Love, Family and Business: How To Work With a Partner with Jens Grede

Aspire with Emma Grede is a finalist for Best New Podcast with Signal’s Listener Choice Awards! Vote here. https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2025/shows/genre/best-new-podcast In this episode of Aspire, Emma Grede sits down with her husband, Jens Grede— media and retail investor, CEO of Skims, Chairman of Frame and founder of the Saturday Group. Jens’ business acumen has been instrumental to Skims’ exponential growth, which has a current valuation of $4 billion. They sit down for a candid conversation about what it takes to be both life partners and business partners. Emma and Jens open up about the lessons they’ve learned building brands like Skims and Good American, the rule that anchors their marriage, and why embracing risk and reinvention has shaped both their careers and their family life. They share honest reflections on balancing ambition with love, parenting with partnership, and excellence with vulnerability. Tune in for a real, behind-the-scenes look at how Emma and Jens make marriage and business thrive — together.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Emma Grede?

  Today is a crazy one. I'm interviewing my husband, who I've also worked with for over 18 years, Jens Grede. Jens is a serial entrepreneur, prolific investor in the media and consumer industries, father of our four kids and CEO of Skims. Today, we unpack how we've been able to build together in life and business. Jens reveals why he never denies gut instinct and how success is about opportunity, patience and resilience and the moment that changed everything for us.

• 0:50Emma Grede?

  Hi darling.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:53Emma Grede?

  This is weird.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, very, very weird.

• 0:56Emma Grede?

  How are you feeling?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  I'm extremely nervous. I think I'm the most nervous I've been for like, since our wedding day.

• 1:04Emma Grede?

  Oh shut up, there's no way. Are you really?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Of course, because I want to do a good job for you. This isn't what I do, so I'm doing it for you.

• 1:13Emma Grede?

  You're so good, I literally had arms from outside. Well, you're very lovely and I'm happy you're here because actually of all the people I've asked to do the podcast, you gave me the most direct answer, which was just a flat no, maybe season two.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31Emma Grede?

  And here you are.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I was hoping when season two would roll around, I could say season three and so forth.

• 1:38Emma Grede?

  Just keep kicking the can.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It was a deferment.

• 1:41Emma Grede?

  Well, the people have spoken Jens, they want to hear from you. It is a fact of social media questioning, so here you are. Obviously, I know you as my beloved husband, the father of our four children and an amazing investor, founder, CEO, all round entrepreneur. But for my audience that don't know you, can you just take me back to the beginning a little bit and talk to the audience about where you come from and what your upbringing was like?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  I grew up in a small working class community in our south of Stockholm. A son of a Swedish filmmaker who made very difficult movies about difficult subjects.

• 2:23Emma Grede?

  You can say that again.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a mother who was a tapestry artist. So we were the odd family, you know, I wouldn't say we were the Addams Family, but we were the odd family in, in, in where I was raised.

• 2:39Emma Grede?

  And talk a little bit about, because you left home at a very young age and kind of set out on your own, away from your parents, like sixteen years old?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I moved away when I was sixteen. You know, I grew up in the countryside, but I never really had a strong connection to the countryside. I was a kid that was very bored growing up and dreaming of, you know, the big city. And I was obsessed with skateboarding and I spent my whole childhood skateboarding and snowboarding. And it's not that easy to skateboard on a farm.

• 3:15Emma Grede?

  Facts.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  So, which is, it was like a challenging choice, like, so I moved to Stockholm when I was sixteen. So I could really skate all year round indoors and, uh, lived on my own ever since.

• 3:28Emma Grede?

  Tell me about coming to London. I know you turned up to London when you were nineteen, but give me that bridge of like, how did you get into fashion? Because I feel like for certain careers, music, fashion, entertainment, it's, you know, it's very, very different now to what it was back then. But you were still a kid with no contacts, no money, no, like, you weren't in the mix because that's not where you came from. So how did you break into fashion? Like, what's your first job?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Well, that was before I came to London. I think I was like twenty, about to become twenty-one. I had somehow wrangled my way into a magazine in Stockholm that was a very well-respected fashion magazine. I wrangled my way in by, I approached them in a nightclub. I saw the editor and I said, I work for free. And who doesn't want someone working for free?

• 4:22Emma Grede?

  I mean, that's what we could do back in the day. Those days are gone, but we all work for free.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I, I, I worked for free until he grew a conscience and started paying me.

• 4:31Emma Grede?

  You didn't tell me how to pay you.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:34Emma Grede?

  No, no, we all just worked for free. It was the norm, especially in fashion.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Well, I wanted the job and I was okay to go hungry for a little bit.

• 4:43Emma Grede?

  And go hungry, you did. All right. So you turn up to London, you've got three hundred quid in your pocket. And three hundred quid is, you know, not a lot of dollars, basically. And what do you do?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Well, I know this is shocking to hear, but I had a girlfriend before you. I know, I know, I know, it's shocking. And and surprising.

• 5:02Emma Grede?

  You mean that you moved to London for a girl?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I think there was a girl involved, yes, in that move. I wanted to move to New York.

• 5:10Emma Grede?

  Long may she be gone.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Well, God works in mysterious ways.

• 5:16Emma Grede?

  Because I was in London, just waiting for you.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Because you were in London, because I did not like London. I didn't like it one bit. And I wanted to move to New York. And I showed up in London. We shared a small apartment above a bookbinder's on Holloway Road, which is not the greatest area then. I don't think it's the greatest area today. And I slept on a, well, her and I lived on a blow up mattress together with her flatmate. That was that.

• 5:51Emma Grede?

  They were the good old days.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  They were the good old days. Yeah.

• 5:55Emma Grede?

  Did you envisage yourself to be where you are now?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  The short answer is yes. I mean, I never envisaged my career. I never had a plan for my career. I didn't know what form it would take or what good I could do. But I was a daydreamer.

• 6:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  I was a big daydreamer and I think I spent most of my school years daydreaming. I certainly didn't spend my school days studying. I never went to college.

• 6:26Emma Grede?

  No, you left when you were what, fifteen, sixteen?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  No, no, in, I left after high school.

• 6:32Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  After high school. It's a little different in the UK to the US and Sweden, but I left after high school. You know, I had terrible grades. I couldn't get into university. I wanted to get into university because I wanted to be able to live. And if I would get into university, I would get, you know, student loans and I could live on the student loans. But my grades didn't, didn't really get me there.

• 6:53Emma Grede?

  So from the terrible grades, tell me how you first got started in business. What was the first thing?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  So the way I think about business, there's something I do to do something I wanna do. It's, it's business itself, it's a means to an end. It's the necessary things we do to be able to practice something we love or we wanna express. You don't become an artist to be in the music business, become an artist to become an artist. The music business follows being an artist.

• 7:24Emma Grede?

  Uh huh.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Or a writer, and I was a writer, or at least identified as a writer. I didn't write very much, but I identified as a writer. You have to work at a magazine. But really, I didn't have any thought of being in business or running a business or starting a business until I had to start a business to do what I wanted to do.

• 7:44Emma Grede?

  Why did you need to start a business? Like, where were you, where were you at, where were you working?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I was twenty-four and I wanted-

• 7:50Emma Grede?

  Because that's really young to start a business.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I couldn't get the job I wanted.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  So I had to create the job I wanted. I wanted to work with my best friend. And no one would hire two people at the same time. I, I can't believe we thought that we were naive enough to think that you can get hired as two people. I mean, how many people have come into your office saying, here's the two of us-

• 8:15Emma Grede?

  And he is my best friend, no.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Here's my best friend, hire us both. That's not how it goes. However, we were naive enough to think that that's how it goes. And when, not only that, we only really wanted to work for one or two people. And when they didn't give us a job, we had no choice but to start our own business.

• 8:32Emma Grede?

  I've heard you talk about, or I heard you say that dysfunction is an opportunity. And so I wonder about somebody listening to this, how, you know, a toxic job, a bad boss, or being in a kind of not-so-great work environment can actually be a growth experience?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, just imagine, right? If everybody around you is really great. You know how hard it is to stand out, but if you're working in an environment with some dysfunction and you're in a job and you don't think your boss is that good or your coworker is that good, good, you be great, you be great, you will stand out. And you'll get opportunities because you will be there and you'll do a better job. So yeah. Instead of, and I've said this to many friends. Don't complain about your environment. See your environment as an opportunity to put yourself forward and do a great job. Don't worry so much about if the people you work with is not up to what you perceive,

• 9:33Speaker 01

  rightly or wrongly, to be your level, but then you you be the level.

• 9:37Emma Grede?

  Yeah, no, I think that that shuts down quite a lot of complaining. I love what you said about the way of framing your twenties, your thirties and your forties, because I think the common wisdom, or so many of us think that everything should be figured out, like you've spent maybe time in education, you come out of college in your twenties and you should like walk into this dream situation. But the reality is, and I think I've learned this as I got, as I've got older, that it doesn't work like that at all. And I wonder if like, you know, you have hundreds and hundreds of employees, you've had multiple companies and successes. Can you talk a little bit about the timing, the timing of everything and and how we should think about some of those frameworks?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Well, unlike you, I don't have a plan.

• 10:24Emma Grede?

  We're gonna talk a lot about how different we are, you and I.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  I don't have a plan. I don't have a a linear career path. I don't call myself an entrepreneur. I don't call myself a CEO. I said, I normally say, who the hell wants to be a CEO? CEOs gets fired. I don't want to be a CEO. I want to call the shots. I want to own it. But someone else been to fire.

• 10:51Emma Grede?

  But the distinction is important because I think for a long time, all I wanted in my life was to be the CEO, the entrepreneur, and you have always fought against those things. You're like, no, you don't, Emma. You just wanna be the person calling the shots.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, what does it matter?

• 11:07Emma Grede?

  Well, I think people care about labels. You're just very, like, you can give a shit about those things.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  I couldn't care two shits about those things. I think one should be careful about being too excited about calling yourself a CEO or founder. I mean, I prefer founder. I think founder is fair. You have an idea. You're bringing that to life. I think it's the best way to describe it. But to me, when I think about a CEO, I think about someone who is, you know, commanding a large corporation, not someone who's trying to make a dream become a reality.

• 11:42Emma Grede?

  But you are a CEO. You're the CEO of Skims.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  I'm a CEO.

• 11:45Emma Grede?

  You've been the CEO of multiple companies.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I have.

• 11:49Emma Grede?

  And yet, that's just not something that you identify with.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  No. I identify with the role of, as a coach.

• 11:56Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  I think in, as you know, which is ironic, but I really think about a lot of things in business in a, as a sports analogy.

• 12:06Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  And I'm a basketball coach. I wanna win the title. I put my guys on the floor, you know, but if you're losing in the fourth quarter, I'm not gonna run out and sink a three-pointer for you, but I'm going to deal with you in the offseason. So for me, I see my job as trying to bring a vision into reality. And that vision will shift as business gets bigger. You know, the dream of what Skims can become is bigger today than when we started the company.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  But I see my role with Kim. Kim had a vision of what she wanted to create. And I see my role as making that a reality for her and for myself and for you and for our team.

• 12:59Emma Grede?

  I wanna know, because I feel like you have a good point of view on this. For someone who's starting out with super limited resources, what do you think the smartest way is to build and to create momentum for yourself? If somebody else like has the three hundred pounds in their pocket, what do you think you would advise?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Well, if you've got three or four hundred dollars in your pocket, you can't really do shit. That's, that's the truth. You have to be good at something. You know, if you don't have the money, you have to have the human capital, your skill set, your drive, your talent. That is hopefully more valuable than four hundred dollars. So you have to double down on being good at something.

• 13:45Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  People try to skip that over. We see these success stories all the time about someone who stumbles over something and, oh my god, now it's unbelievable and it's a billion dollar business. And I can tell you, I have been, as you know, an avid investor in the consumer space and in technology and media for twenty years. I'm on the inside of many of those stories. It's not my name, because it's not mine, but I'm on the inside because I'm an investor. It never is what people think it is. It's never as great as it might look. So it's far better to focus on being excellent.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And I have, in my whole life, never seen excellent people fail.

• 14:38Emma Grede?

  That's a delicious bit of advice right there.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Just be, just try to be great.

• 14:42Emma Grede?

  Just try to be great. Just try to take whatever it is that you've got and be great. I wanna talk to you about. Like the big pivotal moments and I think that one element or something that I see in you that I've really had to try to learn is this element of risk taking. And so I feel like you have reinvented yourself in your career multiple, multiple times. And I wonder like what's given you the courage to start over and start over and start over again?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  The biggest risk you can take in life is not taking any risks in life.

• 15:20Emma Grede?

  You have told me this many times.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  That's a fact. Whatever good moment you have is going to pass for everybody.

• 15:28Emma Grede?

  You are a bundle of joy, my darling.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  It is just what it is.

• 15:36Emma Grede?

  This is the stoic Swedish joyfulness that I wake up with every morning, feeling good, it's gonna pass. I'm like, oh, great. Fucking great.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's gonna pass if you don't reinvent yourself.

• 15:51Emma Grede?

  Well, because you believe very much like not getting high on your own supply, right? You're like, you'll be in a moment and you know, it's just a fleeting moment.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I think getting high on getting high on your own supply or getting high on your own success, I would say that drug has taken down more of my friends than any of the others. You have to reinvent yourself every five to seven years or so.

• 16:19Emma Grede?

  And give me a night, like for people listening, exactly what do you mean by that? What do you mean by reinvent yourself?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I'm sitting on your podcast.

• 16:26Emma Grede?

  Fair.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  And I'm Scott Galloway.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  And we want to tell you about Pivot, our twice weekly podcast.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  That's right, Kara. What a thrill. It's a chance for us to break down all the big things happening in tech, business and politics.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Yes, and I keep you in check so people can make it through each episode, whether it's digging into constant changes in the world of AI and social media, or trying to keep up with whatever the fuck Elon is doing. We're here to give you our take on all of that.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Every Tuesday and Friday morning, we drop a new episode about some of the major stories of the moment.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And Scott is a prediction machine, gazing into his crystal ball to tell you about where it's all heading.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  So if that sounds like a good time for you, especially Mr. That's Right, you can follow us on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every week.

• 17:31Emma Grede?

  All right, let's talk about me and you, dear.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 17:34Emma Grede?

  Okay, so we got to the kind of early 30s, which is basically when I met you. I met you when you were 30.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  30.

• 17:43Emma Grede?

  Because I remember your 30th, 29, because I remember your 30th birthday.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:48Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I wasn't invited.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:50Emma Grede?

  You had another girlfriend then too, but.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  It wasn't much of a party.

• 17:53Emma Grede?

  No, you were miserable before me. But let's, let's just talk about. Well, actually, why don't we talk about that? Why don't we talk about how we first met? Because you know how couples have these different ideas of that. Let's talk about us together, how we met. Go on, in your words.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Well, we met through an agency that was under the Satvy Group umbrella. And they wanted to branch out into sponsorship and events. I didn't really care. But the people running it.

• 18:29Emma Grede?

  That's exactly why I came over, because you didn't care.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  I was like, all right, we'll try it.

• 18:36Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And they said this.

• 18:38Emma Grede?

  But you were in my interview. You were my final interview, basically.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 18:43Emma Grede?

  After I die. You do remember it.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Very well.

• 18:45Emma Grede?

  Where were we?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  But I was gonna say something nice.

• 18:47Emma Grede?

  Okay, go on, go on.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I was gonna say something really nice. They were saying at the time, I was like, why would we do that? And they were like, this girl, everybody loves her. She's super well respected. She's really young, but I think it'd be a really good look for us if she worked here because everybody else would want her to work for them. And I said, good enough for me, but let me meet this person.

• 19:11Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Emma Grede?

  And so I met you.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  So you met.

• 19:14Emma Grede?

  And how did you feel about me straight away? Was it love at first sight?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't love at first sight.

• 19:23Emma Grede?

  For you.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But it wasn't.

• 19:25Emma Grede?

  I loved you straight away.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  But it wasn't.

• 19:31Emma Grede?

  I really did. You can't say it's not love. You really like I, the way I remember it is you literally didn't know that I existed for nine months.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  I think that's a slight exaggeration. I do remember our entire first meeting. In detail.

• 19:51Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah, no doubt. You're very, you remember details.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't have remembered that in detail if you hadn't made a very strong impression. I remember telling someone I thought you were very cute. So I give you that. But I was also aware that that's not something I should think.

• 20:09Emma Grede?

  I remember being so in love with you the moment I met you that when you wrote my offer down. Because I was essentially at that point, it was like I was going to start a division of an agency you already have. And I would have a stake in that. You know, it wasn't really even a company, it was just a division, but I would basically get to, you know, make a decent amount of money. And you wrote my offer down on a piece of paper. And I loved you so much at that point that I still have.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  You still have it?

• 20:40Emma Grede?

  That notebook, it's upstairs still in, in my G A office. It's upstairs in the office. Yes.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  That's, that's extremely cute.

• 20:49Emma Grede?

  Isn't that cute?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's very cute.

• 20:51Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I'm so glad you thought that was cute.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 20:53Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I mean, it's the truth. I was completely smitten, but you know, we were not in situations, either of us, to start dating one another. Cause we both had other partners at the time.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I don't think that meet Q is as interesting perhaps as how, you know, how I fell in love with you, which I find was one of the most, I'm going to sound like the way I don't want to come across, almost spiritual.

• 21:21Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  In the way that happened, it was a, sounds like I have dream catchers.

• 21:31Emma Grede?

  It really does.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Which is like the opposite, but I just knew, when I knew, I knew, I had, when I knew, I had no doubt. It was like a cosmic experience and I knew you felt same way, even though we had never talked about.

• 21:49Emma Grede?

  No, we never had a discussion because we were professional.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  When we kind of proclaimed our love for one another and started dating, we just came out with it.

• 22:00Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I remember I was with you and we.

• 22:02Emma Grede?

  No, we hadn't had, we hadn't kissed and we hadn't done.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 22:05Emma Grede?

  No.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  But I was willing to leave everything and anything for you.

• 22:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah, same. And you did.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Which, you know, yeah, you had, sometimes the greatest risk is not taking it, but it didn't feel like a a risk at all. It felt like this is what I had to do, but I was never uncertain. And I was never uncertain about how you felt either.

• 22:31Emma Grede?

  No, I think that we've been very clear together. I mean, I do think, and I say this all the time, it was, it has been a gift and a blessing that we had a working relationship together for just under a year before we actually started dating, before I put my, you know, falling in love on day one uh to the side and decided to do some good work.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Well, that's helpful because when you have a working rapport, it's much easier to have a personal rapport.

• 23:01Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Personal rapport and you try to turn that into working rapport, that can be a little bit challenging because you just have different patterns.

• 23:08Emma Grede?

  Yeah, the, the, the way around it really worked. And I think that what's been interesting is how we've managed to stay happily married together, um now with four kids later and yet still work together. So what do you think it is that makes us able to work together?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I would broaden that a little bit because I have only really worked with friends. I consider. True, that's true. With a friend. I didn't, in in almost every case, you know, there's been that duality. Mm hmm. You know, you're my family, but as we grow up in our twenties and thirties, our friends are also our family. Yeah. So I have only, I feel like I've always ever worked with family. But also I grew up in a home where my dad was making movies, my mom was making art and they had a dialogue around each other's work all the time.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  So I think I grew up in a home where work and life was always intertwined. And it wasn't something that my parents were trying to separate. They got a tremendous amount of joy and value out of it. Just like I believe I getting a tremendous amount of joy and value out of working with you. You know, all relationships, not just in love, but all relationships have to create something together. And we can create a home, we can create a family, people can create memories, you can have projects, you can start companies.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  People ask me all the time, you know, my friends ask me, you're, you know, you're working with your wife. How does it work with your wife? How can you work with your wife? That would drive me nuts, you know, how do you do it? And I say, you all work with your wife, you all work with your partners, you know. We're lucky now that we don't have to argue so much about who's taking out the trash. But for most people, the division of roles and responsibilities in a home, in in in any relationship, it sure looks like work to me. So I don't make that much distinction. You really don't? No.

• 25:31Emma Grede?

  I always think that it's somewhere in the fact that you and I are. And we talk about this a lot, like, we are so different. The way we approach business, the way we are with the people that we work with. You and I have entirely opposite styles. But in our home lives and what we care about and who we are, we're incredibly similar.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  I think we're very similar about our taste.

• 25:58Emma Grede?

  Yep.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Taste meaning how we want to live, how we want to eat, what we get excited about. We have very similar values.

• 26:08Emma Grede?

  Yep.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  You know, of the whole spectrum of values, I think we have similar moral code.

• 26:15Emma Grede?

  That for sure.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I think we look at the world in a very similar way. I feel that I'm incredibly aligned with you as a human being. Yeah, our styles of work.

• 26:27Emma Grede?

  Stylistically.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Are entirely different. Not like Mars and Venus.

• 26:33Emma Grede?

  No, like.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Galaxies apart.

• 26:35Emma Grede?

  Galaxies apart.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Galaxies apart.

• 26:36Emma Grede?

  Galaxies apart.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  You are charming and friendly.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Impersonable and emotional and, you know.

• 26:50Emma Grede?

  And you, my darling.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I've been accused of being a little bit stoic.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  A little impersonal perhaps, sometimes a little cold. I wouldn't use that word, but um I would just say, you know, a bit more objective. We're super different in how we approach our work, but that's small stuff. That's just how you approach your work is how you get shit done.

• 27:11Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  That's what I'm.

• 27:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  You know, and I've said this to you many times when we've had disagreements, which is. It's all gonna lead to the same result.

• 27:22Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  This is how you go about it. To get to your end result, I have to go about it the way I go about it. And when you say, how can you do this? Or, you know, I don't agree with that. You know, I'll sometimes have to remind you that I've done just fine in life, doing it my way. And we're gonna get to the same place.

• 27:44Emma Grede?

  We're gonna get to the same place. But we do have some rules. Like, I feel like one of the things that between you and I, we always say, like, whichever of us cares the most gets to decide.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a, I would say this is a pillar of my kind of philosophy of working with people that I love. And it goes for you, it goes for all my partners. I think it goes for my working relationship with Kim.

• 28:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Which is, I know what you, I know what Kim, I know what my other partners deeply care about. And if you care that much about it, I'm gonna let you have it. And I'm lucky enough to work with people that give me the grace that when I care a lot, you let me have it. Because in the end of the day, we all make good decisions, we make more bad decisions.

• 28:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  It's okay. Okay, you like blue, I like red, who's to say what's the best? Okay, if you really want blue, let's do blue. If it doesn't work out, we'll do it differently. What's the big deal?

• 28:58Emma Grede?

  How does your dad say it? Some things work out. What is the saying that he has?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Well, the saying my dad has, which applies to a lot of things in life, is it's gonna be okay. But if it's not okay, that's okay too. But as it pertains to, like, how you divide responsibilities between a friend and a business partner, it's really important to follow the rule of who cares.

• 29:26Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Who cares more? Because if you're passionate about it, it's important for you to see that through. You have that in your heart. You wanna see this idea through. Who am I to stop you from seeing that through? That creates friction and tension. And if it doesn't work out, or you don't get your way, and I get my way instead, and that doesn't work out, you're gonna be resentful, thinking if you've only done it my way. Isn't it much easier to go? If this is really important to you, we're gonna do it the way you wanna do it, and we're gonna get behind the way you wanna do it a hundred and ten percent. If it doesn't work out, well, you know what? We'll make a different decision next time.

• 30:11Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  It's okay. Honestly, people overthink the small decisions and they forget about the bigger picture. Because you chose that color, because you opened that store, because, you know, you choose that packaging, because you spent that on a billboard. You think that's really ultimately gonna determine the success of what you're doing? It's not. You're gonna make some bad decisions. You're probably gonna make some horrible decisions. The secret to success as a founder is to realize that you only have to make a couple of really good decisions, and you can make a ton of bad ones. Just make a couple really good ones. And the only way you make some good decisions is to make a decision and move on.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Companies and ideas fail, not because of good and bad ideas, but because people cannot make decisions. They spend too much time with too few decisions. Make more decisions, don't sweat it, learn from it, move on.

• 31:13Emma Grede?

  What was your advice? Because I think it's my number one, and I've said this so many times. My number one piece of advice from you is always that, make a decision and move on. But what do you think your advice is for people that hesitate too long, who make decisions out of fear and get it wrong? What do you say to people?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Well, we're all wired differently.

• 31:33Emma Grede?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  So it's easy for me to say to somebody who has a tendency to procrastinate, to make a decision and move on. But with so many things that we say, this is who I am, this is the way I am, I do it this way, I overthink, I procrastinate.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  And you use that as an excuse for not getting shit done is it's actually a muscle.

• 32:00Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  I'm not a fast runner. You've seen me run. I run slow.

• 32:04Emma Grede?

  It's not your thing.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  No, it's not my thing. But if I committed myself to it, maybe I could run a little bit faster, right? So, things that we know about ourselves, which we wish we could change, it doesn't make you, oh my God, I'm gonna be the fastest, most aggressive risk taker that ever grazed God's earth. That's probably not going to happen, but you can develop that muscle and you can become a faster decision maker. You can become a bigger risk taker. You can be more in tune with what your gut is telling you. You can develop a gut feel.

• 32:46Emma Grede?

  You always refer to gut instinct and gut feel. Can you just, can you just talk about what that means to you specifically?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  So, when we think about gut feel, we think of that feeling we have inside of us when we're confronted with a decision. Or how we feel about someone when we meet them or a situation.

• 33:07Emma Grede?

  Yep, typically.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Right? That's how we refer to it. So, when we speak about it, we tend to also speak and think about it as something that's kind of given to us by God, that it's, it just instinctively happens. I can't explain it. It's in my spirit.

• 33:22Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  There might be some truth to it, but your gut is really your collective memory, your collective experience and learnings all inside of you that is forming that feeling. It's everything you read, every book, every article, every conversation you had, every wrong and right decision you made. That becomes your gut. And it's okay not to be able to explain why you feel it. But you can feed it. And you can feed it by being a curious person. I spend every, every morning reading news for an hour. I read.

• 34:08Emma Grede?

  Everything.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, five newspapers. I read things I disagree with. I read things I agree with. I listen to podcasts of people that I strongly disagree with and people I strongly agree with. I take in the full spectrum. I meet people. When, whenever we meet someone together, you go, oh, oh, here comes Jens twenty one questions.

• 34:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I'm always asking people questions.

• 34:34Emma Grede?

  Cause you're so interesting.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just don't wanna know like the surface stuff.

• 34:39Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  So all of that, you know, in my life, that's built up. That's my gut feel. All of it feeds my gut feel and I have learned to feed it. And I have learned to trust it. I don't need to explain it. I just have now, I think my instincts have got better as I got older. And the only way to explain that is to say, uh, my gut instinct is a muscle that I have trained and I have developed.

• 35:13Emma Grede?

  Can you think about a time when your gut instinct has led you down like the right path? Like when you specifically used your gut and it's turned out to be right?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  When I met Kim and she showed me what her early ideas around skims was.

• 35:36Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  And she had an idea about a world that she wanted to build. I wasn't looking for a project. I was very happy. I had no interest in starting another business. I was kind of searching for a quite different chapter, I think, in life.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  But once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

• 36:00Emma Grede?

  Yeah, you couldn't not do it.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I couldn't not do it. And it's not like I want to do something. And I never think that I've approached opportunities and investments and like, oh, I really want, like, I really wanna do it. It's more like I wake up the next day and I think I have to do it. I cannot not do it. So I just had a gut feeling that what she was showing me was something that I had to help bring to reality. So it certainly led me right, but I would say more often I remember the times where I don't listen to my gut, where I let myself be convinced that I'm wrong, where I'm giving too much, let's say, grace, partly because sometimes I can't

• 36:47Speaker 01

  articulate why I don't like something. It's not always easy in a nice way to say why I don't like something. Sometimes you see something and just really like it.

• 36:58Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  I don't really like it. So you can be convinced because, okay, I don't really like it. But if you really like it, then you go against that gut feel. It always turns out.

• 37:07Emma Grede?

  It always turns out terribly.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:09Emma Grede?

  Do you think that you knew when you and I got together, did you think that you knew that we would like stay in business together? Did you ever have a feeling about how our life would turn out together?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Well, the most important thing has to be the most important thing. And if you're in love, being in love is the most important thing. So.

• 37:34Emma Grede?

  That's such a you answer.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't think about business or what's gonna happen next week.

• 37:42Emma Grede?

  No.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  I was in love with you. So that was the most important thing. And that's that.

• 37:50Emma Grede?

  Do you feel like there's stuff that I do now that drives you crazy as a business partner?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Well, you drive me crazy as a business partner, as my best friend and my wife.

• 38:03Emma Grede?

  How so?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  I've learned, as I get older, I have learned that we all have different processes. It's not for me to change you, that's not my job. And I'm pretty sure I do a lot of things that drives you up the wall. And I think the most important thing for any relationship, again, in love, in business, is really to, and I keep using this word today, I don't know why, you've got to give each other grace. You've got to give each other grace and allow one another to be who you are. It's okay.

• 38:48Emma Grede?

  It's okay.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 38:59Emma Grede?

  I want to talk about disagreements because obviously all partnerships, relationships, everyone has disagreements. And how do you think that, especially in a relationship like ours, how do you stop or how do we stop disagreements from becoming like destructive, at work or at home?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Well, it goes back to a little bit about who cares most. My ambition is actually not to have disagreements. Once you have a disagreement, it's gotten pretty far. So I don't like to get to that. I mean, you can have bickering.

• 39:32Emma Grede?

  Yeah, but I love the way you think about it.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  It's got to go pretty far to have a disagreement. That means that you have a point of view, I have a different point of view. No one's willing to give up their point of view, that it feels so strongly that we'd rather disagree than move forward. So I think disagreements should be avoided generally. But if you find yourself in the unfortunate situation that you have a true disagreement, you've got to take down the temperature, de-escalate. And again, what's the most important thing?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Are we gonna lose our business, lose our love, lose our friendship over this? Is this the most consequential thing? Is everything really at stake here?

• 40:19Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  And.

• 40:21Emma Grede?

  Usually not.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Almost never, right?

• 40:24Emma Grede?

  Yeah, like usually not.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Almost never.

• 40:26Emma Grede?

  So what do you think if there's people listening right now? And they are thinking about working with a partner or working with a really close friend? What's the first conversation that they need to have before saying yes or coming together?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  I think if you have to have the conversation, maybe it shouldn't be partners. You know, I think that the best partners have a different skill set to you. You do different things. So the things that you do or the thing that Kim does or the thing that our partners do has to be different from the thing that I do.

• 41:00Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  So if you're the expert at A, it's gonna be very easy for me to let you make all the decision as it pertains to A. If I'm an expert in B, you're gonna let me make the decision as it pertains to B. You might advise me differently from what I wanna do. But ultimately, that's my area of expertise.

• 41:25Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  So I think if you're sitting with a friend, you're trying to figure out how to work together, you probably shouldn't work together.

• 41:33Emma Grede?

  You're already doomed.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  You're doomed.

• 41:35Emma Grede?

  Yeah, we never had to sit down and figure out our roles. It's bloody obvious.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:41Emma Grede?

  Basically.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And but with everybody I work with, it's pretty obvious. We do different things.

• 41:45Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  And you should have more so than some kind of agreement. Admire your partners for what they do.

• 41:56Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Respect them for what they do. I worked with some brilliant creatives. I'm not as good as them. I admire them.

• 42:05Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  I wish I had those skills. I don't have them. I admire, I look up to it, and I'm excited to see what they do every day.

• 42:14Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  That's how I wanna go to work. I wanna be excited about what my partner is going to show me. And I hope they're excited about what I'm going to do.

• 42:21Emma Grede?

  No doubt. I wanna change gear a little bit because I am very happy that you that you're happy and open to talk about anxiety. And you have been pretty open about the fact that you suffer from anxiety. And I wanna understand a bit more about anxiety as it relates to your career and your life and your business. Because I think that we're so much conditioned to see anxiety as a weakness. And I know you think about it as a superpower. So will you, when did you start seeing it as a superpower? And will you just talk about it a bit for me?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Very late, probably in my late thirties. Where I really understood. And I did that through work I was doing with a highly spiritual person. Who asked me, I said, I want to change. I don't want to be this anxious person any longer. I I want to feel whole. And he said, are you sure you wanna change? I said, yeah, this is, this is a really negative thing for me. This is, this is a big, you know, my days are heavy. And he said, if you change, it also will change who you are.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  You're not just successful because, you know, despite your anxiety, you're successful because of them. There's so many positives that are driven and so many skills that comes from your anxiety. That if you change that, you might not be as good as you are today. You might not be as good version, you might not be as an effective founder, entrepreneur, without it. Are you sure you wanna lose that power? And that was.

• 44:16Emma Grede?

  Ding.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that was, uh, I walked out of that room.

• 44:20Emma Grede?

  I remember. Doctor Tran, right?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, Doctor Tran. Nothing had changed and everything had changed at the same time.

• 44:28Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that that even just you saying it, and I know that story so well, I feel like it is so important for people to hear because we all have parts of our personality that are useful or less useful, more useful or less useful. And it's not often, like, we don't often put things in the right order. Like, we don't often understand how some of those things that can be troubling to us can also enable us.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and anxiety can be debilitating, can be crippling. And indeed, for many people, something that they need to get treated. At the same time, anxiety is a human emotion, it's a part of our human experience, we all have it. It's healthy to have a dose of anxiety. It's connected to fear, which is a natural human emotion or reaction. It's our ability to feel love, sadness, you know, joy. Anxiety is part of us. I have more of it and I have so much of it that for a long time in my life,

• 45:42Speaker 01

  every day was just harder for me than it was for other people. And

• 45:52Speaker 01

  I kind of started every day at a negative.

• 45:54Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Right? So I had to overcome that to do anything. I had to overcome anxiety to meet people. I had to overcome anxiety to get out in traffic, to get on an airplane, to be on my own. So I always was so, it was exhausting.

• 46:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  It was really, really exhausting. It still is often exhausting.

• 46:19Emma Grede?

  How do you know when anxiety is fueling you versus controlling you these days?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  I think it does both, for better or worse. But I don't judge myself for having anxiety anymore. I accept it. I see it as a wave. And when it comes, it's can be imposing. And in the middle of the wave, you feel hopeless. But I know the wave is going to wash over and I know there's still. The water is still on the other side. So what am I gonna do? Never get in the ocean? Is that better? Or am I gonna start getting scared of the sand? You know, the problem, and I'm sure other people, if anyone listens to this, who suffers from anxiety, and I'm sure many do.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  The more you tailor your life to avoid situations which makes you anxious, you're getting anxious in lesser situations. When you lower the bar, that becomes a new bar, you need to lower it again. And life gets smaller that way.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  It's a very tricky subject. Everybody have their own journey. And I can only speak on my experience. I'm not saying that's translatable to other people. They have to have their journey and they know themselves best. I can only speak of mine. But my personal experience is that I do better when I challenge it.

• 47:55Emma Grede?

  I wonder into what tools keep you most grounded when the anxiety flares up? Like, how have you learned to cope?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Being honest with the people around me.

• 48:06Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it's a big one.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't grow up in an environment where you could show fear. I didn't grow up in a community or a culture where.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  That was accepted, not in the school where that was accepted, not in the friend group where that was accepted. Or even a thing.

• 48:24Emma Grede?

  No.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  So.

• 48:26Emma Grede?

  I mean, to a certain extent, I don't even think that I understood anxiety until I met you.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:32Emma Grede?

  Because it's just not a factor in my life and certainly not something I grew up speaking about. And it wasn't until I was in a relationship with you that I understood anxiety. To the extent I understand it now.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Right, so I think myself, like many others. When you have, you suffer from dyslexia.

• 48:51Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so you develop tools to get through school. And little things you did and little fake outs and and ways for it not to show or to get through your day. And get done what you needed to do.

• 49:06Emma Grede?

  Absolutely.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:07Emma Grede?

  Still using them.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Right, and I still use mine. So I had developed tools to deal with my anxiety. And what I learned for me is that I needed an out, I needed a, an emergency exit.

• 49:22Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:23Emma Grede?

  Yep.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I would find ways to reassure myself that I was able to leave this situation if I needed to leave it. And if I knew I had an escape plan.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  I had a much easier time getting through that way.

• 49:44Emma Grede?

  Totally.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  So I developed my tools. But what has helped in adult age. As I'm living in a, in a different time, in a different culture. Where we are so much more open and generous with one another. I learned to be very open about how I feel. I went on this podcast right now and I said, I'm nervous. And when I can sit in front of you and say, I'm the most nervous I've been for fifteen years. Having this conversation with you. And I can say that on camera. Well, that diffuses my anxiety.

• 50:22Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Because if I'm putting it out there, what do you have on me?

• 50:28Emma Grede?

  Fuck off.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  The other thing that I've done is to surround myself with people that know how to support me when they see it's happening. They know the signs. And I have these sayings in my head. When I used to go in for a meeting, that was consequential. You know, when I was in the ad business, you have to pitch for work.

• 50:55Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  So you constantly have to put yourself in really uncomfortable position. Fly across the world, get into these hot ass meeting rooms with people. Get treated like shit. Present your work, sometimes being belittled. And millions of dollars is at stake. And at times, in the early days, the company was at stake.

• 51:19Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  That's a pretty anxious place to be, even if you're not suffering from anxiety. That's a really anxious, you know, high strung. So I am blessed to have had people around me that say, this isn't the end of the world. They've got nothing on you. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. There's always tomorrow. There's always another client. There's always another flight. There's always another meeting. They helped me diffuse it. As I got older and even more confident, all those things live in me.

• 51:54Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  And I think part of why I have pursued success, for lack of better words, in life is to create a environment in which I feel I always have the option to leave. I think they call it fuck you money.

• 52:14Emma Grede?

  I think that's what they call it for sure.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  So I don't wanna be crude, but.

• 52:20Emma Grede?

  No, it's it's true.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  I'm a very happy person who suffered from anxiety and I've been able to create a life partly because of it.

• 52:30Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Partly because of the tools that which we haven't really touched on, which I actually think is the superpower in anxiety, not just the militating side of anxiety. So if you don't mind, can we talk a little bit about.

• 52:44Emma Grede?

  Please, I'm dying for you to tell, because I I think that if you're a young founder, you're a young leader, or you're just anyone who has anxiety, you need to understand that, like it's a it's a I know it's been a breakthrough for you.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Well, you said earlier in this conversation how I don't like to big things up. I'm always moving on to the next thing. I'm always thinking about tomorrow. I'm not really worried about today. But what do you think that comes from?

• 53:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Where do you think that comes from? My fear, which is essentially what anxiety is, is a sense of irrational fear, right? My fear is always driving me to see around the corners.

• 53:28Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  I'm not buying the BS. Okay, you love me today, you won't love me tomorrow. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna focus on tomorrow.

• 53:36Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  So that's that's where my focus is going to be. That comes from a place of anxiety, but it actually is a superpower to constantly live and plan and work in the future.

• 53:49Emma Grede?

  Because you're saying it allows you to see around the corners.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 53:52Emma Grede?

  You can call the play before it's even happening.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  We are all the main characters in the movie of our life, right? So we, most of us believe every moment is here to stay. When people tell us nice things, we tend to really believe they meant them and that they really thought about what they said. It's nice to be an optimist. It's less gratifying to be a pessimist, but.

• 54:20Emma Grede?

  If you're married to an optimist, you've got some spice.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  You lift me up, you know, you you you lift me up. But the positive is that you're more objective. You're more realistic. And you don't tend to get sucked into this vortex where you start trying to feed your own ego.

• 54:43Emma Grede?

  Hmm.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  You're, the ego isn't as important for an anxious person. You're, you're swimming. You're trying to keep your head above the water. I'm not really thinking about, oh my God, I'm so special. I'm trying to survive, bro. I'm trying to live. So.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  So if I'm just thinking about living.

• 55:04Emma Grede?

  You've got no time for the bullshit.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  I, I, I'm not gonna think that I'm that special because I might drown.

• 55:10Emma Grede?

  Hmm.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  And that's the feeling.

• 55:11Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  The feeling is I'm trying not to drown. So it's easy for me to be objective. It's easy for me to cut through the crap. It's easy for me to transform myself because my fear of being stuck or my fear of being left or my fear of drowning is far greater than my fear of what's tomorrow. Tomorrow holds promise for me. Tomorrow is exciting for me.

• 55:40Emma Grede?

  Wow. Do you think you can do the same thing with people because of your anxiety? Like, do you think that you see things that other people miss?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  I think anxious people tend to be really great readers of other people. You're so aware.

• 55:58Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  All the time of your surroundings because instinctively you're just looking for threats.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  It's like a primal thing.

• 56:10Emma Grede?

  Yeah, totally.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Right?

• 56:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  This is, we're from the animal kingdom. This is a primal thing. We're, I'm just wired to look for threats.

• 56:19Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  I'm the lookout guy.

• 56:20Emma Grede?

  You're the caveman, totally.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want me in the lookout tower.

• 56:23Emma Grede?

  Yeah, totally.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Looking at every leaf, what moves?

• 56:26Emma Grede?

  Literally why I married you.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you become really good at reading people, reading their intentions, understanding what they want.

• 56:39Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  And it's a superpower.

• 56:42Emma Grede?

  But you you speak a bit about this with me, like about paranoia, right? Like you talk about your own paranoia and how that's allowed you to make good decisions, good investments, Eva.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:55Emma Grede?

  Give me an example of where that type of paranoid mindset has paid off for you.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Well, it's paid off because I have always moved on at a moment where I could have stayed.

• 57:08Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  I have always planned for the next chapter while I was in my current one. I have a red thread through my work because of my love for popular culture, for my love of fashion, for my love of retail, for an aesthetic that I gravitate towards. So there's a, this podcast is not long enough for me to lay out how everything I've done, from ad agencies, starting magazines, to starting, you know, one of the first influencer platforms, to starting a jeans company, co-founding of Skims.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Like, all of that might seem like, oh, my God, you've done so many different things. I think I've have just done various expressions of the same thing.

• 58:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  That's how I feel.

• 58:03Emma Grede?

  I can see that.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  So it's not like I think that I'm like, oh, my God, this ship is sinking. I'm gonna jump off this. It just means that I'm excited about where the future is going and that my eyes are open for the next opportunity.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  So when I see that opportunity. I wanna take it.

• 58:25Emma Grede?

  So if you are, if you're young now and suffering from anxiety, what, based on your experience, would you say to people, what's the best thing to do?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Just go after your dreams. You have to go for your dreams. You know, if you, if you fail, at least you did it. Now, your life becomes smaller if you don't try. Your life and your experience becomes bigger. If you go for it, you, you have to challenge yourself and it can be really, really difficult. But that doesn't mean you have a choice. Just do it.

• 59:01Emma Grede?

  Just do it. I wanna talk to you a little bit about more personal life.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that wasn't personal enough for you?

• 59:10Emma Grede?

  More personal life, as in like digging further into personal life?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  I feel like you're finally getting to know me after sixteen years. I waited a long time for this conversation.

• 59:20Emma Grede?

  I'm wondering if we go to conflict, like I've got so many things that I wanted to talk to you about. What do you think, Jens, is the hardest part of being married to somebody as ambitious as me?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  I've never been married to anyone else, so it's hard to compare.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't wanna be. Your ambition is part of what I fell in love with. You couldn't take that out of you and it to be you. But I think in any relationship, when you have two parties that are highly ambitious, it's more about allowing each other the moment.

• 1:00:06Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  There was a moment when you were starting this podcast in the spring.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Where that was your moment. The energy around you in your home. I'm sure nerves that you felt going through a transition or adding something to what you wanted to do and put yourself out there in a different way than you've done in the past. It's pretty nerve wracking. It's gonna consume a lot of energy. It's gonna consume a lot of conversation. That moment in time, it's gonna be all about you. That's okay. It's gonna be about you. What can I do? What would, what's best for me is if, and I remember thinking this.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  The best thing is for Emma to be successful at whatever she wants to succeed at. Because God forbid you aren't. I'll have to listen to this for years. But if we lean in here. I let her have this moment. We can get back to me.

• 1:01:19Emma Grede?

  We can get, we can get back to you eventually.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  No, but I mean, jokes aside, I mean, jokes aside, you have to know when it's something is important to the other partner. Like so much of what we're talking about today really comes down to grace. Knowing each other and allowing this is important to you. This is important to me. If you care, if this is your moment, if you care about this, I'm gonna get behind you. I'm going through something that's important to me. You'll recognize that and you'll get behind me.

• 1:01:53Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and I feel like once you've been together for as long as we have for seventeen years. There's seasons to this shit, right? It's like, sometimes it's all about me, sometimes it's all about you, sometimes there's a clash. I think the point is that we are in constant conversation about these things and it's not just like a realization that, oh, this person's traveling and sucking all the air out of the room and everything's about them now. It's usually a conversation and an acknowledgement that this is a period that's about to happen in our lives. And I think that we have a level of like, just a lot of honesty in our relationship and a reality of like, what is going to happen? We're not trying to kid ourselves about it.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's also part of who we are. This is hard thing to teach people.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  I think, you know, I think if I was married to someone who was about themselves all the time for sixteen years, I don't think it would last that long.

• 1:02:54Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  You know, it's it's kind of, that would start grating on me a little bit. So that's just not who you are. If you were that person, that wouldn't be you and I wouldn't be with you, you know? You are outside of work, a sensitive, highly tuned person and a great and loving and supportive wife to me. And I recognize that and I wanna be all of those things to you.

• 1:03:27Emma Grede?

  And you are.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try. I mean, that doesn't mean we get it right all the time.

• 1:03:31Emma Grede?

  Well, no, we don't get it right all the time, believe me.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  It's not right all the time, but you know what? That's okay, too. People talk about this, like, it's not like everything is always in balance. Actually, life tends to be like an EKG. It's never really in balance, right? It's like, it's not really in balance, but there's like a...

• 1:03:50Emma Grede?

  Don't talk to me about balance.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But there's, but there's, there's some kind of medium in it. There's a kind of a...

• 1:03:55Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  An average.

• 1:03:56Emma Grede?

  Like, yeah, you take the average, like somewhere across the, you know, across the life, across the time, like, there's gonna be like a more often than not wavelength. And it's like, are you comfortable with that?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jerry Seinfeld said something in an interview a while back. And he said, you know, we both of us go for a day. Okay, we have a good morning, we have a shitty afternoon, we're somewhat of a good moment at dinner. Maybe we're bad again, then we're good again. It's, it's, life is not a, we're not in this equilibrium.

• 1:04:26Emma Grede?

  No, but that's the problem, because I think so many people are looking for equilibrium and they don't get it. And then they want, you know, it's like, again, I don't expect to always be in the most joyful, incredible, magical moments with you. And after sixteen years...

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  You'd be disappointed.

• 1:04:44Emma Grede?

  I'd be very disappointed. But that's part of it, right? Because if we, I mean, and again, let's talk about conflict a little bit because I think a lot of people wanna understand with us. If we have conflict at home, how do we make sure that it doesn't seep into business and vice versa? Like, how have, how do we manage conflict within our relationship?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tie this to what we just discussed.

• 1:05:08Emma Grede?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  What's the most important thing here? Like, what's the most important thing? And you can have levels to a relationship. I don't have just one level of my relationship with you or anyone else. I have, some people do, some people it's like just one bucket.

• 1:05:25Emma Grede?

  Yeah, no, we have not, no, that's not.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  That's not my people.

• 1:05:28Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  But some people just have one bucket.

• 1:05:30Emma Grede?

  Oh.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I have levels to a relationship and there's a work level. But that has nothing to do with the fundamentals of my relationship with you or anyone else. I'm in love with you. That's, that's the most important thing. Okay, so that's here. Okay, so now we have this work level. It might have some disagreements, but that's really got nothing to do with all the fundamentals of our relationship or my relationship with anyone else for that matter.

• 1:06:01Emma Grede?

  Yes, but I think.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  So you kind of have to, you, you know, I talk about, you wear different hats.

• 1:06:04Emma Grede?

  Yeah, you wear different hats, but for a lot of people, that's very hard to understand. And for me, I'll be totally honest with you. When I first met you, that was hard for me to understand. I didn't understand how we would have a massive conflict in work, which you and I have and continue to have sometimes, and then get home and it will be fine. But I do think that that is the point. Like, we have

• 1:06:27Emma Grede?

  different hats and we are very, very, very, very good at leaving it where it is. Like, it, it's not personal, like with you, it's never personal.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  And my boxers shake hands at the end of the, at the end of the match.

• 1:06:43Emma Grede?

  Some of them, yes. Some of them, like the whole crew just like jumps in the ring and they all go fucking mental, like, so it's not everyone. Hopefully not.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  No, but I mean, boxers shake hands. What I'm trying to say is that when I'm on the pitch, when I'm on the court, when I'm at work. I'm there to fucking win. I'm gonna focus on what's gonna make me win. Yeah. What's gonna make us win? You know, what do I need to do to get to the best result? So, just like there's a scuffle on the court, it doesn't mean that when you watch a game on TV that those guys are, you know, taking that off the court. You know, some pushing and shoving on the court is part of playing basketball. Doesn't mean that they're not friends. It's the same thing. You know, when I'm at work, I'm in the game.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  When I'm at home, I'm out of the game. Mm-hmm. Why would I bring the game home? Just because you gave me a little elbow under the basket doesn't mean I'll take that shit home to roast chicken and potatoes. It's too true. Thank you for that. Leave it up to the work.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. Personal finance can feel like a pop quiz you didn't study for. This podcast is your study guide. On NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, you'll hear from trusted journalists who explain the why behind major financial decisions. You'll get research-backed insights and clear pros and cons, whether you're planning a big purchase or just wanna grow your wealth. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app.

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

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• 1:09:12Speaker 05

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• 1:09:28Emma Grede?

  How do you think about everything that you've learned in your life and career and your business and our kids? And when you think about, you know, I do want to talk to you about money a little bit because I love to talk about money, but when you think about risk, resilience, like the things that have made you, you in and around your career, how do you think about that as it relates to the kids?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  I want my children to write their own story.

• 1:09:55Emma Grede?

  You know Lola said that to me once.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Emma Grede?

  When I told her to come to Skins and Work.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Emma Grede?

  She's like, no mommy, I'm gonna write my own story. Now I know where it comes.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  That's what you want. I don't, I don't want children who defines themselves by their parents.

• 1:10:08Emma Grede?

  Amen.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  I want them to be them.

• 1:10:13Emma Grede?

  How do you foster that?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  You tell them.

• 1:10:15Emma Grede?

  How do you do it?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  You do you.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I don't know. I don't know how you foster it other than leading by example. Generally, I think children are magical and there's a part of you and there's a part of me and the part given by God. And they are their own people. And we're there to give them love and support and share our experiences and encouragement.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  But they're gonna be who they're going to be. But what I would hate is if they define themselves, if their identity in this world is rooted in their parents' success or failure,

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  why would I want that?

• 1:11:09Emma Grede?

  Well, we are.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  I would be incredibly.

• 1:11:11Emma Grede?

  Hundred percent aligned on that.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Wouldn't that be incredibly selfish?

• 1:11:14Emma Grede?

  Incredibly selfish and incredibly sad, quite frankly.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's just selfish.

• 1:11:17Emma Grede?

  Yep. Do you have a moment that you think like, I just wonder like what you're most proud of as a, not really as a businessman, but more as like a person, husband, father, Yenzi?

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, let me tell you that I detest the term businessman.

• 1:11:39Emma Grede?

  But you do know that you're a businessman.

• 1:11:43Emma Grede?

  Jens.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Emma Grede?

  Like, seriously, you're grown up in the office every day. Like, just because you don't carry a briefcase, you are a businessman. That's how everyone, like, all of your staff, all the hundreds of people that work here, that's how they see you. They're like, Emma's a businesswoman and Jens is a businessman. Like it or not, tough shit.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  That's something I would have to process.

• 1:12:03Emma Grede?

  Talk to your therapist.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  I think I fired my therapist for asking me to do things I didn't want to do. I wasn't willing to do the work.

• 1:12:13Emma Grede?

  You weren't willing to do the work. You do a lot of work.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:12:16Emma Grede?

  You can take breaks through your therapist, that's all right. Ash, what are you most proud of?

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I am the most proud of that I have. I think there was a time in my life when I finished high school, so I was around eighteen. And I had no plans and I wasn't particularly good at anything. I thought I was really cool. I was, you know, a kind of a always out and about, you know, in, in clubs and this, that and the other. And the irony of our relationship, and they asked me earlier, it's like, tell us something that, you know, we don't know about Emma.

• 1:12:57Emma Grede?

  Have they got you on social media comments?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  They, they got some. And, um, but I'll tell you something they don't know about you, which is you're incredibly personable and you appear social. You're not a social person.

• 1:13:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  You're not a social person.

• 1:13:15Emma Grede?

  At all.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  A few really good friends. You don't like going out that much. You like to be with the people you love.

• 1:13:23Emma Grede?

  The same people for twenty five years.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  At home.

• 1:13:26Emma Grede?

  At home.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Preferably.

• 1:13:27Emma Grede?

  Please, dear God.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  No one thinks I'm a social person. I'm the most social person.

• 1:13:32Emma Grede?

  The most. All dinner reservations, all group activities, all things with our friends go by a year.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  I have so many friends, I can't keep up.

• 1:13:40Emma Grede?

  It's true.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  And I love it.

• 1:13:41Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  And I love all of them.

• 1:13:43Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  I can do multiple drinks and dinners with different people in the same night just to fit people in.

• 1:13:49Emma Grede?

  I'd rather kill myself.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yes, you tell me that often.

• 1:13:52Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not coming. I'm just not coming.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  When I said, you wanna come and you go, I'd rather kill myself.

• 1:13:57Emma Grede?

  I don't wanna come, I'd rather kill myself.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  I don't wanna do it. Um, so, um, so there was this time when, when I really didn't have a purpose. And I felt that I wasn't swimming, I was drowning. In that moment, I had, I think I had kind of come out into adulthood. Um. Thinking somehow as a daydreamer that these daydreams were gonna come true. Because I was I, you know, you know. Uh, because I was special, some, this was going to happen. And then nothing happened. And, and that negative spiral starts. And from that point, and I can pinpoint the daytime where I sat in the apartment.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  And I just realized that in the end of the day. And it's not because the world is a cold, loveless place, but. People are really busy with their own shit and their own lives. And they might be supportive, but only you can help you. You have to take care of yourself. No one cares more about you than you care about yourself.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  And in that moment, everything changed for me. I went from not getting into college, not having a job. Being totally kind of purposeless. Um hum. With really low self-esteem. To having, you know, a column in the daily newspaper. To being, having a, a dream job at the coolest magazine. And my whole life turned around and within, you know, two, three years, I was in London within. For five years, you know, I had raised money, started the business.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Was starting to have some, you know, early success in life. So it's having overcome that moment in time. And being able to live my life and build a life that I can be proud of. That's the most important thing. Next company, the next idea, an investment, working, not working. Again, what's the most important thing? The most important thing is that I built the life that I'm proud of. That's really meaningful. And again, when you're faced with adversity in life, I had what. What people would refer to as a, a soft bottom. Not a hard bottom, it's not like you, you totally crashed out, but it's a soft bottom.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  I'm grateful for that moment because I discovered a power in myself in that moment in time and I had never seen it or felt it before. I used to be lazy, I became ambitious. I used to be waiting, I became active. All of these traits that used to drag me down was turned into this positive moment. So I think it was divine intervention.

• 1:17:08Emma Grede?

  So knowing that, what advice would you give your twenty year old self about both success and happiness?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. I had been so worried about so many of my friends when I was in my twenties. It all worked out. You know, we were in our early twenties and we didn't have no money. We never understood how we would be able to afford an apartment, how things were going to happen for us. And somehow for all of us, and you know many of them, it all worked out.

• 1:17:45Emma Grede?

  It all worked out.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  It works out. And you cannot see it. You don't, you sit at home, you're scribbling, you're trying to figure out how am I, and I used to think, think that my whole twenties, how am I ever gonna be able to own a property? I couldn't make the math work and I didn't have the money for a deposit, you know, it worked out. But I might be an outlier, you know, on that scale. But I'm just saying generally for it works out.

• 1:18:14Emma Grede?

  It does work out.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  For most of us, if we're at it, if we do the right thing, if we, if we try to do the best with the talent we have, again, I've never seen anyone fail. It works out.

• 1:18:26Emma Grede?

  So if it all went away tomorrow, like everything, the businesses, the money, like the, the whole lot, what's the first thing that you would do?

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  I guess I would have to take an unpaid internship here at the Spire.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Do it all again. Try to prove my value.

• 1:18:44Emma Grede?

  We would take you.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Through my worth. Again, if you don't have money, you have your human capital. You have you. So you put that to work.

• 1:18:56Emma Grede?

  You gotta watch out Joe Rogan if Jens comes to work for us. I mean, that's what I think. What do you think success feels like today versus when you started?

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Well, they keep moving the goalposts for me. When I was young, I could never have imagined the life that I live today. That would have been far and beyond my greatest expectations. But as you do things in life, the goalpost shifts a little bit. So what success looked to me when I was was younger or ten years ago and what they look like today, of course, they have changed. And I like to keep them to myself. And the reason I want to keep my ambition to myself,

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  it's an emergency. If you don't know it, I don't feel put upon. I I don't feel boxed in. I don't feel scared of failure because the only one that would see it is me. So I'd rather keep what success looks like to myself.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  But I can tell you, I remind myself all the time

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  about how lucky I am to be where I am today. And if nothing more happened and if I achieved nothing else, I would still be overjoyed with the life that I built.

• 1:20:25Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Emma Grede?

  Damn right.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  You gotta you gotta lead with gratefulness. You gotta lead with being grateful.

• 1:20:32Emma Grede?

  All right, one more little piece of wisdom from you, Jens. If someone remembered just one thing, like one sentence from you, what would you want it to be?

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  That if it's not okay, that's okay too.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  We all catastrophize. We all think that what we're going through is forever. You know, when you're a teenager and you're unhappy in love, it feels like the world's ending. There's nothing beyond that moment. There's nothing beyond high school. There's nothing beyond that grade. And you can try to tell your children when you come home today not to worry about how the first day in middle school was. That's all they're gonna worry about. Middle school is an eternity.

• 1:21:15Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  So, but it's gonna be okay. And I think it's the most important thing for all of us to take with us that moments don't last forever. There's still water on the other side of the wave and if you're going through hell, you've got to keep on going.

• 1:21:33Emma Grede?

  So good. Okay, I'm gonna take you to rapid fire. You're right at the end.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:21:37Emma Grede?

  Let's do it. All right. The first thing you do when you wake up?

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Get you a cup of coffee and myself.

• 1:21:45Emma Grede?

  It is very true and thank you because I think that's the secret to a lasting relationship.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Right, I know how you like it.

• 1:21:52Emma Grede?

  Thank you. Damn right. And the last thing you do before you go to bed?

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Sneakily look at the news, waiting for you to tell me to stop because it's too late.

• 1:22:01Emma Grede?

  True.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I mean, normally I would say watching Frasier or Seinfeld or any kind of sitcom that-

• 1:22:07Emma Grede?

  Which we love.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I love.

• 1:22:09Emma Grede?

  Which we love. We rewatching-

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  Sneak a little bit of iPad news there.

• 1:22:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I see it. I just let you do it. I just don't want that light near me.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Emma Grede?

  I'm just like-

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  It's unhealthy.

• 1:22:20Emma Grede?

  No, it's not good. It's like I just like I put my phone in the other room and then there's somebody next to you with an iPad.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  I go to bed ready for tomorrow. I'm like, I know what's happening.

• 1:22:29Emma Grede?

  Listen, don't we? Only just now. You are my news. I basically get all of my information from you. And I like that the arc of your news, you know, it's The Economist, it's The New York Times, it's The Washington Post, it's Wall Street Journal. And then you've got like the tea for me, like, you know, some housewife is like something's happening with her. You know that too, so.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  You know, if something would happen to me.

• 1:22:52Emma Grede?

  Mm-hmm. I would know nothing. No news. Um, Jens, what are you currently aspiring to i- in your business life?

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  To continue to surprise and delight our customers. I wanna do things that is unexpected. And when they think they have an idea about what Skims is and what it will do next, I wanna do something that surprises them.

• 1:23:14Emma Grede?

  Do you think we're doing so good at that? What are you currently aspiring for in your personal life?

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  A hobby.

• 1:23:22Emma Grede?

  To have a hobby? You're not still on that one?

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will never give that up.

• 1:23:25Emma Grede?

  But you, you play tennis, you like, what, what kind of, you go to the gym all the time, you read a lot, like, what, what kind of hobby do you want?

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  First of all, I go to the gym just to, for you to wanna stay married to me. And to stay alive so I can be married to you and be around for the children.

• 1:23:44Emma Grede?

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  I play tennis because it's the best sport to stay both, you know, cognitive decline.

• 1:23:51Emma Grede?

  Damn right.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Also, it's fun.

• 1:23:52Emma Grede?

  Yes, and you're very good at it.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  It's a combination of both.

• 1:23:55Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Don't say I'm very good at it because I have friends who are listening to this who's really good at it. And they know I'm not that good at it.

• 1:24:02Emma Grede?

  I will say, I think you're better than Pietro, not better than Jason.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  That is, I am worse than both of them, considerably worse, and, and.

• 1:24:11Emma Grede?

  You're better than me.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  If you wanted to know what we would, could be arguing about, it would be the fact that they would ridicule me. Because I have a wife who loves me so much, she thinks I'm better at tennis than them, which I'm not.

• 1:24:27Emma Grede?

  I'm not even gonna ask you a book that changed your life, because you're not really a book that changed your life type of guy, are you?

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Uh, I have you to tell me what's in the books.

• 1:24:36Emma Grede?

  And I have you to tell me what's in the news. This is how this partnership works. All right, this question I have for you. What is something that you valued when you were starting out that you no longer value?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  That's just not how I think. I can't even relate to the question. What do you mean value?

• 1:24:56Emma Grede?

  Okay, Jens, like, some people value other people's opinions. Some people think that money is the goal. Like, what's something you thought was important back in the day? How, I mean, then, or just explain to us how your brain does think.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Okay, something that I thought was important.

• 1:25:12Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  To be everywhere, to be seen. People think that showing up, like, oh, I'm at this event, or I've got to be seen here. I've gonna be at this dinner. And they think that somehow, success comes from being seen.

• 1:25:28Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Success and being seen as almost, unless you're in the public eye, and the public eye is your business. It, as far as business success.

• 1:25:39Emma Grede?

  Zero correlation.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  There's no correlation to that.

• 1:25:41Emma Grede?

  Zero correlation.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  In fact, I think, one of the things that is my, I would say my red flag for investing in companies and in founders.

• 1:25:51Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  If you see them attend too many conferences.

• 1:25:54Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Because if you want to go to a conference and everybody to go, oh, my God, I love what you do. I love your startup, and for you to spend all that time talking about something. When you have like twenty stores or sold in one retailer because you have like a snickerdoodle brand and, and, and, you know, that's popular in Whole Foods, like, no.

• 1:26:15Emma Grede?

  No.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Don't, don't.

• 1:26:17Emma Grede?

  Red flag.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you're too in love with the idea of being successful. Be in love with the work. If you're in love with the work, success comes. You'll have time to talk about it when you really have something to be proud of. But don't take this thing and like spend all this time talking about something you have yet to create. Create it and talk about it.

• 1:26:43Emma Grede?

  Okay, what's something that you value now that you didn't value when you were starting out?

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Meditation, meditation, meditation. I think meditation is.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  The greatest tool to find clarity, peace, give you energy, joy. I wish I had found meditation earlier. I found prayer when I was a child.

• 1:27:10Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  But I would say meditation to me, yeah, has given me a lot in the last, in the last five years.

• 1:27:20Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been doing it for a long time, much longer than that, but.

• 1:27:23Emma Grede?

  But you become really serious about it in the last five years.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I practice it more diligently and in a different way. I really value meditation.

• 1:27:30Emma Grede?

  It's one of my favorite, it's one of my favorite habits that you have like introduced me to. Because if somebody is meditating in your room at six A M, it's almost stupid not to join them. And so I feel like it's one of those things that by, you know, virtue of you being really into it, I've got really into it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Emma Grede?

  And it really works. Like I, I literally think it's like a tool. And for someone like me who's very highly strung, who's, you know, always on the edge. I feel like it's a really useful thing that just readjusts me. And it works for the whole day. It's like whatever you did, whenever I've done it in the morning, I feel like my day pans out differently.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Well, have you ever tried to run and play chess at the same time?

• 1:28:20Emma Grede?

  Definitely not.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  No, but that's what we do, right?

• 1:28:23Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  We run through our day, we run for our life, and then we're supposed to be strategic, have ideas, process, make the right decisions, handle things. So how are we going to do that when our breath is up here?

• 1:28:39Emma Grede?

  Impossible.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  It's very difficult, very difficult. Meditation allows us to ground ourselves so we can make better decisions. So we have, we can, we have better coping mechanisms. Again, you can't run and play chess at the same time. So I don't know why people think they can just run twenty four seven without any time for reflection. And reflection isn't just sitting down and like agonizing over what happened.

• 1:29:09Emma Grede?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Or agonizing over what's going to happen tomorrow. It's about allowing you the space for that intuition.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  To do its work, to build and you'll find a lot of peace and clarity for meditation. So if you don't, for those who don't do it, I really recommend it.

• 1:29:28Emma Grede?

  This is like a slightly different thing for this podcast, but because it's you, there's a bunch of questions from our team.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:35Emma Grede?

  Okay, and I just chose the really easy ones.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  I thought I was nervous before, now I'm.

• 1:29:40Emma Grede?

  No, this is easy. All right, first question from the team, they wanna know, how do we keep the spark alive in our relationship?

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  I mean, look at you. That's not hard.

• 1:29:51Emma Grede?

  Good art, C N C. It's a lot of work then.

• 1:29:57Emma Grede?

  Obviously, you and I are very intentional about date nights, but I think the question is, when two people are very busy, like, how do you keep something like that going? And after seventeen years, like, are you just running out of places to go? Like, why do we keep them? How do we keep them?

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  I think you have to consciously plan to do things together. But I often can feel like if we have a couple of weeks where we're a little disconnected and we're all over running, I kind of feel like there's a hole. I kind of feel like there's a void and so we normally plan something and do something together. I think it's incredibly important, especially when you have children, to have time just as a couple, because you're more than just parents and you're more than business partners, you're more than a married couple, you're also, you know, best friends and everything else. And you've got to give yourself time to do all of those things together.

• 1:30:52Emma Grede?

  Definitely. All right, this is a strange question, but they wanna know, what was the moment that you knew you were in love with me?

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:31:02Emma Grede?

  That's very you answer.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know the moment I knew, but when I knew, I fucking knew.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  I just never had less doubts about anything. Can't pinpoint it, you know, I don't know, you're very lovable.

• 1:31:25Emma Grede?

  I know the exact moment, on the other hand, but that's fine.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  I know, I'm so disappointing to ask these questions.

• 1:31:31Emma Grede?

  No, you're the least disappointing person in the world. Thank you, my darling.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:31:44Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favourite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five-star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Corinne, Gilliard Fisher, Derek Brown and me. Our executive producers from Odyssey are Maddie Sprung Kaiser, Leah Reese Dennis, Asha Saluja and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, Carlos Delgado and Arnie Agassi. Social media by Olivia Homan.

• 1:32:29Emma Grede?

  Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sidney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company and WME. Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Micol, Shaun Cherry and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemmgrede. Grede is spelt G-R-E-D-E. That's aspire, A-S-P-I-R-E, with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emma greed dot me.