My 7 Learnings from 7 years building AMORELIE

This article summarizes a talk I gave at Bits & Pretzels 2019. You can watch the full video here.

At Bits + Pretzels 2019 I talked about my 7 Learnings of 7 years building AMORELIE. This was only a couple of weeks after we gathered for a big party to celebrate AMORELIE’s sixth birthday, which was a time to reflect and definitely one of my #mentalpicturemoments. I learned an incredible amount in the past 7 years at AMORELIE. If I had to start all over, here are the 7 things I would focus on even more:

1. It’s all about relationships.

If you observe the happiness of people throughout their life, happiness most and foremost depends on one aspect: relationships – not the quantity of relationships, but their quality. That is the result of the world’s longest study on happiness, conducted by Harvard University. To #GrowGreatRelationships is our mission at AMORELIE. We want to help couples grow their relationship by exploring their intimacy together. But investing in your relationships is not only important for your private life – it is also key in business. An example: When we closed our deal with dm, the German drug store chain where you can now buy AMORELIE products, I decided against meeting the dm leadership in person. Why? Because I wanted to save the travel and accommodation costs of 400 euros. Of course, as entrepreneurs it is in our DNA to always be costs-savvy. But, I would do it differently today. Because it is not AMORELIE that is building a relationship with dm. It is Anne and Sven of AMORELIE convincing Katharina and Kai of dm. You never sell to companies, you sell to people. When we were in negotiations with our new partner Douglas, I went to see Douglas-CEO Tina Müller in person. It was an inspiring meeting and the relationship between our companies is better than ever. Ultimately people make relationships, not corporations.

2. Women are a great investment.

You should have women in your firm in leadership positions, invest in female-founded startups and target women as customers! Not because you are altruistic and want to change the world. No. Simply because it makes economic sense. More diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation. Startups founded and co-founded by women are significantly better financial investments: For every dollar of funding, these startups generated 78 cents, while male-founded startups generated less than half that. Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing through a combination of their buying power and influence. At AMORELIE the majority of our customers are women and in our firm we have 70% women in leadership positions. We support parents by offering flexible working hours, home office and emergency nannies. Overall company meetings take place in the mornings and not in the afternoons.

3. Hard decisions, soft life. Soft decisions, hard life.

As a leader you take tough decisions almost every day. During my time at AMORELIE I developed a key rule on decision-making: The sooner and clearer, the easier for everyone. Two examples: 1) People. Who to work with, is one of the most important decisions you take as an entrepreneur. Decide who you want in your core team, and invest in them. Why? Because of the old – but true – rule: A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s. To be able to answer the toughest questions around people, I ask myself: If person A would start at our competitor tomorrow, how much would I fight to keep her or him? 2) Business. At AMORELIE we tried to enter the lifestyle market by launching a perfume called “Eau Yes”. We were excited for our amazing product - but it did not sell. It still is one of my most favorite perfumes, but we have no expertise in selling perfumes. The more invested and committed you are to an idea, the harder it often is, to let it go. Looking back, we took far too long to decide to end this trial. We went for the soft decision and it resulted in a much harder life.

4. Realistic Timing is everything.

My advice is to look for investors and raise money early. Noone wants to invest in desperation. I often observe that startups start raising money way too late, when the cash is already tight. Build your network before you need it. Besides raising money, you also have to be realistic and pragmatic in your timing when it comes to your dreams about your business goals, your company culture, your products and brands. When we started AMORELIE, I wanted to have it all at once: develop private labels, build a sustainable company and offer personal development support to the team. This vision was right, but the timing wasn’t. We only launched our private labels three years after we founded the company; today >50% of our total revenue comes from our own brands. Today, we have personal development options for our employees, in our first years we could not have afforded it. It’s okay to want to have it all. But realistic time planning and patience is still key.  

5. “Feste Feiern, wie sie fallen.“

There is a book called “The Big 5 for Life”. One idea from the book is to ask yourself the question: If I stroll through an imaginary museum of my life when I am 90 years old, which pictures do I want to see hanging on the wall? With this question in mind, I try to create moments for our company and our team, where we celebrate what we achieved. We need these experiences and memories to get through tough times when optimism and motivation is harder to find. We are not motivated by good numbers, we are motivated by linking these hard business results with personal and emotional experiences. Success needs emotions.

6. Learn to lead in their language, not yours.

At AMORELIE we dance to pop music every Monday morning and I love it. It brings, energy, fun and feels light-hearted. However, probably half of the people at our firm dislike this tradition because they dislike dancing. Everyone has a different idea of their perfect Monday morning. Everyone communicates in a different way. As a leader, I can’t have the attitude that I communicate in a certain way and people have to live with it. Instead, I try to learn the language of my team members. One extremely helpful tool to think about different personalities comes from leadership speaker Nigel Risner, who we invited to AMORELIE last year. Nigel has a theory: We all belong to one of four different groups of characters which are lions, elephants, monkeys or dolphins. And we all communicate accordingly:

• Lions are straight-forward, tenacious and purposeful. When talking with Lions, be brief and focus on the task in hand.
• Monkeys are dynamic, creative and energetic. When talking with Monkeys be enthusiastic, tap into their ideas and give them space to think flexibly and change their minds. (Yes, I am a monkey-lion mix.)
• Elephants are capable, analytical and often more sensitive and vulnerable than they let others see. When talking with Elephants, allow them to save face and be prepared for lots of questions about details.
• Dolphins are supportive and perceptive of others’ emotions. When talking with Dolphins, pay attention to social and personal aspects as well as the task and remember they find change unsettling.

I want to build good relationships with all kinds of animals. To have the different animals represented in a team and to make them learn how to work together makes your work more powerful, efficient and empathic.

7. Love it, change it, or leave it.

As a CEO I don’t have a boss to turn to when I want to complain about something. I don’t like it? It is up to me to change it. I am convinced this responsibility for one’s own happiness and personal development should be taken on by everyone. I expect our employees to speak up if they want change. At a workshop at AMORELIE on our corporate values, I read the post-it-notes from different teams and discovered several times the sentence “I want to get developed”. While I understand the wish for personal development, I did not understand the expectation why these great, smart and motivated people had to “be developed” by someone else. As a leader, it is up to me to build an environment in which our people can thrive. But it is up to our employees to take their opportunities and chances into their own hands and develop. #YouarenotaPokemon – Pokemons get developed, People develop themselves.

You are the CEO of your own life – own it!

These 7 learnings come from my personal experience of building a company and will be different for every leader. We are all CEO’s – maybe not of firms, but definitely of our own lives. Let’s make something of it!

This article summarizes a talk I gave at Bits & Pretzels 2019. You can watch the full video here.