E97: Moonpig Founder: How I Built A $150 Million Business WITHOUT Sacrifice: Nick Jenkins

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2021

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Jenkins is the founder and former CEO of Moonpig.com, a company which revolutionised gift cards and is now worth over one and a half billion pounds. Nick knows what it takes to build a business from nothing to change an industry, and today he’s sharing his wisdom with us on what he’s learnt along the way.

You’ll also know Nick from Dragons Den, on which he was a dragon for two years. Since leaving the den he’s become a leading investor in e-commerce and green energy, tutoring and giving a leg up to businesses which help to bring the future a little bit closer every day.

Nick is an incredible guy and an astute and proven businessman, but more importantly he’s a grounded and inspirational individual. Nick doesn’t lead a flashy lifestyle or found businesses just to get rich, but instead sees his businesses as attractive solutions to real problems we all face. Before Monopig, Nick used to tipex out greetings on cards and write his own because no one was offering a personalised service. He doesn’t have to do that anymore, he has a billion pound company to do it for him.

Being an entrepreneur
Starting a business - Moon Pig
Stepping back from MoonPig and hiring people
Your personal sacrifice
Maintaining Focus
The importance of being able to communicate well
Dragons Den
Selling Moonpig
You seem very balanced
The next chapter of your life
What to do if you don't like your job?
Being happy with where you are

We’re going on tour! With such a great reception to The Diary Of a CEO live we’ve decided to take it around the U.K. Sign up here if you’re interested in coming - https://thediaryofaceolive.com/

Sponsors:

https://uk.huel.com/

fiverr.com/ceo

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you do something with tweeting cards.
0:01.5	Is that something you do or am I your spare room?
0:03.4	Mick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of MoonPig,
0:07.2	a company now worth 1.6 billion dollars.
0:11.5	My first proper business was MoonPig, which, although it's been a success,
0:15.5	of course, it went through various ups and downs.
0:17.3	Like all overnight successes it took 11 years.
0:19.3	I got a confess, I probably slightly stumbled on it.
0:21.3	I look at it now and think, wow, that accidentally was a really good business model.
0:26.0	Unfortunately, we too often we measure the things that are easiest to measure.
0:30.1	And the easiest thing to measure is how wealthy someone is.
0:32.7	I'm reluctant to create this illusion that if you work incredibly hard,
0:36.6	you can make a lot of money and that will make you successful.
0:38.8	You have to be a successful human being.
0:40.8	The most exciting times I ever had in my business
0:43.0	were when my back was absolutely against the one thing,
0:45.5	this is going down.
0:46.7	If bizarrely I found that quite invigorating,
0:48.8	but at one point my shelves all said, look, Nick, this is never going to work.
0:52.2	It's never going to make money.
0:53.2	By the time I'd got to the end of it, I was pretty much down to zero.
1:04.0	Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of MoonPig,
	...

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