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Being a Resilient Leader with Paul Lacy
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Today I'm very excited to be interviewing Paul Lacy, CEO and co-founder of Dream Life. Paul is most well known for his role as the co-founder and former managing director of retail giant Kikki K, a company he created with his life and business partner Kristina Karlsson. In this episode, Paul shares his journey through the incredibly challenging time of losing the business, and the work he did to bounce back and become a resilient leader for his team.
In 1998, Paul and Kristina built up Kikki K from scratch to a global business with hundreds of stores across the planet. At one stage, they had a team of one and a half thousand staff and a turnover of $650million. Sadly, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, Kikki K went into voluntary administration - not once, but twice. Incredibly though, they’ve both been able to bounce back and have established a wonderful new business called Dream Life.
Paul shares how, with Dream Life, they continue to inspire people to chase their dreams, offering beautiful products such as wellbeing journals and stationery. With a coaching and mentoring arm, Dream Life is Paul and Kristina’s way of not only leading purposeful lives, but adding value to the lives of others.
Paul is incredibly vulnerable as he shares about the leadership and wellbeing challenges he faced while stepping in and out of the role as Kikki K’s CEO, attempting to be more present with his family and the devastating loss of the business. While he has done the internal work on his journey to recovery, he admits he's still very much in the process of bouncing back.
We talk about the different models around leadership that I supported Paul in implementing, and he shares how the work we did together helped reshape his thinking in many different areas. Particularly, how leaders must learn to let go and build a level of trust within their business. We discuss the importance of creating psychological safety in the workplace, and Paul gives an example of the strategies he employed to achieve this.
When it comes to high performance leadership, physical and mental wellbeing is crucial. Paul shares the practical ways he maintains his own health to ensure he can operate at his best. While he still feels he has a long way to go, his self-awareness and willingness to change are refreshing to see.
This is a very real, very human conversation and I hope that any leaders listening today will be inspired by Paul’s resilience in times of uncertainty, and his commitment to growth as a leader.
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