Writing this from David Lloyd. Upper strength session done. The Twenty One Beauty hiring post went live this week and my LinkedIn DM’s haven't stopped.
Which is a good problem. And also a useful reminder that the right message still cuts through to the right people, even when everyone is telling you organic reach is dead.
Two weeks to Bali. Six weeks to Jakarta. A lot to get through.
The hire we made before we needed it.
We're hiring at Twenty One Beauty.
Brand and Marketing Manager. Someone obsessed with the beauty category. The job is on LinkedIn if you know anyone.
But the thing worth writing about is why we're hiring at this stage.
Twenty One Beauty has one product. One SKU that keeps going viral on TikTok Shop, built a serious review base on Amazon, and is now consistently profitable. By the logic most brand operators use, you hire when you're stretched. When you're running out of capacity. When the machine is already slightly on fire.
We're not doing that.
The decision came directly from what I learned building Toucan. The two hires we got right…like genuinely right were Sophie and Dan. Sophie came in as Head of Client Services, grew into Client Services Director, and is now COO. Dan joined as Commercial Director and is now CCO. Both of them were brought in before the business was large enough that the roles made sense on paper. Both of them helped build the thing they now run.
Bringing in someone to solve today's problem works for about six months and then you either outgrow them or they stall.
Hiring seniority early costs more. It also compounds more.
Twenty One Beauty has four NPD launches planned for Q2 and Q3. New countries on the horizon. A P&L that can support the investment now rather than later. So we're making the hire before the chaos arrives, not during it.
“The best hires aren’t the ones who can do the job now. They’re the ones who can do the job as it’s about to become”
Most people save their best for when it's almost too late.
There's a well-documented pattern in NFL games. More points are scored in the final two minutes of each half than in any comparable period. Same players, same tactics but a different relationship with the clock.
People stop second guessing when the cost of hesitating becomes obvious.
The two-minute drill works because it removes the option to overthink. You either go or you don't. The window is right there. Everyone in the stadium can see it closing.
I've noticed this in training. The final weeks before a race are not the hardest physically but they are the most decisive. You stop negotiating with yourself about whether you feel like doing the session. The answer is already given. Six weeks to Jakarta and I'm not asking myself if I want to do the intervals. That's not the question anymore.
The honest thing to sit with is why that mode isn't the default. Why does it take a deadline (a race, a deal, a quarter that's already behind) to unlock the best version of yourself.
Most people are operating in a window where nothing is urgent enough to demand their actual best. Which means their actual best is sitting there, available, just waiting for the right prompt.
The fix isn't complicated. Set the deadline before you need one. Book the race. Commit to the launch date. Tell someone. Manufactured urgency still works…the brain doesn't particularly care whether the clock is real or self-imposed. It just responds to knowing the window is closing.
I've done this with training for years. The race entry is the first domino. Everything else lines up behind it because it has to. Without Jakarta on the calendar in June, the intervals become optional. With it, they aren't.
Same principle in business. A vague intention to grow revenue is easy to defer. A specific number by a specific date with someone else who knows about it is a different thing entirely.
“Most people are saving their best for a moment that never comes. Set the deadline yourself, don’t wait for one to find you.”
That's issue six.
Set the deadline, the clock is running.