co-founders do too. I think, honestly scale is always a challenge to any business that has a sense of excellence. Scale is just terrifying to a business like that because it's very easy to believe that a very, very close team, and it's not about us seeing everything, it's just about our culture and our belief and our ferocity being tangible. The bigger you get, the harder that is to keep that energy alive, and the harder work it takes to do it. You know, I realized when I was back at Grey, the definition of culture is simply saying the same thing over and over again to people that haven't heard it. And it's sad but that's true. And it's, like, somewhere at some point, that's a worry for me.
Also we have, and still have, dreams to do more stuff, to be more active in the world, to be more activist in the world with our influence, with or without our clients. And I feel like that's at stake, the more in demand we get, you know? We're winning some absolutely brilliant bits of business. We're working with some leaders and founders of those companies that are some of the best in the world, and that's distracting and excellent and all those things. And I think we've got to remember that what brought us all of that was the direction, the travel we started originally and not lose sight of that. So that, that terrifies me. But other than the above man, I just relish it, I'm just fucking loving it. I'm like, it's just a really, really good time, I think, if you believe in what you're doing, I really, I really believe that.
And, you know, I don't know. I'm very validated by the work we make and I'm validated by the conversations I have with people. I save… people send me messages all the time, man, and I don't know why, maybe they do that, but I save them all, like, because they're insane, some of them. I just realized that what we are trying to do and the way we're going about trying to do it, we're not alone in that type of thought. And when it resonates with people, it's a really, really affirming thing. Because otherwise you can wake up and think it's a job, I suppose. Yeah. And I don't know, you know, how do we scale well? Well, I ran a big company at Grey and everyone thought it was good, but I would argue 70% of it wasn't. I want 100% of Uncommon to always be absolutely brilliant. So how we do that at scale is going to be tough, I think, you know?
Charles: (16:59)
Do you think you'll cap the company? Do you have of a size in mind that you think, ‘If we get bigger than that, it's going to be hard,” or are you just going to meet the challenge?
Nils Leonard: (17:05)
You know, I've never believed in that. I do believe in focus, though, and not rapid growth. I just wanted to win everything at Gray. And we really, we really don't do that here. We don't care about winning at all. It's, "Are we going to work for these people? Are these people indicative and share, do they share our values? Do they share our ambition? Do they want what we want? Do they know what we do?" And I think if they do, then we make a call around the projects we're doing and we scale appropriately. I've never believed that big is necessarily bad, I just think that bad is bad, you know? And I think you've got to just make sure that when you grow, again, to that point, you're growing with people who see the world like you do, and you're attracting those people.
Someone said to me that, you know, talent is a problem in the ad industry. Well, I think it's a problem if you've no idea why they would come and work for you. So I think our thing is just making sure that we're ferocious about that. And we really do inquire and, and I mean there's both ways, talent and us. Inquiry each, with each other to the point where we really know who we are and whether it's going to work and that is a deal we make. But I'm really, I'm really excited by it, I'm really excited by it.
And on a personal note the family as well is kind of in a really good place. Charlotte, my wife, has written and is about to publish her first book. She's writing her second now. That's insane. I've got fantasies about arriving at her book launch, being thin, by the way, I'm going to lose even more weight than this and arrive thin and kind of maybe smoke on the fringes of her book launch and be a cool author’s husband. I have a fantasy about that, that I'd like to engage in.
Charles: (18:36)
That's an incredible accomplishment for her.
Nils Leonard: (18:38)
Oh man, it's super insane. I can't deal, I can't deal with it. What, you know, you put 80,000 words, right? I think if I gathered up all the manifestos I've ever written, and I probably wouldn't still get to that number.
No, no, it's nuts. She said the best thing by the way, to any authors listening. We went on a couple of courses and she took a load of courses and The Guardian and whoever, and she said the best thing she learned from one of them, apparently the guy at the start of the course, you know, said, "Right. Anyone here in the process of writing a book?" And they all put their hands up. And he said, "Anyone here ever finished a book before?" No one put their hand up. And he said, "Okay, this is the one lesson I'm going to teach you, and I'll teach you loads of other ones." He said, "But the one lesson is you just got to fucking finish it. And you've got to vomit the words onto a page daily until you've got 80,000 of them." And I just thought that was basically it.
And so Charlotte just went off and did that and that's super rare and it's actually fucking brilliant, annoyingly, obviously, So I'm really excited for that. It feels like a lot of just growth and change and on both sides. So I'm thrilled for her as well as we go through that.
Charles: (19:39)
Congratulate her for me. I really do think it's extraordinary.
Nils Leonard: (19:42)
I will, I will.
Charles: (19:44)
You said something to me the last time we talked, which I wrote down and I've used actually at various points, which is, you said to me that you think leaders are dealers in hope, which I just loved, because I think it's true. What do you think people look at and see hope in when they look at Uncommon?
Nils Leonard: (20:03)
Look, man, we're noisy. I know we're noisy. I know we put ourselves out there. I'm forever retweeting and tweeting and all those other things, and I would say it's because we're desperate. We do have a point of view. We're not just trying to be ‘good’ in inverted commas or make better ads or whatever, we are trying to be something else. And we do have a point of view on the world and a way of being in it, we wish others shared that. And we like to put those points of view out. I think, if we are giving people hope, it's around a few things, but I would argue that a lot of it stems from our rivalry with dependency.
And I think there's so much talk in the ad industry of permission. Permission from your clients, permission from your bosses, permission from... And we just try to fucking wreck dependency at every point, down to deeply asking everybody that comes to work with us, clients and people, why are they here? Do you know what we do? Do you know what we're about? If you don't, just leave, man. We're not in the... We won't even pitch your business if you haven't seen our work or heard us speak, there is no point, because unless you know what we do, why would you walk through the door? We're not on a list.
And I think I'd love to believe that some of our energy and some of our ferocity and some of the difficult decisions we've made saying no to quite a lot of things is a good lesson for people. You only know what others are should showing you, right? It's really tough. It doesn't matter how experienced you are, if you are in your company, that's your experience of the world at that moment? Sometimes it does take other companies to show you there's another way. And that's true in the work and that's true in the behavior of the business. Do you remember the Netflix HR document they've got, yeah, right. Everyone's, "Oh my God. They're so fucking cold." I remember reading at the time thinking, three quarters of it just says, "If you're really, really good, we'll pay you really quite well." That was sort of what it said.
And I was like, "Okay." You know, I know there was some stuff in there that was inflammatory too. They wrote it to go viral, all of the above, I get all of that, but there was a lot in there that just said, "If you're fucking up for it and really good, we're going to pay you really fucking well." I think the ferocity that we've lost in our industry and the candor that we've lost in our industry, Ed Catmull talks about it a lot, right, our ability to be critical without involving our egos, all of that stuff makes us powerful. And we've just lost all that. And so I would love to believe that the work we're making and our position on the industry tells some people that they can do the same thing and it'll be alright. In fact, it won't go wrong, it'll get better. That's the deal, I hope.
But you know, I also just fucking get messages going, you know, "Yeah. I'm talking about that thing you fucking said." And they get it, and they've got their own version of events. And I also kind of respect that too. I kind of go… I remember going to work at places and I’d have a fantasy for the place. And then I realized they had a fantasy for me when they met me because I needed to fill a job they needed me to do, right?
Charles: (22:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nils Leonard: (22:47)
And then you realized that both of you got a fantasy for each other and neither is the truth. I think also a lot of the messages we get are maybe fantasies about what we are. And I'm all right with that too, by the way, but I just think I've got to call honesty on a couple of things and I probably will, as well.
Charles: (23:03)
You know, it's interesting you bring up the Netflix document because I was going to mention that earlier, actually, to your point about people not being ruthless enough in terms of who's around and who sticks around. One of the things that they were ruthless about, and I think still are, was exactly that. They actually recognized that emotionally it's really hard for people to fire—
Nils Leonard: (23:22)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:22)
... other human beings. And so—
Nils Leonard: (23:23)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:23)
... they had a practice in place where after 90 days you were required to evaluate anybody that you had hired into your area of responsibility. And if you thought—
Nils Leonard: (23:32)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:32)
... they weren't making it, you were told that you could pay them 125% of what they would've made by staying, to incentivize you as the manager to fire—
Nils Leonard: (23:42)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:42)
... the person who wasn't there and to incentivize them to leave—
Nils Leonard: (23:45)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:45)
... because they make more money leaving than they would by staying.
Nils Leonard: (23:47)
Yeah.
Charles: (23:48)
Powerful, right, I mean, to your point—
Nils Leonard: (23:50)
Yeah. Yeah. It is.
Charles: (23:51)
... if you're not good enough, if you don't - good enough is not fair - if you don't fit, right. It's about fitting.
Nils Leonard: (23:56)
No, no, no, I think, I also think that. I think that works both ways.
Charles: (23:59)
Yeah.
Nils Leonard: (24:00)
You know? I think that works both ways. I think and wish more of us, instead of just getting there and going, "Oh, I'm still working it out." You're fucking not, you know? You know, in a month really, you can feel it. And I think we try to foster that too. We sort of say to people, you know, we do try to have a bit of a period, usually around two months, three months where we say, "All right, before you are completely indoctrinated and it's the way things are, what do you reckon? How are we doing?" You know, and the best people are fucking ruthless, you know, pretty candid with us and quite cold around it. I think it's a huge thing.
I think we got to be appraising each other.
Charles: (24:36)
I do, too. Life is precious, right, and short, and career paths are even shorter. Why are you wasting today—
Nils Leonard: (24:40)
Yeah.
Charles: (24:40)
... when you could be doing something better somewhere else?
Nils Leonard: (24:43)
No, that's exactly right. I fucking love all that, you know. The poems on my desktop, you know, the death one, you know, Death Twitches My Ear? Do you know that one?
Charles: (24:51)
Mm-mm (negative).
Nils Leonard: (24:52)
It’s great. Okay. It's tiny. “Death twitches my ear. Live, he says, I'm coming.”
Charles: (24:59)
Wow.
Nils Leonard: (24:59)
That's it. I'm like, fuck. Okay. Yeah. You know the best ad for this though, this is the subject matter I like, I think you and I are specialist subject. You know, the best advert for life ever is on most funeral directors in London. And I had never clocked this before. So you walk up Lamb's Conduit Street. It's a beautiful old street in London. There's a funeral director's thing there. And I'm walking up the road and I'm like, "Oh God," and I look up and outside the funeral directors, there's just a massive clock. And I was just like, "Oh shit."
And I was like, "It's okay, great, awesome. Perfect. Got it. Thank you." I walked up the road and the hairs and my arms standing on end like, "Oh..." But yeah, that's right, you know, that's right. I just... You know, look, it's not all life and death, is it, you know, it's about a laugh and all those other things, but it is, in the end, your life. And I think that, you know, that's what I missed for a couple of years was I thought I was looking, I was using other people's words. And what I was really looking for was trying to matter, was trying to do something with meaning for myself, you know, and sometimes that aligns with others.
And that's what you mean by fit. That's what we mean at Uncommon. We don't mean are you ferociously, intellectually clever? We don't give a shit about that. Do you share our anger and sentiment and frustration with some stuff? Do you share our love of other things? Do you want to feel like we do about the world and your role in it? And that's arguably what we try to attract and what we try to foster.
Charles: (26:17)
So you and your partners are so filled with energy, vitality, vibrancy, points of view, humanity. I don't think I've ever asked you this question, but I'm increasingly struck by it. What's your long term ambition for Uncommon, not through the lens of business success, but through its relationship with itself after you are not around. Do you want it to outlive you?
Nils Leonard: (26:41)
Yeah, I'd love it to. I'd love it to be a reference point. We talk a lot about that, about those two words, but I really, really would. And we're nowhere near that yet. I don't mean in the ad industry at all. I want it to be a reference point for how creativity can make a dent in the things that this world cares most about, and how you don't necessarily need to have come from the same old places and have the same old conversations to play a part in the world's most influential moments. And some figures have done that in the history, you know, artists, designers, fashion, you know, McQueen, right, he's a hero of mine. You know, Lee absolutely did that in his career not by choice, partly by choice. But I would love us to be a reference point.
I would love our way of thinking, some of the things we've said, some of the work we've done to become icons in the past. I know half of that's luck, but I also know that if you put enough of those out into the world, some of it'll stick. I'd love us to have a school of some sort. And I don't mean that because we've got those for tea, I just mean what I've noticed is our way of being, and there are tricks and mechanics and they're tangibles, they're not luck or, you know, this guy said this thing, we tend to with all these behaviors I've started spotting. You know, we're starting to build a collection of stuff. We might make a book one day, I don't know, Uncommon Sense or whatever, but there are these things. And I think they're really, really powerful tools once you learn them, around all of it, around how you make things famous, around how you go to work every day, around how you might see a problem, around how you might sell a problem.
And I think all these sorts of things are powerful and I hope some of that makes its way into the world, as well. Because everyone bemoans our industry, but really you can see from the ones that, the one in creativity, what, what they're offering and they have their own unique way and legend, and I'd love us to do that as a company. It'd be amazing, wouldn't it? But isn't that the... Doesn't everyone want that? Probably, probably they do, I don't know.
Charles: (28:39)
I think a lot of people have their egos so wrapped up in the business that they can't actually conceive of the business existing without them, because the business is essentially an extension of them. And on some level, I think, you see people almost unconsciously sabotage the business after they have moved on or after they're moving on, because the notion that this could live without them is kind of existentially threatening to them. I think what you are describing is the ideal outcome. I mean, why spend all this time and all this energy and all this passion, and all this care, and all this thought into building a company whose lifespan is only going to be as long as your interest in having it. I mean, what a waste—
Nils Leonard: (29:19)
Yeah.
Charles: (29:19)
... that would be, right?
Nils Leonard: (29:20)
No, I agree, man. I saw this beautiful thing, I think, is it Dave Hyatt, somebody said this, I thought it was absolutely excellent. It's like, "Everyone's obsessed with growing and scaling and, we are too, to some degree, you know, the ambition of your business and all the above, you know, Fast Company. Well, why isn't there a Slow Company?” And I just thought that was, oh yeah. Okay. I get it. And none of us are trying to build those sorts of businesses.
Yet, you and I are talking about legacy really, and more and more people are talking about time and the finite nature of it. But the nature of the businesses we work in aren't at all and I think that's massive. We've always talked about that, man. Like there are Walt Disneys of the world aren't there, and there are ‘Your Country Needs You’ posters. And there are, ‘I Love New York’, you know, and I'm like, whoever you are, and however you do it, if we can play enough of the part in moments like that in the makeup of the world, then we'll have played their part, we'll have done a bit, doesn't wanna burn a bit, you know, it'd be good.
Charles: (30:17)
No, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, one of the things I'm proudest of is that when Chris and I, my wife and I built the White House, in its multi-city, multi-country form, one of the explicit goals we had was to build a company that was designed to outlive and outlast its need of us. And the fact that it is, I don't know, three to four times larger now than it was when we sold and left in 2005, is a matter of immense pride. But I know it exists and it's vibrant and vital and relevant. And I think—
Nils Leonard: (30:44)
Yeah. Yeah.
Charles: (30:44)
... you know, that to me was a significant achievement. And I hope and wish that there were more people who were conscious of, "This is the company I'm building for now, but this is the company I want to leave behind," because I think it acts in everybody's best interest.
Nils Leonard: (30:57)
No, I think that’s right.
Charles: (30:58)
And I think it's challenging, it's challenging, right? Because somebody like you—
Nils Leonard: (31:00)
No, no.
Charles: (31:00)
... brings a lot, it brings a big personality and the company is built around you and your founders’ personality and your presence and the drive. And obviously, and you have talented people around you, but if you take the three of you out right now, it's not the same business. But how do you make sure the business is built so that at some point in the future when you're ready, it doesn't depend on you?
Nils Leonard: (31:18)
No, I agree, I completely agree. It's a great question. Isn't it? I mean, honestly, that's a question, you know, anyone will ask of us. I would argue that because we've never believed in luck, right? And I've always liked to mechanize things that are supposed to be, you know, I don't know, fluid or, you know, there's people who talk about fame and they're like, "Fame is just one of those things that happens." I'm like, "Absolute bullshit." You can completely mechanize, from the ground up, an idea of the fame. And I can tell you how I think about it, how I come up with it, where it should live. And then I can tell you all the media assets you need in this world right now to be able to make that famous. And I've always loved dismantling things like that. And I look at the company and sort of do the same.
Don't get me wrong, if we weren't here, it'd be different. But like I said, we have culture. But when I say culture, I mean, there's shit on the wall and there are ways and tricks and codes and familiar questions and there are stories in our business. You know, we did this thing at our last party when we actually got together, it was fucking brilliant, by the way. In summer, we all got ruined and completely out of practice at drinking. It was wondrous. But we just told 10 different stories from 10 different people who work here, you know? We didn't go, "This is what we're about or this is, fucking, these are the rules." We just told 10 different stories. And they're each indicative, I think, of a different value or power that Uncommon fosters.
And I know that those things would exist if we just disappeared tomorrow, as well. And the crew here would be aggravated and annoyed that people thought it wouldn't be as good if we weren't here in the same way that I fucking would be. And that's why I know success is, because I look around and I go, you know, Sam Walker, Josh Tends, Tom and Chris, all those people would turn and go, "Fuck off. We're absolutely as good." And they would take it as a personal affront that others would think we weren't the same company. And that's how I know it would be a great company.
Charles: (33:06)
Yeah. Which brings us back full circle to the caliber of the people that you hire is so important.
Nils Leonard: (33:10)
Yeah.
Charles: (33:11)
How have you been changed by the last two years, do you think?
Nils Leonard: (33:14)
I feel older in loads of ways. I don't know whether it's the two years either, or genuinely age. I feel much more grateful and fragile and a bit more humble. I haven't become a cynic, which I'm grateful for. I've always been terrified of that. That was where I was headed, I think, in my previous job, without knowing it. I'd like to think that I try to make more time for people and listen more, and really hear them more, rather than pretend to listen and think of something else. I have more fear, fear of losing things. I'm very, very grateful, very grateful, man, for all of it.
You know, you get me going on that, I'll end up in tears again, like I do most of the time when I speak to you, but I'm kind of like, no, no, I am. I kind of go, "Jesus Christ." Yeah, we work hard and all that other stuff, but the business, my family, the whole thing… You know, it's not easy, all of this and it's gone really as well as I could have hoped for. And I've stayed open and thought of it and all of those things you try to do, but I'm very, very grateful for it. And so I see that and feel that in a lot of the work we're doing, and a lot of the conversations we have, and I hope that's… I think that's a sentiment that's being shared amongst many people, like Charles, you yourself included, I'm sure. Other than that, I don't really know, man. I mean, I've got almost no dark hair on my head.
Charles: (34:39)
Join the club.
Nils Leonard: (34:44)
Yeah. What about you?
Charles: (34:46)
That's a compelling question, which nobody has asked me actually, for some time. I'm more sensitive to the passage of time, for sure, in terms of what am I doing with it, and I think more and more about what's the impact I want to have. I wonder sometimes what I'm waiting for. I see the same thing in people I work with, but I've started asking the same questions of myself, I think, more fervently and with more expectation that there should be an answer coming back from it.
Because the pandemic has both made the last two years very hard to track, and I find it hard to look back and figure out when things happened anymore - was that last year or three years ago. And it's also suddenly kind of jet propelled me forward into realizing I've certainly got way fewer years ahead of me than I had behind me, and what do I want to do with those? I thought this is probably what I thought about 40 would feel like and look like.
Nils Leonard: (35:39)
(laughs). Yeah.
Charles: (35:40)
So I need to do something with that. I make sure that, you know, when that last breath does happen… It's interesting, there was an article a couple of years, three or four years ago, written by a palliative care nurse who talks about—
Nils Leonard: (35:51)
Yeah. It's insane.
Charles: (35:52)
Yeah, you read that, right? It was about what were the five—
Nils Leonard: (35:54)
Yeah.
Charles: (35:55)
... five regrets of the dying. And I hold those thoughts. I let those thoughts wander in more and more these days just to make sure, let’s make sure that you've crossed as many of those off the list as possible before you get to that point.
Nils Leonard: (36:06)
Yeah, I think so. Don't be afraid to piss people off either or just go and fucking do your thing.
Charles: (36:11)
Yeah.
Nils Leonard: (36:11)
That comes a bit with age, doesn't it, less fucks given and all that. Sam Walker told me this great story. He tells me lots of good stories. Some of his great story, he said he went to see someone a while back. And he said, "Okay, what would you do if money was no object?" And then Sam went, "Okay, I had to think," and went, "Yeah, but you know," blah, blah. And then, and basically the guy asked him the question 10 times, same question, "But what would you do if..." and we, I don't know about you, like really sit down and think about that, how many times can we actually even answer it? And that's actually the problem.
The problem isn't that we have these fucking dreams that we're not living, the problem is we have no idea we're sleep walking. And so it's like, you know, actually, that's a really good question to go and ask yourself. And I would argue something a bit like this. That's why I feel so grateful. I'd be doing something like this, convincing myself of what we might do might matter at a brief moment in time, and working with fucking amazing people and having a laugh, really.
Charles: (37:04)
Living the dream.
Nils Leonard: (37:05)
Absolutely do.
Charles: (37:05)
Living the-
Nils Leonard: (37:06)
Quite a little bit. Yeah. But the dream's not easy, right? That's that whole—
Charles: (37:09)
No.
Nils Leonard: (37:09)
... I love all that.
Charles: (37:10)
The dream itself is—
Nils Leonard: (37:10)
I love all that.
Charles: (37:11)
... yeah, the dream itself requires—
Nils Leonard: (37:12)
Yeah.
Charles: (37:12)
... effort and thought and consideration. Inspiring and uplifting and thought provoking, as always. I've come to regard our conversations as sort of benchmarks in the passage of time, actually. And I value them enormously. So I'm grateful to you again for coming—
Nils Leonard: (37:27)
Thank you, Charles.
Charles: (37:28)
... back on and sharing your thoughts.
Nils Leonard: (37:29)
No, no, thanks for having me, man. And if anyone is listening to this, by the way, you must please go and check out Unrest, which is our new accelerator. I should have mentioned that. You know, we always had a vision to go and put these brands into the world. You talked about what we were trying to leave and all that other stuff. I had this sort of strategy that one company couldn't possibly be enough, maybe on its own, to impact the sort of world that we wanted to do. And so we tried as always from the start, you remember with Halo and some of those other brands, to build brands that have a voice to make a difference in the world.
You know, Halo's the compostable version of espresso that we created. So we just launched an accelerator called Unrest, which is going to put 15 to 20 brands a year through the mill. And we are a key partner in that business, so we're going to help them with purpose. We're going to help define what they are, but they're already purpose-driven brands. They're already all ware designed consumer-facing brands, designed to make an impact. So if anybody wants to be a part of that, or wants to know more, please hit us up because we're literally looking for that cohort of brands. Uncommon are leaning into it. We do all the marketing, the design for those brands if they want, that's the deal. So I'm quite excited about that.
Charles: (38:39)
That's a brilliant initiative. I'm glad you mentioned that at the end. It's a fantastic idea and something the world needs badly.
Nils Leonard: (38:45)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you just got to spin those plates, haven't you? And I think what dawned on me is there's a lot of good businesses actually that launch, but very few great brands, like, "Oh, our business idea is this," but often the brand, the way they go about going to market, it just takes them fucking years. And so we were like, "Well actually, what if we supercharge that from the start? That could be powerful."
Charles: (39:06)
It's interesting actually, because I talked to a couple of guys yesterday who've started a business called ConCreates, the ‘Con’ stands for convicts because they met in federal prison in America. Actually you would love these guys. I should definitely connect you. And—
Nils Leonard: (39:20)
Yes, please.
Charles: (39:21)
... and all of their employees, I think, as of right now, it's about to change because they're growing fast, as of right now, all of their employees are former convicts, actually in some cases, current convicts because they tap into them on a freelance basis. They met in prison, put the business together, idea in prison. And to your point, by their definition, they were lucky enough to work with people coming out who helped them craft, what's the mission of the company, what's the purpose of the company, and it got them going in the right direction. So it wasn't simply, "This is a good idea," but it was actually—
Nils Leonard: (39:49)
No. That's it.
I loved that idea, man. Please link me up. I mean, yeah, there's a few conversations we've had here with the idea of reform in prison in this country, as well, actually. So I'd love to meet those people. But I think it's true there's you go to any accelerator or a Start-Up Day and you'll see 20 companies, and you'll see, you know, 15 great ideas, and you'll see like one brand. You know, there'll be one person that articulates their purpose and talks about how they live and has the logo and aesthetic and the mark on the world and all those, if you're lucky. And I think, companies wake up at three to five years, don't they, and go, "Shit, we should probably work out what we're about." And you kind of go, "That's too late. Don't... Why would you do that? That's three years you missed." So that's our plan, anyway. I just wanted to lob that one in.
Charles: (40:33)
No, it's a good lob.
Nils Leonard: (40:34)
Use your immense network to get it out there.
Charles: (40:35)
It's a good lob. Thank you again. It's a pleasure—
Nils Leonard: (40:39)
Thank you.
Charles: (40:39)
... as always. So good.
Nils Leonard: (40:41)
Thanks, Charles.
—————
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