Wake that answer up in the morning.
The Breakfast Club Morning, Everybody's DJ, Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the Guy.
We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special.
Guest in the building. Yes, indeed we have Emma Greedy. Welcome, Thank you.
I'm so happy to be here. Good morning, all of you.
How are you?
I'm really good, actually very good today.
Now you are the CEO and co founder of the Denim Company, a good American. I am a founding partner of Skims, co founder of Safely, and you have a new podcast coming out Aspire with Emma gree.
I do, I do? Indeed?
Now tell us how this all came about.
Doing that?
Thank you, Thank you very much. Well, honestly, I'm so excited about the podcast. That's my newest latest venture. And you know, I've spent my entire career building businesses, and so the idea around the podcast was really me thinking about how I can scale mental ship because wherever I go all over.
This country, if I'm doing a talk or if I'm walking.
Down the street, people are constantly asking me questions, how do I start a business, how do I get a pay rise? How do I become the best version of myself, how do I negotiate better? And you know, I can answer a lot of dms, but there's only so much you can do. And so I'm really taking all of my knowledge, everything I've done, all of my network and trying to bring it to people in a digestible way.
And I think that when you think about podcasting, it's a very very you know, broad medium, but there's a very narrow business viewpoint, very very narrow viewpoint, and especially
when you get to business podcasting, it's all men. And so I'm bringing like a perspective of myself, of somebody who is self made, someone who's a self starter and has you know, come from where I come from with very little education, and I want to bring something to people that is tangible and that they can essentially take out.
I want you to have something that's actionable when you leave this podcast, that you can take that back into where you work or back into your small business and do something with it.
Speaking of where are you from? Where do you come from?
Where do I come from?
I come from East London in England, which is a bit like you know, I always think about it as you know, similar to Brooklyn or something like that it's the most impoverished part of London.
But I would say probably the best part of.
You said it, like you from Brooklyn, Yeah, East London, but you have a network of three hundred and twenty something like that and you're from Eastland.
I think that was last year's figures. But yeah, we'll talk. Yeah we're growing out here.
But you didn't come from an impoverished area.
I do, and you said yourself, me, yes indeed.
So how did you get to that point?
What was the first thing that got you in the mix of get on that road and having a network.
I mean, I've had a job since I was twelve years old.
I delivered the papers, I worked in a Delhi, I worked in close shops, I did all the things. But you know, my interest was really in fashion. That's where my passion was. But I didn't know anyone who, you know, had a business when I was old. I didn't even know the term entrepreneur. If you were an entrepreneur in where I come from, you were probably doing something very wrong. So that wasn't really an idea that I had growing up. Excuse me going to clear my throat. But so for me,
I started out like many people. I did a lot of work experience. I tried to get into the fashion business. I assisted everybody. I worked in a lot of stores, and eventually I found myself in a fashion show production company and so that was me creating the shows, like building the shows, the catwalks, the backdrops, and it was
a very unfulfilling job, but you met everybody. So I did that for about four years, and then I fell into this kind of weird space of sponsorships because no designers ever have money to do their shows, and so they needed brand partnerships. And I just happened to be like a hustler, you know, I understand how to put people together and make things happen. So I started doing
these brand partnerships. Became the girl in London. You know, if you were running a show or you had a party to do, you come to me for the sponsorship. I would find you the sponsorship. And after a while, I started my own company doing that when I was twenty four years old, and it kind of grew from there. I did one company, I did another, I sold a couple companies. Fast forward to when I'm about thirty two.
I managed to exit that business, so I spent, you know, nearly ten years building that first company, had my first serious, meaningful exit, meaning that I made some money for myself and so I was financially secure.
Company with it.
That was called ITB and so, and it was amazing. It was like an entertainment marketing agency. So I worked with all the great brands and I would put talent in their campaigns and I built a big company. We had offices in London, in Paris, in New York, in LA. I shut down in LA because I made a lot of mistakes, but it gave me the foundational knowledge.
To really get to where I am now.
And then, of course, you know, I decided, after all that time and you know, creating a lot of value for other people and other brands, that I would do something for myself.
And that's when I started Good American.
Yeah, and Good American with Skims is under that and what else.
No, it's not.
They're totally separate, totally separate companies, separate companies, separate entities, separate shareholdings, separate that's the thing.
And I was reading this and I started, you have, like, you know, you have a certain percentage in Skim, Do you have a certain percentage.
In good America, you have a certain percent safely.
And the reason I thought that was so dope is because we live in this era where people feel like you have to have one hundred percent of something to be an owner, to be a boss. But the reality of one hundred percent and nothing is nothing nothing.
And listen, here's the thing.
I've done a very very good job because I divest my shareholdings. You don't want to hold a lot of money of a company. I've taken money off the table. I'm not looking to be rich when I'm seventy five years old. I want the money now. Yeah, And so I think that when you get valuations like a four billion dollar valuation, you take some money off the table. That's the sensible thing to do to divest your interests.
And that's what I've done all along. And so I'm very happy with the shareholdings I have right now because I've cash in the bank and that's what counts.
How did the Skims company start? You know, people will know Skims because it's so huge. It's on the sponsored by the NBA.
So how did that come?
We sponsored the NBA even the other way around? Even better?
So how did that company come about.
So honestly, I think it came about from the relationship that I have with the family, and you did, No, it wasn't my idea. It was Kim's idea. She wanted to create a shapewhere company or an underwear company, and you know, I had a business with the family, and so we decided to do it together. And the rest, they say, is history. It was, you know, the right thing at the right time. And you know, I think with any company, the stars, the stars have to align.
We launched that company in a magical, magical time and it hit the kind of zeitgeist. It was the right company for the culture like at the moment, and so I think it was just a series of amazing things that happened and put it on the map and here we are.
That's amazing because even Good American is Chloe's, Chloe's company.
Right, it's a partnership between me and Chloe.
Yes, work well with the families.
To say a check, check, check, I love that, And there's so many of them, so so many checks.
I love that.
You have a look at Skims and Good American blowing up and think to yourself, damn, you know, we really made the Kardashian's culturally relevant again.
No, I never think I never think about it like that. No, they're you know, they're being cultural culturally relevant. I think that what I do is what I do, which is I'm a very very good product person. I understand how
to bring product to market. And my background, you know, ten years of working forging celebrity partnerships makes me really good at understanding how talent are used to accelerate a brand, and so what I bring is an intrinsic knowledge of that space, right, And it's not so easy because otherwise every famous person we know would have a big brand that does hundreds of millions of dollars, and they don't.
So there's more to it, right.
You really have to be a somebody that understands product, that understands the customer, that understands how to.
Run a business. And that's what I bring to those partnerships.
And skims is redefined shapewre Like, what was the biggest risk you took early on.
That paid off? You know?
I think that Kim had a very clear idea of what she wanted to do and a very differentiated idea, and I think that that's what it's all about in business anytime, right, you have to have something that is unique and a unique point of difference to whatever's out there. And when I think about anything that we've done, whether you're talking about size inclusivity, or whether we're talking about the range from like a kind of you know, nude color range, like, we're always trying to do something that
doesn't exist in the market. And I think when you're solving problems, when you're creating solutions for people, that's when you know, you get that kind of breakthrough. That's when you get something that customers really go, oh, like, I need that.
I have that problem and you guys are solving for it.
When do you realize when it's time to sell a company? When do you say, Okay, this is when we have to exit, you.
Know, I think that that is different for every company. And I've been in agency businesses and I've been in brand businesses. I think that what is often true is like your first off, your first offer is often your best offer, and you shouldn't always think that there's something amazing coming around the corner. You have to sell things when they're on the up because it peaks right. And
then you've only got the downside to sell. And so when you've got that momentum, when you've got the forward towing, when you're in growth mode, as they say, that's when you need to think about selling or at least taking some money off the table.
Do people in fashion really care about diversity or is it just good pr until like the next next?
I mean, you could ask yourself, does anyone really care about diversity? I don't think it's just about fashion. I think there's definitely a certain amount of you know, performative action out there right for marketing purposes. And actually Good American and the reason I started that company was a reaction to that because I worked in the fashion business and I saw all these companies doing perform you know, like hiring one black girl in the campaign, and yet
no one in that entire company was black. And I saw people like performatively putting a plus sized person in a campaign where they didn't even make the clothes for that person. The girls like clothes would be cut up the back because she couldn't even fit in the jeens.
And so when we started Good American, the idea about it was to say, Okay, let's make a company that actually has these values where the office and the people that run the business and the people that make the decisions and the people in the c suite are actually a reflection of the customer base. And I think that's what made Good Americans so successful, that it was actually walking the walk and not just talk in the talk.
If you were a Side twenty and you needed a pair of jeans, you have a tiny waist and a big bar, like you came to Good American and you could feel the difference in that product and people knew we were for real.
Will It's like you said that, a tiny ways and a big bar.
Yeah, that's what we were working with.
Something I was gonna say, Now, you're also on Shark Tank.
I am, yes, absolutely.
What do you look for when somebody is on Shark Tank and they're pitching something to you?
You know, for me, it's always about the founder.
It's always I you know, even when I think about hiring and investing, I'm like attitude over experience, because that's my experience about I'm not someone who comes from a place where you'd be like, I'm going to bet on her, and so I really want that person that is so passionate about their ideas, so crazy about it. They know everything about the competition, they know everything about what they're doing,
and they are deep and they are into it. So I'm going for someone who like feels it intrinsically.
I was going to ask, so, what was your more successful investment on shark TINGK?
Do you know? Is this incredible?
It's so funny that you are to because when I got onto that show, you know, you do a few investments. And I remember saying to Mark one day when I haven't made any money out of any of this stuff, and he said, you know what, Emma, There'll be one and one of them will make you a bunch of money.
And for me, that was Cake's body.
These incredible two women that make like a silicone nipple cover. And of course the minute I saw them, I was like, I know that business. I understand this space, like I know I need that in my ket in my wardrobe. And they were doing just under a million dollars when I met them, and a year later, one hundred and twenty million dollars Killed Cured and just so you know, just a couple of like regular girls that left their jobs and decided I'm going to do something for myself.
You have such a very confident demeanor. What got you to that place? Did you always have that level of security?
You know, I was raised by a single mum on one of four girls, and I think that my mom did an amazing job of instilling.
That confidence in us.
You know, she taught me like, Emmy, you're not better than any one else, but nor is anyone better than you.
And I really grew up believing that.
I really felt like, if I work hard enough, anything is possible. And in East London, I was surrounded by people that were really hustlers, but they were trying their hardest. They were doing whatever they could to make a buck. And that's just in my spirit.
You know. For me, I'm a tryer.
I'm going to keep doing, I'm going to keep learning, and so much of what this podcast is about, you know, I think of myself as a lifelong learner.
I'm always in learning mode, right. It's like the more you learn, the more you earn.
And I really really feel like if you can help people broaden their horizons, if you can bring new ideas to people, there's nothing more valuable than that. And so I feel like in my life that's just who I am me?
I got four girls? What are you for?
I'm number one?
Ye, number one, As I like to say, my sisters will be like she hah, number one. But yeah, I'm the eldest of four girls.
Work what you are?
No, thank god, they don't work with me.
Do you know what?
I'm not about that missing? I already work in my that's enough. That that's enough. No. My sisters, two of them live in England, one lives in Los Angeles. We're very very close, talk every day on the like sister chat.
No, I don't want to work with them. I don't want to work with them.
How often, because you know, you're in these billion dollar rooms, right as a woman of color.
My dad's black moms, a mixed race, got you.
How often you still feel underestimated every day?
I mean because I am underestimated every day, right, I think? Well, I mean, listen, now it's a little bit different. Now I can walk into any room and people will bet on me, and people would want to invest in me. But I do think that you still, you know, I still think you're proving I'm proving myself every day. I never take anything for granted. Right, You're only as good as the last thing you did. And I'm constantly pushing
myself into spaces. It's like I might be sitting here with you know, a bunch of great companies behind me, but I don't know. I'm not a good podcaster, you know, I'm.
Just getting started.
And so I don't take anything for granted. And that's why I always think that, you know, you've got to be humble. You've got to go into something with the spirit of, you know, trying your hardest and trying to be good.
And I never let that leave me.
I don't walk into anything expecting anything.
I think you got to work for it every day.
Is that why you want to do the podcast? Because you want to help people?
Because you've got so many different jobs and you have girls, you have kids, you have a husband, you have a lot of ish going on.
I have a lot of ish going on.
No, you know, it really is because I think at a certain point, right you get to a place where you are financially comfortable. And also I proved to myself all the things I wanted to prove to myself, and now I think that the sign, you know, of success for me is how many people can come along like that are like me, that can come along and you can open the door for and that could actually have this sense of changing their life and building the life
of their dreams because of something that I did. And I know that, you know, people are looking to me, and I feel like it's honestly a responsibility and I don't want that to sound you know, trite or like something that feels disingenuous. Is I feel very very responsible for all the women that get in touch with me all the time because there is so much there are so many barriers, and there's so much out there that tells you that it's an impossibility, that there's not room for people, that.
Your opinion doesn't matter.
And I really think that leaning into my difference is really knowing and understanding where I come from and what is different and important about that. That's what's actually given me like space in these rooms. That's why people look to me and say, what is.
Your opinion about this?
Because of where I've come from, And so I actually think it's a superpower.
What would you tell somebody that it's an entrepreneur, maybe a woman and trying to get into the space has an idea, but it just hasn't taken off as of yet, they can't get on shot tank and they just want some type of advice to say, how.
Would you do it, how would you approach it? What would you tell that person?
Well, listen, the first thing is to start, because what you'll find is a lot of people talk about a lot of stuff and they haven't actually done it. And there's this idea that there's some perfect time, perfect set of circumstances.
It's never perfect. And also this idea.
We're in this culture right now where everyone thinks they have to raise a load of money, Like, don't don't raise any money, just do something, get out of the gate. We live in a world where social media and shopify has enabled us to start things very cheaply, and you can start small. Not everything needs to be a billion
dollar business. Maybe you're trying to transform your circumstances and leave your corporate job, and actually a little bit of money, a little bit of revenue, will be transformative for you. So I would say, don't benchmark and measure yourself by some standard that actually isn't part of your existence. It's like, do something, get out of the gate, start it, and then you test and you learn into it. Because nothing
works immediately. If I think about the business that I started with Good American three skws of skinny denim and what it is today, the two things don't even look the same. They don't look the same. We change the size, but we changed everything. The only thing you can't change in business is the reason that you started, right It's like the very essence of what you do and your purpose has to remain the same.
You iterate everything.
Else transform on the way up. And so I think that that's a really important thing. It's like you just have to get out of the gate and start.
I agree with you, you know, I think comparison to the deferioid, yes, it is.
So people will.
Start something, but then they'll be looking at you, but they don't realize all the time you've already put in all the experience you've got that.
Got you to this point.
But they feel like if they're not doing what Emma's doing right now, they're not successful totally.
And I think that that is just again, it's so much about the culture that we sit in right now.
It gives you this idea that you know, there's.
Such a thing as overnight success, and I don't know any overnight successes. You know, again, I have been working since I was twelve, and all of those experiences, you know, are so formative and they're so in me. And it's like every single thing that you get leverage right. And when I talk about leverage, I don't just mean taking something that you've been given.
It's like, what do you have?
Well, I have my reputation, right, and that reputation for delivering great business when I was in the AI agency business allowed me to go and raise money. I didn't know what private equity was. I would never have known how to go and raise funds. I went to a client that I'd consistently delivered good business for in my agency, and I said, Hey, do you want to invest three million dollars in my business?
And he was like, no, girl, I'll give you.
I'll give you less than that, but I'll invest in you. And so sorry, I've been doing a lot of talking this week. I'm like very hoarse, But you know, I think that that is the thing. You know, You've got to be creative and you've got to work with what you've got. And I think so often we focus on what we don't have and where our lack is and actually there is just that that is not worth your energy. You've got to figure out like where are you, what do you have and how do you leverage?
From that point, he says, you work with your husband.
How is that?
Because when it's so personally that's your husband, that's my husband, that's what you wake up with?
What like, how is that? How are you guys able to separate? Well, we're not.
Let me be honest with that, there's very little separation. The truth is that my huse spend was actually like one of my first investors. So I worked in a company where I set up a joint venture with them, and eventually years later and down the line, I ended up marrying one of those guys.
It's a great jobs. I have returned that investment.
But I think the what's important about that is that we had a professional relationship before we ever had our personal relationship. And my husband's Swedish, and in Swedish culture
is a very matriarchal culture. They really have so much respect for women, but they also really meet women halfway, like even to the point like in Sweden, when you take maternity leave, it's given to the couple, so if the woman wants to you know, you get a year, and if the woman wants to take six months and the husband takes six months, that's how you do it. But it's very usual in society that that happens. But what it means is that I've got someone who meets me.
You know, he respects my ambition, and he respects the fact that we have four kids.
We have four kids together, and we do that together.
So there's no expectation that I'm going to take some leading role, and nor do I quite honestly.
You.
I just forget what I'm gonna ask you. Oh, no, where did you learn financial literacy?
You know, that's a really good question.
I think when you come from scarcity, you have a really good appreciation for money. Because we didn't have any, and so I knew the price of everything, right, because it's like I knew what we didn't have. And my mum would budget, Like she'd sit at the table and she'd be like, this is what we are for groceries.
This is what we've got to keep the lights on. So I knew what money was.
And I used to see her back in those days, you know, you'd write checks, and so i'd see her do the check book and I'd be on the calculator and so money was just like a thing that I understood at a very young age. And also it was cash then, right, so you'd like count the cash, and
that gave me a relationship with it. I'm dyslexic, and so I had a very hard time when I started my business understanding how the money would link together, like between the margins and the profit and the E but I would be to me, it was like scrambled eggs. And then again when I got into e comm, everything is acronyms. You know, you're talking about AOV and the UPT and the LOV and I would.
Be like, I don't get this.
But I think the thing for me is that I'm naturally curious, and so I would just ask a lot of questions. And I learned by just asking, like just that I'm never scared to be the dumbest person in the room. I'm like, what does that mean? How does that work? How does that go together? And so I just like learned on the fly. And I think that being naturally cautious about money meant that even when I got investors, I spent their money like it was my own,
meaning that I'm frugal, like I am tight. I'm just holding all the money all the time, and I never like flashy with the cash. Even now when I am a bit flashy with the cash. It's like, I know the cost of everything. No one can buy anything in my house and me not be like what was that, you know, because there's a special price for everything in bel Air.
My toilet breaks.
They're like, oh, hi, you know, it's the bell Air price and I'm like, no, this is what we're paying, you know.
So I'm like very aware of everything.
How much power do you have in these partnerships, Well, you.
Know, I don't really think about it in terms of power.
We're partners and we do different things, and so I have, you know, a good American and I'm the CEO, and so I make all the decisions as the CEO would in any company. In Skims, it's very very different, and Kim plays a very very hands on role. My role is across everything product related, so design, merchandising, production planning. That's a part of the company I run. And I see my role as really like making Kim's vision come true.
She's like, this is really what I want to see.
I want to make a nipple bram No, I'm going to make the best nipple bra with the best margin, and we're going to make hundreds of thousands of them.
So that is what I do.
What's harder convincing investors to back inclusive brands are convincing consumers.
It's not just a gimmick, you know.
I never think about it as I never think about inclusivity as what the brand is about, right because I think about at the end of the day, what you're selling to customers is like the overarching dream of what a brand is, and there's so much more to that.
Inclusivity is one.
Piece of what we do, providing a great product at a great price and getting it to consumers really quickly, Like that's what the brand is, and then there's all of these different parts that are additive to it. So I think that whenever you're pitching something, first of all, you've got to know your audience, but you've got to understand what the true mechanics are of anything and what the important parts of anything are.
And inclusivity is one of.
Many, many things that we do, So I never think about it as something that it's like like that is the main selling point because nobody's like, at the end of the day, no one's buying inclusivity. If you're a size sixteen, you're here for the size sixteen. You ain't here for the side twenty four and the size eight, you know. So that's just what we do, like giving that. The right thing to do is and the right business decision to make is to serve as many customers as
you can. If I make nineteen sizes, I'm going to do better the business than if I sell six much just good business.
My wife loves Skims, you know what I mean. And I remember asking her why and she just like, she just likes the way it fits.
It fits as comfortable, simple as that fits.
But what would you say to the black women who feel like Skims isn't made for them, even if it looks like it.
Is it's made for them. Who are they?
What are their sizes? We have everything? I'm like, no, no, it's made for everyone. We have the most unbelievable customer base and you don't. You don't have that level of sales if it's not for certain people.
Question which your podcasts you're gonna have guests on a podcast and who's coming on a podcast.
We've got so many amazing guests on the podcast. So we launched yesterday with Gwyneth Paltrow and Melody Hobson, and Melody is my business idol. So I really wanted to make sure that we could come out of the gate with someone that I've learned from and also someone that I believe is you know, Melody is a one of one. She is not just one of the best black business women in the country, she's just one of the best.
Business people in the country.
Former chair of Starbucks. I mean, she is just so incredible. And she spent her.
Entire career at one place, thirty.
Years in one company, and I think that there's some really amazing learnings for that. She went in as an inter born on the South side of Chicago, you know, one of five kids, five kids, she's one of five.
And she is just single mom.
Again, the most incredible woman went into this company as an intern and now she owns a very very meaningful part of a fourteen billion dollar, you know, private equity business. And so I look at that and like my mind is blown. And then again Gwyneth, I thought so interesting because for so many women they're starting businesses from something that they're passionate about.
And also they're trying to do a pivot.
And if you are, you know, working your corporate job and you want to just change completely and do something different, I thought she would be a really interesting benchmark to look at. How do you just completely rip it up and say I'm going to start something new. So I was really I was really happy to have those first people. But I also think that women have a lot to learn from men right in business, and so I'm really going to be focused on a lot of different men coming through.
And so we have Michael.
Rubern, I've got Mark Cuban, I have the wonderful You, and some find Charlote Maine's coming on and I'll be so happy. So I've just got like a bunch of really incredible guests, and it's really about people that I know, I respect and those that I aspire to.
He has if you haven't guess because you can talk, you're good talking. You're good talking.
One is hoping. Yeah.
How do you evaluate celebrity influence versus product quality when you're trying to build brand trust?
How do I evaluate it? I mean, it's an interesting question actually to me. I don't even think about listen. Influence will only take you so far. Right, you can drive a customer to product once, so I will could love you, Charlemagne, and you could be trying to sell me something, and because of the strength of how much I love you, I'll go and buy your product.
If your product doesn't perform for me, I'm not buying it again.
And the strength of a business is the strength of the lifetime value of that customer.
How many times are.
They coming back to you over and over again, And that's how you build affinity with customers. And so after a while, the influence is useless if the product is not good.
So the two only work.
In terms of the acceleration of the talent can only work for the product if the product is good, because customers are too smart, Like, no one's going to buy things that are not good.
Absolutely, Well, what's your approach to like global expansion? Like the skim's different in Paris than it would be in like I think.
You know, that's one of the things that I learned really early in my career when I when I had ITB, which was my agency business, I was killing in London and then I opened an office in New York and it was amazing, and I was like, I'm going to LA, the home of celebrities. And I failed miserably. And when
I tell you, I foiled miserably. I opened a big office, like a gorgeous office, and I hired all these people and had to shut it down less than a year later, about ten months in, when I was devastated because I had an ignorance for the localization of anything. And it kind of comes back to this idea that success you can't transfer success, and you know, more than anywhere.
I feel like La is one of these places.
It's built on such a community, right, It's like and you are either in that and you understand it or you don't. And I bought all of my kind of like this ignorance of success into a place where they were like no, no, no, honey, not here like this.
That's not going to wash.
I've since been successful in LA, but I really understood the landscape of the place. And so to answer your question, I think that you have to really think about localization in certain markets. That there's no such thing as Europe, right. Europe is a is a bunch of different territories, and what works in Germany does not work in France, which is not works in England. It's very different to if you you know, the US, which is essentially one market with a little.
Bit of localization.
So you really have to think globally about if your product is going to resonate in that market and how and where, and have specificity around how you come into that market.
How long were you in La before you did become successful because you you did say like you thought, you know, with the ignorance of succession, that she was going to go to this La Hollywood place in it pop overnight. How long were you?
It took me about honestly, like I would say three four years. And I was lucky because the business was successful in other places. But I shut down the office, I scaled it down, and then I essentially had to restart. And it was really like a bash on my ego, you know, because I was flying high with this agency girl. I had a bunch of stuff and I was like, nothing can touch me. And it was really like eating
humble pie. And again, all of that is fine so long as you take the lessons, you know, And I'm not too proud to say I failed and I knew it at the time, and I was like, Okay, well, why what did I do wrong? And so I just scaled it back. I changed a few of the people around. And again that's really difficult because for me, I was often bringing you know, people that I loved, people that were successful with me in a business. And there's nothing
worse than having to fire people. But you know, it's like, you can't be a people pleaser and a leader at the same time. You have to make you know, I always talk about this idea of killing your darlings. You have to like make choices, make tough decisions, and you
have to have an enterprise mentality. And so for me, it's about doing the best thing for the business, and at that point, it was about scaling it back and starting again and doing something with a lot more understanding of where I was and of respect for the place that I was in.
I want to ask you some skims again. I remember there's a complete love skims. Were wife looking at Okay?
But are you wearing skims?
You know we have men throw away like yes, come on, once again, we have some of it dumb discriminating.
I'll get you some products, okay, Okay, can you get into the products place for this afternoon.
Absolutely I will deliver.
But I remember them saying Kanye was a ghost creative director.
O Lord, you're not going to You're not going to do that to me today, are you.
I just remember seeing it.
When I come here with my energy and my voice and all my things, I'm here to talk about me.
Don't do that to me now.
Okay, what are you at getting the skims down?
She handled it the way you should handle it. When you don't want to answer a question, just don't answer it.
There's nothing wrong with it.
I love it.
What do you want your legacy to be? Business?
Morgal, culture, shifter, investor are just something else entirely.
You know, I'd really love my legacy to be I would love to think about, like here's a girl to help ten million women get to where they could be, Like I would love that.
You know. It's like I really think about myself. You know. It's like I'm kind of done for me.
You know.
It's like I've got to a place where I'm so happy and I'm so content, and of course I'm very
ambitious still for myself. That's not to say like I'm in retirement or anything, but I do really like, look at my success now and think, my goodness, wouldn't it be amazing if like a million other little Emmas appeared, you know, a million other girls that like left school when they were fifteen really without a lot of hope, became super successful because of something I said, I did, I enabled, And so that's what I'm thinking about right now, and I think it's possible for me to do that.
The DEI initiatives are being rolled back in government and corporations. Have those pressures changed how you approach the AI for your.
Business Absolutely not, in fact never, And I really lean into that because I know that honestly. It's it's the diversity in my business is a superpower. It's been a superpower for me. And you know, you guys probably know. I'm the chairwoman of the fifteen Percent Pledge and we work with brands all over this country to essentially advocate for them to take fifteen percent of their annual spend
and give that to black owned businesses. And so we've put over fourteen billion dollars of opportunity into the hands of black founders and entrepreneurs all over this country. And when I look at those this is a business proposition. Isn't a nice to have, This isn't a fun to do. This isn't a tick on some charter somewhere. This is about having more relevance with your customer base. And I know that if you walk into Sophora now versus walking into.
Sepour or five years ago.
So it's not just better for black women or women of color who can find a product. It's better for everyone because everyone can go in there and buy those products. Black businesses aren't just for black people, nor a Latino businesses, Nora any businesses. So I actually think that when we talk about some of this stuff, we lose sight of what we're actually talking about. We're talking about more choice, better for customers, and that's what women looks like.
So it's like we really shouldn't.
Like, I think it's so crazy that people would try to think about these things. It's like nice to have. It's like, do you want to make more money or not? I make more sizes and more colors, I have more customers that.
Behave expound on that, like do you ever get out of explaining whyde diversity market are we talking?
It's pretty simple, It's really simple stuff.
It's like, we're trying to be more dynamic, We're trying to be more differentiated, We're trying to bring more people through our doors. Who cares who? Here's who they are? Right Like, I don't I don't understand.
Why limit yourself?
Why limit?
Why not? Why the customer.
Will be a hundred percent?
Or what I knew?
I made it moment, you know, I honestly think that it's so funny because I think, you know, so many people and quite rightly so are down on this country right now, right we all feel the fatigue. And I think that moving to America was a game changer for me. And I think that what you have to understand is that the American dream is still alive in Kicking. There is nowhere on earth that I could have done the journey that I've done now. And you know, my husband's
he has a very very wise father. He died and he used to say, you know, ever, America is the best of everything and the worst of everything. And it's really true to me now that I live here, I really see that so clearly.
But I'm living my American dream, you.
Know, in this place and the people and the opportunities that I've had here have been unbelievable and so I'm really I'm really kind of living proof of something that is still very very special about this country.
Wow.
There you have it.
Enjoyed this conversation.
Enjoy you Now? Where can they listen to the podcast?
You can listen to it everywhere you get your podcasts, Please go you know, Apple, anywhere, YouTube.
We're going to be everywhere.
And thank you for joining us so much. You make sure you send them some skims extra small.
I'll send you all.
Extra small. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm easily a large.
Definitely not get you an ex excel XL. We'll figure that.
Emma Greedy, it's the Breakfast Club.
Good morning, Thank you guys.
Wake that ans up in the morning. Breakfast Club