Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdlXcVu1CTs
Work life balance is your problem. It isn't the employer's responsibility. Look, I have four kids and I had to figure out how I would think about my own ambition balanced with my parenting. That's the truth. And we have to have a level of honesty about what it takes to be really successful. But is it possible to be number one but still have all of my evenings and weekends? No, you're not. No, no. If if it's possible, tell me who she is and I'll show you a liar. Emma Greed has rewritten the fashion business rule book. As the co-founder of multi-billion dollar brands like Good American and Skims with the Kardashians, she's now revealing the secrets behind her unstoppable success. You know this Emma here? Where'd you get these photos? How old are you here? 15. And how do you feel about her? I feel like this person was like dying to escape her circumstances. I was raised by a single mom, one of four girls, and I had a very big hand in raising them to help my mom keep our family afloat. But I thank God every day for the type of upbringing that I had because it was hammered into me that nothing is going to come easy. And that made me who I am. Grit. Fast forward and I'm Carol CEO, someone who goes out and raises hundreds of millions of dollars. Somebody who starts an agency in multiple countries. I have zero qualifications to do any of that. Like I didn't have talent as a designer, but I will just make it happen. There's a lot of things I want to go into. What are the three most important things in being successful in business? Do you think it's possible for someone to make themsel gritty? How do we not give so many my sexuality and then pitch Chloe? What was that journey like? I'll tell you the truth. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll
continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Emma, what do I need to understand about your earliest context in order to understand the woman, the very, very unique woman, the very successful woman that is sat in front of me today? And when I ask that question, I'm looking for the characteristics that were most formative in creating the woman that is Emma. What a great way to start. I think that that's a great question for me because so much of who I am and how I feel about who I am comes from where I'm from. And you know, I I say all the time, I'm from East London. I like to make that distinction because I feel like such a Londoner and I feel like that, you know, being from East London, coming from that place is so much a part of my character. It's so much a part of what is important to me. Like that idea of being, you know, someone that is reliable, someone that is honest, not just, you know, sometimes but all the time. and I'm one of four girls. I was raised by a single mom. And it was so much kind of hammered into me that this is where you're from. This is not where you need to stay. The world is your oyster. You can do anything. You're just going to have to work really, really hard. And I think all around me, I saw a lot of people that were working hard. I saw a lot of people that were hustling and doing what they needed to do just to get through the day. But I had this feeling very much inside of me that if I wanted more for myself, it was all completely within reach. And I think that really came from this like East London mentality and all the people that were around me. I didn't need to do my research to realize that you are a big sister because you've got some serious big sister energy. Even with me, we've known each other for a little while now. So you're the oldest of four sisters. I am indeed. How did that shape you? I think in a really big way. You know, I have a pretty interesting relationship with my mom. You know, my dad left when we were much younger. And our family dynamic is like she's the dad, I'm the mom, and we have three kids together. And and I really, you know, I think if you asked any of my sisters, they'd say Emma had this very big hand in raising us in in being pretty formative in our childhood. You know, I would get up as a kid. I'd
iron three school shirts. I'd make three pack lunches. My mom would, you know, go off to work. I'd get all the kids in school and half the time turn back around and come home to watch this morning. That that was my life. You know, there was the odd day I decided to stay there, but more often than not, I was just, you know, about trying to help my mom keep our family afloat. And I think that that made me super responsible at an early age, but it also gave me a very early indication of like how I didn't want to live my life. I knew that the milkman hadn't been paid. I knew that there were bills dropping on the, you know, on the doormat kind of every day. And I felt that at a very young age and I felt the heaviness of that. And I knew it was all down to my mom to uh to make ends meet and to and to figure that out so that we could all be okay. And I I kind of decided at a very very young age that I didn't want any of that anxiety and I didn't want that heaviness to to stay around and to weigh on me as I grew up. I feel like children aren't supposed to grow up with the heaviness of bills on the doormat. Whether they are or they aren't, I actually I thank God every day for the type of upbringing that I had because I think a it it's made me who I am. And I guess there were parts of my childhood that essentially like just didn't exist because I didn't have the ability to like, you know, and still to this day, it's so interesting actually like the idea of like just playing isn't part of like who I am. But it gave me a lot of other things. It gave me a sense of, you know, I'm I'm an extremely maternal person and it gave me this kind of like empathetic route that is like I'm here to look after a lot of other people and I know I do that very very well. My energy had to be about, you know, making sure my sisters were fed and making sure that the house was clean and making sure we were safe because as wonderful as East London was, it was also a place where you needed to have your wits about you. You needed to make sure that you'd bought your bike in. You needed to make sure that you were safe. And so my primary instinct wasn't like, "Let me have a laugh right now. Let me see what my friends are doing." My primary instinct was, "How do I ensure everybody's safe and the doors locked
and we're going to be good?" And at that young age, before the age of, let's say, before the age of 16, if I met you as a 15-year-old and said, "What you want to be when you're older?" What would you have said to me? Fashion designer. Fashion designer. Straight away. Yeah. Fashion designer. I was obsessed. Well, you've got to remember, you know, I was born in 82 and in the early 90s in England, it was like the glory days of fashion. You know, you had all of those supermodels, the Kates and the Naomi and, you know, amazing designers, McQueen and Galliano and the British kind of Brit art scene and the, you know, British music scene. It was just an amazing time in England. But to me, fashion was this means of escape. It was this fantasy industry. I didn't know anyone that worked in fashion. My which is so crazy. My grandma worked in a bra factory, which I laugh about all the time now thinking about how many bras I make. But that was like as close as anything I knew like anyone that had worked in like the apparel business. I certainly didn't understand the idea of entrepreneurialism, having your own business. To me, it was just a fantasy like I'm here in plasto. It's [ __ ] How do I get away from it? And you know this it to me it was like it's almost like the movies could have just as well been Hollywood. It was like that's over there. It's beautiful. It's glamorous. Wouldn't that be fantastic to be part of that somehow? And what was I was thinking the other day about money. I was speaking to a friend and we were discussing money as if it was a person and playing through the attachment style you would have with that person, you know, like the secure attachment, the anxious, the avoidant. At a young age, what was money as a person in the room in your life growing up in the family? Like like the the best best friend, like the best thing ever. I mean, you know, I we worshiped money. We worshiped money. We worshiped what money could bring. We worshiped the material stuff that you could get for having the money. It was all about the car and the bag and the thing and the thing. That was it. Was money around a lot? There was none of it around. Absolutely none. I mean, I knew I knew people that had money, but they were kind of over there doing their thing. They were not part of
my thing. But it was it was so obvious to me when I was a kid that uh money was something that I needed to find. So in my head that was always like playing out in my mind of like how do I get away from that being my reality? And I've, you know, I wanted to leave where I was, you know, I wanted to be, I used to have this like vision and I would draw this fireplace and this beautiful Christmas tree and this credenza and I would, you know, and I'd imagine like that's the house of of my dreams and it's so you're going to think I'm insane. But years later, the first So I had Gray on December um December 20th and got him back home, sat down with my baby in my living room for the first time and literally burst into tears and my husband was oh my god isn't it like amazing we got this baby and I was like no it's amazing I drew this scene. This is the scene that I drew my whole childhood and had this beautiful townhouse in Clark and well and it was like the window and the credenza and the Christmas tree and I was like b like I did it and I I will never forget the moment. It was it almost eclipsed having the baby. I was like this is insane. Like I visualized it. I made that happen. I've drawn this 500 times and here it is and here I am. And if you were to give someone some advice, just jumping ahead and doing some topline stuff on how to make their drawing Yeah. come true in their life. Yeah. As you reflect back on the like core components of that manifestation becoming a reality. What are those core components? Cuz we've all got a drawing in our head. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Well, first of all, I wouldn't tell them to draw it cuz that's just not me. I wouldn't that wouldn't that wouldn't be part of what I would say. Absolutely not. I think that certainly in this space of like you know mindset manifestation visualization there's a lot of toxic positivity around here for women and what you need to do is like get to work like that is the first thing to say so I I I have like yes you can dream it you can believe it you can create a vision board all the things but don't forget what comes under that and what comes under that is an enormous amount of work and an enormous amount of planning I think that what I do uniquely well, Stephen, is that I have an ability to focus on what I'm
doing. I have an ability to get better at what I'm doing, right? Like to constantly get better at whatever it is that I'm focusing on. And then I have an ability to drown out and kind of disregard the noise of everyone around me. And those three things are important because focus is like it's like a force multiplier in work, right? When you have a plan and you have a focus and you can kind of go into what it is that you find important and double down on a very finite number of things. That's what propels you forward. And I was very fixated on working in fashion. But I also knew that I didn't have talent as a designer. And as much as I wanted to be a fashion designer, I couldn't draw. That drawing wasn't a very good one actually. If you look at it now, it's like I couldn't sketch. I don't have much creative talent. What I am is a great enabler to talent. I can sit next to a talent and understand their vision and figure out a way to turn that vision into a reality, but the creative part isn't what I do so well. And so really understanding like what is your plan and how you can double down and get into the things that you are uniquely good at and that you uniquely have skills for is important. I think getting outside of your head is like really important because so many people have dreams and ambitions and ideas, but it just exists here. Like what I do is a lot of action. Like I made like hundreds of calls. Like I always talk about this thing of at some point cuz this was like before email. I would send a lot of letters and I thought no one's getting back to me. Maybe they're not getting the letters. So I started like handd delivering things around the West End. I would buzz on little doors of PR agencies and be like, "Hi, you know, my name's Emma and I sent you a letter, but I don't know if you got it." People like, "Yeah, whatever, love." But sometimes they'd let you up. And sometimes you've had a conversation with somebody and whatever, right? So, I really believe in this kind of idea of action. And then you've just got to like just really when I talk about this idea of disregarding what people think, there's just so much noise and you have to have like this single-minded focus on what you're doing. And I've I've been really good at drowning out the noise, not just from
what goes on inside me and what you know, my own kind of fear, but also what's happening around you. And I think that those things are really really key. When you say drowning out the noise, there's a lot of things I want to go into there, but you talk about drowning out the noise. I'll focus on that because it was the last thing. How do you balance drowning out the noise with another principle that I know is important to you, which is feedback? Yeah. Especially from customers because customers will be saying, "We hate this. Customers always hate change and they also don't know what they want. So, how do you how do you know what to drown out and what to consider to be feedback? I think that that's really it's a it's a great question and you know it's interesting because I am actually a person who takes in a lot of information. If I'm trying to make like a really big decision that I don't feel fully qualified to make, which by the way happens to me all the time because I'm still learning so much. I will call a lot of people that I think are in the know, but at the end of the day I have to call the play, right? And often if you if you call up seven or eight people they're going to have different opinions there. There'll be different patterns that emerge. There will be contrarian type of you know something that comes out of that. And so you have to then still like go where is my gut? What feels good to me? What's right for my customer? I think it's very different when you get customer feedback because what I've learned is that everything your customer says is true because it's true to them. And so what I do is like of course we have a balanced view. We try to like speak to as many customers. We're doing giant surveys and you take, you know, the sum of of those parts. But when it comes down to customer feedback, I think it is it's ingested in a very very different way than like that kind of decision-making feedback. When I make a decision on behalf of my business, that has to come from my gut and from the intentions of where I want that business to go. When I'm doing things for customers, it's very different because you just want to please customers. You you referenced that calling around people that you respect all the time. I do it constantly.
I had someone say that refer to this as your like personal board of directors. Oh, I love that. Which is these like five or seven people that you typically call, maybe it's 10. Um, who's on your personal board of directors? Like who are these people that are taking these phone calls? And why are you calling them? What is it about them that makes them a reliable partner in decisions? Well, you know, a first person I speak to my husband a lot because obviously we work together and Yens has a unique understanding of me, of my weaknesses, of what might be stopping me from making a decision. So, I feel like I go to him a lot because he will, oh, he's going to tell me the truth. I mean, he's, you know, he's told me to like some of the biggest unlocks in my life and my career have come from Yens. And I will never ever forget, Stephen, like one of my first board meetings, one of my first companies, it was called ITB and I would get so nervous ahead of a board meeting and he'd be like, "Why are you so nervous?" And I'd be like, "I don't know." Cuz I'm I'm a good chatter. I'm a good presenter. I can sell anything. But, you know, I would get to these board meetings and I would just fall apart. And he said to me, just wrong timing, by the way, if you're going to give, you know, your wife a little bit of feedback. Literally, just before we went in, he said, "You know what? really I I know why you are suffering here, Emma. You have an employee mentality and I I mean I was 26 or 27 years old. I couldn't think about anything else in the whole meeting because I was like he's completely right. I have an employee mentality. Well, why? Because I'd only ever been an employee up until that point. But I was looking instead of, you know, being there as the CEO to guide the board into a decision. I was looking for everybody else to tell me what to do. And so I was seeking their approval instead of going in and saying, "Here's the direction. This is what we're doing. Everybody come with me and these are the reasons D." And so it was such an interesting insight and I think that you could only or I could have only heard that from somebody so close to me. So at that early stage in your career, what role are mentors playing? Because we're talking about personal boards of
directors here. Yeah. These are in some respects mentors, right? Do they matter? And I say this, Emma, because I have kids coming up to me all the time saying, "Steve, I need a mentor." And they sometimes say, "Can you be my mentor?" And I'm thinking, "Fucking hell, I've done 17,000 hours of podcasting and you haven't learned a [ __ ] thing." That was the mentorship. That was the mentorship. How what's your what's your take on finding a mentor and how pivotal and important that is to become a successful person. Listen, you know, from my own experience, I don't think I had any mentors. You know, I I started work like well, let's talk about real work, right? So it's like I've had a job since I was 12 years old. I've worked a paper round and then I worked in the delies and then I worked in clothes shops. And when I got my first real job in an office in a fashion show production company, I was 18 years old. So I've had a salaried job in a place that was working towards something that I felt was interesting and in the the kind of direction of where I wanted to go since I was 18. At that point, you make whoever is around you, if you're smart, you make whoever is around you your mentor. I used to sit in front of my boss and everybody thought that was so unfortunate because my she could see my screen and that was like the beginnings of online shopping. Netaporte was our uh client and we all had a discount. So everyone would sit on Netaporte all day except me because my boss sat behind me and they were like what a nightmare. And I was like no not a nightmare at all. Whatever she says when she's on her sales calls I would write down and I would use them later on on my sales calls. Now was she my mentor? No, she was my boss, but I used her as such because I would learn from her. I take, you know, I even like copy her outfits, you know, like I would do the whole thing. And so for me, she was really formative. But I don't think that you should walk around looking for a mentor. I think you have to walk around asking questions because anyone who's going to be a good mentor probably doesn't have time to mentor you first. Secondly, like depending who you are and what your exposure is, you're not going to have the right people around you to get mentored. So you've just got to be
super inquisitive and I think it's really important to take where you are and figure out like who is around you and where can you get that type of mentorship from. For me in the beginning I would just take whatever client I had like if I come into contact with the CMO or the CEO I just ask him a question. I'd be in the meeting I'd be like I have two other questions for you. It have nothing to do with the work that we're doing or the you know whatever brief I was there to deliver and I'd ask a question. And what what part of you do you think if I removed and this could be a skill or a characteristic would definitely assure that you wouldn't be where you are today? Like what is this the sacred part of you that is defining cuz people see Emma today and they see these skills and this knowledge and all this stuff and these relationships and these businesses and this success but what is the like cuz you said I'm dyslexic and I know I think you left school you dropped out of school at 15 and then you went to college for a while and you dropped out there too. I'm a serial dropout. So it's not something you learned necessarily in school. So I'm wondering what the characteristic is that was the like the wind in one sails that brought you here and what if I removed that thing you definitely wouldn't be here and he could only give me one thing. I mean listen we didn't call it that then but it would come down to grit. Grit, right? I think that that is what we would say now. You know, Angela Duckworth like coined that phrase, I guess, or that term and wrote that fantastic book about grit that all everybody read and was like, "Oh my god, I just want my kids to have grit." Like, my kids want for nothing. They're not going to be gritty. Like, it's just facts. You don't you don't grow up in Belair gritty, you know? But I think that if you if I think about what it what it is for me and and still is, I'm just gritty. I'm very clear about what I want and what I need and I will find a way whatever it is. You know, I am not any of the things that you would have on my resume. You know, an apparel CEO, someone who goes out and raises hundreds of millions of dollars, somebody who starts an agency in multiple countries. I have zero qualifications to do any of
that stuff. I will just make it happen because I'm in the moment. I see the opportunity and I am prepared. And I'm prepared because it's like I have done all the work to get to the point where that thing that is in front of me, I will make it happen. I've done enough work to say, okay, like I can take this to the that next place. And is that grit an ember that life blew on? Because I wonder if I'd gone back and I'd met Emma at 18 years old whether she would have said it like to me like that. No, Emma at 18 years old would have been like it's so interesting. You know, we don't have yearbooks in in England, but if if we did, I reckon I would have been like the most likely to succeed. I don't think anyone at school was like, "Oh, she's a bit of a waste girl." No, it's like I had that mentality that I was away from the pack, that I was going to do something special, but also my mentality was like whatever it takes. You know, if I could if I think about the most important words for career advancement, like the the three most important words, I'd be like, I'll do that. That was me. I had my hand up my whole life. I'll do that. Like every single time anytime anyone has asked me whatever it took, wherever I have been in whichever workplace, I was like, I'll do it. I'll do that. And and that is what like people started to look at me as someone that would just figure it out, right? It's not like I had any particular skill. I just put myself in a situation and in the space of let me have a go every single time. To me, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense because you grew up in a situation as an older sister where you were playing the role of a dad where you did have to put your hand up and say, "I'll do that." Mhm. You did have to make the lunches. And I sometimes think back to my own life and think about how avoid of independence is maybe a scary thing to some parents, but it's also an incredibly useful thing for a kid to learn that I have to get myself from A to B. Yes. Whether it's from home to school or from home to dinner or from home to whatever it might be. And that I don't know. I looked at your life and go okay you had this massive void of independence and in there grows skills belief and understanding about life that
most others don't get. So it's no surprise that at such a young age you were you thought you could do stuff cuz so many people they have an idea they know where they are now and they kind of might have an idea of where they want to be but the gap between it is not something they've ever had to traverse like they've never had to walk it. Do you think it's possible for someone to make themsel gritty? You know, you've got team members, employees, you can see the variance in gritty and ungritty, resilience. And I see a lot of ungrittiness that Yeah. Go on. Where where do you see the ungrittiness? And is it possible to make yourself great? Have you ever seen someone go from what should we call it? What's the opposite of grittiness? Floppy. I don't know. I don't know what the opposite of grittiness is, actually. Um I soft I guess. Yes. Listen, I I do. if you want it, like anything else, right? It's got it's all about do you actually want to be that way and to behave that way. And we were talking about this actually, funny enough, on the way over because, you know, I I just came from my own office 2 minutes away. It's Friday. All of the product teams are in. The rest of the office is pretty empty. And you know, and I think postco people have really taken the liberty of as we allow them, right? they can come in four days a week. And it's interesting because we talk so so much about the flexibility of working from home and what Zoom life has kind of done for business, but we don't talk about any of the rigidity of it and what it takes away from work. And I can tell you and I can guarantee you that had I been a work from home person in my 20s, I would not be where I am now. There is no doubt in my mind and I think about some you know I met my husband at work. I made some of my best strongest relationships in my life that are the most important things to me and the foundation of my happiness and my like being a solid person at work. That's where those relationships come from. And so I think it's really interesting now that we have this aversion of like wanting to be away from the office all of the time. And I'm like, "Oh, that's like it's so interesting to me because I'm like such a I'm like an imperson. I
want to be with people. I want to collaborate. I want to do things quickly." And the culture of work right now makes that so hard. So I think yes, you can treat teach someone to have grit, but I can't teach you on a screen, babe. I can't reach you. You won't see how I move. And in that same way that I had this woman that sat behind me and I would take notes of everything she said. That happened in real time, right? She would walk out of the room and I'd be on my next new business call saying her lines. Like it was just that quick and that immediate and I would test it out and I'd make it my own. All of that is lost. And so I feel a little bit sad for the way that we're working right now because I don't think that we're having that exchange of, you know, what happens when you're in a really dynamic environment and you're able to learn from people around you because we're not as together as we once were. When you're looking around your team and thinking that person's going to be a star in the future, that person's going to be a star in the future, which I'm always doing, which I'm always doing as well. And this is why always, always, always. What are the factors or the characteristics of those people that you look at in your office and go that's she's going to be a star, he's going to be a star. What is it about them? What are they doing that others aren't doing? Well, I you know, and people ask me this all the time. I think that the sure way to put yourself in a position for more responsibility for a promotion is to be excellent at what you're doing, right? Like I I find it really difficult when people are like, you know, I'd really like to do this thing over there. I'd really like that opportunity. And I'm like, but you're only 70% good at what you're doing now. like I'm looking at the 120% people, the people that are smashing it in the role that they're at now before they're going to go anywhere else. So that's the first thing to say. But I don't think it's any I I again I have hire much more for attitude over experience, right? I really want the people that come in with like a winning mentality, a figure it out mentality. And also what I love is this these people that have like an understanding across the business. It's like you are an amazing thoroughbed, you know,
wholesale salesperson, but you really want to learn ecom and you really want to learn about stores and you really have a good understanding what's happening planning and merchandising. Like, you know, in business leadership language, they call them the T-shaped leaders, but it's like that's what that's what I care about. People that have an interest in the entirety of our business and they can see outside of the lane or the division that they work in. And so, that becomes interesting to me. But to me it's so much more in mentality, energy, enthusiasm, attitude. I'm also one of the things that I think is massively overlooked. But a key thing now is flexibility because I hire a lot of people that are in their 40s and 50s, right, for super senior executive leadership level roles. But if you come to me from a competitor and you believe that the only way to get from here to here is the way you've been doing it for the last 20 years, that's problematic to me. I need you to come both with the experience and a level of flexibility because technology means that the customer and the uh the consumer experience is changing all the time. So that ability to say I've got all of this knowledge but I'm I'm willing and ready to flex is like really important. So I I need I need all those things. I need a lot. Stephen, you don't say. But what are the red flags? Very demanding. Tell me tell me some sentences I could say in an interview with you that would be immediate red flags. Oh, I've got a good one. So, can you talk to me about work life balance in this organization? Sorry, babe. I'm leaving. I'm Get out. Here's the thing. Work life balance is your problem. Like, that's yours to figure out because the way we run organizations now is that no one misses a dentist appointment or a doctor's appointment or a haircut or their kids parent teacher conference at our organizations. That's just not how we work anymore, right? like you come in, you have set hours, but you you know there's flexibility within the the your working life. It's not like, oh my goodness, such and such is not at their desk. That's just not how we work anymore. So when somebody talks to me about their work life balance in an interview process, I'm like, something
is wrong with you. You haven't been able to figure that out. That's not the way you win this interview. I'm not trying to give this away. I'm not trying to give this away, but because it might [ __ ] me over saying this, but um we do a screening survey and one of the questions tests for this. So I actually know the exact percentage of the general public that when asked this question will pick work life balance as one of the most important things and it's roughly 33%. 33. So 33% of people on our screening survey will say that work life balance is more important to them than another range of options including doing perfect work, beating the competition, leading and inspiring others, having a happy team, etc. They'll pick work life balance as being one of their most important things. So it's a lot of people that prioritize this. And it's not to say for me, let's listen, it's not to say for me that it's a bad thing, but it's it's not what I would pick. No babe, it's not what you would pick because you're ambitious as anything. So maybe, you know, it's very interesting, right? Because I wonder if you put on that list of options earning 10% more year on year getting a meaningful bonus, right? Like because here's the thing, these things correlate. And that's what people don't understand. In order to run an organization where there is the ability for your people to have a good work life balance, you have to be profitable. The company has to be, you know, in line with, if not beating its competition. We have to be able to run an efficient business to give people what they need. The two things go hand in hand. And so I have this idea that with the people that I work with, like we're in a social, like we're in a contract together, right? It's like you're going to work really hard and in return you should get an amazing place to work. you should get an incredible environment that is feeding you in ways that are not just about your your job, right? And so when I look around at our office and our organization, we're doing, you know, I just I left the office yesterday, there was like a fertility seminar going on where there were like hundreds of people in the kitchen of our office all learning about having their eggs frozen and like various different I I I have four kids.
I clearly didn't need to be in the seminar. I'm like, I'm done. Um, but you know that that was happening. It's like we do things for our employees that are above and beyond what a workplace back in the day may have considered the norm. So I just feel like you've got to with that like something has to give and there are certain things that are the employees responsibility within that and you figuring out what works for your life, how you're going to pick up your kids, how you get home, how you get to work, what happens in like these are all things that you need to figure out within the construct of your life. That isn't the employer's job. That isn't the employer's responsibility. I'm going to play devil's advocate. So, what people are, I guess, when they hit that that button and they say, "I want work life balance," what they are maybe alluding to is am I expected to work seven days a week because I need that information to be able to figure up figure out if I'm going to be able to pick up my kids and be able to do my totally dejing or whatever on the weekend. So, what is the expectation in your business? I don't think the expectation is that anyone is going to have to work seven days a week in order to get, you know, to have an average job. Like, they're not going to have to do that. If you have ambition, if you want to do the most, if you want to grow, if you want to be one of those people that's like, you know, at the top of the organization, the chances are you might have to work a little bit more. That's the truth. Like, what are we talking about here? We're gonna lie to everyone. Do you work five days a week, Stephen? No, babe. You're working on a Saturday and a Sunday. And if I text you wherever you are in the world, you come back to me within about an hour. I'm assuming that that's not just what you do for me. That that's just how you roll. And that's how I roll. And that's how most successful people roll. And you know, it's like there is something to speed and agility. And I don't listen, I think I have a tremendous work life balance. I am in Malibu most weekends. um on the beach. But I think that we have to have a level of honesty about what it takes to be really successful. And I think that everybody is tired of hustle
culture. People are tired of burnout and figuring out how you can do what you need to do and be really successful at the same time is like what I consider personal responsibility. But at the same time, if we tell everybody that to be really successful, you can do that in a way that um is, you know, without being 150% without waking up most days and doing some type of work, without thinking about work a lot. It's just not it's not honest and it's not um it wouldn't connect with what I see and what my experience are of most people that are truly successful. Why do some people hate what you just said? I think because it hits them in a place of like I just don't want to do that. I want I want all the benefits but I don't want to do the bit in the middle. And I get that it's not for everyone then don't do it. But is it possible to have the success to be number one to be on the magazines to be Emma? And is there like not a way where I can have my evenings and weekends but still get like the I have some evenings and weekends but like I want all of my evenings and weekends. No, you're not. No. No. If if it's possible, tell me who she is and I'll tell you. I'll show you a liar. You know, I I I don't think so. And and and honestly, Stephen, like what what are we talking about? Because we I think that most people most people want a you know, they they don't want everything, right? It's like most people don't are not sitting here being like, I need to be in all the magazines. I want this. I want that. It's like most people want to have uh security of a well-paying job. They want to, you know, be able to afford their rent or their mortgage and have a nice car and live well and go on a few holidays and and that's like a good life. Should you be able to do that? Absolutely. Should you be able to do that without working evenings and weekends and putting all of the hours in? Yeah, I really think that you should. But if you are leading an extraordinary life, to think that extraordinary effort wouldn't be coupled to that somehow is crazy. It's interesting post pandemic how it feels like leaders got gas lit a little bit. founders got gas lit by platforms, you know, like if you go on LinkedIn, you got all these people telling you how to run a business and that what you're
doing wrong and work life balance and you got to be more like this and you've got to be this kind of leader and you have to be this empathy and do this and that and the other. And if you're a young founder growing up in this world where this everyone is telling founders what to do, um it can feel incredibly confusing. And I think in particular post pandemic where like how we work was like shuffled up and it's now like take a mix. It's like before the pandemic, it was like we all got it. We come to the office 5 days a week, we work, you know. Um, it's a difficult time to be a founder because you've almost got to step out if you know what I mean. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you have to. And listen, I don't think that that is as hard as people are making it. You have to understand that, you know, you can't be a leader and a people pleaser at the same time. And if you're walking around trying to make everybody happy, guess what you won't do? You won't have a great business. You have to have a focus on what it is that you're trying to do. And you have to be relentless in the pursuit of doing those things. And you need the people that are going to, you know, I am I'm so much about the people that help you. You know, I I hate that idea of like being um, you know, like a a you know, I get called like a self-made whatever. And I'm like, I'm really not self-made if you understood how many people there were around me that just like getting me here today. Do you know what I mean? There's like a a village sitting outside. But nothing happens on your own. And it takes so many people and so so much skill and so much that I don't have. And so when you start a company, this idea that you should make all of the if you if you're thinking about making all of these concessions before you're thinking about what the goal is, what the the the the you know I I call it and everybody it's like enterprise mentality. It's like you have to put the business first, the needs of the business. And sometimes that is about thinking about your people and being a certain type of leader. Sometimes it's not. So you've got to balance those things, right? We're trying the point of a business is to make profit. It's to create like a company to serve, you know, your customers, all of those things. It
really isn't about what I think so many people are trying to make it about. Now, your leadership style is, you know, it's it's going to be such a huge part of what makes that business successful, but it isn't it isn't everything. And so, I think that we've just got to try and separate these things like a little bit. That can't be the first thing that you're thinking of like how you know like how you're doing all of that stuff. The first thing that you think about is like how is the business going to grow? How are we going to thrive? What are we what are we actually here to do? I think founders are scared as well because we live in this age of social media where you know if especially if you have a profile if you do something wrong there's this really interesting incentive that the employee has where they can they can pop back. And so if if you fire me from your company, Emma, and you know, I didn't feel so good when I was there, I now have you by the balls a little bit, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, totally. Because I can post on my TikTok and say, you know what, Emma is not who you think she is. Yeah. That's just part of being in business though, right? But then because you're living under that threat from some kind of activist employee, how do you stop that from changing the way that you live with that enterprise mentality and do what's right for the business? I don't think you do. I've had so many founders say this to me in my portfolio. They've saying like, "Oh man, I'm like scared of being canceled." Well, don't do anything to be cancelled. I mean, look, I think it's a fine line, right? You're if you're a leader, you're never going to please everybody. And I think that this is where leadership style and who you are as a person really comes out. I don't think anybody I'm somebody that leads with no ambiguity. Nobody's like I wonder what Emma's thinking. It's like I'm very clear in what I'm thinking. I'm very clear in what the goals are. And the reason that we've been able to do what we've been able to do is because of those things. I have a very straightforward management style and I I bring everybody along with me. Now listen, there's always going to be someone or you know a fraction of people that will feel disgruntled. I've gone
through various things in different companies where you've had to you know downsize or let people go and things that are really unfortunate and that's just part of the course of business. Now are you doing those things in a way that is congruent with who you are as a as a leader and you know really thinking about what what that actually like you know it's it's not again it's like I never have like an indiv individualistic idea about that. It's like if I have to look at a company and downsize I'm not thinking about the 50 people that I have to let go. I'm thinking about the 400 jobs that need to be saved. And sadly, sometimes there is a little collateral damage. That's just part of being in business. Um, I certainly am not sitting here sweating what somebody might do on TikTok because I know who I am and I feel good about the decisions that I make because of the of the where they come from. They come from me. They come from my heart and I know that I'm a good person. So, I would never sit here and be like, "Oh no, someone's going to like shame me." What was the most important lesson you had to learn about leadership as a upand cominging talented black woman in business? I don't think it's any different than honest if I if I'm really honest I don't think it's any different from any other woman but I do think it's different for women. Okay. More generally, I think that probably the most important lesson was how distinctive and important my point of view is and why that gives me an edge, right? But I also understand that, you know, this kind of like empathy coin has two sides to it, right? What makes women phenomenally good leaders and makes them fantastic at you know mentoring staff and looking after the needs of the team is sure as the underbelly when it comes from perhaps you know downsizing their team or you know firing the wrong person or if people are not getting pay rises like how they might feel about that. So, I definitely had to learn that there's two sides to what makes me great and to keep both of those sides in check. So, it's balancing the empathy part of you with the needing to make difficult decisions. Yeah. Because it doesn't feel like care to fire someone. It's like because No, it
goes against the grain of uh of caring for It goes against the grain of being like a maternal individual who is looking after people, right? because that's the opposite of that. You're leaving someone to their own devices and so that that's been difficult for me for sure. Do you remember the first time you had to contend with that dichotomy and how it felt and Yeah. Yeah, I do. I I think it would have been like way back when in London in ITV the first time I had to do like a meaningful downsizing of the agency and I had to fire like you know it was a small agency. I had like 60 people and I fired 15 people in one day. So we're in a tiny office, Gressy Street in, you know, just off of Tottenham Court Road and everyone sits together. So there was no like giant boardroom that you could go into and then go out the back door. It was like I went back upstairs and told everyone, you know, it was like awful. It was absolutely awful. I laugh about it out of just like horror of how it felt at the time because it really to me it felt like the end of the world, the end of my life. And I felt so responsible because oftentimes, you know, like so much of being in a competitive dynamic environment, you know, like you're pulling people out of other agencies and other jobs and you're bringing them in and you know, you're like that's the best person for this and then all of a sudden you're like, I'm so sorry, but like it's over. And and that for me was soul destroying the first time I had to do it. But in hindsight, how do you look at that decision now with your wisdom? Well, look, again, I go back and say I created a better company be because of it. I created more discipline in the business because I was able to see the mistakes that I'd done that weren't just about overstaffing, but it was just about running a a less healthy engine. I do think it made me a better leader in the sense of I had held so much of the anxiety of what was happening in that company, it not going well to myself. I hadn't really shared with the full senior management team like quite how bad things were because I felt I'm the CEO that's all my problem. They should be able to just come in and out. And with that there was a lack of accountability from everybody else. And
so I think I've really understood now that you know it's like I'm I'm here at the top of the organization. And you know it's like almost like I'm the I'm the manager, right? I sit on the sidelines and I have a bunch of people. I shouldn't be like running on the pitch to score the goal. I need to stay on those sidelines and I need to direct everybody to do the best job possible. And now I think so much more about bringing everybody on the journey. And when you're having difficult times, which we do all the time in all of our businesses, despite whatever it might look like to people, you know, you need to bring people on the journey and get them involved in what those solves are. Because if you get to that place where you have to downsize or you have to change the way that you're doing business and you have to make meaningful changes, they're there with you. they've been part of the solution. They've been part of those solutions not working out and they're going to be part of making them right for the rest of the business. I think there's a lot of business owners that can relate to holding on to all of that pressure themselves, cash flow issues, the uncertainty around the business, and you know, they internalize it, they take it home with them, it's with them seven days a week. Um, how did it feel for you when you were going through those challenges with your your first company? Um, and I I asked that because I want the person going through that, I was going through it, to feel seen, but also to have a bit of a blueprint, a road map of what to do about that. Well, the the truth is it feels like the end of the world, right? Like that that's how it feels when you start something from the ground up and it's yours. There's such a sense of responsibility. And, you know, I think that what happens in business, it's always like a a confluence of factors, right? like you try to work out like what has made this thing happen and it's like you know sometimes like death by a thousand cuts there's no like one thing that you can point to and say that was it that's what made this like downtrending moment happen it's like it's a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of this and a bit of that but often what it comes from is you know you get so into what you're doing that it's
very very hard to rise back up and I think what I've taught myself like this muscle that I've taught myself is every kind of quarter at least every six months I try to float up and see like what is happening not what I'm telling myself not what are we doing like what's happening what's happening with the competition what's happening in the market and back then I just didn't have the ability to do that I was so heads down so in the work so you know like just deep in like my clients and doing the best job that I could that I had no ability to zoom out and I do again I'm not just blaming myself but it it really was about that inability to see clearly. And so I think for anybody that's kind of been through a moment like that, it's either surrounding yourself with people that are able to help you have a little bit more perspective or trying to make that a habit that you do that in your business. You know, Bill Gates talks about having reading week or like, you know, an away week. He takes himself off and he does it twice a year and he goes and he just like sits somewhere beautiful. It looked like it was like by the water or something. goes into a little cabin and he just reads, but he thinks about like what is happening in his business, what is happening in the world. And I certainly would never want the comparison to Bill Gates, but I think just having the ability to zoom out a little bit is something that all founders should really really think about and it's given me unbelievable perspective that I've made that a practice now. That's so so true. I was I was talking the other day, I think it was actually when I did that solo episode on on the diary of a sea about this idea of like clouds and trenches. I love the solo episodes. Did you listen to it? Oh, thank you. Yeah, I love them. I think they're so good. One of the ideas that emerged from that process was as I was writing the solo episode, I thought about the day that I went fishing. Like I don't fish, obviously, you know, like, you know, but I went fishing because whatever. I just found myself there and I'm on this boat in the middle of the lake and the art of fishing is you sit there and do [ __ ] nothing. You do nothing and you're on a lake and it's like pissing it down. So I'm sat there in my Mac and it's just
like leathering on me. And this boat, this is not glamorous. This is a 2 m wooden boat. Oh, babe. We all had an idea of like a yacht. No, no, no, no, no. It was like at a castle somewhere. And it was the most important like seven hours of my life at that exact moment cuz I'd been in the trenches for so many weeks in a row that sitting out on that boat for seven hours just waiting for this nibble that never came cuz I'm [ __ ] at fishing, it turns out, was so powerful. Like this is this is the distinction between being able to stand back from the photo so you can see the picture and founders like especially when you've got cash flow issues and clients giving you [ __ ] and and team member issues you're like this. Yeah. And I think that the problem is as founders we can feel guilt and we kind of talked about this earlier tremendous guilt of like not being in there and not being in the trenches but because we don't realize we're serving our company by creating a little bit of space. Yeah. So is it a practice for you? It is and honestly I've really made it a practice and I say that it it's about like first of all I have to get out of the office that's the most important thing um and it's really about me creating the conditions for me to be really thoughtful so it's like I prepare to like be with myself like so I'm really taking a snapshot of like what's happening with my competition what are people doing I'm on the sides of my competition like I'm like what is the customer seeing I go like in store I really try to understand that what is everybody else like what are customers truly experiencing from this brand and then it's really about looking objectively at what we're putting out there and I really do that and I've I've got a uh I think I have a really really good sense of not um I don't know how to say it without swearing like you can swear I just don't believe my own [ __ ] I I've still got the ability and it's so interesting because I think that when you join a new company you I always say to people that come, you know, you got fresh eyes for, I don't know, a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months at best, until you start telling yourself the same stories that we tell ourselves internally. And I am very good at having those fresh eyes.
And so when I have new people in the business, I will go to those people and be like, what are you seeing? Where were you before? What have you like versus what we're telling you? Like what are you seeing in this company? And so I make a point to like get around to any new starters and that's just like part of the process. Competition, new starters, having the zoom out, what am I actually like serving and delivering to customers and I kind of take all of that and come up with like just a one pager. Like for me it's always very simplistic, you know, it's like three things. I'm like this, this, this, go and work on those things. And it will often be in line with the priorities that I have like the broader priorities of the business. But sometimes it's just like a random thing that I'm like, didn't see that happening. I didn't see how [ __ ] would we become at that, you know? And so it's like I try to I try to have that level of objectiveness all the time. Are you paranoid? Definitely. 100%. Yes. Well, also I'm par rightly paranoid. Like I work with some of the most like copied duped brands in the whole world. Do you know what I mean? It's like I'm not actually paranoid. I'm just like everybody's copying me. And how do you think about people copying you? Because anyone that's successful, all of my friends that have done anything well, they're just everyone just copies. I'm totally unbothered. We've moved already, babe. I'm like, by the time they've copied me, I'm, you know, I'm a year and a half in the future. I'm like, go for it. Done. It's over. You got your first um I guess your first foray into the world of fashion was that internship you had at 19 years old. You became a show producer after that at Inca Productions. You worked at a marketing agency between sort of 23 25 years old um called Saturday Group which is now known as Wednesday Agency co-founded by your now husband Yens. Yes indeed. Which is where you met him? Yes. Now I'm you know I'm in business with Yens. So we started our relationship as I was an employee and then he was my investor. So he and his business partner invested alongside somebody else that I bought in in my first company. Then I married him. Um, then we had four kids together and it has been an
unbelievable relationship and one of the kind of most important things in my life and still remains one of the most important things in my life. But it hasn't always been easy because he is obviously, you know, doing his thing and he's very ambitious and he has his own things going on. Um, and when you bring kids into the equation, everything changes again, right? that it it shifts a little bit. I think what is important is to have somebody who just sees all of your talent and sometimes sees it before you do yourself. And I think that Yens has been like unbelievably encouraging of me at every turn. Every time I've had any doubt, every time I've been like, "God, that feels like a little bit outside my comfort zone." And he's been like, "But you did this, but you did that." you know, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I did, didn't I?" And he's like, "No, everybody has that." And you'll know people, right, who are really ambitious themselves and maybe their partner is envious, resentful, maybe lowkey, subtly plays them, like plays them down or diminishes their ability to them. What would you say to someone who right now is listening to this and has a partner who they feel doesn't want them to climb to the top of the mountain and isn't willing to help carry them up there and actually sees their work as a competition. What would you say to that person because I know we probably got a couple million listening. I say this all the time. Everything starts with yourself. And you have to be willing to put what it is that you care about, what it is that you want more than anything first. You have to be able to do that first. And if you have somebody who isn't necessarily like a big cheerleader, which not everybody can be for everyone else, that's one thing. But if you've got someone that sucks your energy and your ability to believe in yourself, that's a problem, right? So I don't think that everybody needs the like cheerleader husband, but you need somebody that at least supports your belief in yourself so that you can go off and do what you need to do. But I don't know that there's any big secret.
The secret is just being interested in each other. The secret is just growing together. And I think that we are so fortunate that we've been able to work with one another, but it comes from like this place of like interest and respect. And I'm interested in the person that he was. Is it 16 or 17 years ago? I wish I knew. But I'm interested in the person that he's becoming. And I think he's interested in the person I'm becoming. Quick one. I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously, which is cyber security. Whether you're a first-time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional who's been through it all, staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated, I have to say. And that is where Vanta comes in, who is a sponsor of this podcast. Vant takes the pain out of security compliance, automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is secure across over 35 frameworks like SOCK 2, ISO 2701. centralize your workflows, answer security questions up to five times faster, and protect your business without losing focus on growth. And this is really a critical part of this. A new IDC white paper found that companies using Vant save over $535,000 a year, and it pays for itself in just 3 months. For a limited time, my community gets $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/stephven. That's van.com/stephven for $1,000 off. So 25 years old, you start ITB. Yes. Worldwide. And you run that 25. 24 maybe. Yeah. Something like that for a decade roughly. A decade. A decade of your life up until 35ish. And you meet Chris. Yes. Jenna. Yeah. In this process of these 10 years, when did you meet Chris Jenner? I met her for the first time like on a job that I'd done for one of the girls. I was actually and I'm sure they must be pretty furious now. Actually, I was actually introduced through an agent at WMA. They just gave me her number directly, so I just called her. Why would they be furious now? Cuz they Well, you know, probably, you know, maybe they should have ushered that introduction slightly more, but hey ho. Yeah, I just called her. At that time, you know, at that time, Chris wasn't the Chris of now. She
was still extremely famous. I remember when we went for lunch there um you know there was like a little crowd forming outside but it was very different from how it is today. And what was she like when you met her? Amazing you know but also like not in that way that when you you go and meet someone for me it was just like meeting any other manager, agent, publicist and of course it was Chris and she was you know on the show and so I had an understanding of who she was but also I was trying to get something done. you know, I would have been doing some type of endorsement and trying to, you know, get some information about whatever it was that, you know, I was working on at the time. So, it was just like a means to an end wherever I would go at that point in my life. You know, I was meeting with managers, agents, publicists all the time. Um, and that was part of my job and part of what I did on behalf of brands. What was that journey from meeting Chris that first time to getting into business with Chris and pitching her as to be a business partner and then what happens to ITB the agency you were running in the background? Mhm. So it was a really interesting time for me actually because there was this big shift and what I'd done in the agency was built this you know entertainment marketing agency and we really kind of sat at the intersection of where like brands and entertainment get together. So film product placement, endorsement deals, influencer packages like and that was like the very early days of influencers. Most of the like we were calling them bloggers at that time, right? So the agency was growing and I'd opened an office in New York that was really doing like the majority of the business and it was fantastic. So the business become very kind of US-facing from a client-based point of view. And then this idea of like talentbased equity deals kind of like raised its head. And I read something about Ashton Kutcher taking I don't know equity in some Silicon Valley startup. And I started to get calls and you know people would always phone me when they wanted to put an alias talent in a fragrance ad for example. But people started calling me and saying hey we've got this startup we'd be willing to give X Y and Z 10% of this thing for you know for an
endorsement. And I was like well that's interesting but how do I commission that? Right? because usually I would be getting paid a percentage of whatever cash was taking was crossing hands. So for me it was this new interesting part of the business that I had to figure out how to monetize. So fast forward I did a couple of deals and instead of you know taking a piece of equity like you know because at the end of the day my agency wasn't it wasn't in that way shape or form it wasn't figured out that we could like bring equity into the business like where does that go? that wouldn't go to me, that would go to this shareholder base. It would then mean nothing to anybody. So I was like, do you know what? A flat fee. And so I did a bunch of deals with a bunch of talents and I'd say, you're going to pay me a couple hundred,000. I'm going to work out for X to take 10% of your company. And I did three that were very, very successful. Then what happened is I kind of sat back and I was like, "Wow, it's so interesting." And I remember this company reporting some just reporting some numbers and I was like I cannot believe that they've gone from there to there. And in my head I made a direct correlation between the talent that had been brought into that company. It was Fel Williams at the time and I was like wow because Farel did this thing the value of the company jumped like this. I got my little couple of hundred grand and wasn't incentivized and you know by any of the value that was created and therefore you know I was like god I'm really losing here. Maybe I should do one of these for myself. Maybe I should create a company and bring a talent into that company and give them a piece of equity in order to accelerate the business. That was the start of Good American. That was the initial thought because I wasn't getting paid what I needed to from my clients. So I was like well who's going to who's going to pay me correctly? no one. So, I'll create it myself. At that time, Yenz and Eric had started Frame, which is an incredibly successful denim company. And so, I had kind of thought in my head that between, you know, I had clients like Gar and Calvin Klein and I've worked with Topshop for a long time, very denimheavy. Yens had um frame. And so, I
was like, I know something about denim. Like, that's a category I can do. No, what I knew was denim marketing. I had no idea about how to make a product. And then fast forward, I sit down, I sit at a dinner and next to some guy who had invested heavily in a big plus-size uh retailer in America. And he said to me, "Emma, this space is exploding." And he was telling me all about it. And I looked on my phone, I looked at the retailer, and I was like, "That's gross. Nobody wants to dress in those clothes. That product is horrible." And then everything just came together. I was like, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to create a denim company. I'm going to make all of the sizes all the time and I'm going to make everyone look hot. Buster end off." That was it. I was like, "Ding, ding, ding." And it just came together and I was like, "Oh, and you know what I know how to do? I know how to book talent and bring them into the brand and converge all of those things and it's going to be explosive." And so the idea was kind of set in my head. And at that point, I'd had the conversation with Chris who had said, you know, we're looking for these type of partnerships now. And so I just went back to her and I was like, I have an idea and I'd really love it if I could pitch your daughter. The rest is history. You pitched her? I pitched her. You pitched Chloe? Mhm. What did Chloe say? I don't remember the exact words. And you know, I never like to It's so interesting. We have a great working relationship, the family and I, because I don't speak on their behalf, you know, and I'm very careful not to speak on their behalf. And it feels really unfair because what they are so unbelievably famous that anything that you say becomes news. So I prefer never to talk about what she said. What I remember is the end result is that she said yes and you know we're in business together eight years later. What was the process of making Good America a good company in terms of you have that initial hypothesis when you're sat at that dinner. You think, okay, this is what it's going to be. It tends to be the case that almost everyone's initial hypothesis is like a little bit wrong. Yeah. At least in part. No, it's so interesting actually. That's the that's the thing that we got right. I think
that what we understood intrinsically is that there was this huge subset of customers that were left out of the fashion conversation. if you're above a size 12 that there was almost nothing cute in the market for you. And what we didn't do was create any separation. We just like we're going to make 19 sizes of clothes. And what happens traditionally in most retailers is that you've got one set of sizes and then you go up to floor five and there's this like horrible little subsection and you've got bit of, you know, the assortment for petite and a bit of the assortment for plus-siz women and it's completely not reflective of what's downstairs for everybody else. And so we were like, do you know what? We're just going to connect all of those things. We're just going to make one product. We'll make it in 19 sizes and whatever we do, we'll let the customers choose. So, if we're making a dress with a giant slit up the side of it, we're not going to moderate it because we think that a girl at a certain size doesn't want the slit as high, cuz you know what? We bet she does. If we make a teeny tiny fluorescent pink bikini, we're going to make it in every size and we'll let the decision be down to the woman. And it turns out we were 100% right with our instinct because these girls weren't buying or because they didn't want to buy it. They weren't buying because it wasn't available anywhere. And so our instinct to just like make the stuff and put it out there and see who comes was the right thing to do. What part of the strategy and the games you played in 201 18? 18 could not be replicated now. That was so important back then because the the game is changed so many the game has so changed. you know, the arbitrage that existed in social media then, like how you could pay to acquire a customer is almost entirely gone. And so, when I think about how we could work with Facebook and how we could work with Instagram, how powerful those followings were back then, you can't compare it to now. And so, you could acquire a customer very cheaply. You could um you know, I think that the the algorithms worked completely differently. Therefore, the cohorts in your business behave completely differently. And if I think about it, we had a three-year
golden period of runway. The good thing is I think we knew and I always talk about the beauty of my board members at that time going back to people like Andrew Rosen and John Howard who were the total opposite to everybody else on my board that was like, Emma, you need to just double down, acquire as many customers as possible. don't worry about profitability. Just spend, spend, spend. And they were like, absolutely do not do that. You need a profitable business that works when this is over. And so I just was like, I'm going to do what these guys are telling me. They have a lot of experience. They have a lot of successful businesses. They've been doing it for a lot longer. And so I think that while we, you know, created a foundation for the business that was really important, that was rooted in being digitally native, we never we never rested on that being the only way that we could meet customers. We were immediately saying, "We've got to open our own stores. We've got to create a wholesale footprint." And when the tide turned, which it inevitably did, and that really happened, you know, COVID kind of gave you an acceleration, but then the falloff was pretty quick. we had this buffer of an incredible business that allowed us to stay the course. So if one is, you know, 2025 and they're trying to deploy a strategy to build any kind of brand um and they're thinking about the channels. If we think about uh B2C companies, so things like Good American or it could be, I don't know, an energy drink or whatever. What what kind of strategy are you thinking about now to acquire customers as being some of the most interesting but maybe unobvious? Yeah, I really am blown away by what happens when you meet customers in real life, you know, and I think that some of the more experiential things that we've done that stay with people, you know, postcoid people want to be together and they want to be in person and they want experience and they want memories and they want things that last and they want physicality and and what's tangible. And so whatever you can do that brings those type of experiences like in real life experience is always going to be out anything that is like more digitally native. And so a good example of that is we just opened a store on Sunset for
Skiims and we connected the store opening with this incredible diner next door that's like a 24-hour kind of like Hollywood staple diner. There were cues around the block. Every single slot for in the entirety of the six days, and it's 24 hours, was booked within five minutes. And this is to get pancakes and, you know, chicken tenders and like a root beer float. And what was so interesting to me is I took my kids and it was so cute. You know, it's like a 50s diner with a juke box and we skimified the whole thing. It looked amazing. My three-year-old two days later said, "I want to go back to the cafe." And I was I was like, "You're English? That's so cool." um you want to go to the diner. She's like, "Yeah, I want to get the thing with the cherry on the top." And I was like, "Wow." Like in a three years, three-year-old's head that even like she had an impression of like that being like a special moment and something that stuck in her mind. And I was like that those type of things for me are just way more valuable. Now look, if you're starting a business, it's really hard to do experiential in real life things like that. I think the point is like getting in front of customers like getting to them and and that physicality of being in front of them and whether that is if you're starting a new drink like being in the supermarket being in front of like the point of purchase like that is really important to tell your story and have some physicality around what you're doing. Are you seeing this idea of community becoming more and more important for building brands? Because you know a couple of years ago it was all like just throw some Facebook ads at them or get some influencers to tell them about it. Now we're seeing this transition towards like run clubs and yoga thing with the brand present and yeah I think it's I definitely think it's community um and I you know when I think about what that means um for our businesses you know often times it's really about like owning that customer experience you know it's like if you if you know for example Skiims has an app which is like an incredible place for customers to experience the brand and I think there's like a lot again it's like there's high low ways. There's very very few brands
that can be successful in an app, right? You've got to really have so much brand affinity and so much love to that brand that people will come get off of whatever they're doing and like click and be in your app. So, I think that's certainly not for everybody. I don't think that would work for a lot of the brands that I'm involved in. But the sense of like standing for something, having some kind of purpose, galvanizing people around something that isn't just about your product is is probably the way to go, I think. And and you know, Good American has been so successful because it always stood for something. At the end of the day, we were selling blue jeans and white t-shirts, but people understand why they come to that brand. They understand that there's a purpose, but you also have to evolve that purpose continuously. And when I think about where we started eight years ago and where we are in the middle somewhere we became BC Corp certified and that was another like real push for the company it was very very very heavy lifting but that was something that for our staff became so important to them you know denim is a tough business to be in it's a very pollutive business I have a lot of really young people a lot of young mothers that work at the company and they wanted to know that they worked in a place that cared about the world that they live And so it really was something that was an undertaking by that company to say we all feel that we could do so much better. And I think that the underlying values of that company are about it being about our customers and the people that work for work there and whatever is true to them being the most important thing. And so that has really evolved over time. How old are you here in this photo? I must be well. Okay. So if Katie is she looks like I must be 16. 16. 15. No. 15. 15. Oh yeah. Yeah. A if you were to speak to this Emma and this Emma was keen to start a business and she came to you and said, "What are the like first principles of business? What are the the the three most important things in being successful in business that you've learned in your decades now of wisdom and experience? What what would you take to say to her?" A bless her. Well, I'd say I love your curly hair first of all. Um, it's not a
bad place to start actually because I would say that it's so important to be true to yourself in whatever you do. And, you know, I think that I have an incredible gut instinct and I have very strong feelings that guide the decisions that I make and that has really led me so well. So, I'd be like have conviction about what it is that you feel deeply and go and go with that. But by the same token, I'd say know what you don't know because there's a lot of places where I'm weak. And one of my greatest strengths and a superpower of mine has been know what you don't know and hire people into the kind of gaps and the holes that you have in your own knowledge. That's been really important for me. And it's I I feel like I'm so privileged that I've worked with people in one company and been able to bring them into another company and another and I start almost a lot of things with like a similar group of people and I love that because they fill in for where I'm not so good. Um, and that's been really key. And then despite everything you've been told, you're going to have to take some risks. And I think that everything that this kid knew was like don't be risky. Don't take any risks. Like figure everything out and be really safe. And what I've learned is that nothing is going to come easy. And I think that when I moved here, I moved to America with a 2-year-old and a newborn baby. And I had no friends here, not like real friends. And it was a really scary move because you move away from you know you forget when you move country you move from all senses of what is familiar to you and that's very it's very difficult in any stage of your life but there's a special vulnerability that comes along with having a new baby and having a new venture that you don't really understand how to run at the time and so I would say like learning to take risks has probably been the best thing that I've done. How do you feel about her? Oh, you know, I think she's so cute and so lovely. You know, I don't like I feel like that's, you know, I still look exactly the same, don't I? Yeah, you do. You know, like I feel like this person was like dying, like dying to dying to just do something differently and dying to escape her
circumstances. Some of the skills that I think you have that are unappreciated. One of them is the ability to articulate an idea and some people call this like sales. How critical do you think it is for for women, for men, for everybody to cultivate that particular skill and how did how did you cultivate it? Oh, I I think it's one of the most important things. You know, when I think about who I am investing in, when I think about what businesses to support, I don't care if a founder has a lot of missing pieces, but if you can't sell, you ain't getting my money. Like, no way. Like, it's just no way. You can't you can't outsource that stuff. You either have an ability to convince somebody of what you're doing and sell your idea uniquely or you don't. And I've never invested in any founders that didn't have that as a skill that couldn't bring me on a journey and tell me their story and convince me that this was something that the world needed. How do you sell? So, if you were selling something to me, what what are the core what would you be thinking about as you're preparing that pitch and putting it together? Oh, you'll see. You're just so much more thoughtful than I am. I would just I would be so you know like my whole thing is like I have to be passionate about the thing that I'm doing. I have to like see the need. I have to figure out the like what am I solving for and then I go in on that. I'm like, you know, I'm I'm painting the picture of like where the problem sits and then I'm showing you how I've uniquely come up with the solution. And then I'm, you know, I I'm like old school, right? It's like I create a value proposition. And I'm all about like the perfect place for pricing and then it's like I'm going to get it to you in a a unique way. But I don't think it's like so complicated. I'm I'm I'm like a born saleserson. That's just who I am. When you reference this, you touch your chest a lot. Oh, do I? No, no, but it's interesting to me. That's what I'm saying. So intuition, feeling. Yeah. And I do get that from you that I think you've cultivated the trust with your intuition which obviously took some time because I remember the comment Yen's made to you said you're acting like an employee. You need to like it almost sounded like trust yourself a bit
more so you can call the shots. Is that something we cultivate? And and how how do we know whether to trust our intuition? Because so many people like their intuition is trying to say something to them and maybe they like gaslight themselves and tell themselves or other people tell them to to sort of dim down that internal voice. How have you learned to get that conviction to act upon feeling? How have I learned to act upon feeling? Well, I guess there's an element of doing it and turning out to be right. But I think that you've got to know the difference between having intuition and a gut feeling and then just sort of general excitement and being able to separate those things cuz I get really excited about things, right? And I'll be like, "Oh my god, that's amazing." And it's so interesting because when you sit on a show like, you know, Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, like you really need to learn like very quickly to separate those feelings. And so that that helped me a little bit. But I think that that is the like is it coming from a place that kind of hits you in your heart spot or are you just feeling like some sense of excitement? And that that is two very different things for me. Like are you are you moving me emotionally or am I just like oh that feels like money over there. It's like that looks like it's going to chop up into some you know nice dividends at some point. That's that's not how I make decisions. It's like I never I never go that way with that sort of general excitement of something to that's going to be like more financially exciting for me. They never work out. Have you thought much about as you look back through your career and now you have the clarity of hindsight how important the size of one's dreams are because I imagine that if you spoke to that Emma now you'd be like like listen go [ __ ] hell like dream [ __ ] big like it's going to you know and I I was I think it was when I heard about how we work took investment in the back of a car from Mash what's his name son something from Soft Bank the big like billionaire investor and he gave the we work founder a billion dollar check and said you know the only problem with you is you don't dream big enough. He just given him a billion dollars and he was
criticizing him for not asking for more. And as I reflect back through my career I go Jesus Christ like so many moments I like undersold myself because I just like couldn't see it. I didn't have the friends. Yeah. What happened in the end of that story right Steven? Yeah yeah but still like listen this guy walked away with a billion dollars even he did he did all right. He did all right but you know it's like I'm I'm not investing in his next thing a year. He's just raised 250 million. I saw it. I saw it. I I can't believe people are just walking back into that. But there you go. The the thing that put in my mind was actually that you know that whole adage of like aim for the cloud like aim for the stars and you land on the clouds, whatever. I was like there's truth to this idea of just like aiming higher. Yeah. I think there is some truth to it. I mean, look, I I don't know that I even had an idea of how high high was, you know, and I think that it's perspective and your environment that gives you an idea of like what is high, you know? I often talk about this idea, you you can't be what you don't see. And for me, I don't think that I had a lot of role models and being in England at that time, it just wasn't like who was there like do you know what I mean? Like I don't remember anybody being particularly like you know I I I kind of honed in on Oprah because she was on the TV when I would come home from school and I was like that is aspirational. There's a black woman who reads all these books that has these crazy ideas around gratitude and at the time she you know she was talking a lot about um manifesting and it wasn't mindfulness meditation right but that then kind of moved in to mindfulness but the exposure to those ideas to me at that time it felt fresh and new and I was like I am going to watch Oprah and I'm going to be like Oprah in my way of thinking not that I wanted to be on TV but it's like that's the type of level of thought I wanted I wanted to be thoughtful and articular and and and move like Oprah because I thought she'd moved good. So when it comes to like your dreams and your ambitions for me I think that they've maybe aside from the visualization side of things where I like drew this beautiful home for me
they've always been a little bit more bite-sized. It's been like let's get out of this place, get out of plasau, then let's like get a job and surround yourself with the right people and then like and you know it's all been very kind of like much more incremental and I always think about this idea of how I've leveraged everything that I've had into the next thing and I'm pretty good at doing that. I'm I have grand plans that I started writing when I was 30, but they're much more theoretical about how I want to feel and how I want to be spending my time as opposed to like what will I be doing at that moment. One of the things you said over and over again as well when talking about building business is hiring and how important that is to you. Um it's taken me a long time, longer than I would have liked to realize the importance of hiring. In my first business, I think it was an afterthought. I thought most important things are if I work seven days a week and I don't leave this office and I have good ideas, we'll be good. Yeah. Not so much. Not scalable. Yeah. And you learn the hard way. You learn the hard way because you start hiring your friends and you go off vibes, etc. So the hiring advice that you needed at the start of your career that would have helped you to make less mistakes. What is that advice? The hiring advice was learn to fire. Oh, really? Well, that's what you know because I think that what happens in businesses is the people that get you to 10 million are not the people that get you to 100 million. The people get you to 100 million are not the people get you to 500 and then to a billion. And so what happens is as a founder you get so um you know you know what it's like like that startup vibe, those early people, the work that they do and the times you have together that all becomes like so much part of your success story, right? And if you hold on to that for too long, you kind of miss what is next and you miss that ability to be able to pivot and to level up. And so I think that the mistakes that I made early on were not moving people out of the business quickly enough. And so because because I just didn't want to fire them. I was so lo cuz I have loyalty and I'm like such a nice girl and I was like I you just needed to go and I didn't want to I didn't want to say that. And what
was the harm that they did by staying or by you and Oh, we it restricted my growth. it restricted my ability to be able to move up and level up and have better clients. And you know, you you don't know what you don't know until it's like right in front of you. And so I needed to keep a as the as the business grew, you need to keep constantly upleveling your people. And so that's what I that's what I missed. So if I could bring that old Emory in that didn't want to fire and I sat her here, what would you say to her? Because I asked this because I know cuz kids come up to me all the time saying this that there are so many people who can relate who can relate. Can relate. Oh, no doubt. You know, people pleasing. We're a family. Yeah. No, we're not a family. We're not a family. And that's the first thing. It's like I think everybody really needs to understand like why they are there. And this is about leadership style, right? Like are you clear in what you're all there to do? Because it's like I am not building a family. I am here to run an organization. That organization is here to create a profit. And we all have to be very very clear about our goals and how we're getting there. And I think that in the past what happens and especially when you have successful companies, success masks a lot of problems in a business, right? Like and when you get successful, you've got to allow yourself and your team to be equally critical. Even when everything's going well and even if the bottom line's well, there'll still be dysfunction within that organization and you can't let the success masked what that dysfunction is, you've got to get into it. And actually, it's even more important when you are successful that you deal with those things because otherwise the problems get bigger and bigger as the company gets bigger and bigger and you end up with a problem that you could have stamped out much earlier on that you then didn't. So, it's just a really key thing and it's a muscle. It's like anything you get better at this like all the time. I've become better and better at spotting who are the right people and inevitably actually I spend more and more of my time bringing the right people into the company. I reckon we were talking about
this the other day. I think it's like 20 maybe even 25% of my time is spent on talent and and and cultivating like the right people to come into the company. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. Oh my god. But that's the difference between good and great. 100% agree that who you bring in you know when we talk about culture in a company culture is like who you hire who you fire and who gets promoted now that is my job that's my decisions to make within the organization and so I really think about how how much more thoughtful can I be about those decisions and the majority of that is put in like who I hire. So on that point then how does one get truly exceptional people to come and join them? And I I say this because you know in the last 5 years I've become increasingly obsessed with hiring. It's like my your team will tell you I feel like I'm the head of recruitment. I built the process sign off everybody that joins every company obsessing about it. Building tools myself in my bedroom to make our like the screening process that I talked about built it myself. It's my absolute obsession because I now have the clarity of hindsight where I go, "Oh my god, my net worth and my outcomes can be correlated to like 10 exceptional people that I brought into my ecosystem 10 years ago and the downstream impact of them hiring more exceptional people, etc." So this So, but me and you're in a different place now. And if you go back to when you first started your agency all those years ago, you didn't have the same leverage. Oh, no way. So if you're a startup founder now and they agree with this principle that hiring is so critical, a players really matter, how do they go about like how would you go about now getting exceptional people to come and join Emma's company? Yeah. Well, Stephen, that's the reason that you've got to be a great salesperson otherwise I'm not going to invest in you. But it comes back down to that, right? Because in the beginning, you've got to sell a dream, a vision. You might be willing to give someone some equity, but chances are that equity is worth zilch in the beginning. So, you've got to be that person that can say, "Here's where we're going. We're going to paint a vision, but you got to have the strategic chops
to say, you know, anybody good is going to understand that a founder alone goes nowhere, right?" So, it's like what am I coming into? Like, if it's the founder and it's like very little, then what's the vision that I'm buying into and what's the strategy to get there? So, it comes back down to this like idea of like, can you sell a vision? Can you sell the strategy these people are going to come into and actually work towards? And I think that that is probably like the thing that I'm good at after. I've had a pretty clear idea about what I'm doing. And I can do that because I don't do very much. Everybody always says to me, "How do you do so much?" It's like, "I don't do very much. What I do is obsessed over the customer. I obsess over a set of products and then I get them to them really quickly. That's it. Like that's all I do. And so it's not really that much that I do. And I think that it's like so so so important for you to be able to do very very very few things really really well. I think that's it really goes against what a lot of startup founders think they have to be doing because they think they have to be good at everything. No. No. I think I I honestly think it's the opposite. And I think that if you start to tell yourself that it's a slippery slope because no one is good at everything, right? You've got to find people that have expertise that can do things that you can't do. And that can be really difficult in the beginning, but again, it's like you have to have it's like so much of it is about curiosity, asking as many questions as you can so you can start to figure out who is going to be the best person to solve that problem. in the beginning like I just feel like I had no idea how so many parts of my business worked but it's like I would make sure that I would be the person to ask enough questions to get to the point where I could hire somebody that would be competent to do that role right so it's like you train yourself and you you train these muscles that get you better at hiring and you're going to make some mistakes like I I never feel like we spend enough time talking about failure about the mistakes I've made so many mistakes. I moved a whole bunch of people here to LA and shut the office down 18 months later cuz I was I thought I had something that I just didn't have.
I thought that the reputation I'd built in London would translate to LA. What I didn't understand is LA is a community and I wasn't part of it. You know, it was like a closed door. I got here and I was like, "What?" like I like just frozen frozen out completely like like that. Yeah. Yeah. They're not like us like this is it. So you know and it really was and so I think that you know learning like not just understanding okay I had this thing it went wrong but it's like really going deep and being like where and how did I fail and how do I consistently get better at that and staffing is one of those things that you just get better and better and better at it the more you do it. I'm really obsessed about this idea of like truly exceptional people and truly exceptional people. Yeah. Like truly exceptional people. I was I was listening to something Steve Jobs was saying a couple of weeks ago. I'll throw it up on the screen for anybody. I've built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players. And I found something. I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go to through the incredible work to find, you know, five of these A players, they really like working with each other because they they've never had a chance to do that before and they don't want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-p policing and they only want to hire more A players and so you build up these pockets of A players and it propagates. Have you found that to be the case? And also I want to address another point here which is the insecurity of an early stage founder who looks up and sees someone that's really experienced and then they have that sort of self-doubt and go how the [ __ ] am I going to manage them? Mhm. You know what at the risk of disagreeing with anybody so prolific and amazing. I think as someone who has been able to move people between organizations or between companies sometimes it can be the company that can make people great. You can have a truly exceptional person in a kind of dysfunctional company and then they don't do as well, right? Like you can bring in somebody not quite exceptional into an exceptional culture and company and the organization makes them great,
makes them look great or makes them No, makes them great. Because what people tend to do is level up, right? whether you you you end up the average of the people that you surround yourself most. And I have in some cases bought people in, you know, I'd be like a B minus and they've turned into an A+. And I the more I think about this, Stephen, the more I think that's happened on a number of occasions and when the organization is exceptional and when the people there are doing exceptional work, they can actually level up the people. Now, they have to be somebody that wants to level up for sure, but I've definitely seen it work that way. One of the things I think a lot about, it's kind of dovetales into this a little bit because I was referencing how we can sometimes be our own worst enemies and doubt ourselves away from like finding the truly exceptional person. So, we end up hiring our friends is the idea of I love this idea that you've hired friends. Who are these friends that you're hiring? Did you hire a bunch of friends? It's a terrible bloody idea. 18 says me who works with my husband. I was 18 and I I um they weren't actually friends but they weren't they weren't qualified. I just met them at like I met one guy at a Prada store and I was like you can be my account manager and then I met some guy at like a rap battle and I was like you should be my marketing director and he this is great between Prada and the rap battle I get it I can see these things weren't happening no rigor in deciding who No but that's what it comes down to like rigor right it's like you again you've developed systems and processes that have helped you get to where you are and it's like now I have a giant organization and you know a head of people that that spend their life like not just again bringing people into the organization, but then like making them great once they get there. Like I had no such thing. I don't even think I knew where the HR office was when I was in in employment. I mean like who are they? Where are they? Some I don't know girl called Joe that sits in accounts. I don't know where she was. Um but the I say that because we're in a different time now where there is such an ability for us to be more thoughtful about who we're bringing in. And so I think anyone
who's really smart and any founder that's really smart is going to use all the tools. All you need to do is know that it's a really important thing that you will do. Who those first three, five, 10 people that you bring into your organization will be the difference between good and great. And so being slow and thoughtful and purposeful and using everything at your disposal to make those decisions is probably the the best time that a founder can spend outside of developing product or whatever the end product is. How do you think about prejudice, Emma? I I mean what I really mean here is being being counted out before you walk in the room. So people hear that you're it might be a woman or something else and you feel that they're not taking you seriously. Has that happened in your career? Um, as a black person, as a woman, as anything that puts you in the minority, as it relates to the accomplishments you've made? Actually, you know, I'm going to give you a bit more context as to why I ask. Yeah. Go on. Frame. Is because one of my fears, Yeah. is with some people, they count themselves out before they walk in the room because prejudice is real. So, they limit themselves. And there's a really great study they did many, many years ago where they got a group of black people, I believe it was on a vocabulary test, just to talk about their race before they did the vocabulary test. And if they got them to talk about their race before, their performance dropped. If they didn't get the group to talk about their race before in a different study, performance was the same. They did the same with women. They got them to um identify their gender before doing a maths test. because there's a stereotype around mass or at least there was at the time in women. Women on that test would perform worse if they'd talked about their gender right before they did the test. But importantly, if they didn't, the results were the same as everybody else. So stereotype threat is a real thing. And the UN unpopular conversation is there could be ways that we're holding ourselves back before we even walk into the room because of that stereotype threat. Mhm. It could be age, it could be race, it could be gender, it could be anything else. It could be a a disability. And I just wonder how you
think about like, you know, that I mean, look, it's undoubtable that that is real for so many people in their lives and the way they think about themselves. I think that any thoughtful organization has and certainly in more recent times, if we think about what's happened in the last 5 years, anybody that didn't look at their company hiring process and and and beyond the hiring process, look around their business and see is it a true reflection of our customer base, of society, of what we're trying to achieve and who we want to be, you know, making decisions. We're talking about foolish companies here. I feel like any anybody and everybody did that. Look, the the great thing the great thing about prejudice is you very rarely know if it actually happened to you. Nobody nobody likes to point out. They're like, "Listen, you didn't get this thing because actually I'm prejudiced against you." I'm sure it has happened. It's never something that for me, knowing how I'm hardwired, I would have let get to me in any way, shape, or form. you know, I'd get in a room and would never feel any such like like held back by my educa education, held back by my accent or anything like that or being a black woman. In fact, to the contrary, to me, I always felt like it was a bit of an advantage. There was only one of me. I used to walk into these offices and work experience and everybody would always single me out because I was the only one that kind of looked like she might have a different opinion. and everyone came from the same kind of, you know, like private school stock and there I was with the accent, with the big curly hair, black girl sitting in the corner and inevitably they'd be like, "What do you think?" So, you know, it just played out differently for me and and therefore my experiences kind of are a reflection of that. That's what I wanted to know. I wanted to understand that because it's it's um it's something that I really want people to realize which is like prejudice. Yes, it's real as you said but it doesn't have to be your problem. It can remain theirs. Yeah. And I really worry that people will internalize other people's prejudice and then limit themselves. Yeah. And I think this is a very different Listen, you and
I speak as two British people, right? I've lived here now for eight years. It ain't the same here in America. How do you mean? Well, the the way people relate to race is extremely different here. And if I'd have been born in America, maybe I'd have had a different feeling about how the color of my skin impacted my life on a daily basis because it's very very very different here and very much more prolific and a point of everyday uh not just conversation but everyday prejudice comes up and manifests itself in a very very different way here. uh in with negative connotations. And so I thank God that I was raised in London and I I had a very very different way of associate like how I felt about myself. I had a very very different way of um the way in which I was raised and how I experienced like race as a kid. How you felt about yourself seems to be more internal than external in that regard. And that brings me to my next question, which is just about how do we not give so many [ __ ] because it's hard to live and it's hard to strive and it's hard to take risk if we're imprisoned by the amount of [ __ ] that we we get. Yeah. This is I feel like this is like my specialtity, you know? It's really interesting because so much of that is just like in us, right? It's like hardwired who we are and how many [ __ ] we give. And I just so happen to be the type of person that has such sort of self asssurance and such conviction that I don't care or I just have I have such high it's not that I don't care. I just have such a high value on how much I care about what I think that maybe what other people think just kind of like pales into insignificance for me. That that that's the honest truth. And so I just have very very high selfworth. I've heard you talk before about how as well we kind of misunderstand how much people actually give a [ __ ] about us. I think about that all the time because it's just one of those things that we just imagine that people spend a lot of time crafting texts to us that you would like sit and be like what did they mean by that? You know like I it just was sent. Do you know what I Like I didn't even think about the words and now you
know whether I was using caps or the wrong emojis or like whatever it is. And I do think that there is this thing that we imagine because we're at the center of our universe that we're at the center of everybody else's. And it's just not the truth. Nobody's watching you. Like I think about it all the time. Nobody wakes up and thinks about me as much as I do. So it can feel like we just got to relax. Well, maybe it feels like it for you, but I just don't think that anybody's that interested. It doesn't feel like it for me. But when you're in the I think humans like from an evolutionary perspective, we're like our brain is built to deal with like 20 tribes people. Yeah. Yeah. So we we interpret we we we we have a probably hardwired to our fault of being interpreting everything as coming from a member of the tribe. Yeah. Whereas in reality it could be like Dave and Swindon with like an egg emoji who's telling you that those genes suck suck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Listen. And David Swindon is like allowed to have his egg emoji. I just don't think his egg emoji needs to like ruin my day. I'm like, poor [ __ ] Like, what's he doing? How embarrassing. Bad skin. I've had it. And I'm sure many of you listening have had it, too. Or maybe you have it right now. I know how draining it can be, especially if you're in a job where you're presenting often like I am. So, let me tell you about something that's helped both my partner and me and my sister, which is red light therapy. I only got into this a couple of years ago, but I wish I'd known a little bit sooner. I've been using our show sponsors Boncharg's infrared sauna blanket for a while now, but I just got hold of their red light therapy mask as well. Red light has been proven to have so many benefits for the body. Like any area of your skin that's exposed will see a reduction in scarring, wrinkles, and even blemishes. It also helps with complexion. It boosts collagen, and it does that by targeting the upper layers of your skin. And Boncharge ships worldwide with easy returns and a year-long warranty on all of their products. So, if you'd like to try it yourself, head over to bondcharge.com/diary and use code diary for 25% off any product sitewide. Just
make sure you order through this link, bondcharge.com/diary with code diary. One of the um the next seasons of life I find myself moving towards quickly is parenthood. M when did you start trying and what was your fertility journey like? I love that you asked this and I was I'm very surprised that you are. Um I had the most easy, unbelievable, brilliant fertility journey with my first two and then probably the saddest, most disappointing, hardest time in my life with the second two. And so it really was a tale of two halves because I have an 11 and an 8-year-old and you know without too much information I like literally you know came off the pill and puff I was pregnant which was amazing. 31 I had gray when Yeah. So 30 30 years old, you know, was had had got married. Actually had zero ambition to ever have kids ever. And then it was like one of those fairy tale things where I literally walked down the aisle and was like, "Oh my god, I just can't wait to have a baby." What is going on here? No, I don't know who that girl was. Um, so I got pregnant uh very easy with my first child. Couple of years later, had my second child. You know, life happens. Moved to the US. Oh, everything's like, you know, going fantastic. I decide baby number three. Come off the pill again. And I'm like, waiting. I'm waiting again. And it doesn't happen. And so I'm like, honey, you need to go and get yourself checked. Okay. You know, so we do the things that you do when you don't get pregnant so easily. And there was just no explanation for my infertility. And so I went through um a few rounds of IVF. And for me, you know, what age is this? Sorry, just so I am at this point, how old am I now? I'm 42. The kids are three f So 38. You're 38. I'm 38. So I'm, you know, I'm not like quite yet a geriatric pregnancy as they like to call it in this country when a woman over the age of, you know, 40 has a baby. But I'm I'm skimming, right? I'm on the edge of where f fertility starts to um become, you know, more of an issue. And anyway, for me it was devastating because I really really had something and and I'm sure so many women will tell you this. Once you've made up your mind that you're having another baby, that was it
for me. Then it was just like, well, how is this going to happen? And I was so lucky in some ways that I was here in, you know, I lived in Beverly Hills at the time. Access to the best doctors was like so so easy. And so I went on what would become a journey through IVF. And it was one of the hardest, most soul destroying times of my life. I couldn't think about anything else. You know, you could be like, "Emma, what do you want for dinner tonight?" I'd be like, "A baby." You know, like I just I just was single track like the all I could think about was I need this. I need to be pregnant. Why soul destroying? You know, it was so destroying because I went through multiple rounds of IVF and every single time for me actually it did work out but then I lost a baby three times and it was really it was just awful you know and for me it happened at 9 weeks 11 weeks and 16 weeks and so you know at that point 16 weeks you you're about to tell people you are you know you think you're past the sort of danger zone so to speak something in my heart told me that it wasn't going to work out for me like I I actually think I knew deep down, but you're doing all the things. You know, I'm having the acupuncture and the doctors all feel great about it. And of course, you know, you have IVF and then it's successful. You're like, great, now I'm pregnant. I'm having a baby. Um, and so that that loss was just an it was so hard to deal with. And again, you know, it was a very isolating time because it was like like co I was on my like driving in a, you know, in gloves and a hazmat suit, you You know, it was like the time where we really didn't know and you know, and the roads were empty and it was tough. You know, the police would pull you over and I'd be like, I'm going to the IVF clinic, which was like one of the few things that you were allowed to be on the road and driving around for. So, it was just very, very difficult. Um, but you know, I had a happy ending. And so for me, my journey ended in something that I never thought would be uh a way that I would go, but I ended up deciding that I would have a surrogate. And I met an incredible woman. And she carried my twins, which was the like single biggest thing that anyone can ever do. You're like, "What? Like this is so
crazy." Um, and it was amazing. I had like such a profound, incredible pregnancy with this amazing, wonderful woman who beyond what our contractual commitment was, you know, because you hear horror stories like she asked me for nothing. It was a beautiful, amazing partnership and my twins were born via surrogacy and that was that complicated emotions. No. And you know, I have to tell you, Stephen, I'd love to like and maybe I approached it more like a bit of a like I was very transactional about it. Not the surrogacy in the moment before of beyond beyond beyond complicated emotions because you are, you know, I've had pregnancy loss before before I decided to have children. Uh, you know, I've had a complicated, as so many women have, complicated fertility journey. It was emotions that were, I would say, too hard to bear. And for somebody who's used to being able to get her way and work towards things being as they should be, and to me it's like the amount of effort I put in directly correlates to the result. And there was no such thing in this. You could have all the shots and all the acupuncture and do everything that you're supposed to do, not work out too much, don't go in a sauna, you know, like be an angel, eat all of the right things, and still I couldn't, you know, hold on to the pregnancy. So to me it was just something that I couldn't I couldn't bear in that moment. Are there any like are there decisions that you wish you'd made or is there something you'd wish you'd known? Because we don't talk about this enough so people end up going through this themselves. You you know what I'll tell you I wish I'd have spoken about it more with all of my friends that had gone through it. And I will tell you this story. I was a couple of summers ago. You know, I'm often the person people confide in. And I happened to be, I won't say where. I was in this place. I'm very confined, like on a boat. And all of the women were in some type of fertility thing. Like they had different things going on. And I looked around and I knew I was the only one of all five of us that knew everybody's thing. And I was like, we could be having such a good conversation now, right? like it would be so rich and so useful because again like there was
somebody that had like had kids by by IVF. There was someone who had just come from somewhere. There was somebody that was in the middle of like diagnosing endometriosis and there was somebody who was pregnant but not telling everyone she was pregnant because it was IVF and she'd have all the problem. But anyway, like everybody had their own unique circumstances and I was like in a group of women where we discuss I won't even say what we discussed but we discuss every single thing that that is like the last taboo. It says something about your womanhood that it would that it would be such a deeply held secret and something that you just can't discuss is such a shame. And I'm not saying that that's what it is for all women and all groups of friends, but it's definitely um it's definitely something that people really really struggle with talking about. And certainly for me going down the surrogacy route, I really felt an element of I wouldn't say shame, but it was like Why could I was willing to do this myself? Like why couldn't I? Like you, you know, I should have just been able to do it. I was ready, you know, at 38 to like have to like go back on the workouts and, you know, like, you know, figure myself out again. And so I felt like I'd been robbed of of an opportunity to do something. And then, you know, coming out of it, I was like, "Wow, that was such a profound experience. I would never have had had all of these things not happened." And so in a weird way, I was just kind of grateful for the opportunity to have been, you know, to have been able to see how selfless like another human being could be. Were you aware of the biological clock in the way that people are now aware of it back then? Yeah, I I was. Although I have to tell you that there's nothing, you know, for most women, we spend all of our time thinking about how to not get pregnant. He's just like, you know, I just want to like not get pregnant forever until it's your moment that you want to get pregnant and then there's this second moment where it's like it's no longer your choice and the window's really really narrow. And so I I you know, again, I have hundreds of women in my office and I mentioned to you at the start of this conversation, you know, there was some fertility
seminar yesterday. I think that there's still so many myths around it. You know, there is no good time. You can freeze eggs, but it's not like freezing embryos. it's very different, right? And so the idea that the decision is all ours is just not realistic and that there is there is a window and it is narrow and it is something that you have to think about. And I think that there are a lot of women that know that they don't want children, that's fine. But if you do, it's really something that you ought to be more planful of because it's bloody difficult and it's not how you think. Thank you. Thank you for talking about that because there, as you say, there's not enough people that talk about it. And actually, had I not had the the access to information on doing this podcast and meeting these women who have been very open about it, I would have had no idea. And I would have probably found myself in a bit of a struggle because me and my partner weren't thinking about that. We're thinking about getting the back. We're thinking about building our businesses. And we're 32 now. Yeah. So, when I hear people like you say, "Listen, if this is something you want, then plan, make a plan." And I don't think many people listening actually have a plan for for children. They're going to they see it as the thing they'll get round to when they're ready. But this clock, man, it's like the clock is ticking. Work like that. I've got an idea. I think you should start a podcast. Steven, whatever you say, I will do. It's a great idea. Let's go. What should What should it be called? I think you should call it Aspire. I think you should launch it in May. Stephen, you're so incredibly smart and thoughtful. And I feel like if my podcast could be born here and be just half the podcast that you have, I think you can do it even better. I think you can I think you can level up. You This is what you said. You said people come and see something then they level up. So they level up. Why podcasting? So your podcast launches in May. It's called Aspire. Yeah. What are the what are you trying to achieve? What's the mission there? Yeah. You know, and it I'm so glad that you asked a question like that because for me it is a little bit of a mission and I think that the more success I've had and
I'm sure this is very similar to you and you you've mentioned it on a few occasions and actually I remember being out with you in Manchester. You remember when we had to like walk like from the studio to the bar where everyone was doing that thing and you know it's like inundated with people and questions and people just wanted like just get like this one thing that they're trying to figure out across the line and say like Stephen like how does how do I do this? And so that happens to me all the time wherever I go and I've made it a habit of mine in the morning on the way to the work to just like jump on the phone to someone for half an hour. I do it almost every day, four days out of five. And I'll speak to some founder and give them like 30 minutes of whatever it is that I can. And so the podcast was honestly from the beginning about figuring out like how can I scale mentorship? How can you get to this place where all of these people that want to ask me questions can actually get some answers from me? And you know the podcasting was not the first thing that came to my head. But the more I looked into it because I am a huge podcast listener. I listen to so many podcasts. But it's kind of interesting that for such a kind of broad space there is kind of such a narrow point of view in so many ways. There's so many men hosting podcasts. And when we start to think about business, it becomes even more male-dominated. And so in my head I was like, well, I just have a very different point of view. I have very different experience. I have a very different, you know, access. And what's been so interesting is all the people I called up to do a podcast, they'd never done a podcast before. Really? Yeah. Everyone that I was like, "Hey, would you come on?" They were like, "I've never done this." And I was like, "Well, that's interesting." And immediately, even just from that kind of casting point of view, I was like, "Oh, maybe I have a a distinct point of view that could be interesting here." But all I want to do is very very simply is take what I've learned and take the people that I know and have it be impactful because I feel like everyone aspires to something. Everybody wants to build the life of their dreams. And so I was really thinking about this as something that
maybe if I could facilitate conversations and tell people more about the journey that I've been on and be really thoughtful about what it takes, right? Because I just feel like again in like the female like media landscape, there's so much toxic positivity and I'm like babe, you're not going to be able to manifest your way there. like I'll tell you the truth if you want to listen and if you're willing to put the work in like all of these things could be, you know, applicable and, you know, you could have access. Um, and so that's what I want to do. I want to just like do things how I do them, be honest with people, bring in people that I know and be honest about my journey. And I'm I'm excited to do it. Like it's been I've done a couple of episodes and I'm like just having a chat. I think of all the things you've done in your life, I think the more and more that you find yourself in the public eye, um, and the more of the work that you do on your podcast, Aspire. Um, I think that is ultimately going to be the greatest part of your legacy. And I say that because there is nobody else, able, and capable of occupying that space that I can see. There is no one who comes from where you come from, who has been on the journey that you've been on both in the UK and in the US, that's climbed both mountains that is relatable even though that they're so high up the mountain, that is had to contend with some of the things you've contended with, which many women and men contend with, which is like parenthood and family, that is articulate, that is seasoned across a variety of different environments and spaces, that is also a black woman, there is nobody. And if you reflect on you as that young girl looking up at Oprah or me like looking up at Jamal Edwards, it was so important. Yeah. It was the it was the kernel of belief that stays in your mind that says if they can, there's no reason I can't. And I've said this to my team before a ton of times over the last couple of months about you. I'm like, there's no other Emma. So, she almost has a responsibility to that gap because you've done incredible things in your
life. You've done so much philanthropic work which I'll I'll put all in the description below um to help so many people. But it's not lost on me that like the older I've gotten, just seeing someone that you can that makes you realize that that brings down those like limiting beliefs that you have or that society has has passed to you could go on to create a 100,000 Emma and that you it's hard to think of a more like astonishing important legacy than than that. Like the 10 million Emma that you will create and so I'm so glad you're doing this because I've said to my team a time like there's not there's not another Emma. there's not someone else that could occupy that position. So, it's so important that you're successful in it and it's so important that you continue to do it. So, so thank you for that. That means so much. It's so true though. I say it all the time behind your back. I'm like, there's not another one. There's only Emma. So, she has to not has to cuz it's not it's not an obligation, but it's a responsibility. It's a responsibility. I see as a responsibility. It's one that I'm taking really seriously because I feel like there is um there is an amazing opportunity there. And if you take anything seriously and you apply yourself and you think about like who are you here to serve, you know, and I think about that every day. I told you it's like I'm obsessed with customers. I'll be obsessed with listeners. And at the end of the day, I just want to do something where it's like it's just about doing a good job. Right now, I'm obsessed with like what is the content that you put out? How do you have a conversation that's not currently being had? And I feel like there are such incredible people like yourself that are having beautiful conversations that are actually moving us forward in ways. You know, it's like I, you know, I text you when you have an amazing episode. I'm like, I love that episode. And I'm so proud that, you know, you could be an like black guy from England who's doing these things, who's at the top of the charts. And I I look at that and I think that's so important. And so for me, it's like it's interesting to think about how this could be important for a certain group of people right now. It's going to be important beyond what you'll ever see
or realize or understand or be able to measure. And hoping and we've and you know if you know that if that's 15year-old Emma there had seen this Emma what that would have meant to her. Yeah. You know what that would have meant quite a lot. Exactly. We have a closing tradition here Emma where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's been left is what about you is better or has vastly improved because of the person who loves you the most? Who loves you the most? Well, Yens loves me the most, doesn't he? More than more than my mom. More than my lovely mom. You know, I would say whether it was my mom or it was Yen's, you know, when you are when you're so loved, you know, and I feel like someone who is so loved, you know, my sisters love me, my kids love me, my mom really loves me, Yens loves me. You have like such capacity, right? And that's what I always feel, you know, when when I think about what it is that kind of like keeps me going and gets me up. I have such a huge capacity for more. I have such a like huge capacity to give, to put the work in, to receive, to make things better. And I honestly think that that is what's happened to me that I've like my ability has just grown so much and continues and my capacity just keeps growing. And it's a really interesting thing as you get older to see that like happen within you, you know, because you we always talk about like having insane energy in our 20s and then, you know, it's like I'm 42 now and I think I have more capacity for learning, for giving, for being, you know, open to new things than I've ever had in my life. And I think that that is because I'm really loved. And it's so interesting. I don't think it's about what I've achieved. I don't think it's about anything else. I think that I know I feel so safe and so secure and so seen that I can do anything because even the biggest mistakes like these people would they'll always love me like it's totally fine whatever I do. So it's like I would say that that's a beautiful thing. Emma, thank you so much. Thank you darling.
I'm a huge fan of yours in every way and um you're like a big sister to me and I really appreciate our relationship and long may it continue. Oh, I hope so. I'm so I'm so proud of you. I really am. I look at everything you're doing and I'm so happy that you're here in America about to take it over. Come on, babes. No pressure. This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribe to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so [Music] much. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music]