International Women’s Day 2022
Erika Ottela, COO & Co-founder of eBrands — Prioritization and balance
Continuing our series of female founder interviews, next up is Erika Ottela, COO and Co-founder of eBrands. eBrands is an ecommerce group company that acquires, operates and scales small and medium-sized consumer brands.
Erika has a long and strong experience from companies such as McKinsey & Company and Amazon. At eBrands she’s responsible for making sure the brands in eBrands’ portfolio grow and make the world feel better.
What has been the driving force to get you where you are today?
Firstly, giving my best on what I am doing at the given moment. I have never had a 10-year plan — or any idea what I want to do when I grow up. I still don’t. However, I am a strong believer in working hard on what you are passionate about in your current work (whether it is about answering those customer calls with a smile, analyzing financial models, developing team members or building sustainable ecommerce models). When you work in each of your jobs to the best of your ability, interesting new opportunities open up.
Secondly, you need courage (with a hint of craziness) to grab those opportunities. I have taken on several roles I have no idea how to do. For example, I took a job as a Head of Design — 100 UX designers and project engineers — in a bank. Without having any experience on design, engineering or banking! If you have confidence on your intrinsic skills and willingness to learn, the rest will (mostly) sort itself out.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced during your career?
Finding a balance between what is urgent and what is important — without trying to do it all (and burning out!). The more junior you are, the more these two are the same. The bigger roles you take on — especially as you become a founder of a start-up — this becomes a balancing act. There are so many immediate tasks on your to-do list that ARE important (fixing pricing, contacting customers, improving marketing) that you don’t find the time to look at things that are important on the long term (but don’t have a deadline), such as defining your company values or re-assessing your strategy. Knowing what moves the needle the most is not always simple — especially as it changes every day.
I have also tried to do everything — and burned out. Digging yourself out of that hole (while keeping up with the rest of your life and work) is maybe the hardest individual thing I’ve ever done.
What are you most proud of?
Digging myself out of the hole I mentioned previously 😊 In all seriousness, I am the proudest of the people I’ve mentored and helped to develop along the way. I have a real passion for building teams and helping individuals to grow.
I am especially proud when I see my team members developing as leaders. Functional skills we all develop as we work on them, but leadership skills are developed through interactions — interactions with mentors, with (good) leaders and with team members. It’s very rewarding to see someone to realize how much more there is to leadership than being better at a functional skills than your team members.
In my previous organizations and with the people I’ve worked with, I have a reputation of being someone that builds successful teams — that’s a “reputation” I am insanely proud of.
Who is your biggest inspiration/role model and why?
Ignoring all role models from my personal life, I would want to name Angela Merkel. Regardless of what you think of her political opinions, I think she is a living proof of how true leadership is not about doing the popular or flashy things. She did a lot of boring things right — but still found a courage to make some truly unpopular and controversial decisions as she saw them as questions of values.
What advice would you share to fellow entrepreneurs for this year International Women’s Day?
Prioritize more than you think you can. This was the best advice I ever received from someone: “unless you are slapped at least once a month for prioritizing the wrong thing, you are not prioritizing hard enough”! (less relevant for today, she applied the same advice for her flights: if you don’t miss your flight at least few times a year, you are spending too much time in the airports.)
