January 9, 2025 • 36 mins
This episode will inspire, enlighten and educate. I sit down with Jill Nykoliation, a visionary leader in marketing and branding. Jill shares her journey from learning about branding at the family dinner table to becoming a trailblazer. She discusses her time at Queen's University, her rapid ascent at Kraft, and her bold decision to venture into advertising.
Jill's 'Tall Grass' philosophy, which she developed through her experiences, encourages embracing the unknown and pushing boundaries. It's about not being afraid to stand out, even if it means being the tallest in the field. She candidly recounts her experiences navigating male-dominated environments and the challenges of starting her agency, Juniper Park.
Jill's 'Refounding' philosophy is about reinventing oneself, especially in the face of struggle. It's a powerful concept that can help those struggling to find their footing. Her insights on masculinity and femininity alone will make your visit worthwhile, but that isn't enough - Ienough—I bet many who listen will stage your version of Jill's Pirate Huddle.
Jill is a wonderful storyteller, teacher, healer, and human being. If her journey moves you as much as it did me, I urge you to share it with others and to leave room for magic.
Here are five key takeaways from Jill Nykoliation's inspiring journey:
1. Embrace the Tall Grass:
2. Trust Your Inner Voice:
3. Create Your Own Identity:
4. Go Where You're Wanted:
5. Leverage Curiosity as a Strength:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
If you're involved in marketing or branding in any capacity,
across North America, and I would argue
almost anywhere in the world, you would have heard the name Jill
Nykoliation. She's a visionary leader,
a trailblazer who has constantly reinvented
her path in life based on her passion and her
(00:25):
pursuit. I get really excited when it hasn't been done before.
And people who are wondering what I'm doing, they're paved road people going,
when is she gonna get out of the grass? That must be terrifying. Where I
look at them and go, aren't you bored? We're gonna learn about
how she learned about branding at the dinner table, her rise to the ranks
of craft, to founding one of the most successful ad agencies,
(00:49):
and leading in a male dominated world. I made a deliberate decision
to start showing up with my feminine, and I had a coach. And he said,
now that you're restructuring, let's bring in an exec team that matches
your energy, that's more balanced than the feminine. And I'm like, what are you talking
about? What I love about Jill's story, it's one
of embracing the unknown and pushing boundaries. And we're gonna dive into her
(01:11):
personal journey and how she's turned adversity into
opportunity and why today her focus is creating
positive change in our world. When you're in your
knowing, it just seems inevitable.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented
by RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast. And
(01:34):
ratings and reviews, well, they're always welcome, and they're always appreciated.
Jill Nykoliation, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Hi,
Tony. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. It was so wonderful getting
together with you a few weeks ago, and I said, you have to come on
Chatter That Matters. I'm so glad you agreed to do it. And what I loved
about part of our chat is when you talked about the dining room table,
(01:57):
and I'm a big advocate of for parents to
realize that what's discussed with their children at a young age
very often becomes a defining tools that they have in their knapsack
for life. So talk to me about your dining room table. So I have 3
brothers, and my father was in marketing. He became
a CEO, but he was he was in marketing and around our table. That just
(02:19):
became the language of, hey, dad, what are you working on? Or he would
talk about, his day. And I remember understanding
the power of brands and specifically here's one really juicy one he
had was he was at General Electric
GE. And GE had sold its
small appliance division to Black and Decker. And he was
(02:41):
tasked with how do you put those two brands together? How do
you get someone who buys a power drill to also
wanna have a curling iron from the same company and and vice versa?
And he's like, this is really gonna be tough. And I remember going, oh,
yeah. Yeah. That guy's not gonna want that and that woman's not gonna want
that. And that was actually a brilliant case study that actually later came into
(03:04):
Queen's when I was there. So I remember that being this isn't just
a business. This is actually psychology and having to put the
consumer in the middle. You mentioned Queen's. From what I understand, this was a
full court press in terms of your family going to Queen's.
Yeah. It was all 4 of us went there. And at 1 year, we were
all there at the same time. What's it like when you have that
(03:26):
sort of family statement that you're making in a university? Is
it easy for you because you've got strength in numbers? Or is
it difficult because it's hard to sort of create your own identity?
I created my own identity. I was very grateful that my
brothers were there because you always knew if something you needed something
or you'd bump into them. Home was just around the corner. But, no,
(03:48):
I made my I created my own identity. And I think that started when I
was young. And my parents very much encouraged that
too. Ken Wong, who's been on my show and arguably
the greatest, marketing professor this country's had. He's
mentored so many people. It almost sounded like he was a little
intimidated by a young Jill. It's just talking about how, you know, you
(04:09):
came to class prepared, but not in terms of did I do my the
work that was asked, but prepared to ask the questions that really mattered. I have
goosebumps in you saying this. He's legendary.
I I think what he remembers of me is my curiosity.
How does that work? And what does that mean? And how does that build? And
where do we go? You know, and again, I go back to the dinner room
(04:32):
table because there's a lot of times I find, and I've even witnessed it, where
parents get frustrated because kids have so many questions. They
just have this insatiable appetite for knowledge. And, of sure, it wears a
lot of parents down. But I have to believe at your dinner table, the the
concept of being curious was something that was fueled and fostered
and and celebrated as opposed to, trying to compartmentalize.
(04:54):
It comes down to patience and interest. And I think when you come from
genuine curiosity, we can try and find
infinite patience for that. When people are curious and really wanna
know more, we should celebrate that. The gauntlet at the end of that, you know,
the Queens is I wanna get into Procter and Gamble or Unilever or Kraft
or PepsiCo. I mean, companies are really known for their training, the
(05:16):
best of the best, and you show up at Kraft. I might have
my timing wrong, but it seems like almost overnight, you go from the
assistant brand manager deciding what font to use on the Jell O
package to working with the CEO. And
I'd I wish people could see your smile. I gotta clip this because take me
back. How did that happen? Because there's a lot of people that were stuck on
(05:37):
that font for years, and you are going into the head office, the CEO's
office. My last 5 years, I was mentored
in part by Irene Rosenfeld. I heard that there was this new
program that she was cooking up. How do I
get around the customer into the consumer? And for your listeners to
go, well, you know, craft sells food to people, but in
(06:00):
between that is a customer, like, the grocery stores. Craft was
spending 3 times as much with the customer than the ones they were the
consumer. So, like, shelving fees and stuff. So she was asking the question, how
do we get around? And if we could just go to these people's homes, we
could save so much money and we could talk so directly. But who are they?
I don't know who buys Kraft Dinner. I don't know who buys peanut butter. I
(06:21):
don't know who buys literally by name. And so she's she's, that would be
just a fun assignment to to to work on. I need to create a
database. I need there is no database, so we'd create one.
And then when we get to their house and and their postal code or their
their address and eventually their email, What are we gonna
say? I said I'd take on the whole messaging part of it. Someone else said
(06:43):
I'll take on the data. Tony, no one else wanted the job. I
was floored. What attracted me was 2 things. 1 was,
this is such a puzzle and it's never been done before. Number 2
was Irene said, you will have access to me every Friday for 3
hours. And I just thought, what a massive gift. Because she's brilliant
and she's tough, widely respected. And I thought,
(07:06):
it's like going to school. I get to have a class with her every
Friday, and the assignment was interesting. So that's how I got there. I
raised my hand. This is a great lesson in life for everybody. Then it takes
me to my one of the first of the three principles we're gonna talk about
today with Jill Nykoliation, which is tall grass. My analogy is
there's paved road and there's tall grass.
(07:28):
And each of us can do either. It's a matter of knowing what am I
really wired for. And most people I've come to
learn our paved road. How does it work? How is it
done? The road is paved with, is lined with filing
cabinets of how tos and case studies. That's an important part of
this efficiency and I can, oh, I can beat that. So for
(07:50):
example, this is the Cheetos pack. I can make it bit better
next year. That's paved road. You're just making it slightly better. But a tall
grass is, wow. What if we built something
over there? Let's make a database and let's go to people's homes and
let's create a whole recipe system and let's create magazines and let's
create a TV show and that sounds exciting and I have no idea how to
(08:12):
do that. And no one's done it before us. So you get your machete and
you get in the grass and you whack it around. And sometimes you might poke
your head out of the grass, Tony, and say, oh, wow, we're off
course. It doesn't deter you. You go, okay, back in the grass, a
little to the lab. I quit learn quickly learn like, oh,
I get really excited when it hasn't been done before.
(08:35):
And people who are wondering what I'm doing, they're paved road people
going, When is she gonna get out of the grass? That must be
terrifying. Where I look at them and go, aren't you bored?
And so it's, you learn not to judge, but when I learned that I was
a tall grass person, it was so freeing because then I
understood myself. I'm like, oh, I can make these decisions.
(08:57):
This is the right place for me to be, and I can tune out the
naysayers. But let's talk about that because you're about
possibility. You're about positivity. This is what this podcast is about. How
many times did people like that executive VP wanna grab you by the ankles
and pull you back on the road because they don't
understand what you're doing. They wanna know that you're on the path
(09:19):
that they set for you. Lots of people did. And and and I think I
look back and that's one of the patterns I can see for how
did I keep doing that was learning to trust
my inner voice. And getting out of here and my if any listeners,
my hands on my head and moving it moving my thinking
down to my heart, into my gut. And when I move my
(09:41):
thinking down and I slow it down and I get
quiet, it always leads me
to my truth. You know, here you are, Jill, you're wandering around in the
tall grass at Kraft. And then one day you realize you're actually standing
on pavement. It's getting quite repetitive and rinse and repeat. You
decide to jump and go to a completely different sector advertising,
(10:04):
and you walk into an environment that looked good in the outside, but
when you opened the kimono was toxic, testosterone
was roaring through that place. How do you come to terms with that? Because that's
then I'm saying to you as a as a friend, Jill, that was a bad
decision. And that was jolting. Yes. I left
Kraft. Our budget was over a $100,000,000. I mean, I
(10:26):
don't know if there's a marketer listening to this that has a budget of $100,000,000.
And I left to go into advertising because it became this undeniable
pull that I just, I love brand building so much. I
needed to go to the other side to do it all the time. It
was so jarring. I learned a ton. I
stayed for 2 years. I stayed a year too long.
(10:49):
And that that's the lesson. What I learned there is I'm in the right side
of the fence. That I knew. But I was at
the wrong place. And I had not realized.
That places like that could exist. So talk to me about people that
find themselves in that. They're seduced by a job, a
title, a salary, the beautiful red ribbon, but when they open the
(11:11):
package and they walk into that culture, it is jolting. It
is jarring. People are being marginalized. So two
things. 1 is don't ruminate or beat yourself up
for the decision. I didn't see it because they didn't want me to see it.
Those dark places, they hide it. They they wouldn't exist otherwise. So
that's 1. Number 2 is go where you're wanted.
(11:34):
Jealousy is really toxic. When you know
you're not wanted, when you know it's not the right place again, trust your
knowing and say, I will make such a better,
bigger difference at a place that's cheering me on. We're so glad you're
here. Oh my gosh. You think differently. I don't always agree with you. But you're
making it better. You're making me think. You'll do much more work
(11:56):
there than in a place where the internal competitor is your
fiercest competitor. And that's what I learned. The internal
competition was. Choking and it was
exhausting. And so that was my error was I was trying to
prove to myself that I could, I could do this. I can stand.
I, I, I can be successful. Why can't they see what I'm bringing
(12:18):
in? Jill, you first came on my radar when you made the move
from the an agency we won't name to the agency you named,
which is Juniper Park. How did that come about? At that
place that shall not be named, I met through
wonderful people that also were like, how did I get here? How did I not
know this? And we really worked well together and we loved our
(12:40):
talent connection and chemistry. And we still believe that
there was a better way. And so we decided we created our own agency.
It wasn't really some big master plan. It just felt like it was inevitable. We
believed in the power of brands, not advertising, but the power of brands, which
is different. And so we created this thing, overnight
and we scrambled and and there's, like, 6 of us doing it at the very
(13:02):
beginning. And that's how it came about was was out of the friction
of the last place. You know, this is another major
move. I mean, you leave the the certainty of craft to the uncertainty of
advertising, and then I would compound it by a factor of 10
becoming an entrepreneur. You're not part of a multinational network.
You don't necessarily have people knocking at the door. How did
(13:24):
it feel? I'm gonna take a guess. It must be one of the most exciting
times in your life when they that small band started to make a
lot of hit records. It felt undeniable, and it felt
invincible because, again, when I get into my knowing and I know
something's clicking, then you just go, oh, this is gonna
work. It's gonna be a ton of work, but this is gonna
(13:46):
work. And I didn't really feel we had competitors because we had formed
it, not just we were advertising, but we had strategy, myself, design, which was
buried in advertising, Terry and Ellen. And we were doing it
differently for that time. And I was, like, oh, we're in a category of 1.
Also, to your point about, like, it was a big leap, it was odd at
the time. People were so fascinated that I was a woman starting an
(14:08):
agency. And it sounds ridiculous now at 2024.
But in 2,007, she's a woman starting an
agency, and she's from client side. She has 2 years
experience. And she's starting an agent. What does she
know? And wait, her first client is
Frito Lay in Dallas. What? And so there is I
(14:31):
remember that people going, I'm sorry. This just
happened. But I really felt people were cheering us on.
And maybe I felt your energy too, Tony. I I really did feel people were
going, this is interesting. I'm gonna watch. You know, Jill, you just off
handedly said, and we walked into our first client was Frito Lay
in Dallas. I mean, this was a stranglehold by
(14:52):
Omnicom, this holding company. Some of the top agencies
were in that building, and you walk in this sort
of startup from Canada and you started to rock and
roll. Andrew Robertson, who I adore, and he is
right now the chairman of VMedia. He was just like, I don't know what you're
doing here, but they love you. And we're losing stuff left,
(15:15):
right, and center. And you're picking it up. And you're picking up assignments that we
don't even know are are available. And and so, yeah, he's like, will you join
us? And I actually said no. I'm like, no. And and he was like, I'm
sorry. What? Because you don't say no to Andrew Robertson? He's like the madman of
the madmen? And, I'm like, no, because you're so tepees
centric. And he's like, okay, just be you. Stay
(15:36):
you. But he's yeah. It was it was fascinating to have
them wonder. And we were beating Goodby also, and Goodby's an amazing
agency still to this day. When you're in your knowing,
it just seems inevitable. When
we return, put yourself in the footsteps of Jill. One minute,
you're winning awards, you're the top of the game,
(15:59):
and suddenly everything changes. Well, Jill and I discussed our journey through the
tall grass, from health problems to pirate huddles to
spreading gratitude to the rest of the world. I now show up
my whole self, not the business Jill or the
compartmentalized Jill. I show up whole. That's what's next on
Chatter That Matters. Hi. It's Tony
(16:21):
Chapman, host of the podcast Chatter That Matters. And I'm here to give a
big shout out to a long standing partner of RBC, Woman of
Influence Plus. This is an organization that isn't here to change the
narrative. It is here to rewrite it, to create a more inclusive
tomorrow, and one of their biggest initiatives is the RBC Canadian Women
Entrepreneur Awards. For over 3 decades, they've recognized and
(16:43):
celebrated the strides of Canada's most accomplished, influential, and
impactful women. It is the leading women's awards program in the nation,
working to elevate their important contributions from economic growth to
social change across sectors, across industries, and across Canada.
Women of Influence Plus and the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur
Awards, well, that matters to you, to me, and to RBC.
(17:09):
If you really wanna step into who you are and you really want to
be your authentic self, you need to know who you are. Like, the
one thing people say a lot is I wanna be authentic. I'm like, okay. Authentically
what? Because, yes, you can be authentic. Do you know who you are? You know,
who am I? And who am I now?
Today, my special guest is Jill Nicolatian. She's a force of
(17:31):
positive energy, creativity, positivity,
and a force to be listened to.
You're doing so well at Juniper Park that from what I
understand, they wanna now merge one of their other brands with you
and have you take over the rudder. And this is where
2 other tools became part of the Jill knapsack. And the
(17:54):
first one, obviously, would be the sense of masculine and feminine.
And the other one was refounding. Refounding
is a mindset I use in my personal life as well. And
so it came about when one day, the CMO
changed at PepsiCo US. And again, like, this
is like we're Canadian agency working in the US, bringing jobs
(18:17):
to Canada. It was such a such a privilege. The CMO
changed and called and said, hi. I'm new. I'm sure you're
good. We had just won 6 Effies for them. Those are the most
prestigious effectiveness awards. So our work worked. I
know you're good, but I've got my own people and you're
fired. 42% of the agency just went poof.
(18:39):
Nothing you can do. Not, there's not a conversation to be had. And it wasn't
about the work. You spend all your time finding these
amazing talented people and you don't want to let them go.
And so what I did is I gathered everyone in the basement of the
agency and I just explained the news and we shared the
6 FE case studies that we had just, we were the most awarded agency in,
(19:01):
in, in North America for work that worked and we just got fired
for it. And I said to them, this is our work and this is
who we are and we are this good. And these are our cases
studies to take forward to the new clients. And now we're gonna go hunt
for some new stuff. We're gonna refound the agency because
we've just been destabilized. And so I don't care who founded the
(19:23):
agency. I need to know who wants to refound the
agency with me. I had about 15 people go, oh
yeah, let's do this. So we're gonna refound how we hunt, we're
gonna refound production, we're gonna refound strategy. We just took a look at
everything and said, okay, we got over dependent on somebody. And so,
anyway, fast forward, in 9 months we won 11 accounts and we replaced
(19:44):
every single dollar and we didn't have to fire a single person, lay off a
single person. But that's where the power of refounding going, come join
us. What should we be now? Because the world has changed.
That's now a philosophy, Toni, I take forward and go, wait a
second. The world's always changing. And we, as people
are always changing. So, you know, our kids grew up and we become empty
(20:07):
nesters. We have to refound. When I got divorced in 2015.
Oh, who am I when I'm not partnered? Who am I when I'm not
pretending to be happily partnered? Someone gets ill and or your
parents pass. Who am I when I'm not tethered? And so this idea
of always refounding where we saw that through the pandemic is
so much changed, and all businesses need to
(20:29):
refound every 3 years or so. I love the refounding.
Now I also wanna ask about this masculine and
feminine, not as a gender, but more of an energy because it
certainly must have roared through your dining room table and
craft. But in many ways, it's kinda defined who you
are and the value you bring to the world. So talk to me a little
(20:51):
bit about masculine and feminine. And each of us have both.
And we can if we know we tend to know when to flex. So
masculine is accountability and it's measurement and it's goals and it's
KPIs and it's achievement. And feminine
energy is collaboration and it's listening and it's nurturing and it's
curiosity and it's, it's, it's got that energy to it.
(21:13):
The language of business is typically masculine. And it's about accomplishment
and it's goals and, and driving things and keeping things ticking.
And what I learned as I went along in business is
that I had grown up in a masculine household. I
had Irene Rosenfeld, you know, female in a male
world, been modeled by masculine. Advertising
(21:36):
is ultra masculine. Like, Mad Men's an interesting show because it's
mostly true. It's not fiction. That is what it
was like and it has still remnants of that. I learned
to navigate very well in a masculine world and I would say I over
flexed. I didn't realize it, but my coach of 9 years
said, it's an overused skill now. Your natural language actually
(21:59):
is to skew to the feminine and I didn't know what he was talking about
and this is where he taught me this. And he said, this is the
language of the environments you've been in. But in 2015,
I was restructuring the agency at the exec level.
And he said, now that you are restructuring, let's
restructure it to match your natural energy.
(22:21):
And that is where I unlocked my leadership.
Superpower is in, I could come as myself, but first I
had to learn who am I when I'm not actually wearing armor
in a trained way. But if I get comfortable with who I am
naturally, what would it be like if I brought that? And then who would
I attract in my executive team that would be like that? How's
(22:44):
culture respond to that? Because they've grown up, as you said, and where
the chords and the melody are very masculine sounding.
And you're bringing out matters of the heart, curiosity
and empathy and sort of that left brain and right brain working
together. Do people fight it or do they feel
confident that within this sort of tall grass that you've created,
(23:07):
that they have an ability to be part of it? They were a bit hesitant,
affirmed me. I was so foreign, but they loved it. And so what
happened, what helped was, my exec team, I I got
balanced, people. So Graham Lang, who was my chief
creative officer at the time, big, burly, huge biceps,
bald beard, collaborative, listened, gave
(23:29):
away credit. So he looked masculine, but he actually was very,
he was very balanced, for example. And then like starts to attract
like. And so we started having a leadership team that is kind
and we use the word kindness a lot. And I actually
declared that one day to the agency. All right. New executive team, meet
them. Highly talented. And we're
(23:51):
gonna be kind because this business is so hard
on agencies and so hard to
win. We don't need to be hard on each other. I
created these classes. I called them pirate huddles.
And every Thursday I said, you know, we, we're not gonna talk business. We're gonna
talk humanity. And you can come, not come, doesn't matter,
(24:13):
but I'm gonna talk about personal growth. We would talk
about neuroplasticity of gratitude. When
you're grateful and you choose to be grateful, what happens to your
brain? When you choose to be generous, what
happens to your brain? What opens up? We go from a
fixed mindset to a growth mindset to, to quote Carol
(24:35):
Dweck's work. And this is what unlocked the agency is, well,
what does it mean to be kind? What does it mean to be, to express
gratitude? And we started creating these practices and ways of
speaking that were absolutely beautiful. The
younger people absolutely loved it. Because they felt
heard. They felt seen, they felt valued. And
(24:57):
by me talking like this and saying like, I'm having a
hard day. I need to borrow someone's energy. We've got a big pitch, but I'm,
I don't have it today. Who's got extra? It
means that they could come in vulnerable as well.
And when we show up that way for each other and with honesty
and, and humanity, it flows in. It just
(25:20):
becomes this multiplier. Harvard, if I have my research right,
turned this into a case study. They did. And there's rumors. There might even be
a book one day talking about these pirate huddles. You have
to be so proud as a leader. I mean, this masking side of you rings
off the string of awards and talks about the clients you won and
and David versus Goliath, but the warmth and body language that
(25:41):
changed when you talked about Pirate Huddle. I don't know if you've ever looked seen
yourself in the mirror, but it's 2 very different Jills.
Before you get into your executive coaching, the one thing that you failed to
realize that that a parasite had gone into your body and you kinda
ignored the symptoms because you're a Jill Nykoliation. You
were changing the world. You were changing cultures. Talk to me maybe
(26:04):
about how long it took before you realize that
this was not only threatening your career, but you, in fact, threatened your life.
Yeah. It was 2015, and it was when I was changing my exec
team and, I was getting divorced.
And I was exhausted. I was so exhausted and the doctors were like, oh, it's
just because you gotta, you know, single mom, big job, traveling the world
(26:27):
everywhere. And I just knew in my bones, no, it's not that kind of tired.
I'm I'm tired to the core. And I had
started collapsing. Long story short, I had a
parasite that had been in me, they think for, almost a
decade, and that it would destroy my microbiome and your microbiome,
of course, feeds your organs. And so my whole system was inflamed
(26:48):
and my whole system was compromised and not working at the at at the
levels it should be. And what happened was I was using adrenaline
to keep going and because clients needed me and the
staff needed me or so we tell ourselves. Right? And that's the story we tell
ourselves. And I overrode it. And I muscled. And what I
learned was adrenaline is interesting, but when you use it too much, it
(27:10):
fuels everything good but it also fuels everything bad. And so they said
your parasite has gotten so strong. And so that was a big wake
up call for me and I learned a ton how rest is
important and how you have to take care of yourself. And my doctor said to
me, like, 80% of this getting better is you. I'll do the
20. I'll kill the parasite. We'll fix your organs. But
(27:32):
80% of wellness is lifestyle. You gotta
slow down. You've gotta meditate. Practices for yourself.
Time back for people who you love, etcetera. So that was a big wake up
call. It's interesting that when I first read
on LinkedIn, you'd become an executive coach, I
went, that surprises me. Not because of what you can
(27:53):
offer individuals, but because the stage was more
1 on 1 versus leading a team, leading a
client. You were Joan of Arc, and suddenly now
you're playing more the role of Yoda. If your listeners are familiar
with the book, Strength to Strength by professor Arthur Brooks from Harvard, he
talks about how our brains change. In our mid forties, our physiologic
(28:15):
physiology changes, and we go from this striving,
driving, 1,000,000 miles an hour thriving brain called
the agile, brain, and we move into our crystallized intelligence. I
think this is what happened during the pandemic when I was doing all these pirate
huddles. I felt myself shifting and going, my favorite day is
Thursday. My favorite thing, you know, we have Apple's client. We've got
(28:37):
CIBC. We've got amazing clients. And my favorite thing is
teaching people's growth on Thursdays. And so a few things as
I fell in love with the Pirate Huddle, I fell in love with how I
felt. I was so rewarded by how
people were growing and people would write me my staff and say, I
am a better father because of the lessons you've taught
(28:59):
me. My marriage is better. You know, the signal for help that
we created, that has saved women around the world that came
out of Pirate Huddle. That's the power of talking about
generosity and kindness and saying, what if we put our pencils down
today and Apple can wait and Capital Group can wait and Nissan can wait?
What if we helped women who were trapped in violence and we turned our skills
(29:21):
into gratitude and generosity? That's how that came about.
And so I see the power that that this could do. It just feels so
good. So you you think about I'm stepping into my second curve and I'm
like, I should just go with this. I shouldn't fight it. And
just like the tall grass before, I'll figure out
what form it's gonna be. What do you think is going, Joe? And because
(29:45):
if I have any role now, it's it's trying to curate positivity and
possibility and share it with the world. And I look at someone like you and
saying, if I could bottle what you offer to
those individual people and bring it to the world, wouldn't that be a
lovely thing to do? How are you gonna get this message out?
Because I don't wanna say this in any kind of disparaging or
(30:06):
diminishing way, but I think in some ways, all
you've have might be wasted on a handful when there's
tens of thousands, if not millions of people that could use the lessons you've
learned along the way. I leave room for magic. One thing
Andrew Robertson told me back way back when was he goes, go back 5
years. Could you have imagined this moment 5 years ago?
(30:28):
And I remember how like, oh my gosh. So much no. No. And I look
back, Tony, you and I go back 5 years. Could we have imagined where we
are? No. No. So what makes me think I can imagine the next 5 years?
So leave room for so much shifting and so much to come into my world.
So that's number 1. Number 2 is I love
working with people 1 on 1 to keep me tight and
(30:50):
close to what are people thinking. What are people
struggling with? What are the transitions they're working through? And,
and I can also work on mass. I
am crafting out a book to see if I can put this, my pirate huddle
work into a book. Your listeners could follow me on LinkedIn. I put that out
there. I put my LinkedIn post out once a week for just pure again,
(31:12):
generosity. Just here's wisdom. You don't have to be my client.
You can just share. And then I work at Modern Elder Academy as well with
Chip, and we'll see where that goes. Well, let's talk about Modern Academy and
Chip Conley because I'm fascinated reading about his story.
But what I understand was that you went down to simply be an
observer, a student in one of his academies, and I think it was
(31:34):
about half a cup of coffee in where somebody came over and said you should
be teaching this. Once again, there's a Ken Wong in the room
going, I'm not sure I could teach this person. So tell me what you're doing
with Chip and how that's gonna impact people's lives in terms
of positivity and possibility. Modern Elder Academy, MEA
Wisdom School. I went there. I read about it in Arthur Brooks
(31:56):
book. And I thought, wow. First of all, this book feels like it was written
for me. And then he says in chapter 9, no one teaches you that your
brain changes in your mid forties and onwards, except this one school in the
world, Modern Elder Academy. So I thought this is the perfect
place for me to go to put my career, this, this
chapter down with grace and gratitude. Because I really
(32:18):
I was so sure I was closing it and I wanted to say a
quiet thank you to myself. I wanted to wrap it up. And
so then I could step into my next chapter, which would be human development.
And so I went there. I'm taking my 30 years of consumer
insight, turning it to the human and I get to actually now get he's my
next Irene Rosenfeld To be in the presence of someone who
(32:40):
is so free and so curious and he's all
tall grass. And he's invited me to come into the tall grass and walk
alongside him in whatever way I choose. And so I go, oh, wow. I
will Absolutely. So I teach online with them. My
next week course is called, who am I now? Because that's
a question I keep asking myself, Jill, who are you now? Am
(33:03):
I carrying around identities that no longer serve me? Are
my relationships still serving me? Are
my habits, hobbies, behaviors, what I'm reading still serving me
for who I am now? Do I know who my values are now? So I'm
teaching that course for 5 days, and we'll see where it goes.
Well, why don't we end that the the interview with who are you now? When
(33:25):
I my coach first asked me that, he goes, you don't use your job.
I said, well, I'm the CEO. I'm a marketer. I'm create I'm mother of
Olivia. Because no. You can't use rules. I remember going, I don't
understand the question. I I really can't answer. Shamefully
now, I could look back away. I really was lost. I was really attached to
my work. And now I look and I say, to my two leading
(33:47):
values are growth and
wholeheartedness. And I look at that and go, I always have been fascinated by
human growth. Always. That's why I got into consumer insight as a 30 year
career. It's what I read. It's what I study all the time.
And then wholeheartedness is I now show up my whole
self. Not the business Jill or the
(34:10):
compartmentalized Jill. I show up whole. And my
staff saw that in the last 5 years that I worked with them, and I
show up hearted. And vulnerable.
When I see something I appreciate in in anyone, a stranger or
or or a friend, I tell them. I model that. And so I
go, that's who I am now. I put those 2 together and I
(34:32):
go, yeah. I take my wholehearted self and now I teach growth to
others. And it's reciprocal, Tony, because it helps me grow every time
I teach one of these. I just go, how lucky am I? You know,
Jill, I always end with my 3 takeaways and and sometimes I say that's an
impossible task because there's so many and I think you set the record for takeaways.
But I'm gonna try to frame it in 3. The first one's a bit of
(34:52):
a cheat because it combines 2, but I love when you said forgive yourself
because there's times in life where you're not where you should be
based on decisions you made and said, forgive yourself. Go where you want it.
And I love the fact, I've always heard, you know, you can't push a rope,
really go where you want it. The second is when you started
to rethink logic from head to your heart,
(35:15):
and you said, I'm gonna slow things down, and I'm gonna embrace
my feminine energy, and I'm gonna embrace listening and generosity
and gratitude. And what a wonderful gift you gave to yourself, and what a
wonderful gift you're giving to others. The final one
came out in the last couple of minutes is leave room for magic. There's a
lot of insecurity and uncertainty in the world, but there's still a lot of magic
(35:38):
to be had. And I think if we listen to the the wisdom of
Jill Nykoliation and the Jillisms that you've talked about, the tall grass
and the refounding and masculine and feminine, and we do so
with leaving room for magic, I think we're all gonna live a better life. And
so I thank you so much. So blessed that you're part of, Chatter That
Matters. Thank you so much. I've so enjoyed this,
(36:00):
Tony. Thank you so much for having me on.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chatter That Matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
If you're involved in marketing or branding in any capacity,
across North America, and I would argue
almost anywhere in the world, you would have heard the name Jill
Nykoliation. She's a visionary leader,
a trailblazer who has constantly reinvented
her path in life based on her passion and her
(00:25):
pursuit. I get really excited when it hasn't been done before.
And people who are wondering what I'm doing, they're paved road people going,
when is she gonna get out of the grass? That must be terrifying. Where I
look at them and go, aren't you bored? We're gonna learn about
how she learned about branding at the dinner table, her rise to the ranks
of craft, to founding one of the most successful ad agencies,
(00:49):
and leading in a male dominated world. I made a deliberate decision
to start showing up with my feminine, and I had a coach. And he said,
now that you're restructuring, let's bring in an exec team that matches
your energy, that's more balanced than the feminine. And I'm like, what are you talking
about? What I love about Jill's story, it's one
of embracing the unknown and pushing boundaries. And we're gonna dive into her
(01:11):
personal journey and how she's turned adversity into
opportunity and why today her focus is creating
positive change in our world. When you're in your
knowing, it just seems inevitable.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented
by RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast. And
(01:34):
ratings and reviews, well, they're always welcome, and they're always appreciated.
Jill Nykoliation, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Hi,
Tony. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. It was so wonderful getting
together with you a few weeks ago, and I said, you have to come on
Chatter That Matters. I'm so glad you agreed to do it. And what I loved
about part of our chat is when you talked about the dining room table,
(01:57):
and I'm a big advocate of for parents to
realize that what's discussed with their children at a young age
very often becomes a defining tools that they have in their knapsack
for life. So talk to me about your dining room table. So I have 3
brothers, and my father was in marketing. He became
a CEO, but he was he was in marketing and around our table. That just
(02:19):
became the language of, hey, dad, what are you working on? Or he would
talk about, his day. And I remember understanding
the power of brands and specifically here's one really juicy one he
had was he was at General Electric
GE. And GE had sold its
small appliance division to Black and Decker. And he was
(02:41):
tasked with how do you put those two brands together? How do
you get someone who buys a power drill to also
wanna have a curling iron from the same company and and vice versa?
And he's like, this is really gonna be tough. And I remember going, oh,
yeah. Yeah. That guy's not gonna want that and that woman's not gonna want
that. And that was actually a brilliant case study that actually later came into
(03:04):
Queen's when I was there. So I remember that being this isn't just
a business. This is actually psychology and having to put the
consumer in the middle. You mentioned Queen's. From what I understand, this was a
full court press in terms of your family going to Queen's.
Yeah. It was all 4 of us went there. And at 1 year, we were
all there at the same time. What's it like when you have that
(03:26):
sort of family statement that you're making in a university? Is
it easy for you because you've got strength in numbers? Or is
it difficult because it's hard to sort of create your own identity?
I created my own identity. I was very grateful that my
brothers were there because you always knew if something you needed something
or you'd bump into them. Home was just around the corner. But, no,
(03:48):
I made my I created my own identity. And I think that started when I
was young. And my parents very much encouraged that
too. Ken Wong, who's been on my show and arguably
the greatest, marketing professor this country's had. He's
mentored so many people. It almost sounded like he was a little
intimidated by a young Jill. It's just talking about how, you know, you
(04:09):
came to class prepared, but not in terms of did I do my the
work that was asked, but prepared to ask the questions that really mattered. I have
goosebumps in you saying this. He's legendary.
I I think what he remembers of me is my curiosity.
How does that work? And what does that mean? And how does that build? And
where do we go? You know, and again, I go back to the dinner room
(04:32):
table because there's a lot of times I find, and I've even witnessed it, where
parents get frustrated because kids have so many questions. They
just have this insatiable appetite for knowledge. And, of sure, it wears a
lot of parents down. But I have to believe at your dinner table, the the
concept of being curious was something that was fueled and fostered
and and celebrated as opposed to, trying to compartmentalize.
(04:54):
It comes down to patience and interest. And I think when you come from
genuine curiosity, we can try and find
infinite patience for that. When people are curious and really wanna
know more, we should celebrate that. The gauntlet at the end of that, you know,
the Queens is I wanna get into Procter and Gamble or Unilever or Kraft
or PepsiCo. I mean, companies are really known for their training, the
(05:16):
best of the best, and you show up at Kraft. I might have
my timing wrong, but it seems like almost overnight, you go from the
assistant brand manager deciding what font to use on the Jell O
package to working with the CEO. And
I'd I wish people could see your smile. I gotta clip this because take me
back. How did that happen? Because there's a lot of people that were stuck on
(05:37):
that font for years, and you are going into the head office, the CEO's
office. My last 5 years, I was mentored
in part by Irene Rosenfeld. I heard that there was this new
program that she was cooking up. How do I
get around the customer into the consumer? And for your listeners to
go, well, you know, craft sells food to people, but in
(06:00):
between that is a customer, like, the grocery stores. Craft was
spending 3 times as much with the customer than the ones they were the
consumer. So, like, shelving fees and stuff. So she was asking the question, how
do we get around? And if we could just go to these people's homes, we
could save so much money and we could talk so directly. But who are they?
I don't know who buys Kraft Dinner. I don't know who buys peanut butter. I
(06:21):
don't know who buys literally by name. And so she's she's, that would be
just a fun assignment to to to work on. I need to create a
database. I need there is no database, so we'd create one.
And then when we get to their house and and their postal code or their
their address and eventually their email, What are we gonna
say? I said I'd take on the whole messaging part of it. Someone else said
(06:43):
I'll take on the data. Tony, no one else wanted the job. I
was floored. What attracted me was 2 things. 1 was,
this is such a puzzle and it's never been done before. Number 2
was Irene said, you will have access to me every Friday for 3
hours. And I just thought, what a massive gift. Because she's brilliant
and she's tough, widely respected. And I thought,
(07:06):
it's like going to school. I get to have a class with her every
Friday, and the assignment was interesting. So that's how I got there. I
raised my hand. This is a great lesson in life for everybody. Then it takes
me to my one of the first of the three principles we're gonna talk about
today with Jill Nykoliation, which is tall grass. My analogy is
there's paved road and there's tall grass.
(07:28):
And each of us can do either. It's a matter of knowing what am I
really wired for. And most people I've come to
learn our paved road. How does it work? How is it
done? The road is paved with, is lined with filing
cabinets of how tos and case studies. That's an important part of
this efficiency and I can, oh, I can beat that. So for
(07:50):
example, this is the Cheetos pack. I can make it bit better
next year. That's paved road. You're just making it slightly better. But a tall
grass is, wow. What if we built something
over there? Let's make a database and let's go to people's homes and
let's create a whole recipe system and let's create magazines and let's
create a TV show and that sounds exciting and I have no idea how to
(08:12):
do that. And no one's done it before us. So you get your machete and
you get in the grass and you whack it around. And sometimes you might poke
your head out of the grass, Tony, and say, oh, wow, we're off
course. It doesn't deter you. You go, okay, back in the grass, a
little to the lab. I quit learn quickly learn like, oh,
I get really excited when it hasn't been done before.
(08:35):
And people who are wondering what I'm doing, they're paved road people
going, When is she gonna get out of the grass? That must be
terrifying. Where I look at them and go, aren't you bored?
And so it's, you learn not to judge, but when I learned that I was
a tall grass person, it was so freeing because then I
understood myself. I'm like, oh, I can make these decisions.
(08:57):
This is the right place for me to be, and I can tune out the
naysayers. But let's talk about that because you're about
possibility. You're about positivity. This is what this podcast is about. How
many times did people like that executive VP wanna grab you by the ankles
and pull you back on the road because they don't
understand what you're doing. They wanna know that you're on the path
(09:19):
that they set for you. Lots of people did. And and and I think I
look back and that's one of the patterns I can see for how
did I keep doing that was learning to trust
my inner voice. And getting out of here and my if any listeners,
my hands on my head and moving it moving my thinking
down to my heart, into my gut. And when I move my
(09:41):
thinking down and I slow it down and I get
quiet, it always leads me
to my truth. You know, here you are, Jill, you're wandering around in the
tall grass at Kraft. And then one day you realize you're actually standing
on pavement. It's getting quite repetitive and rinse and repeat. You
decide to jump and go to a completely different sector advertising,
(10:04):
and you walk into an environment that looked good in the outside, but
when you opened the kimono was toxic, testosterone
was roaring through that place. How do you come to terms with that? Because that's
then I'm saying to you as a as a friend, Jill, that was a bad
decision. And that was jolting. Yes. I left
Kraft. Our budget was over a $100,000,000. I mean, I
(10:26):
don't know if there's a marketer listening to this that has a budget of $100,000,000.
And I left to go into advertising because it became this undeniable
pull that I just, I love brand building so much. I
needed to go to the other side to do it all the time. It
was so jarring. I learned a ton. I
stayed for 2 years. I stayed a year too long.
(10:49):
And that that's the lesson. What I learned there is I'm in the right side
of the fence. That I knew. But I was at
the wrong place. And I had not realized.
That places like that could exist. So talk to me about people that
find themselves in that. They're seduced by a job, a
title, a salary, the beautiful red ribbon, but when they open the
(11:11):
package and they walk into that culture, it is jolting. It
is jarring. People are being marginalized. So two
things. 1 is don't ruminate or beat yourself up
for the decision. I didn't see it because they didn't want me to see it.
Those dark places, they hide it. They they wouldn't exist otherwise. So
that's 1. Number 2 is go where you're wanted.
(11:34):
Jealousy is really toxic. When you know
you're not wanted, when you know it's not the right place again, trust your
knowing and say, I will make such a better,
bigger difference at a place that's cheering me on. We're so glad you're
here. Oh my gosh. You think differently. I don't always agree with you. But you're
making it better. You're making me think. You'll do much more work
(11:56):
there than in a place where the internal competitor is your
fiercest competitor. And that's what I learned. The internal
competition was. Choking and it was
exhausting. And so that was my error was I was trying to
prove to myself that I could, I could do this. I can stand.
I, I, I can be successful. Why can't they see what I'm bringing
(12:18):
in? Jill, you first came on my radar when you made the move
from the an agency we won't name to the agency you named,
which is Juniper Park. How did that come about? At that
place that shall not be named, I met through
wonderful people that also were like, how did I get here? How did I not
know this? And we really worked well together and we loved our
(12:40):
talent connection and chemistry. And we still believe that
there was a better way. And so we decided we created our own agency.
It wasn't really some big master plan. It just felt like it was inevitable. We
believed in the power of brands, not advertising, but the power of brands, which
is different. And so we created this thing, overnight
and we scrambled and and there's, like, 6 of us doing it at the very
(13:02):
beginning. And that's how it came about was was out of the friction
of the last place. You know, this is another major
move. I mean, you leave the the certainty of craft to the uncertainty of
advertising, and then I would compound it by a factor of 10
becoming an entrepreneur. You're not part of a multinational network.
You don't necessarily have people knocking at the door. How did
(13:24):
it feel? I'm gonna take a guess. It must be one of the most exciting
times in your life when they that small band started to make a
lot of hit records. It felt undeniable, and it felt
invincible because, again, when I get into my knowing and I know
something's clicking, then you just go, oh, this is gonna
work. It's gonna be a ton of work, but this is gonna
(13:46):
work. And I didn't really feel we had competitors because we had formed
it, not just we were advertising, but we had strategy, myself, design, which was
buried in advertising, Terry and Ellen. And we were doing it
differently for that time. And I was, like, oh, we're in a category of 1.
Also, to your point about, like, it was a big leap, it was odd at
the time. People were so fascinated that I was a woman starting an
(14:08):
agency. And it sounds ridiculous now at 2024.
But in 2,007, she's a woman starting an
agency, and she's from client side. She has 2 years
experience. And she's starting an agent. What does she
know? And wait, her first client is
Frito Lay in Dallas. What? And so there is I
(14:31):
remember that people going, I'm sorry. This just
happened. But I really felt people were cheering us on.
And maybe I felt your energy too, Tony. I I really did feel people were
going, this is interesting. I'm gonna watch. You know, Jill, you just off
handedly said, and we walked into our first client was Frito Lay
in Dallas. I mean, this was a stranglehold by
(14:52):
Omnicom, this holding company. Some of the top agencies
were in that building, and you walk in this sort
of startup from Canada and you started to rock and
roll. Andrew Robertson, who I adore, and he is
right now the chairman of VMedia. He was just like, I don't know what you're
doing here, but they love you. And we're losing stuff left,
(15:15):
right, and center. And you're picking it up. And you're picking up assignments that we
don't even know are are available. And and so, yeah, he's like, will you join
us? And I actually said no. I'm like, no. And and he was like, I'm
sorry. What? Because you don't say no to Andrew Robertson? He's like the madman of
the madmen? And, I'm like, no, because you're so tepees
centric. And he's like, okay, just be you. Stay
(15:36):
you. But he's yeah. It was it was fascinating to have
them wonder. And we were beating Goodby also, and Goodby's an amazing
agency still to this day. When you're in your knowing,
it just seems inevitable. When
we return, put yourself in the footsteps of Jill. One minute,
you're winning awards, you're the top of the game,
(15:59):
and suddenly everything changes. Well, Jill and I discussed our journey through the
tall grass, from health problems to pirate huddles to
spreading gratitude to the rest of the world. I now show up
my whole self, not the business Jill or the
compartmentalized Jill. I show up whole. That's what's next on
Chatter That Matters. Hi. It's Tony
(16:21):
Chapman, host of the podcast Chatter That Matters. And I'm here to give a
big shout out to a long standing partner of RBC, Woman of
Influence Plus. This is an organization that isn't here to change the
narrative. It is here to rewrite it, to create a more inclusive
tomorrow, and one of their biggest initiatives is the RBC Canadian Women
Entrepreneur Awards. For over 3 decades, they've recognized and
(16:43):
celebrated the strides of Canada's most accomplished, influential, and
impactful women. It is the leading women's awards program in the nation,
working to elevate their important contributions from economic growth to
social change across sectors, across industries, and across Canada.
Women of Influence Plus and the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur
Awards, well, that matters to you, to me, and to RBC.
(17:09):
If you really wanna step into who you are and you really want to
be your authentic self, you need to know who you are. Like, the
one thing people say a lot is I wanna be authentic. I'm like, okay. Authentically
what? Because, yes, you can be authentic. Do you know who you are? You know,
who am I? And who am I now?
Today, my special guest is Jill Nicolatian. She's a force of
(17:31):
positive energy, creativity, positivity,
and a force to be listened to.
You're doing so well at Juniper Park that from what I
understand, they wanna now merge one of their other brands with you
and have you take over the rudder. And this is where
2 other tools became part of the Jill knapsack. And the
(17:54):
first one, obviously, would be the sense of masculine and feminine.
And the other one was refounding. Refounding
is a mindset I use in my personal life as well. And
so it came about when one day, the CMO
changed at PepsiCo US. And again, like, this
is like we're Canadian agency working in the US, bringing jobs
(18:17):
to Canada. It was such a such a privilege. The CMO
changed and called and said, hi. I'm new. I'm sure you're
good. We had just won 6 Effies for them. Those are the most
prestigious effectiveness awards. So our work worked. I
know you're good, but I've got my own people and you're
fired. 42% of the agency just went poof.
(18:39):
Nothing you can do. Not, there's not a conversation to be had. And it wasn't
about the work. You spend all your time finding these
amazing talented people and you don't want to let them go.
And so what I did is I gathered everyone in the basement of the
agency and I just explained the news and we shared the
6 FE case studies that we had just, we were the most awarded agency in,
(19:01):
in, in North America for work that worked and we just got fired
for it. And I said to them, this is our work and this is
who we are and we are this good. And these are our cases
studies to take forward to the new clients. And now we're gonna go hunt
for some new stuff. We're gonna refound the agency because
we've just been destabilized. And so I don't care who founded the
(19:23):
agency. I need to know who wants to refound the
agency with me. I had about 15 people go, oh
yeah, let's do this. So we're gonna refound how we hunt, we're
gonna refound production, we're gonna refound strategy. We just took a look at
everything and said, okay, we got over dependent on somebody. And so,
anyway, fast forward, in 9 months we won 11 accounts and we replaced
(19:44):
every single dollar and we didn't have to fire a single person, lay off a
single person. But that's where the power of refounding going, come join
us. What should we be now? Because the world has changed.
That's now a philosophy, Toni, I take forward and go, wait a
second. The world's always changing. And we, as people
are always changing. So, you know, our kids grew up and we become empty
(20:07):
nesters. We have to refound. When I got divorced in 2015.
Oh, who am I when I'm not partnered? Who am I when I'm not
pretending to be happily partnered? Someone gets ill and or your
parents pass. Who am I when I'm not tethered? And so this idea
of always refounding where we saw that through the pandemic is
so much changed, and all businesses need to
(20:29):
refound every 3 years or so. I love the refounding.
Now I also wanna ask about this masculine and
feminine, not as a gender, but more of an energy because it
certainly must have roared through your dining room table and
craft. But in many ways, it's kinda defined who you
are and the value you bring to the world. So talk to me a little
(20:51):
bit about masculine and feminine. And each of us have both.
And we can if we know we tend to know when to flex. So
masculine is accountability and it's measurement and it's goals and it's
KPIs and it's achievement. And feminine
energy is collaboration and it's listening and it's nurturing and it's
curiosity and it's, it's, it's got that energy to it.
(21:13):
The language of business is typically masculine. And it's about accomplishment
and it's goals and, and driving things and keeping things ticking.
And what I learned as I went along in business is
that I had grown up in a masculine household. I
had Irene Rosenfeld, you know, female in a male
world, been modeled by masculine. Advertising
(21:36):
is ultra masculine. Like, Mad Men's an interesting show because it's
mostly true. It's not fiction. That is what it
was like and it has still remnants of that. I learned
to navigate very well in a masculine world and I would say I over
flexed. I didn't realize it, but my coach of 9 years
said, it's an overused skill now. Your natural language actually
(21:59):
is to skew to the feminine and I didn't know what he was talking about
and this is where he taught me this. And he said, this is the
language of the environments you've been in. But in 2015,
I was restructuring the agency at the exec level.
And he said, now that you are restructuring, let's
restructure it to match your natural energy.
(22:21):
And that is where I unlocked my leadership.
Superpower is in, I could come as myself, but first I
had to learn who am I when I'm not actually wearing armor
in a trained way. But if I get comfortable with who I am
naturally, what would it be like if I brought that? And then who would
I attract in my executive team that would be like that? How's
(22:44):
culture respond to that? Because they've grown up, as you said, and where
the chords and the melody are very masculine sounding.
And you're bringing out matters of the heart, curiosity
and empathy and sort of that left brain and right brain working
together. Do people fight it or do they feel
confident that within this sort of tall grass that you've created,
(23:07):
that they have an ability to be part of it? They were a bit hesitant,
affirmed me. I was so foreign, but they loved it. And so what
happened, what helped was, my exec team, I I got
balanced, people. So Graham Lang, who was my chief
creative officer at the time, big, burly, huge biceps,
bald beard, collaborative, listened, gave
(23:29):
away credit. So he looked masculine, but he actually was very,
he was very balanced, for example. And then like starts to attract
like. And so we started having a leadership team that is kind
and we use the word kindness a lot. And I actually
declared that one day to the agency. All right. New executive team, meet
them. Highly talented. And we're
(23:51):
gonna be kind because this business is so hard
on agencies and so hard to
win. We don't need to be hard on each other. I
created these classes. I called them pirate huddles.
And every Thursday I said, you know, we, we're not gonna talk business. We're gonna
talk humanity. And you can come, not come, doesn't matter,
(24:13):
but I'm gonna talk about personal growth. We would talk
about neuroplasticity of gratitude. When
you're grateful and you choose to be grateful, what happens to your
brain? When you choose to be generous, what
happens to your brain? What opens up? We go from a
fixed mindset to a growth mindset to, to quote Carol
(24:35):
Dweck's work. And this is what unlocked the agency is, well,
what does it mean to be kind? What does it mean to be, to express
gratitude? And we started creating these practices and ways of
speaking that were absolutely beautiful. The
younger people absolutely loved it. Because they felt
heard. They felt seen, they felt valued. And
(24:57):
by me talking like this and saying like, I'm having a
hard day. I need to borrow someone's energy. We've got a big pitch, but I'm,
I don't have it today. Who's got extra? It
means that they could come in vulnerable as well.
And when we show up that way for each other and with honesty
and, and humanity, it flows in. It just
(25:20):
becomes this multiplier. Harvard, if I have my research right,
turned this into a case study. They did. And there's rumors. There might even be
a book one day talking about these pirate huddles. You have
to be so proud as a leader. I mean, this masking side of you rings
off the string of awards and talks about the clients you won and
and David versus Goliath, but the warmth and body language that
(25:41):
changed when you talked about Pirate Huddle. I don't know if you've ever looked seen
yourself in the mirror, but it's 2 very different Jills.
Before you get into your executive coaching, the one thing that you failed to
realize that that a parasite had gone into your body and you kinda
ignored the symptoms because you're a Jill Nykoliation. You
were changing the world. You were changing cultures. Talk to me maybe
(26:04):
about how long it took before you realize that
this was not only threatening your career, but you, in fact, threatened your life.
Yeah. It was 2015, and it was when I was changing my exec
team and, I was getting divorced.
And I was exhausted. I was so exhausted and the doctors were like, oh, it's
just because you gotta, you know, single mom, big job, traveling the world
(26:27):
everywhere. And I just knew in my bones, no, it's not that kind of tired.
I'm I'm tired to the core. And I had
started collapsing. Long story short, I had a
parasite that had been in me, they think for, almost a
decade, and that it would destroy my microbiome and your microbiome,
of course, feeds your organs. And so my whole system was inflamed
(26:48):
and my whole system was compromised and not working at the at at the
levels it should be. And what happened was I was using adrenaline
to keep going and because clients needed me and the
staff needed me or so we tell ourselves. Right? And that's the story we tell
ourselves. And I overrode it. And I muscled. And what I
learned was adrenaline is interesting, but when you use it too much, it
(27:10):
fuels everything good but it also fuels everything bad. And so they said
your parasite has gotten so strong. And so that was a big wake
up call for me and I learned a ton how rest is
important and how you have to take care of yourself. And my doctor said to
me, like, 80% of this getting better is you. I'll do the
20. I'll kill the parasite. We'll fix your organs. But
(27:32):
80% of wellness is lifestyle. You gotta
slow down. You've gotta meditate. Practices for yourself.
Time back for people who you love, etcetera. So that was a big wake up
call. It's interesting that when I first read
on LinkedIn, you'd become an executive coach, I
went, that surprises me. Not because of what you can
(27:53):
offer individuals, but because the stage was more
1 on 1 versus leading a team, leading a
client. You were Joan of Arc, and suddenly now
you're playing more the role of Yoda. If your listeners are familiar
with the book, Strength to Strength by professor Arthur Brooks from Harvard, he
talks about how our brains change. In our mid forties, our physiologic
(28:15):
physiology changes, and we go from this striving,
driving, 1,000,000 miles an hour thriving brain called
the agile, brain, and we move into our crystallized intelligence. I
think this is what happened during the pandemic when I was doing all these pirate
huddles. I felt myself shifting and going, my favorite day is
Thursday. My favorite thing, you know, we have Apple's client. We've got
(28:37):
CIBC. We've got amazing clients. And my favorite thing is
teaching people's growth on Thursdays. And so a few things as
I fell in love with the Pirate Huddle, I fell in love with how I
felt. I was so rewarded by how
people were growing and people would write me my staff and say, I
am a better father because of the lessons you've taught
(28:59):
me. My marriage is better. You know, the signal for help that
we created, that has saved women around the world that came
out of Pirate Huddle. That's the power of talking about
generosity and kindness and saying, what if we put our pencils down
today and Apple can wait and Capital Group can wait and Nissan can wait?
What if we helped women who were trapped in violence and we turned our skills
(29:21):
into gratitude and generosity? That's how that came about.
And so I see the power that that this could do. It just feels so
good. So you you think about I'm stepping into my second curve and I'm
like, I should just go with this. I shouldn't fight it. And
just like the tall grass before, I'll figure out
what form it's gonna be. What do you think is going, Joe? And because
(29:45):
if I have any role now, it's it's trying to curate positivity and
possibility and share it with the world. And I look at someone like you and
saying, if I could bottle what you offer to
those individual people and bring it to the world, wouldn't that be a
lovely thing to do? How are you gonna get this message out?
Because I don't wanna say this in any kind of disparaging or
(30:06):
diminishing way, but I think in some ways, all
you've have might be wasted on a handful when there's
tens of thousands, if not millions of people that could use the lessons you've
learned along the way. I leave room for magic. One thing
Andrew Robertson told me back way back when was he goes, go back 5
years. Could you have imagined this moment 5 years ago?
(30:28):
And I remember how like, oh my gosh. So much no. No. And I look
back, Tony, you and I go back 5 years. Could we have imagined where we
are? No. No. So what makes me think I can imagine the next 5 years?
So leave room for so much shifting and so much to come into my world.
So that's number 1. Number 2 is I love
working with people 1 on 1 to keep me tight and
(30:50):
close to what are people thinking. What are people
struggling with? What are the transitions they're working through? And,
and I can also work on mass. I
am crafting out a book to see if I can put this, my pirate huddle
work into a book. Your listeners could follow me on LinkedIn. I put that out
there. I put my LinkedIn post out once a week for just pure again,
(31:12):
generosity. Just here's wisdom. You don't have to be my client.
You can just share. And then I work at Modern Elder Academy as well with
Chip, and we'll see where that goes. Well, let's talk about Modern Academy and
Chip Conley because I'm fascinated reading about his story.
But what I understand was that you went down to simply be an
observer, a student in one of his academies, and I think it was
(31:34):
about half a cup of coffee in where somebody came over and said you should
be teaching this. Once again, there's a Ken Wong in the room
going, I'm not sure I could teach this person. So tell me what you're doing
with Chip and how that's gonna impact people's lives in terms
of positivity and possibility. Modern Elder Academy, MEA
Wisdom School. I went there. I read about it in Arthur Brooks
(31:56):
book. And I thought, wow. First of all, this book feels like it was written
for me. And then he says in chapter 9, no one teaches you that your
brain changes in your mid forties and onwards, except this one school in the
world, Modern Elder Academy. So I thought this is the perfect
place for me to go to put my career, this, this
chapter down with grace and gratitude. Because I really
(32:18):
I was so sure I was closing it and I wanted to say a
quiet thank you to myself. I wanted to wrap it up. And
so then I could step into my next chapter, which would be human development.
And so I went there. I'm taking my 30 years of consumer
insight, turning it to the human and I get to actually now get he's my
next Irene Rosenfeld To be in the presence of someone who
(32:40):
is so free and so curious and he's all
tall grass. And he's invited me to come into the tall grass and walk
alongside him in whatever way I choose. And so I go, oh, wow. I
will Absolutely. So I teach online with them. My
next week course is called, who am I now? Because that's
a question I keep asking myself, Jill, who are you now? Am
(33:03):
I carrying around identities that no longer serve me? Are
my relationships still serving me? Are
my habits, hobbies, behaviors, what I'm reading still serving me
for who I am now? Do I know who my values are now? So I'm
teaching that course for 5 days, and we'll see where it goes.
Well, why don't we end that the the interview with who are you now? When
(33:25):
I my coach first asked me that, he goes, you don't use your job.
I said, well, I'm the CEO. I'm a marketer. I'm create I'm mother of
Olivia. Because no. You can't use rules. I remember going, I don't
understand the question. I I really can't answer. Shamefully
now, I could look back away. I really was lost. I was really attached to
my work. And now I look and I say, to my two leading
(33:47):
values are growth and
wholeheartedness. And I look at that and go, I always have been fascinated by
human growth. Always. That's why I got into consumer insight as a 30 year
career. It's what I read. It's what I study all the time.
And then wholeheartedness is I now show up my whole
self. Not the business Jill or the
(34:10):
compartmentalized Jill. I show up whole. And my
staff saw that in the last 5 years that I worked with them, and I
show up hearted. And vulnerable.
When I see something I appreciate in in anyone, a stranger or
or or a friend, I tell them. I model that. And so I
go, that's who I am now. I put those 2 together and I
(34:32):
go, yeah. I take my wholehearted self and now I teach growth to
others. And it's reciprocal, Tony, because it helps me grow every time
I teach one of these. I just go, how lucky am I? You know,
Jill, I always end with my 3 takeaways and and sometimes I say that's an
impossible task because there's so many and I think you set the record for takeaways.
But I'm gonna try to frame it in 3. The first one's a bit of
(34:52):
a cheat because it combines 2, but I love when you said forgive yourself
because there's times in life where you're not where you should be
based on decisions you made and said, forgive yourself. Go where you want it.
And I love the fact, I've always heard, you know, you can't push a rope,
really go where you want it. The second is when you started
to rethink logic from head to your heart,
(35:15):
and you said, I'm gonna slow things down, and I'm gonna embrace
my feminine energy, and I'm gonna embrace listening and generosity
and gratitude. And what a wonderful gift you gave to yourself, and what a
wonderful gift you're giving to others. The final one
came out in the last couple of minutes is leave room for magic. There's a
lot of insecurity and uncertainty in the world, but there's still a lot of magic
(35:38):
to be had. And I think if we listen to the the wisdom of
Jill Nykoliation and the Jillisms that you've talked about, the tall grass
and the refounding and masculine and feminine, and we do so
with leaving room for magic, I think we're all gonna live a better life. And
so I thank you so much. So blessed that you're part of, Chatter That
Matters. Thank you so much. I've so enjoyed this,
(36:00):
Tony. Thank you so much for having me on.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chatter That Matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
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