WEBVTT
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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and I am honestly so excited about today's guest, because this is someone who I'm convinced that she's an entrepreneur right down to her very bones.
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It is so clear to me.
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Everything that I found about today's guest just screams out yes, not only am I an entrepreneur, not only am I creative and someone who likes building things and someone who likes helping others, but what's really important for me as well is that this is someone who celebrates other entrepreneurs and helps others uplift the meaning and the impact of their work as well.
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So there's a lot of good stuff that we're gonna get into.
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Let me introduce you to today's guest.
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Her name is Nika Selle.
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Nika founded her brand, nika Selle, all the way back in 2002.
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And I'll tell you what.
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I think that we need to celebrate longevity so much more in the world of entrepreneurship.
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So huge shout out to Nika for being in business since 2002.
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She founded it as an answer a design answer to a lack of choices in sustainable fashion, from slow textiles to fair labor.
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Since then, she's endeavored projects of all sizes and scopes, from clothing to branding, to website design and now communications, marketing and brand writing.
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Trust me when we talk about writing.
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Nika and I are going to talk about some trends that we see in the marketplace that we hope are different in 2025 and beyond, with a focus on creating clarity for purpose-driven projects.
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She's proud to have worked with brilliant minds across all different industries, whether we're talking music, art, gosh, contemplative practices, regenerative agriculture so many industries that it's hard for me to rattle them all off in her bio but she takes a holistic approach, looking at the inside of the business as she redesigns the customer-facing experience.
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She does deeply meaningful work that we're going to dive into because it impacts all of our businesses.
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If you're serious about growth this year, then this episode is a treasure trove for you, so I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Nika Selle.
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All right, nika, I am so very excited to have you here with us today.
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First things first, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I'm very happy to be here.
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Heck, yes.
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Well, I'm going to kick it right back over to you, because you've got to take us beyond the bio.
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You do so many cool things.
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I want to hear the backstory.
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Who's Nika?
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How'd you start doing all this stuff?
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Oh, my goodness, you know I've been reflecting on this for the last few months because I myself am going through a transition with my own business, because businesses are evolutionary, right, and I remembered that as a child, I would go down into the neighborhood and ride my bike around and I noticed that my mother actually had the spider plant and it had all these babies.
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And so what I did as like a five-year-old is I started clipping the babies off of the spider plants and then selling them on my bike in the neighborhood.
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And that was followed by an interest in textiles, and I always wanted to be a fashion designer, and so then I started doing door-to-door order forms for clothes.
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Just to say, fast forward 20 years, that's what I did for a job where I would remix deadstock clothes out of hip-hop warehouses where they store all the tour t-shirts that they couldn't sell.
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And then I started remixing those into women's clothes, and through that process I really learned how to build a business, and it's been a ride ever since, to be honest, yeah.
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So now I do branding holistic branding and really help people get their businesses from V1 to V2.
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And that's what we're here to chat about today.
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So that's the origins.
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It starts early, right, all these entrepreneurs, all these people who are listening, you know you had it really early, you felt it.
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Yeah, so harnessing that in this moment in life again and again 2002.
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I want to call that out because you just dropped a huge hint of success there in your overview, which is because you are so willing to evolve, and I think that that evolution, we don't talk about it enough, we don't celebrate it enough, we don't teach it or preach it enough in the world of entrepreneurship is so many people and I'll go back, I'm going to throw a little bit of shade right now, nika is that I'll go back all the way to business school and professors convince us we need to have a 10-year business plan and we need to know what it's going to look like.
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Nika, I've been in business since 2008, a little less time than you, but both of us have been in the game for quite some time.
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And gosh, since 2008, I would have never guessed that one thing led to another.
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I just had to roll with it.
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Talk to us about that evolutionary process.
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We need to talk about it more.
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Yeah, I mean right now I'm really noticing that people have these emergent experiences If you've been in business for five years and you've been practicing and treating your business like a living entity, which it is right.
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So we don't want to graft a 10-year plan necessarily onto small businesses because we really don't know what the fluctuations in the market, with audiences, with climate change, with all the things that are happening other factors are going to come into what you're up to right and something, some idea is going to emerge that's going to move the business forward.
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So we have to stay alert to that and we have to build practices in so that we can pay attention to it.
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So a lot of my work is really a fusion of yoga practices into the business and observing what we're up to so that we know and can stay consistent amidst all the changes, both outside and also on the inside.
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So when inspiration strikes, you can actually have the space to look at it, see how it can affect the revenue channel, see how it can affect the mission statement, the vision and the purpose of the business and really give the business space to evolve right, because we're not going to be the same person, one of the best, if I may, one of the best pieces of advice that I received when I was working in hip hop, as, like someone in my early 20s, my boss Domino at Hieroglyphics.
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He said to me if you're the same when you're 30, as you were when you were 20, you got a problem, and if you're the same when you're 40, as you were when you were 30,.
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We got to have a conversation and that was something that I heard so early and it really stuck with me.
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Who we are today is not going to be who we are in five years or 10 years or 20 years, and if we can pay attention to that and allow that person to grow, then we allow what is needs to stay to stay and what needs to go to go.
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So that's my feeling about that.
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So big deep bows, big bows to the early, to the early inspirations and mentors.
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I can't honestly, because that's huge advice and I feel like here's the thing the amazing thing for me about that advice that you got early on is that I feel like societally, we actually tend to give the opposite advice.
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I remember when I went to college I started my first business the summer after my freshman year of college and then a year later I would go back to my home.
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Can you tell me what that business was?
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Can you just tell me what that business was?
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Yeah, it was a soccer blog and I just did it, kind of like you talking about the spider plants.
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I did it for fun.
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You know, I was a kid and I really love soccer and I love writing and I love the internet.
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So I started writing about soccer on the internet and it's funny because when I would go back to my hometown people would be like, oh, you've changed.
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And I, as if it was negative, nika.
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And for me I was like, of course I did.
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I see possibilities, I see the world through a lens.
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I have thousands of people coming to my website every day, like I'm serving fellow soccer aficionados like myself, and so that really drove me and I think the point is to change.
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It's so funny to me that we act like that's a negative.
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So, nika, with that in mind, I can see all the different influence of your life manifesting.
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I mean, I've never heard someone go from yoga to talking about top line revenue metrics in one such cohesive sentence.
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But I joke about that because I'm going to use you as a really great example.
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We always hear that term thrown around of holistic, whether it comes to holistic branding or holistic marketing or holistic business health.
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A lot of people want to say it.
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It seems to me like you actually practice and I want to hear your thoughts on that, because I know that you're also very intentional with your words and it's clear to me that you're able to weave in all these different facets of your life, of your passions, into the way that you operate.
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So what's holistic branding?
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When we get to the root of it, what's it actually mean to you?
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Okay.
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So when people come to branding and they say I want you to rebrand my business, a lot of the times they're talking about very surface level things.
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They're talking about logos, they're talking about colors, which is very important, but we don't know what that logo and that color will be until we know what you're up to.
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So I start off with deep interview systems that allow me to understand where you're at with your business, and I think this is important for anybody who's starting a business.
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We need to know what we're up to, why we're doing it and what impact we want to have, because that defines the audience that we're talking to.
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Right.
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But deeper than that, we have this conversion process and when I say we, I mean me and the people I work with where we dive deep into the center of it.
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We develop the whys, of course, the brand writing, the narrative, the story, the anthem, the manifesto what have you?
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And then we start to turn it towards the customer.
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So a lot of the times, we think we're doing a business for us and really we're not doing a business for us.
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We're doing it for the customer, we're doing it for the client, we're doing it for the audience, and we have to find ways to craft all of that for yourself so that you stay clear and centered in what you're up to, and then also for the client so they can take engagement opportunities to be with you, to purchase or to you know, to sign up for your services and to make it accessible.
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Pricing strategies, product pricing strategies, giving things away for free, and why this kind of stuff.
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We answer all these questions so that the day that we launch and we press play, if you will, we have we know exactly what we're up to and why and they can understand it.
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And so it's inside outside Right.
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So for a lot of companies, I offer them like full internal branding documents so that anyone they hire and as they grow they can keep referring to it so that they don't forget.
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When you're engaged in your business, you might forget exactly how to do what and what you're up to Right, especially if you're one person or two people, and you might need those agreements to keep going in a way that's fluid and keep people coming towards you and keep that conversation going and keeping that mission blooming.
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Yeah, I love that verb, choice Can.
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I step back for one second to something that you said that really got me.
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Okay, you said that when you started the blog, people said that you changed.
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Okay, I'm going to give another shot.
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I have to give another shout out for an organization that no longer exists, but is how I learned about independent business called Women's Initiative for Self-Employment, and it was in Oakland, california, in the nineties.
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And the two thousands and what they did was they helped women who are low income break into business.
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And at the time I qualified so I took it and I actually was temping for them because I was so young, I'd just gotten out of college and moved to Oakland, and so when I was temping for them, they said the first thing they said is when you start to get success, people will start to be mad at you, and how you deal with that and that grace that you give yourself and that you give your community is going to make all the difference in your work.
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And I feel like that is one of the most important things, because if you don't allow yourself to evolve, if you don't allow that mission that's coming through you or that purpose that's coming through you to be met, then you're denying the outcome.
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So you can't necessarily listen to what we call now the haters, but they're actually being challenged and people are being challenged to step up into independence and outside of the late stage capitalism.
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Like, if you have an independent business, you are fighting against late stage capitalism, right, and that's what's happening right now.
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So you have the opportunity to lift others up just by sheer force of what you're doing with your life, and that is the most beautiful thing.
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So people will be like I don't understand that.
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But then they'll be like hey, brian did that blog, remember?
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I think I'm going to share a message like that too.
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And then we have the ripple that's in our business, but also in our communities.
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So if we can be patient around that and around other people's reactions, then we can actually inspire people without like doing anything extra.
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So I just want to say that Thank you for letting, thank you for giving me the space to say that.
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That's a big piece of making yourself at peace with what you're doing.
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Yeah, and thank you for saying it.
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I've got all the goosebumps right now as you're saying that, because here's the thing, nika, you and I have both lived this we're not just talking about these things conceptually in today's episode is that we've both lived it about me and some who didn't care about me, but nonetheless, a lot of people were giving me all the reasons why it wouldn't work.
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And so, with this show, one of my commitments is five days a week.
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You're gonna have incredible people sharing with you all the ways why it will work and all the ways why you are limitless and you are expansive.
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And so, nika, it's guests like you that shine that light, and that's why I said in the the intro that you also love fellow entrepreneurs and I so appreciate that about you and I want to pick on a verb that you use there I think it's so revealing about your mindset, not just the way you do business, but when you talk about branding.
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You talked about your brand blooming and hearing that you know there's life to it, it's something that grows, it's something that fosters.
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Nikaico, when I hear the way you talk about branding, it seems to me like you believe branding is a continuous thing, whereas again.
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I'm gonna throw a little bit of shade in today's episode, because I think there's a lot of beauty in the contrasts.
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I feel like traditionally we talk about branding as something we figure out, a problem that we solve, and that is a finite period of time, whereas when you're talking about it, branding is something that's always there, something that we're always doing, that yields itself in our pricing strategies, in our marketing strategies, in all these other ways, which, of course, comes back to your concept of a business is a living entity.
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All of these things are always moving, just like we are.
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Personally, talk to me about that approach.
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It just seems so different to me well, I think the word branding is problematic in and of itself.
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Okay, like a brand is something that you do to a cow.
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Okay, that's like where it comes from.
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Right, it's mine.
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Right, there's an ownership piece around it.
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But what branding has evolved into?
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And as words change and become more inclusive and maybe even become vague?
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You know, you can ask me about optimize your potential and dead marketing words later if you'd like, or involving marketing words if we, if we're I really want to be generous.
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That's me throwing shade, but there's this way that the brand, when people engage with your brand, they're engaging with your business, the whole of it.
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So if consumers and audiences have won a very short attention span and they are very ready to critique, so it behooves us all to be in super alignment with what we're doing from everything, from the.
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You know, of course, the colors and fonts and that level of visual communication.
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I have an art background so I'm very I want to align with that as much as possible and obey those rules, because there are certain ways that that communicates that other things can't.
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But you communicate through your strategy.
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You communicate through the pricing that you offer your clients.
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You communicate through your pro bono offerings.
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I have a teacher that for a very long time was giving away 30% of her trainings so that there was more access, her business exploded.
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She's an inspiration to me.
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She has been a client of mine in some respects but you know, when I saw her giving away 30 of her trainings and free classes to people who otherwise wouldn't have access not as necessarily as a strategy but as a core principle of her business she's huge, she's, she's, you know she's she's exploded.
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She has a multi-million dollar business now and it has so much meaning and it affects so many lives.
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So that is also part of your branding, right, and how you tell your story and the original language that you use.
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That allows you to be something, not just different, to differentiate, because of course we all want to be different, we all want to differentiate away from like the big behemoths, but also just to share your character and who you are and that and that uniqueness and that uniqueness of your offering.
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So even if you're selling pencils right, maybe, maybe it's the it's a very similar pencil to the, you know, to the number two, the classic, if anybody even uses pencils anymore, dare I say but the way that you do the business itself like think Tom's Shoes or like they're just, you know, they're espadrilles, basically they're cool.
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But the way that he did business allowed him and them, all the people in that business and all the people were affected to start doing eyeglasses right.
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Like that was a huge shift in the marketplace for people to think, whoa, I can actually help people through the business.
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So the way that we do that is really important and the way that we share that story is really important.
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We can't.
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We want to sort of make sure that there's no cracks in the facade, but we don't want any cracks in the actual way that the business is done.
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And I can go off about that with fashion too, because that's a huge piece.
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You know the days of saying that you're eco but then sort of outsourcing and greenwashing another part of your business to make that profitable.
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Those days are over.
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We don't have the capacity for that anymore.
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If anyone's in fashion or merchandising, I think they know what I'm talking about.
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So happy to go there at some other moment.
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But yeah, so yeah that's my story.
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Integrity- it's called integrity.
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Are all four wheels on the road at the same time?
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Let's make sure it's in good working order, that's brand name.
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Yeah, and I'll tell you this even as someone who's not inside of the world of fashion.
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Yes, a lot of us are aware of some very mainstream brands who say one thing but mean the other, and that's why I'm gonna use that as a natural segue, nika, because I'm so excited for you to call this out, because you can do this way better than I can, and you even have a beautiful term to wrap around it, which is dead marketing words holy cow, nika.
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Actually, before I even kick things back to you, I'm gonna make a very public confession here is that we behind the scenes so obviously we have an incredible pre-production team that proactively reaches out to people who we want to have on the show, and that's why we were so excited to invite you on the show is because we find amazing entrepreneurs doing impactful, real work.
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Big stress on the word real there is because there's a lot of stuff that isn't real in the world, and especially in the world of business, because people are motivated by a lot of stuff that isn't real in the world, and especially in the world of business, because people are motivated by a lot of other things and not always the best of motives, and so, with that in mind, we see so much fluff out there, so much stuff, that we say this isn't real, and a lot of that, nika, I will publicly confess to you, is the words that people choose.
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We've gotten fed up of when we go to someone's website and they say we are the most innovative and revolutionary solution when it comes to this system, and we read through their website and we say what do you do?
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What exactly is it?
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You call that dead marketing words and you don't like the up leveling, all these different things that people say.
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Please guide us down this path and talk to listeners about what those words are and how the heck and why we should avoid them in our businesses oh, my goodness, I just need to take a breath on that.
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Can we just take a collective breath on that?
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Just inhale and exhale out.
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Unlocking your potential.
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We'll start with that one, because I had a conversation about this the other day with a coach, because coaches love to say unlock your potential.
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Well, guess what?
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Your potential was never locked in the first place, it wasn't locked.
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And now I'm doing the same thing that you know razors for women did in the 1930s, like you didn't even know you had a problem.
00:20:29.478 --> 00:20:32.030
Now you've got a problem and we're going to fix it.
00:20:32.030 --> 00:20:35.951
We're going to identify a problem that you didn't even know you had, which is actually not really a problem.
00:20:35.951 --> 00:20:40.832
It's just a way for us to break into the women's market with razors, right?
00:20:40.832 --> 00:20:47.489
So this is like an age old thing and the last whispers of it are coming in now.
00:20:48.090 --> 00:20:58.924
So, like, unlocking your potential suggests a problem that you don't even have and it creates promises and dependencies on the business that you're getting as a customer.
00:20:58.924 --> 00:21:02.496
As you're engaging those business services, you're already coming in weak.
00:21:02.496 --> 00:21:04.010
Do you want your customers to come in weak?
00:21:04.010 --> 00:21:05.592
I don't think so, right?
00:21:05.592 --> 00:21:07.633
You want to make your customers feel strong.
00:21:07.633 --> 00:21:09.291
You want to make them feel included.
00:21:09.291 --> 00:21:14.756
You want to make them feel like they're opening themselves up into new extensions of themselves.
00:21:14.756 --> 00:21:21.073
Right, and I think that there's this way that people got really into SEO for good reason.
00:21:21.073 --> 00:21:30.949
Right, it is a tool, but the repetition dissolves the meaning of the words and, just like I mentioned earlier, like with branding, like what does branding mean now?
00:21:30.949 --> 00:21:37.414
Right, it actually means so much, and we have to be really precise so that we can communicate clearly.
00:21:37.414 --> 00:21:49.827
Because if you say I want to unlock your potential, or if you say I see something in you and I want to help you grow you and I want to help you grow Like.
00:21:49.847 --> 00:21:52.217
Marie Forleo is an incredible example of this in the celebrity coaching world.
00:21:52.217 --> 00:21:57.452
She says, like I think it's something to the effect of there's something special in each person and we're going to find out what that is.
00:21:57.452 --> 00:22:11.912
That's not exactly what she's saying, that's not her tagline, but there's essentially like you have a gift that's uniquely yours and we're going to, like, blow it up and make it big, and that, just like, empowers the customer, the client, the audience.
00:22:11.912 --> 00:22:12.894
We want to empower people.
00:22:12.894 --> 00:22:19.548
Right now, there is a lot going on, and there I mean, to say the least, even when people say there's a lot going on or what's really going on.
00:22:19.548 --> 00:22:21.355
The world is at a juncture point.
00:22:21.355 --> 00:22:23.204
We know this, politically, environmentally.
00:22:23.204 --> 00:22:26.536
We don't need to, we can't deny that at this point.
00:22:27.700 --> 00:22:36.646
And so now is a beautiful time to empower people and use words that sort of access different parts of their brain so that they can make unique choices.
00:22:36.646 --> 00:22:43.792
Unique words, unique choices, unique expressions of life, unique expressions of business, unique expressions of engagement with your customers.
00:22:43.792 --> 00:22:47.311
So there's opportunity here when we expand our language.
00:22:47.311 --> 00:22:52.550
I think we all read 1984 in eighth grade and there was like limited language.
00:22:52.550 --> 00:22:53.954
What a scary thing.
00:22:53.954 --> 00:22:59.797
Yeah, so let's improve our ways of communication so that we become more connected and curious, like you.
00:22:59.797 --> 00:23:03.614
So thank you for being curious, thank you for asking these questions.
00:23:03.614 --> 00:23:04.676
This is great, thank you.
00:23:04.924 --> 00:23:05.526
Thank you, nika.
00:23:05.526 --> 00:23:06.728
I'll tell you where my head goes.
00:23:06.728 --> 00:23:14.354
Hearing you talk about this stuff is because I've often been accused of being the eternal optimist, and it's certainly true for a lot of regards.
00:23:14.354 --> 00:23:17.266
And here's the thing, nika, hearing you talk about these things.
00:23:17.266 --> 00:23:26.152
What I would imagine part of being a podcast host is I always just think about what would a contrarian think, so that we can address it while we're here together, because they're listening to this episode.
00:23:26.152 --> 00:23:31.299
And I guess the contrarian thinking here would be well, it's not all rainbows and butterflies, you guys.
00:23:31.339 --> 00:23:32.932
And here we are, we're talking.
00:23:32.932 --> 00:23:43.887
I mean, we're two entrepreneurs who have been at this for almost two decades each of us, and so, with that in mind, almost 40 years of entrepreneurial experience, feels weird, the two of us saying that together, nika.
00:23:43.887 --> 00:23:44.930
But here we are.
00:23:44.930 --> 00:23:58.627
And so, with that in mind, I think to myself of that quote it's one of the most impactful quotes I've ever heard which is we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
00:23:58.627 --> 00:23:59.933
And so hearing you talk in this way, nika, I think to myself.
00:23:59.953 --> 00:24:01.339
Well, of course you've been in business since 2002.
00:24:01.359 --> 00:24:23.546
Of course, you've navigated all of the twists and turns and pivots along the way, because you see things through these positive lens and you believe in uplifting others in in the real sense of the word is is being a positive change agent, and that's how I feel and that's why, when people say you're an eternal optimist, I say well, yeah, because I believe in the betterment of myself and those around me and I'm gonna work my butt off in order to make that happen.
00:24:23.586 --> 00:24:47.582
And so, with that in mind, there's so many things that I want to talk to you about, nika, and time's flying by, but I want to give this stage because I would imagine that a lot of your perspective and expertise and experiences come from your clients, and what's really appealing to me about your business is that so many people want to always focus on what's new, the exciting, shiny new things, and we're all guilty of that in the world of business.
00:24:47.582 --> 00:25:00.086
But you work with a lot of older clients as well, and I would imagine that that process of working with them and alongside them and learning and growing with them, that's what people don't understand about service-based businesses.
00:25:00.086 --> 00:25:02.731
Nika, give us some of those insights.
00:25:03.554 --> 00:25:11.906
Oh, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, oh, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness.
00:25:11.906 --> 00:25:12.347
Youth is not a prize.
00:25:12.347 --> 00:25:17.363
Living a long life and having many chapters is the most incredible opportunity you could ever have, right?
00:25:17.363 --> 00:25:18.949
So you asked a few different things.
00:25:18.949 --> 00:25:24.448
I'm going to give a shout out to all my clients because they are really spectacular people and anybody who like.
00:25:24.448 --> 00:25:25.690
If you come to my website.
00:25:25.690 --> 00:26:02.678
They are unique people that have been through so many chapters and the eldest of them is and the eldest though he looks the youngest, to be honest has been through so many business changes where he has a product-based business, he deals in incredible fine art and design objects and he has seen businesses when he was a partner in a business and it was sold and then it was re-bought and he was rehired and then he had to start his own.
00:26:02.678 --> 00:26:04.323
All of these chapters.
00:26:04.403 --> 00:26:17.817
When you speak to these people, their level of knowledge and wisdom around their craft because it takes, I don't know, maybe Malcolm Gladwell said once like 10,000 hours.
00:26:17.817 --> 00:26:29.766
When you put 100,000 hours into your craft, it's beyond any degree that you can get, and the time spent and what it then speaks back to you.
00:26:29.766 --> 00:26:32.038
That's the other thing when you practice business.
00:26:32.038 --> 00:26:33.824
I'm just going to segue into the business piece.
00:26:33.844 --> 00:26:48.923
When you practice business for so long and then you have the opportunity to have the business talk back to you and you're not running it Not that it's running you and you are you are, you know, like, like it's subordinate or it's, you know it's not like that.
00:26:49.506 --> 00:27:20.907
But when you build a relationship so much that it starts to have a life where it starts to speak back to you and your genius is sealed and you have that piece which I call legacy and legacy is a little bit of a problematic word, but what you can offer to the next, not even the next generation, but just your own generation and your friends and your people and your community, the ingenuity to reinvent yourself over and over again, out of need or out of desire, it doesn't matter has such an incredible ripple effect.
00:27:20.907 --> 00:27:40.226
Again, just like the brand has the ripple effect over time, so does you as the business owner and you as a person in your community, as someone who originally had many, many questions and much hustle and now has literally all the answers just from the practice of being in business that long.
00:27:41.107 --> 00:27:51.077
Yeah, so that's what I have to say to that, because here's the thing every answer brings up new possibilities for us to explore together.
