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When you are chasing a dream, you're going to be happy about a third at the time. I have lost and failed more time than I've succeeded. We don't talk about that. I felt like it was the end of my company and my career, but it wasn't.
It was just a failure.
One of America's richest self made women.
Fashion and business powerhouse, Emma Greed.
I spent such a huge part of my life being so crippled by THEA for so long that held me back.
It was rough.
Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on thisubscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing It means the world to me, the best selling authoring the most the number one healthy wellness podcast
and Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. You know that my goal is to introduce you to incredible thinkers, thought leaders, people who are making an impact and a difference in the world, rule breakers, people who
are changing the way we think, lead and live. And today's guest is someone I've wanted on for a long long time, so I'm very excited that I finally have her sitting opposite me. I'm talking about the one and only Emma Greed, CEO and co founder of Good American, the first fully inclusive fashion brand that celebrates all dimensions of female power. In October twenty sixteen, Emma good American, alongside Chloe Kardashian what started as the largest denim launch
in history. Good American is now an iconic inclusive fashion line of denim, ready to wear, swim shoes, and active wear. Emmo is also a founding partner and Chief product officer of Skims as solutions oriented brand creating the next generation of underwear, loungewear, and shapewhear you already knew that, and co founder of Safely, an accessible, premium home care brand
dedicated to creating high quality, plant based cleaning products. Emo is now recognized as one of America's richest self made women by Forbes and serves as chairwoman of the fifteen Percent Pledge and also as a board member of Baby the Baby. And for me, beyond all of this, I'm just happy to be sitting with a fellow brit in La and just so grateful, Emma, because I've been watching you, I've been following you. Your energy, whether it's a picture or a video, is so magnetic and so real, and
now I meet you in person. I'm like, it's amazing, Thank you, Thank you for being here.
Honestly, I could not be more happy to be here. A definitely because you're a fellow Britt. But I have been listening and watching and reading you for so long. This is like the thing that I've been most excited about for the longest time. So thank you for having the very happy It's a big like tick for me.
I'm like, yes, let's do it.
Oh you're the sweetest and I want you to know literally, my whole team was so excited you were coming today. Everyone is such major fans.
Didn't even imagine that. Even when you say it, I'm like, really, it's true.
Oh no, I want to go back to I remember that you and Chloe were doing a live years ago. Yes, And I literally just came on because I saw you both live and I came on and I was just saying, hey, guys, you know, like just being friendly, and we were like because you both shifted the entire life. I just want everyone to understand this. They're on a live talking about their incredible brand is like crushing it and little o
Me comes on, We're like, yay, we love it. And it was this thing like and I was like, how did I felt terrible? So I lugged off, No, no, where's he gone? It was so sweet and I was just like how conscious and kind and thoughtful and anyway, I want to dive straight into your incredible journey. That's why we're here today to understand you the human behind
this incredible journey and incredible story. And I want to start off with what is your earliest childhood memory that you think is indicative and defines who you are today.
That is such a brilliant question. This is what you do right. You asked the best questions. I'm so glad you.
Why did you start American?
You know, it's so interesting. I come from East London, and you know, East London is like, you know, it's like coming from like Long Beach, Inglewood or Brooklyn, do you know what I mean. It's like it's the street. It's the part of London that when you know, if you go back thirty years ago when I was a kid, is just not the place where you would happily hang out. I had a fantastic upbringing there, you know, and I think it's very defining. East London has been very defining of me my personality.
You were really raised to, you know.
In a community, to have huge respect for the people around you, huge trust actually for the people around you. But it was pretty devoid of any aspiration and certainly any glamour. And I was one of those kids that just kind of grew up like always kind of looking at what could be next and what was in my future. And I just fell into this like fashion magazine land, you know, It's like I would do my paper out, I'd get the money from that, I'd spend it on an issue of like Bogue or l or Mary Claire.
And it was that great moment sort of late eighties early nineties in England where we had you know, so many incredible movements, you know, Brit Brit Art, but all of those supermodels, you know, it's like Naomi and Kate Moss. And I saw that as a means of escapism. I never thought about it as a potential for a job, but I was like, let me just lift out of where I am an aspire to something that was beautiful and aspirational, because I couldn't see that anywhere around me.
And so when I think about my childhood, I think partially about this piece of like East London, where there's an honesty and an authenticity and a level of just like being the person that you say you are, like living by a certain set of values.
And then this other part that was like get me out of there. Do you know what I mean? That's the honesty of it, really.
Yeah, And how do where do you think that comes from? I think some people are like, you know, we've become products of our environment, and so if some people are in a group of people or in an area that is unambitious or not striving, it's easy to fold into that. Yes, where did that come for you personally? Like? Was it someone in your life? Was it something you read? Was it the magazines? Like? Where did that belief come that
there could be more? There may be more, there is another place to go to?
You know, I think that it must have come from my mum in some ways, because I honestly I didn't know anyone that owned their own bas everywhere I come from, everyone worked a job and you work for somebody else, and jobs were seen as exactly that. There was no career, there was no vocation, there was no like purposeful doing of what you do. It's like you get up, you went to work, you probably found it miserable, and you try to get out of there as quickly as you could.
And for me, I really thought that, you know, there has to be a better way to live. I was like, shouldn't there be some excitement and enjoyment. I don't know where I got it from. The sense of value and the sense of ambition has always been at me and people always say to me, you know, like how did you get to where you are? And I go, well,
it's much more simple than people think, you know. It's like I've really value myself and I've really value my goals, and I don't think it's much more complicated than that. But I was taught that by my mum, who was very very much like, listen, Emma, You're not better than anybody else, but nor is anyone better than you. And so when people talk about imposter syndrome, like I look around,
I'm like, that's just made up. Like everybody, we all feel exactly the same, like deep deep down, and that sense of me feeling like I could achieve was just built in. Like I've never felt a lack of confidence. I've never felt less than. I always felt like if I worked hard enough and I really like put everything into it, that I could achieve.
I still feel like that today.
I don't expect things to be easy, but I've never had a sense of I couldn't.
Yeah, what a great way for your mom to set you up, Like, what an amazing recipe. But it's beautiful to hear that because I love that perspective of no one's better than you and you're not better than anyone, Like that's such a great equalizer.
Absolutely, And the two things are really important, right because I grew up with such a respect for everybody else around me, regardless of like where they come from or you know, what they were doing. And I think that, you know, as a kid, I was surrounded by a lot of people that were doing what they had to do to get through the day. And I never looked down on anyone. I always feel, well, you know what, as long as you are doing something, you find an
interest in something. And for me that came at a very early age in fashion, but it was much more a means of escapism than me sitting there and like really appreciating the clothing or the craft.
It was like it was a means to dream.
Yeah, absolutely, I love that, and tell me about you touched on it there. But I want to talk about your first job. And I like doing this with people because what's really interesting to me is people forget, especially when someone's at the peaks of their careers and achieving incredible things. Like when people ask you the question of like how did you get to where you are, it almost takes away from the fact that there was a first job that was this see especially.
Now right, because we have this idea through like social media, that everything happens overnight, and I think, you know, it's like I've been grafted in a way since I was twelve years old, and like boom, I get some success at forty and people think you're an overnight success. I have worked every job imaginable. I had a paper round when I was twelve. Until I was fifteen, I worked in a delicatessen. I worked in clothes shops. I served
in restaurants. It's like I've done every job in fashion that you could do at the lowest possible level imaginable while not being paid.
Right, It's like I've done all of it.
But actually for me, you know, when you talk about people and your point of view on life, like I am a naturally positive of a naturally positive distribution disposition. I always am a person that thinks about the glass being half full. And so even when I worked in that deli and I was making a sandwich, I was going to make you their best turkey sandwich you've ever had in your life.
And I would wait and.
Look at you and be like, how good is that sandwich? Is that an amazing sandwich. I chose the best amount of turkey with the right amount of the pickle, and I'd make it look nice and I'd cut it beautifully like on the plate, and do you know what I mean? So for me, I can take pride in anything, and I also take a huge amount of learnings from everything.
So for me, it's like I used to.
Think, well, one day like this will be useful to me, like one day learning how to make a perfect cappuccino or making a customer happy, or discussing how things work in a shop or a debt access and will be useful to me. And I actually think about all of those experiences as being very formative, and I enjoyed all of them.
You know.
It's like I've just I've really worked. And I think everybody talks so much about hard work, but they don't really talk about like unenjoyable work. I had a lot of unenjoyable jobs that I just had to get through, but I never ever let it put me off. I always saw them as a means to the end, you know. And so I think when we talk about that now,
like what does hard work actually means? It means getting up and thinking about the end goal when you're nowhere even close to it, right, But you can see a pathway, And for me it was always about that. I could always see very clearly that I'm going to do that to get to that, to get to that, And I've been quite been quite planned, I feel in so many ways in my life.
Yeah, and I'm so glad you raised that point because I feel the same way that you don't have to love a job to learn from it. Now, and I think we all are thinking, well, I hate my job. I dislike it. It's the worst, it's a waste of time. I'm in the wrong place. But actually, if you just shift that to be like, what can I learn? What experience do I not have?
How how do I not want to behave?
Like?
This boss drives me crazy? I'll never be this boss. I remember I had a boss like that, and I used to literally write down in the back of my book like you should never ever speak to people like that or call someone out in that way. And I think that's been so formative of what type of leader I want to be. But the two things for me
haven't been mutually exclusive, right. I think that you can two things can be true at the one time you can be unashamedly ambitious and focused on what it is that you need while also being an inspiring and empathic leader who lifts other people up. And so I've been thinking about those type of things since I've been a boss, you know, for the last fifteen years, as a direct reflection of what I didn't experience when I was an employee.
And so I actually think, God, all of those experiences were really good for me because now I.
Know what I don't want to do.
Yeah. Absolutely, I did a paper around to.
It was heavy work, was it was, But that's where I feel like I got my appreciation for the morning. I'm such a like early bird, and I remember doing those paper arounds in the dark in England and it was kind of amazing because you'd like most houses were quiet, quiet, and then you'd see this like one house where like there's a little glimmer happening. And I thought I learned the power of the mornings from that particular job, like
getting out getting a head start. I'd go home, I'd put on my school uniform before any of my sisters. I'd be sitting there with a cup of tea while they were all like scrambling around, and I was like, this early morning stuff, there's something to it, you know.
That's interesting. So I used to do mine in the evening. I didn't have to do in the morning, so I.
Do after school. What about your people get in the papers? What happened to.
That's fine, that's what I was talking to anyone amazing. But I would like, I'd walk around with my headphones on. I'd be listening to them, and I'd have, like, I know that paper out and I have this like really weird looking like trolley that around and then I have to take the papers into a bag. That bag stunt to.
My bringing me back. I believe that too.
I have like a lopsided shoulder because of that bag.
It was so bad. But yeah, I learned the same thing like for me. So all the kids in my area what they used to do, the other kids who did the paper routes, They used to throw the papers off the edge of the train track or like in a bush or whatever it was. So then the guy who ran whatever company was that did the paper routes, he said to me, goes, Jay, You're the only reliable person I have, so I'm going to give you all their streets.
Quittin. Yeah, exactly, you are making money.
Yeah, it was amazing, and it's I love that you said that, that you learned, and I loved the passion. I wish you were at my local deli late and you know that stuff still happens today. I interviewed last year. I was doing a show for YouTube and I interviewed this TikToker called Markel Washington, And if anyone doesn't know who he is, he's awesome, like great energy to talented young guy and he was I think he worked in
a subway. Wow, and he was. He used to dance and sing while he served right, and not only did he used to upload that to TikTok. He got found that way and now he's got this incredible career. And I love that energy of like back then when you were doing it and it took you maybe a lot longer to find that success, he was doing it more
recently he found it. But it's interesting to see that it's the same sort of what was what was the hardest job that you did, the most unenjoyable, the most uncomfortable where you actually looked at and went, maybe it's not worth it, Like what was the one that pushed you to the edge.
Well, you know, it's so interesting.
It was probably the job that I did before starting my first company because such a part of that. I worked in a fashion show production company, which if you imagine I want to be in fashion, you think, yes, The reality of that is that you're building stages, you're working on this concept of like, you know, whatever you're producing for three months, the show goes up down in ten minutes, everybody goes off to the after party and you're doing d rig and you're like, oh.
This is the worst job ever.
And so I transitioned into this role of like sponsorship, which was so formative for my for the first business that I ever started, because it was all about brand partnerships and marketing and collaboration. But my role at that point when you know, nobody was just cold calling, right, so I would just have to like hit the phones and the rejection and you know you can't help but take that person and you're like, I haven't made one connection today, and that I found so disheartening.
But you know, I even knew then.
I was like, this will be worth something because for every like little knockback you got, you know, every kind of three days, you'd get one glimmer of hope and you'd take one meeting, and out of those ten meetings, maybe you'd start one deal. And actually it was very It was just like very telling about yourself, like what are you good at? And now I think, you know, as I think about entrepreneurship, and because I meet so
many founders that skill of sales and storytelling. If you ain't got that, like, you can't do this job right.
You can't.
You can't sell to investors, you can't craft a story to customers, and you certainly can't get into the heart of like what makes a brand successful unless you can sell and storytell. And so again, it's just one of those things that I had to go through. But it was miserable.
I didn't realize how many different similarities we have in our background, really. So I worked at the Business Design Center for a bit and I did like internships. Then I worked there over the summer and stuff, and all I had to do was sit there and call to sell the stands because you know, they'd have all the different stands for like the bike show or the there'd be fash formative. Yeah, it really is. And I remember
the cold call, and I look back at then. I remember before then I was so I was quite introvert, quite shy, and then all of a sudden, when you're doing like three hundred cold nows a day, it's gone, it goes away, And it's amazing how so much can be removed from not your personality, but this kind of fear and securities that we often have as a kid.
One hundred percent.
And I feel like even now, you know, when I think about fear and what that's meant in my career so much because it's actually been helpful in so many ways. Like I always think about myself now and I'm like, you know, it's like if I am not a little bit scared about what I'm doing, like even coming here today, right, it's like, then I'm not growing, Like I'm not moving forward, I'm not going in the right direction. And so now I find myself looking for the fear. I'm like, what
can I do that's going to scare me? Because like I know how to make genes. I can make you fantastic Nichas all day long, but actually, like branching out and trying to do something else is the stuff that keeps us as humans growing. And I think about that all the time because I spent such a huge part of my life being so crippled by fear and failing. And you know, I was a school I dropped out of school when I was fifteen or sixteen, I can't
actually remember, it must have been fifteen. But you know, that always left me with this kind of inferiority complex that I wasn't educated in if I'd work in London around all of these like very hoity toity one for people that were fresh out of Cambridge and Oxford and had these wonderful educations, and I always felt a bit inferior for that.
I was like, I'm going to get caught.
They're going to find out that I don't, you know, have that educational background. I don't speak in the right way. And you know, I feel like for so long that held me back until I've realized no, no, no, that's my fuel, that's what makes me me And if I'm not a little bit scared now, I find myself just actually looking for it because I know I need that fire in my belly.
Like the whole time, did you ever feel that anyone ever made you feel inferior? Because of a lack of the formal education or was it in internal.
I'm sure they did, but it was much stronger the internal voice.
Right.
It's like, I don't think anybody you know what it's like when you're in London. There is such a class system, right, and people know immediately they in this country, they think you and I sound like the Queen. We know in reality we don't bake. And in London, any English people listening to that us absolutely know that. And so there is always that you open your mouth and immediately you're judging. You know exactly where I'm from, and you can attribute
a set of circumstances to that. But I think it was much more about the voice in my own head. And I think about that an awful lot now in the way that I've set up my life and my businesses. And you know, I believe very much in this idea, like this rule of thirds, right, I think about it constantly. You know, when you are doing something very difficult, or you are chasing a dream, you're going to be happy
about a third at the time. You're going to feel okay about a third of the time, and the other third at the time you're going to feel pretty crappy, you are going to feel bad. And if the ratios get out of whack and things are not actually you're too happy, you're probably not pushing yourself hard in it enough. And if you know you're actually spending too much time, you're probably not you know, you're not thinking about it right.
But I do think that that leaning that I've had my whole life, like the idea that I shouldn't and be comfortable and happy all of the time, actually really helps me so much. And I think about that idea of the third and the third and the third, and it doesn't scare me anymore. I'm like, oh, I'm just having one of the days that is my crappy date. That's okay because what I'm doing isn't straightforward, it isn't
what everybody's doing, and it's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be heavy, it's supposed to not be comfortable all the time. And I think that that for me has been a way that I can actually get through those times that are a bit more tricky.
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And then terrible.
Yeah, that's so spot on, and I've never heard someone break it down like that simply. Yeah.
Well, I am a very simple girl. You know that I have to break it down like that for myself.
But you know, it's really helpful because I think in any part of your life, like there is especially now because I work with so many people, there is this idea. And also you know, I'm a mom of four, right, so there is this part of me it's like, I just want my kids to be all right and to be happy all the time. And I'm like, actually, no, because it's in those moments and you know this more than anyone of challenge of difficulty, that's when you grow
the most. But we shouldn't rather than like trying to remove that from my children or take those times away from my employees, or think that's not okay, it's like no, no, no, guys, Like that's what it's about.
And if you're.
Coasting through life and doing something like really simplistic, fine, you might just feel all right all the time. But I am so happy when the good is good that I'll take the okay and the bad. You know it's worth it because it actually all comes out even in the end.
Yeah. Sure, when you were chasing the dreams back in the day, or like trying to build it up, were you dating, did you care about that. Was that like because a beautiful family. Yeah, now you have a beautiful family, you have a wonderful partner, you have four kids, as you said. But I wondered then, like I feel like a lot of us spend a lot of our teams and our twenties thinking about love totally? Was that how you were too or one hundred percent? I don't think
I've ever been without a boyfriend. I'm a person that needs someone, and you know, I went around a little bit and I was very happy to settle down at twenty five, twenty six. I don't feel like I missed out, you know, because we started so early. I feel like, you know, I was like out in the clubs when I was thirteen fourteen, and then I had this stint in Abizza when I was asked to leave school. So it's like I've had a lot of living before I got there.
And I think that I've always been someone that has chased love, Like I love that feeling, but as you get older, you realize you know what that really means. Like today, it's like I want to be loved back, but it's not all about that rush, you know. It's like I've been with my husband now for fifteen years, married for eleven, and the things that I value have completely shifted.
Right.
It's like and we've been on a journey together. And I think that in life you need chapters and just as the same, you know, like in carea and you need you know, needing transitions and to transform. Relationships need
chapters like that too. The first five years, we traveled the world, we parted, we got drunk, we did all the things that you do, and then we went through a period of having children and that's extremely challenging on any relationship, especially while the two of you are enormously ambitious. And I think that what I have with my husband is this extremely unique partnership where he always understood that I was ambitious and I needed to do things and
he's completely supported that. And I think that the love that I have for him has grown exponentially because we've been still I've still been able to chase all of my dreams outside of the relationship and the family structure while having someone really support me do that.
That's it. Yeah, we won't, we won't go down the stint.
And no, it's really fun a calling part.
No, I just feel like, you know, it's like you have there's a part of my life life where I think there was a need to escape, you know, and I found that I was a real club kid. That's what I enjoyed. I wanted to go out. For me, it was actually never about getting smashed, but it was like the music and those super late nights and the like that whole community of it. Like I was friends with the DJs and the MC's and you know, like I was on the list and like I did that
whole thing. I think that was a huge formative part of my childhood, Like I would not or not my childhood my kind of late teens early twenties, like I needed to go and get like remove myself from from what my kind of everyday life and my upbringing was. And it kind of introduced me to a lot of alternative things and people and ways of being. And you know, it's like you go to IBF, you you learned yoga for the first time. I was like, well, what's this. Nobody I knew in plast I was doing yoga.
I didn't.
Nor for the island, but.
You know, it was like there's just there's things that I think that part of my life really opened me up to and I felt like in some ways, even though I saw a lot as a kid and I was experienced to some pretty kind of gruesome things, there was a whole part of life and sort of a way of living and a kind of level of peace and understanding of people that was not ever explained to me and was not part of my childhood and my upbringing.
And I learned that much later.
Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. It's so yeah, it's so interesting. Again, we often feel like the next chapter will be better, and you've just broke it down and said, well, no, actually there's going to be every chapter, and every chapter has its reason and has its story. And you just said I loved that. I lived life that way, and then when I met my partner, I knew it, knew it was going to work. And even
that's had so many chapters inside of it. Absolutely, what would you How would your mum describe what she saw as a little girl to who she sees now.
I think she'd say saying, so, I was always a pain for everyone around me, you know.
I literally I was that kid.
I actually didn't you know, I didn't have many for I wasn't that the popular kid. You know, my sisters were all massive athletes, hugely popular. I was a bit more of a loner. I had like, you know, two or three really solid friends. Sounds exactly like today, actually, but you know it was like I was that kid. I was like in my own head, I've always been a dreamer. But you know, my mom would always say, she was like, you're a dreamer, but you're a doer.
And I always had those two things. I don't think I've changed that much.
You know.
I think about myself and I've been absolutely the same since I was seven years old.
This is how I've always felt. That's how I've always been.
That's epic, that's so cool. I wonder how you see that with now being a mom too, Like now when you're looking at your kids.
Know what, it's wild because I think, like so many moms, especially mothers that work in the same way that I do, Right, you're kind of played by this idea of what you're supposed to be and do as a mother. And because I grew up with a mum that left the house every day, that went to work, I have maybe a different idea of what I'm supposed to be providing for those kids. I think it's really important that my children see me living out my dreams and hopefully they'll do
the same for themselves. But you know, everybody, the question always kind of boils down to, like how do you do it all? And I really think it's important to dispel that myth of doing it all because women have been really sold a crop of crap, like it's like you can't have it all all the time, and my life is a series of trade offs, right, that's just a fact. I'm not the mom who is at the schoolgate. I'm not there for pick up and drop off, I'm
not at the school gala. Hopefully my kids get something else from me, which is a sense of actually living out your dreams and what you're supposed to do. And I think that they see that and really appreciate having that for me. But I think it's very important that we stop talking about this idea of like balance, because there is no balance in my life. Like it's it's rubbish, you know. It's like I have to go wherever the energy is that morning, and my children have to fit
around that. Nothing's changed, Like I said, I'm still the same, the same person, and for children, yes, it changes the the kind of you know, routine of your day, but it doesn't change who you are fundamentally. And I am one of those person people that think, you know, my children have to fit around me, and that's just a fact.
Yeah, it just it is what it is.
Yeah. And I'll say as a kid who grew up with a mom who is working that hard and like had her. So my mom trained to be a financial advisor so that she could be self employed, as we called it, and she was an entrepreneur. But the language can manage your own time, own time, so she could be there for us. So my mom would make us breakfast, us to school, pack lines amazing, and then she'd go to work superwoman, pick us up, feed us, and then go back out to work. And sometimes I join her.
I'd go out with her in the car and sit with my son's in my office clients, and.
I should I should have.
And it's just I saw my mom be so active. My mom was never she wasn't around they just hanging around the house. She wasn't available in that way. Again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying my mom wasn't. And as someone who grew up with the mom like that, Like, not only do I love and respect my mom insanely insane, I also just saw that you could still feel loved without having loads of time.
It's about quality, right, I always think about that My kids need me, like in a one hundred percent capacity, like not half looking at my phone, not half doing work,
not surrounded by lots of people in the house. And I really try to think about them as individuals because I have a boy and a girl and then boy girl twins, and I like to do things with my kids individually so that I can really understand who they are and what their needs are, not like this sort of like family pack, you know, because a very big, qutous one comes that I'm.
Like, ah, like all of you in the car.
But I think that, you know, again, when you grow up in a big family, you have ideas and experiences of how it wasn't so great and what you'd want to do differently, and so I try to apply that.
But I think for most women it's really it's really important to just level, like lower the expectations a little bit and be honest with ourselves about what we're capable of, because it's really something that I think there's so much being thrown at women all the time about what you should do and how you should advocate for yourself, and you know, and it quite frankly, is just too much. It is not feasible. It is not something that we
can all cope with. And I think that you do what you do to get through the day, and we should all just like lower the expectation levels a little bit. That isn't to say lower your ambition level, but that's just to say, don't feel.
Bad about what you're doing. At the end of it.
It's like, we all do as much as we can and our kids will all be all right. They don't need us to usher them through every experience in the day.
And they'll be who they are.
They'll be who they are.
How did you make peace with that? Because I feel like I love that perspective and I'm sure it's going to help so many people, but I think people struggle with this. We love being the controller, we love making sure everything's right. We also so hard on ourselves, as you were just saying, because people were hard on us, and now we think we need to be super mom and maybe our mom did it, or maybe our Auntie
did it whatever. I think there's a lot of people who are just like I get that, but I don't know how to make peace with that one hundred percent.
You know, it's a great question. And I always think about I'm somebody that's absolutely like fixated and fascinated by memories. Right, I always like go back and I think about, like the big important things in my life, What did I really enjoy from last year? What were the moments that like hear in my memory? And when you do that, it very rarely has anything to do with any level of perfection. The best moments are the sporadic moments that
were unplanned. When you're sitting there, the kids are a mess, you're in the garden, something happened that just made it so. And it's never the moments that you kind of forced. It's never the things that you planned. It's never the ones that you spent like all your energy on. And so I think that it just becomes about like this great like you've got to weigh it up, right, You've got a wigh up like what is worth it? And
what where do you derive enjoyment from? And I think anyone who looks at their life will actually find that it's in the small stuff. It's in those moments that you just let it all go. And so I think it's really it's such a good exercise, especially for women and moms, to just kind of backtrack and say, in the last twelve months, what were the single best moments that you had, and then you will absolutely not about whatever it is that is weighing you down today because it's never what you think.
Ever, it never has been for me.
Yeah, and don't judge the moment right like we can. We're so quick to be like, oh, I just I said the wrong thing totally, and all of a sudden I said the wrong thing becomes I messed up today.
I shouldn't be here. I don't belong, I'm not supposed to be part of it. And it's so interesting. I remember, like there's this brilliant story about when Oprah was going through this like crazy, crazy time in her life and she turns up at Quincy Jones's house for dinner and she said to him, oh my god, like, it's so terrible, it's so awful of you've seen the press and and he's like, what are you talking about? He hasn't seen anything right, Because at the end of the day, no
one's watching you. No one's watching you like you're watching you. Most of your mistakes is in private, and so I often think about that because it's like everybody's so bothered about their own stuff and what's going on in their head, they're not thinking about you. And so sometimes you just have to release a little bit. And I always try to think about like what is real?
What is ego?
You know?
And so much of it is ego, so especially around the mom part, funnily enough, right, because we're all trying to do and be better than what we had and change things for our children and be this impossible, wonderful, perfect mother. And that's nothing to do with your kids, because what your kids want is just a bit of you in the most simple way.
They don't care about any of that stuff.
And so again, it really is that challenge of really sitting down and speaking to your children and thinking to yourself, like what actually matters? And I think it's like those small moments.
Yeah, yeah, that's well said. And as I said, as someone who received a lot of that from my mum, I felt like I never doubted whether my mom loved me or not. Whether she could come to my rugby game or not, or whether she could come and watch me at the class rehearsals or dramas or whatever we were doing. If she was there or she wasn't there, that wasn't how I felt long she loved it, absolutely, Yeah, because it was so it's it's such a core part
of my life. I feel today I have like so much love to give because of how much my mother love And it's not that she was there every one. So yeah, and the flip side, I'm sure there's people who would think, God, my parents were around all the time, and and I didn't necessarily.
Didn't necessarily connect exactly, it didn't necessarily feel connected.
Yeah, you've talked about this before, and I really like it, this whole idea of like you can't have it all and everyone's always talking about balance, and I agree with you. I don't think balance exists either, even in my life because I often get that, oh ja mindfulness and meditation, but that's not balance, Like you're actually constantly using these tools and techniques to be back at a point of theory ecanimity. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, to be back at the
point of equanimity. But there isn't this idealized balance? Now when it comes to you know, you and your partner, you both have great careers, you do some things together, lots of things individually. How does that like? I guess my question there is what is the one thing you both need from each other that allows you to stay connected whilst having collective empires individual empires and then a beautiful family is well on top of all of that.
I honestly think that just comes down to love, because it's different things in different moments, and if you really really love someone, then you do what they need in that moment, whether or not it's good for you right there or what you might have discussed right That comes down to do I really love this person and want the best for them in this thing, this moment, this decision, and more than anything, you know, I have such an admiration for my husband in so many different ways in
how he thinks and how he approaches things and what type of father he is. And you know, love does lots of different things, but you know, usually it grows or it dwindles. Right, It's like in relationships, and I think that mine is still growing. But it just comes down to the fact that I love him. It isn't
any more complicated than that. We have lots of things that we do together, and I do think there is a huge thing of this idea of chapters and having projects together, you know, to some extent, children at that because you go through this like you know, trying to get pregnant and then being pregnant and then having the baby in those early days, and then those stories about those early days, and then buying houses together and doing
those houses up, and so there is this element. And with us, we've also had the businesses that to some degree, and in some businesses we've done those things together. And so they have been these chapters and these projects that have been extremely i'd say pivotal in our life. And you often see that that when you know, couples have kids that fly the nest, it's like suddenly they don't have a project anymore. It's like everything's done and they're like, Okay,
we don't have anything. So we have that together. But I feel like in my life, I'm extremely ritualistic, you know, That's just how I am. And there's parts of our relationship that have taken on some of those rituals. In terms of you know, how we think about time just us and not with the children, how we think about setting up our mornings, and those things become sort of bedrocks and foundations that for what I think is like a healthy relationship.
Yeah, well, I really gain from what you're saying right now. And I hope everyone's listening and taking notes too, because there's so many great, great insights that are like you just sprinkling them everywhere. I'm like trying to catch them. And there's I love the idea that if you value a relationship in your life, your relationship is only as good as the stories you've lived together and the memories
you've made. And if you stop making stories and memories with people, then you're constantly living in the past.
Exactly, which is so unhealthy. And you've seen that in so many friendships. Right when you're no longer creating together, you have nothing but your old memories, and after a while that just dwindles. So you need to consistently create.
And that can be big things or small things. It can be building a you know, shed in your back garden, but something that you live out together and you see to fruition and you create and you make and I think that that's a really important part of ever relationship.
Yeah, and to keep doing that and keep getting exciting together about something absolutely yeah, rather than just like how is your day, and then you're doing your own world and then their world and all.
Of that separation, you know, And that's how so many couples, I think where it goes wrong. You're kind of living out the most exciting parts of your life entirely separately.
And I feel with us, you know, it's like.
We just bought a cold plunge, and like the cold plunge has become the thing, right, we're literally just like how many minutes are you going to do?
How many minutes are you going to do?
Oh my god, you're gonna put your head under it, like you know, but it becomes this thing that you're living out together and now will be like cold plunge bullies to all of our friends. Even something so small like that can be so like magical for a relationship because you're learning and pushing and doing something together.
Yeah, we do the same. But my wife she's so good. She's not she's so good. I can't even try to be well.
I married a Swedish man, so I feel like I'm at a disadvantage, like from the outset and you were basically born in the ice, Like, come on course, you're better at this than I have.
That's amazing. And then we've been playing pickleball as well.
That's a but I don't think I'm going to I'm it's so funny. You guys can come over and you can show how it's done.
It's so much fun. And again it's just doing taking on a new project and you know, whatever it may be, you've I love that you were saying that you love memories and that you kind of almost have a memory bank.
I was going to ask you, do you think there's a memory in your life that you've kind of like locked away or hidden away that you kind of like it's almost He's in that movie Inception and so he locks it away in the basement and he never goes there because it kind of it has sometimes gonna be good, bad, it can be anything. But do you have a memory you've locked away?
I think I probably have a lot of memories that I've locked away. And you know, it's really interesting. We should have maybe done this podcast back in a month. I'm going to go to the Hoffmann institute. I think I have an enormous amount of that in my life. And I said to you earlier, you know, I think if you're not. I think about my life in terms of like practice, right. It's like I'm practicing every day like who I want to be. And I think that that's a great way to teach my children because they
do what they see. And I never beat myself up about my past, who I've been, my background, where I came from, because I know that I'm constantly moving and evolving. And I feel like if you're not working on yourself, then you're not really living, do you know what I mean? I feel like the purpose of my life is to explore how I can be the best version of me. And I don't just mean that in business. I mean
in every single facet of my life. How can I be the best mum and the best wife and the best boss, like all of those things that mean a lot to me. But it takes work and it takes practice, and I don't get it right every single day. And when I think to answer your question about memories and things I've locked away, it's when I've not been proud of my behavior. But those are always things that I am willing to kind of hold my hands up to and work on. And I feel like I've done especially
now I live here. You know, you come and you do the work right, It's like it's just the grown up thing to do. And I feel like that's been one of the reasons I've enjoyed being in La so much is because I've had this whole obviously all the success with the businesses, but on this other side, I've had this huge awakening in terms of who I am and who I'm supposed to be and how I'm evolving as a person. And so I really feel like those are things that I'm still exploring and I will be
until the day I die. You know, I'm always in learning mode.
I love that. And you're invited back afterwards. You don't have to worry. No, No, What I mean is I hope this is not going to be the last time. You can't. But what's a memory that you'd love to relive or you revisit offten mentally and you can close your eyes and you're like, yeah, I'm there, Like I'd love to live that again because.
It was you know, it's so crazy. I think it's probably I mean feel so bad on my kids. But the birth of my first child, like that was so insane and amazing. And it's really funny because women like often say like everything changed. Then you know, it's like and I and for me, everything changed in that moment. I remember having just had Gray and YenS was holding him on like you know, the side of the bed, and I thought, I have got to get out of
this bed and go to the office. And that's all I could think of my head because it was like, all of a sudden, I had the reason I was doing all of this stuff for. And it never become more clear to me than in that moment. I was like, okay, like now real life stants. Wow, yeah, yeah, that's really how I felt. I was like, get me back, like into the office, like immediately.
Oh my gosh, forget the baby.
No, nothing about going home and like snuggling with my child. I was like, I have a reason to do what I'm doing now, and.
That can coexist with loving your kids, because.
Again, like you can be so many different things. It's like I am a super nurturing, hands on mum and I really enjoy motherhood.
I just have other stuff that I like too.
Yeah, you know, why do I think we struggle to have those two ideas?
Your society is setting up that you're one or the other. Right you're either putting on your heels and like banging out the door and like don't see your kids and put them to bed, or you're like this really sweet mom. It's like, no ONEm both. I'm actually everything. I am every woman.
Like it's just like tough, do you know?
It's like I think that actually what it is that you know, there are all of these like misconceptions about what you are allowed to be, and I don't think we put those same things on men, because men can be like totally in the office and killing the DEALM Like, then just be this incredible dad throwing like a football on the weekend. It's like you're fully allowed and it's fine,
But for women it's not so fine. And so, you know, so much of what I do in my work and my businesses and actually just sort of trying to be honest about me and how I operate is to dispel a lot of them smiths, because I do think that we are not one dimensional and you can be so many different things and also so many different things to
different people. You know, I'm one person to my husband and one to my kids, and if you were to come in my office, I think they give you a whole different version of me.
I like it all over it.
It's true that we all have to there's all different facets to each part of ourselves, and I want.
It's about the level of acceptance, right like are you are you allowed to be that? And is it accepted? And that's why, you know, Jay, it's so interesting. I don't think I've ever listened to a podcast where a man has been asked about imposter syndrome.
Not once.
It is a question that is the special reserve for women, as is the question of balance.
No one says, hey, YenS, how.
Are you balancing it all the brands and the business and the kids. No, what says that to my husband?
They say it to me.
Every day, every single day. Or what is it like to be a black woman in business? I'm like, what kind of question is that?
You know?
But there are things that for women, just like we're still not able to get over this idea that we have in our heads that we can't be many things to many people.
And I just don't believe in that.
At all, yeah, No, I'm with you and with you, and I really feel that naturally, all those questions are coming because that's what people are scared about and insecure about and worried about. And it's, as you said, it's
come because it's been created in society. I read a there was this research paper a long time ago, and I won't get it absolutely accurate, but the point was that when men and women look at a job application, if men can do some of it, they'll apply, and even if women can't do one part of it, they won't apply.
I see that every single day in my own office, right a guy will work for me for six months and come and ask me for a pay rise, and then I will say to a woman, I don't think you've had a pay rise for like a year and a half, like do you know what I mean? It's like or somebody that will come in and say, like I speak absolutely fluent Spanish and a woman who's nine
you've sent there. I won't even mention it. So there are those obvious things, and that's just about you know, so many times for women there is this natural nurturers.
We naturally play.
Down our skills, and I think that that is just something that society has taught us, and so I think about it all the time. I'm quite the opposite, you know, I'll go in and pretend I can do anything in a picture meeting, or it's like I'll say what needs to say to get it done, do you know what I mean? But I do think that for so many women, there is this like sort of magical golden moment in your life where you're free of a lot of constraints.
You know, maybe you don't have a mortgage, you don't have children, yet you're not in a really serious relationship, where there is this moment to be incredibly selfish. And for most women, when all of the responsibilities pylon, they stop doing that. And I think that actually, just as women, we would do better to be selfish for longer in our lives. And that's the type of thing. And so many people will be like, oh, I just don't like the word. I can't you find another way to dress
it up? Absolutely no, because I mean what I say. You do have to think about yourself because nobody else is thinking about that for you. Everybody else is too busy thinking about themselves. And so this idea of being selfish shouldn't feel like such a foreign thing for women or a dirty word for women. It's like you have to be there is no other way to get ahead
and to do what you want to do. You have to put your needs and your wants and your ambition first because no one is going to do that for you.
Yeah, and it's hard, isn't it? When like you were saying, you've tried to be the boss that you didn't have. I can identify with that. I try and be the bosses that I didn't have. And I think it is really wonderful when you see a great relationship building with people you work with where they recognize you're being the boss that they never had as well and you are too, And you're also realizing they're being a great person of your team that hasn't been like other people have been.
How have you learned to like sense that and know that when you're like, Okay, well me and this person can go and build together and create together, or this is the right person to recruit onto my team, or like what are the things that you're looking at and trying to decipher? Because I think right now we do live in a world where also people are thinking about a job as a paycheck and they don't care. Whereas you're very passionate, You're very driven. You always have been
since the Deli. So it's like, if you've cared that much about the Delhi and the sandwich, obviously you care so much about what you do today totally, how do you do that? Well?
You know, I think I'm really realistic because you will have those people in your business that come to work with you literally because you know, a good America we are be court registered, right, and people feel that they want to work in a company that cares about the environment, that cares about what they're putting out. And you'll get people that care about the mission and the vision and the values. But I don't expect that everybody will care. I know that there are some people that just come
and they just want their paycheck. And so for me, I try to say separate who I am and what I might need from what somebody else might need. My expectation is that not everybody's bouncing in there trying to kill it for me, right, I'm really sure that a lot of these people come in and they do their job and they're working on their side hustle halfway through the day, and that's okay. You know, it's like, that's
not for everyone. And I think that as I've got older, I've learned not to put my type of ambition on, you know, or not to try to reflect that onto everybody that's around me. And those people, well, of course they'll rise to the top, they'll make themselves known.
But it isn't for everybody.
You know.
It's just a fact. And also you need that when you're building a team. If everybody was an ambitious little monster, it would be a disaster.
You know.
You need people happy to come in, grind, do their job, and leave at five o'clock.
That's just facts. Yeah. Absolutely, how did you make that leap? Like you just said earlier, I'm just connecting the dots you were, like, I was never around anyone who's an entrepreneur, had their own business. Everyone worked a job. Yeah, how did you accident?
Jay? Sheeddy?
Okay, it was a total accident, because you know, I never set out to start my own company. I was frustrated that I wasn't being paid enough where I worked, and then was like, all right, well if you don't like that, then you're going to have to do something else. But I was also acutely aware that no one was going to come and hand me a company on a
play like it's this company to run. You pass them with no experience and you know, you kind of jumped up twenty four year old, and so I was very like acutely aware that I'd have to do it myself. And that's where it came from. Like, you know, I'd love to say that I had this like great idea and this great ambition, but it came out of like frustration and not being paid enough and feeling like I wasn't getting the value back that I put in.
That's the honest answer. Yeah, no, And I think that's very relatable. I think most people are in positions like that, but that doesn't lead to the courage, yes to do it, to do it because we feel like, well, what if it doesn't work? And say what you know, and all those kind of things that come up because we're scared. Even for me, Like I remember I had a steady job and I was this is after I'd left the monastery, had come back home, I'd finally found a steady job. I was dating such a.
Good sentence after I left the monastery, isn't it good? It's so after I left the monastery, I.
Was just starting to give context and then this is this is the British em like, really, I love it. I love it.
I don't have a sentence like that, and I want one. I might just take it after I out.
You've got to be You've got You've got plenty. But no. The so I was in the steady job and it was like I was dating my now wife and I remember going, this is not working for me. And I wasn't killing it and I wasn't doing badly. I was, I was doing all right, but I just knew it wasn't my place. And I remember I probably spent two years there feeling that way totally. You kind of just one you just thinking about it, reflecting on it. You're like,
what do I do? What if it doesn't work? And so walk us through that a little bit because I think a lot of our listeners may actually be feeling that way. A lot of our audience is actually listening going, you know what, I'd love to I'd love to forget doing what Emma's done now. I just love to gal where I am now, because you know what I mean.
I think The truth of it was that I've never been that scared of failing, right, and for me, at that time in my life, I was making a small amount of money. It's fair to say that I didn't have any you know, no one was relying on me to pay when I had a tiny, tiny little I lived in like a high rise in East London with no front door and a gate on the door, no oven, just a microwave, no fridge. I put my milk on the balcony just to paint the picture of like where
I was at that time in my life. It was rough, and honestly, what I thought is that how could I lose? Like at this point, I could always go and get another similarly not inspiring job, And so that idea of like fear of not failing was really key. But I also was really I've always been very honest with myself, Like you know, everybody has a voice in their head, and some people have a voice that like chats them up,
you know, it's like I do. But I also have that voice that's like, Emma, like know what you don't know? They don't be too silly in this situation. So I think that I really in that instance where I decided like, let's get out of this job and try to go and do something else. It was enough understanding of it wasn't that good where I was. If it really didn't work out, I could always get back into something like that.
But also that thing that just says what happens if you don't do it, you know, Like for me, I was miserable and I really saw a better life for myself, and I was like, I will just regret this when I'm thirty five, for example, And so it was really about just going like, you know, no one's going to take a chance on me. I have to take the chance on me, and then maybe someone else will be inspired to take a chance at me, which is ultimately
what happened. I left that role, I got employed in another job, and then when I got into that job, my now husband and business partner at that time they kind of saw me and they were like, well, this girl's like kind of good, she has something, And they ended up being my first investors when I was twenty five years old.
That's incredible, which was.
Crazy, which to me even at the time it felt crazy, and I remember questioning I was like, why would anyone invest me? In, and then I thought, now, of course i'd invested me, who are you going to invest in? Like you might as well I'm as good as anybody else out there. And that's when that thing started ticking in. So I think, sometimes you've just got to not be too afraid to lose. And you know, the truth is, Jay, I have lost and failed more times than I've succeeded. Right,
we don't talk about that. That's not in the articles. I don't post that on Instagram. But that's just the fact, Like I've made so many mistakes before I got here and had three very successful companies. I had a dog an agency that I opened here in a very successful business that was thriving in London and thriving in New York, and I opened an office in LA and I embarrassed myself. I completely let the you know, I let the company down, and let the ball down and let the staff down.
I underinvested, I did all of the classic mistakes. And you know, at the time, I felt like it was the end of like my company and my career, but it wasn't.
It was just a failure.
I've had lots of things like that happened, lots of you know, public embarrassments and things that didn't work out, and it's you know, it sounds like such an obvious thing, but it's like, well, how do you recover from that? And so for me, it's like always been this thing of like, all right, well I've dust myself off, I've survived worse, you know, and I think a lot of.
That comes from my upbringing.
You know.
It's like you see a lot of stuff go down and you can get through things. Yeah, I think I'm pretty good at getting through things.
And this is that quincy moment where I'm like, I didn't even know. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just like you just you know you. It's so fascinating how quickly we are. It's so fascinating how quickly we point out people's faults and then forget about them. And that happens so far because.
It's not as fun as story, right, people want at the end of the day. I believe in, you know, the goodness of humans. We default want good stuff for each other, and we want to see each other when and people are very happy to celebrate alongside you. You're much more concerned about your failures. You're much more concerned about your fears than anybody else out there, and I think every now and again I kind of just have to tune myself back into to that piece of it.
Yeah, And it sounds like what I really like is that you've got this ability. And I've been watching the whole interview, and it's like you've got this ability to know what the different voices in your head are. Yes, you're very clear about like this is the one that's being real, this is the ego, this is giving me the hype that I need right now, one hundred percent.
But also you know, I know their voices. I know they're not me, and I always knew that because I have an ability, Like my whole superpower in life is about being able to turn it on and off. And so I am acutely aware that those are just things and that I have at my disposal, and sometimes they work to my advantage and sometimes they work to my disadvantage. But I don't think that it's me. Does that make sense?
Like it's like I know who I am, and like it ain't all of that, it's not the chatter, none of it. It's just I'm something else.
Yeah, it's I mean, that's an incredible distinction to know and have and build. Did that come from? Did you read something? Did you learn something? Was it just you started listening to yourself. Did you spend a lot of time alone. I'm intrigued as to what you did to gain that skill, because it's a skill and you're obviously aware of it, you know.
I think I'm just that like Oprah generation.
Do you know what I mean?
You come home every day from school. Oprah was on the TV telling you to be grateful with you What do I have to be grateful for? Have you see my house? Have you see my trainers? I need new shoes, like you know. And it's like I didn't get it then, but I started to believe it and I started to read.
You know, I am an avid reader.
I read so much everything and always have since I was thirteen. And again it was that means of escapism, and so I started reading things like you know, the Power of Now or like you know, like all of these things that like conversations with God, I remember, you know, It's like and I was like, just blew my mind because I didn't know anybody that thought like that, and so maybe I just absorbed it. A couple of books yeah, you know, and it went in like and it made sense to me.
No, it's as simple as that, and the same generation, Like I grew up in the same way, And it's so true, how like these tiny little messages just start connecting dots and that's kind of what kids are built on and young people are built on. It isn't you could have heard the same thing at school every day, but because it wasn't simplified and easy and digestible one hundred, you don't remember it, but you remember the random TV
show you watched in the back exactly. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I love I love witnessing it in an interview with someone where you're like, Wow, this person's away and I want to talk more about Hopefully this is what you don't get to talk about as much or maybe, like you're saying, like men get asked this stuff and maybe women don't. I'm intrigued. But like we were talking earlier,
you're a brand marketing genius. Like you're super attentive, aware, conscious, You have this ability to think about products and brand in a different way. How do you select problems to solve? How do you choose which problems you want to work on and then make sure that you build something that actually solves that problem.
I think about it in the sense of myself. I think it would be very difficult for me. And I'm not saying other people can't do it, but to do things that you can't relate to, right, So I always start with the idea that if it's a problem for me, likelihood is it's a problem for other people like me, whether that be other young women or other women in the middle of America. But it's like the starting point.
It's always what do I find problematic? And then I think the lens and the kind of red thread that goes through all of my companies is this idea that And again I hate saying it because in the last kind of five years it's almost become like this sort of buzzword.
But when we.
Think about inclusivity and business and what that actually means, including and thinking about the most amount of people possible. When I started Good American, it was actually a reaction to this idea that so many women, women of color, plus size women as just completely left out of the fashion conversation and why is there dollar any less valuable than anybody else's? And so I had worked in marketing
for all of these years. For fifteen years, I grew this incredible agency, and I'd done castings and you know, put projects and collaborations together for the biggest and best brands in the whole world. And I'd been part of actually falsifying an image of inclusivity.
You know.
It's like you have a group cars, you need a black girl and an Asian girl and then this and and actually when you thought about the product and when you thought about the senior management of those companies, it looked nothing like that, right. It just the product didn't work for anyone over a certain size, and the boardrooms were just all made up of typically like white men making the decisions usually for women. And I just sort of thought to myself, there must be a better way
to start a company. But it came from problem solving for myself. And I go back to this idea of like, you know, when you think about businesses, it makes more sense that they would be geared towards serving more people. That's just good business, right. Forget d E and I forget like, you know, this idea of diversity, equity, inclusion doing some being something that companies need to do now.
It's just good business. And when I talk about it, this idea of inclusivity and diversity being a superpower in business, it's not something that I just said, it's something that I do. That's where the process actually starts. I'm thinking about how can I best serve customers the most amount of people. And then when there's an acknowledgment of someone who isn't usually acknowledged, of course it goes without saying that.
Suddenly they feel seen, they feel heard, and they're like, I'm going with this girl, I'm going with this brand because it's the first time anyone's spoken directly to them. And I think that it's such an underthought about part of business. You know, people usually bolt it on at the end, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, it's right where you start. It's in the inception of those products. It's in making thirty two sizes, it's in doing nine
different shades. It's in the very very beginnings of what you're creating, and then you can dress it up and make it look nice and put the right kind of branding on it. But actually it starts way earlier than that, and so I actually think about customers in a way that I think most people don't.
Where did you not learn that? But where did you learn to look to understand that? Obviously it started with yourself, But I'm like, why didn't people do that before? Because, like you just said, it's better business, it's better financially, it makes more sense, it makes more people happy. What do you think blocks companies?
It just comes from where decisions are being made, right, because it's like you don't know what you don't know. And I've sat in enough rooms trying to pitch enough businesses to a group of people that aren't my end audience, and I have actually said in meetings before, maybe you should phone your wife or daughter, like literally like phone them because you don't understand this because it's not for you, you know. And so I think that decisions are made
in such an abstract way in most companies. And you know you see this when you know companies make mistakes, right, there were seen a lot of like big fashion brands and big consumer brands make mistakes that have seemingly kind of come across as like insensitive, racist, completely misogynistic. That's just where a decision is made. A company isn't inherently racist, like the whole company. It's just a decision making process
is flawed. Are you there's not enough people in the room of a different background to'say, hey, perhaps put the T shirt on the other kid, like then it won't be an issue. So I think that this just comes from the idea of like, where are the decisions made in that company and who's making the decisions? And I know that the more people you bring around to table
from different backgrounds. We're not just talking about race here, we're talking about age, education, the full gambit, like, the better the company will be.
Yeah, that is such great. I love what you just said about asking someone to call their partner or their daughter or son or whatever it may be, because you're so right, Like I think so many people sit in meetings and they're looking around, going these people don't know what they're talking about, or like they just don't understand totally.
How have you maintained Like I guess the question is how many of those meetings have did you have to sit in until you felt like I'm just going to do this or we're just going to figure it out, or did you look for someone who agreed with you and had your values and did the research or was it kind of like we're just going to build it ourselves, Like give us a bit of that, because I think a lot of people.
Know, you know, it's so interesting. I'm at that point in my career now where I don't sit in a lot of meetings. Now they pitched me, which is lovely the I'm like, come over here and I'll let you know if you can come in. But in the early days, you know, I think that I sat in a lot of situations feeling like, you know, the great thing is, I never doubted myself or any of those ideas.
I just thought I hadn't found the right people yet.
It's a little bit like, you know, I'm happy to kiss a lot of frogs, and I always have been, because again, I don't think it should be so easy when you're doing something that is new and without so much definition and unproven, like it's supposed to be hard. And again it's like anything, I never let it get to me. I just was like, poor poor chicken. He doesn't get it yet, and he will do and he will kick himself. You know, it's fine, you know, it's
just it's part of it. And I don't mean that in a smug way, but I never I never doubted what I was doing. I was very very clear, especially when we started Good America, and I was like, this thing people don't understand, and we'll just get them to understand it.
Yeah, definitely, yeah, no. And I think that's such a great mindset to have and do not have the smugness or bitterness because exactly that person just wasn't in the right space. You don't know what you don't know totally. It's totally cool. I feel like that all the time. I'm like, I'm trying to find the people who want to be part of this story. And if they don't want to be a part of this story, that's totally cool, of course.
Because they won't be great partners to you down the line. Right, It's like you either get it and you want to be part of it, and you are happy to know that you don't know it all right, because it's about new space. It's like if we were all doing the same thing and trying to set up the same companies, we'd never find the skims exactly.
You know, It's like you'd never land on it.
You'd be like, that's too complicated, that's not how we do things, and you'd skip over the great stuff.
How have you managed to continue to stay hungry and also stay innovative when things are good? Like before you talking about I didn't like my job, but wanted to get out, you know, milk was outdoors, I was. You know, like there's a there's a pain that pushes you in a better direction. I'm not saying you don't have pain anymore. Of course there's stresses.
I don't have that much pain. I have daily dramas, but the pain has gone. You know what it is? You are fueled every day by.
A piece of it is competition, right, It's like I look at everything. There is no one who knows more about jeans and nickers than I do. I look at every competitor I go out in the market. I see it. I know, like the promotional cadence. I know everything everybody else is doing. And I think that that natural inquisitiveness is part of what keeps me good. But at the end of the day, it's like I just want to win,
you know. So it's like I don't feel satisfied. And also it's like, how could you It's just been a couple of years. There's loads of people that had successes for six and for three years. I don't think that's the end goal. The end goal is to build like you know, generational or generationally defining businesses, and that doesn't happen quickly. And also I'm not stupid enough to think like or to let a few years' success get to me. There's a lot of people that had a few years success.
Do you know?
That's not the end game.
And so I think about now, it's about, you know, really taking the foundations of what we've felt, not sacrificing any of your principles, and still being able to grow and to thrive and to higher people.
But that gets more and more difficult the bigger you get.
Right, there's one thing saying oh, we're going to do business this way, when there are ten of you and you're doing a million dollars, it's very very different all these years in because there's no model, there's nothing that you can go out and emulate. We are making it up as we're going along.
Yeah, how do you how do you define winning now? Like? Is that how you define winning? You know?
I define winning now by doing things that excite me, Like, you know, it's like we just launched this insane push up bra at Skims and everyone's talking about it. It's all over the place, and you know, like that's exciting to me because like some one of my girls in England will call me and be like, oh my god.
I need to get that bra.
You know, I love that, and I still get a thrill from you know, It's like I love what I do, Like I genuinely really love it, and I just want to keep getting better at it. And for me, it comes in so many different ways. It's like I love giving people opportunities. I love the hiring part of it and getting to work with all different people, and I
think that those things for me feel really successful. But if you to ask me just to like boil it down, it would be like to continue the growth and what we're doing without sacrificing the principles that we set the companies up with.
Yeah, I don't want to.
Dial it down because we're you know, reaching some kind of like critical mass.
Yeah. Yeah, how do you You know we were talking about that. You have daily dramas you said.
Not pains.
No, nobody talks to me when things are going well. My life is just a series of problems, you know, from the minute I wake up to you know, the minute I go to bed, Like that's just a fact. The stress level is unbelievable. And I do think that that's important because you wouldn't know that looking at me or maybe just speaking to me. But you know, my job is not all you know, trying different fabrics out and hanging around with models that that's just not what I do exactly.
Yeah, what what do you find to be the most stressful thing about building a business and what do you do in order to deal with it?
I think the most stressful thing is probably the expectations, right that that comes from the outside. I honestly believe you're only as good as your last launch. I never ever drink the kool aid ever, and I think that, you know, I happen to work in extremely high profile businesses where everything that we do is scrutinized, and with that comes a level of stress. It comes back to that thing of being very ritualistic. I, you know, am
militant about the things that work for me. You know, I suffer with migrains, I get super you know, I carry stress like in my body and so it's like I get up very early, I wake up, I work out, I meditate. I make sure I have to be up before my children are up because I need like quiet time,
I need time to like focus. I'm like religiously grateful, like I have trained myself to focus on the great stuff in my life because I feel like there is so much noise, you know, whether I like it or not, And so I could be overwhelmed every day in the things that are going on around me.
And at the end of it, I'm like.
Looking up, going wow, the ceiling in my bedroom, Like how could you even have a sick I could never imagine that such a beautiful ceiling ever. You know, It's like I am someone who truly stops to smell the roses, Like quite literally, I can find good, happiness, joy in anything, and I really make it a point and a priority
to do that every day. And even as I have my tea, you know, it's like I have special tea from Japan and I have a special pop that I put it in and I just like taste it and every day it's like I'm tasting it for the first time.
But if I didn't do those things, I would lose my mind, you know, I would lose my mind, and so I think I've just trained myself to like enjoy the kind of the rituals and the small things and be hyper grateful because there is no difference between me and all of those kids that I went to school with in East London, and I should be so lucky. It's like we're here in the sunshine overlook, in the
whole of LA I'm chatting to you. I'm going to go into my office where I'm the boss, and people are going to feel me chatting about stuff like I don't have anything to complain about.
Yeah, but I bet And from what I've learned today, you were like that even when the milk.
Was outside, I was like, at least I have a balcony.
Yeah.
I don't have a fridge, but I have a balcony.
Yeah, because because if it wasn't there, then it wouldn't be there. Now. If you went on a walk with little Emma as a memory, you like held hands and you went on a little walk with it, what do you think she'd say to you?
I think she'd say, well done, love you did it? Keep going? Keep going?
Yeah? I think so what would you say back oday?
I am I'm really walking forward now?
Stopting pressure on me.
I always sit here and I think, oh my goodness, I'm so proud of myself. But honestly, Jay, when I think about what that means for me now and the level of responsibility that I feel, that is the thing that really fuels me today, because when I do something, I feel a weight and an expectation a group of people that have been historically left out and marginalized from a lot of these conversations and a lot of these opportunities.
And there is this huge sense of responsibility that I have for women, especially sort of young black women and minority women and kids that just grew up poor anywhere. I think about all that stuff every single day, and I think that real success for me will be when I am able to really pull what I've got and what it is that I strive for and continue to achieve and has that affect a lot more people. And I do that in ways, you know, like through my
chairmanship of the fifteen Percent Pledge. That's been like a huge undertaking an amazing amount of work that I have been able to do. But for me, it's like that is only kind of scratching the surface. And I think more and more of my work will be in how can I help so many more people that are like me, you know, get out of their circumstances and be able to contribute more, Because it just is mesmerizing to me that I've been able to go so far and it
ain't because I'm something special. It's because there were a series of circumstances and then enough kind of gritin determination that I was able to do it. And so it's like, how do you put other people into the same circumstances so that if they have the will, that they can do it too?
And so that's where I'm fixated right now. Was one of your favorite success stories from that or like a memory or story from that?
Well, Well, you know, it's so funny because it happens again in the in the smallest ways, right It's like I'll have a chat. I get hundreds of people reach out to me to say, listen, I'm starting a business. I you know, I'm selling ten thousand dollars a month in this COVID brand. And it's like I'll jump on the phone and I'll give someone some advice. Like, you know, I had a girl a couple of years ago. She was like, I think I'm going to get into Selfridges and I want to know how to do that, how
to I structure the contract. Anyway, fast forward two years later, I do my first ever ask me anything because my team pressured me into it. I'm like, social, it's just not my bag. But anyway, so I do the first ask me anything, and all the girls are asking me the same questions.
Right, how do you start a business? How do you sy? I did it?
And this girl comes up and then shehes, I just want to let.
You know that I now do, however, many tens of thousands a week at Selfridges, and it was all because you helped me walk through that contract and I took your advice and I, you know, I stuck to the distribution plan and did it and I was like, oh my god, you know. And so it's always those tiny things for me. And again, that's just about giving someone
your time. So I'm really trying to think thoughtfully about how I can do more of that in a a more systematic and a bigger way, because sadly I can't answer every phone call or every DM what comes to Yeah.
What are you talking about? That's so beautiful? And I think that that component is such a big part of happiness and success is because you're so right, Like no one who's got the top is any more special. Just going back to what your mum said at the beginning, and as soon as you start thinking it, or people also start thinking it that oh, yeah, that person's there because they're faster, smart, better, or when we do the opposite, when we go they don't deserve to be there exactly,
both of those. Just take it away, and I look at your journey and I'm so I really admire the way you live and think, like it's really it's such a wonderful mindset and it's such a strong You've been able to craft something that's so resilient and you can and yeah, it's so what you've been able to build. And I'm talking about almost like if we were able to physically look at your mindset. It's so resilient because I can hear as we've approached it from so many
different points of view. It's like you have such a clear philosophy on how you live, who you are, what matters, what doesn't matter. I look at that clarity when I see you as like that's the reason you are who you are and where you are. It's because you're just so clear, and I feel like, no matter what would happen either way, it's like, that is what you're betting on, and that's what you've been building and focused on.
I think so, yeah, I think, so, someone write that down.
I really mean it. I really mean it.
So kind, it's so kind. I love that you say that. It makes me. It makes me so happy because you never think about yourself in such clear terms like that, right, It never you are who you are in so many ways. You know, when I see that with my own kids, they're like four people that I think, well, you got exactly the same upbringing. We all live in the same house, I don't do one thing different, and yet they are just these like four tiny individuals.
And it's six months.
It's like, you know exactly what kind of kids you've got, Like you know if this kid is like super anxious, if this kid's super obnoxious, you know exactly who they are. I'm sure there's lots of things and changes coming in their life, but so much of it is just in you, right, and you know, and then you layer circumstances onto that, and you know what you're capable of, what you can and can't affect and what you should be doing, And
so I always look at it. It's like I was living like a very nice, very privileged life in England and I moved here specifically for work, and it's been wonderful for work, but in so many other facets of my life, being in LA has been an eye opener and it's actually fueled me in a way that I really never expected. And I always think, you know, if you elevate your health, you elevate your life. It's like if you elevate your thinking, you elevate you know what
your capabilities are. And so for me, it's just been wonderful and an amazing moment to be here because I've been able to elevate so many things that I do, and I think that that should only end up in like a bunch of other people being able to benefit from that.
Absolutely well said write that down printed? Oh that was yeah, I no, absolutely, Like, I think it's incredible. How you know, I think a lot of people label LA as Hollywood and think of it as just that. Yeah, but it's like I feel the same way as you, like, moving here, like my eyes have opened up to so many more things that are really valuable, important, insightful, and met people who are doing incredible things. You know what you just said now of like opening the door and trying to
break down. We had, you know, just a few months ago, we had Lewis Hamilton here talking about forty four and talking about how he's trying to help, you know, trying to help people of color get into the world of Formula one, which is a normal which him and his father were able to do. Like you start seeing that happen across fashion, sports business, and that's so incredible because you start thinking about all those little Emmas and little Lewis's and everyone else out there totally who is just
trying to figure out whether they have a shot. Yeah, and they do. Yeah, Emma. We we end every episode with the final five, which we sit down and do as a fast five, which means every answer has to be one word to one sentence maximum.
One word to one sentence. All right.
I always ruin it because I get intrigued, So all right, okay, so em agree, these are your final five. The first question is what is the best advice you've ever heard or received.
I wish that I could make this sound as powerful as it was for me. It's the first thing to say, but it's a good one. It was to make a decision and move on, because you can be so stifled by your decisions, and when you are just stuck, it just does so many other things to you. And so I think it served me really well in so many ways. I used to think about it just for business, and now I don't. I think it's make a decision and move on.
Yeah. Yeah, I always say to people, stop trying to make the right decision. Just make a decision and then make it right.
Totally saying you can go back, you can go back afterwards.
Yeah, I love that. That's great. We've never had that that. Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
Stay in your lane?
What was the lane?
I don't know, but someone was trying to stifle me, and lucky enough, I listened to my little emma inside and gave her a big old bit.
I never stay in your lane.
But it's interesting because I think all the growth in my life has come when I have stepped outside of whatever lane I was in at that time, and so it's useless advice absolutely.
Question number three, how would someone who doesn't know you that well describe you in three words. I wish if you're listening to this, you just missed out on the best facial expansions. You need to go to YouTube right now.
Always such a worry. I mean, goodness, me, the things I've been called. How would someone describe me? I think they would describe me as like kind, I'm a kind person, ambitious, and like not to be messed around with?
Got it? I like it? I like the third run not to mess around?
Can think about the one. I think that's what people think about me. They're like tough, Yeah, tough, tough, kind but tough, ambitious.
Question before, how would someone who knows you very deeply describe you in three words?
Sensitive, very thoughtful, and tough.
That's brilliant. We need to get to verify.
To verify for sure you go tough to love it and them.
Your final question fifth to final question, If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
You know, very specifically for the time we're in right now, it would be to lead with kindness nothing else.
Yeah, we need it in every little interaction.
In everything.
It's so powerful and it's what I teach my kids, you know, it's like, just be kind, Like it doesn't take much and it goes so unbelievably far, you know. And when I say that about myself being kind, it's like that is something that I think about every single day, Like how am I treating people?
What do people get from me?
And I'm talking about everyone, you know, like everyone, It's just a fact.
Just be kind and agreed. Thank you for coming on on Perverse. This was incredible. Everyone has been listening and watching wherever you are, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're at the gym, whether you're driving to or from work, whether you're listening with your friends. I want you to know that. Please go and tag me and Emma in the moment that stood out to you. Maybe there's a quote, Maybe there was so much wisdom sprinkled across this entire episode.
I hope that you find the ones that resonate with you. I hope that this helps you make a shift in your career. I hope this helps you make a shift in your mindset about how you're trying to balance what's going on in your world. I hope this helps you think differently about the choices and decisions you're about to make. Please please please tag me and Emma across social media to let us know what stood out to you. Please show a ton of love, Emma, thank you for doing this,
Thank you for opening up. Thank you for being so real and wonderful to spend this much time with.
Oh, it's been a pleasure. I've loved every second. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you too, Jack, Thank you so good to see.
Thank you. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Kendall Jenna on setting boundaries to increase happiness and healing. You're inner child.
You could be reading something that someone is saying about you and being like, that is so unfair because that's not who I am, and that really gets to me sometimes. But then looking at myself in the mirror and being like, but I know who I am. Why does anything else matter.
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