Oprah Winfrey Interviews Emma Grede on Her Debut Book "Start with Yourself”

This one is a little different. For Emma, sitting down with Oprah Winfrey wasn’t just another interview — it was a full circle moment. A conversation years in the making with someone who helped shape how she thinks about success, ambition, and what’s possible. In this special episode, Emma shares her conversation from The Oprah Podcast — one of the most honest conversations she’s had about her debut book Start With Yourself and the journey behind it. Together, they go beyond the highlight reel and get into: The mindset shift that changed Emma’s life Radical self-accountability and what it really looks like in practice The tension between ambition, motherhood, and guilt Why building from purpose — not ego — changes everything How to separate truth from emotion in business and decision-making And the question that can redefine how you move through your life and career Emma also opens up about the mistakes that shaped her, overcoming comparison, and why she believes success starts from within — not from external validation. It’s a conversation that feels as grounding as it is powerful. And if you know Emma, you know — this moment meant everything.

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

• 0:04Emma Grede?

  Hi darlings, welcome back to Aspire. I'm so excited to bring you something that's a little different, but very special. I'm sharing with you my dream come true, my conversation with the one and only Oprah Winfrey on the Oprah Podcast. This honestly feels like a full circle moment for me and it was really important to bring it to you right here on Aspire. It's one of the most honest conversations I've had about my debut book, Start With Yourself, uncovering the parts that don't always make it into the highlight reel. Seeing down with Oprah felt really grounding in a way I didn't expect and if you know me, you know this moment was it for me. I think you'll get a lot from this and if you enjoy it, search the Oprah Podcast wherever you listen and follow shows.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Hi everyone, it's me Oprah. And if you like the content on this channel, I think you're gonna like my show. It's called The Oprah Podcast. Easy to remember. Every week I sit down with fascinating people, thought leaders and authors and visionaries and cultural change makers for conversations that help us understand ourselves and our world a little better. I think you'll learn a lot from Imma Greed on this episode about achieving personal and professional success and how to take ownership of your life. But before we start, I want to ask if you can take a few seconds right now and search for The Oprah Podcast wherever you listen and hit follow, then you won't lose the show after this episode ends.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  We have a lot of great episodes on my channel and we release new episodes every Tuesday. Now let's get started.

• 1:36Emma Grede?

  And here's the thing Oprah, this book is dismantling the rules that we've all been sold around these things. I honestly believe that we need, desperately need more women in positions of power right now. And so I look at this and I say, do you know what? If you are an ambitious woman, it is going to require some discomfort. If you want money, it's going to require some level of audacity. If you want a big, big career, you're going to need visibility and proximity. If, and it's not for everybody, but if you want a family, it's going to require some timing and it's probably not what we've been told. And if you want power, then you are going to need to take it because nobody is coming to give you power. And just like I said, we are desperate in this world for more women in positions of

• 2:21Emma Grede?

  power right now.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Hey there, everybody. Glad to be with you here on the Oprah Podcast. My guest is not just an entrepreneur, not just a businesswoman. She is an inspiring force, a modern day business mogul and visionary. And she's written a book called Start With Yourself. It's a new vision for work and life, and it should be your guide if you are starting a business, thinking about starting a business, already in a business, want to make a better business for yourself and want to be a better person in that business. I highly recommend Start With Yourself, honey. Please welcome Emma Grede to the podcast. Hi, Emma.

• 3:04Emma Grede?

  Oh, hi, Oprah. I am so happy to be here. I can't even tell you how happy I am.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Forbes named Emma Grede one of America's wealthiest self-made women at just 40 years old. A wife and mother to four. She's worked with both Lowry and Kim Kardashian to co-found culture-defining global brands like Good American and Skims, now valued at $5 billion. She offers savvy business advice. On her podcast, aspire with Emma Grede.

• 3:34Emma Grede?

  Put yourself in the position of your customers and just listen to your intuition. It will never serve you well.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  She's also the first Black female investor on that ABC hit show, Shark Tank.

• 3:44Emma Grede?

  And I've been toying in my head. I'm like, do I call her Miss Winfrey?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  You call me Oprah.

• 3:48Emma Grede?

  Then, thank, thank you for that.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You have to call me Oprah. Because I was reading in your book, and I was so touched every time I saw my name, where you would say, and I'd go home and I'd watch Oprah. I mean, really, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

• 3:58Emma Grede?

  Thank you. You have, and listen, I know that every time somebody meets you, they have this kind of explosive reaction to you. And so I'm like, what, what do you do? What do you say that she hasn't heard before? And I'm not trying to say anything you haven't heard before. For me, there is nobody else that I would rather sit and discuss this book with because you have been in my mind as my fantasy mentor since I was 10 years old. And it's the truth, because I had no other example of a woman that... That was like you, that had that level of integrity and spoke like that and behaved in a way. And so I feel like I have tried my best to emulate some of the behaviors that

• 4:42Emma Grede?

  I saw in you for the longest time.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and as I'm reading the book, I see some of my teachings. I see that. I say, oh, you're one of those students who paid attention.

• 4:52Emma Grede?

  Oh, yes, I did. I really did. In the most, in the biggest and the smallest ways, you know, from thinking about gratitude to thinking about how you speak to people and what your energy is that you give off. And so for me, it's really been in so many, so many ways.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you tell the story in the book about yelling at a deaf woman. Tell us that story.

• 5:11Emma Grede?

  Oh, is that where we're starting?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I didn't want to start there, but because you said about the energy, that is such a classic energy story.

• 5:18Emma Grede?

  Okay, so let me tell you, the truth of this is, and you will, I mean, my publisher from Shannon, from Simon and Schuster will tell you this. I took that out of the book three times for one reason, because I said, if I ever get to meet Oprah, I know that she will pick up this story.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 5:36Emma Grede?

  And when I spoke to your producers, I was like, no, no. And I took it out and they said, you've got to put it back in.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  No, I like it because it's so revealing, so truthful, and it is a story of you recognizing in your own self-awareness that I need to do better. So that's why, that's why I love the story.

• 5:52Emma Grede?

  So here's the story. The story goes like many people. I got up every morning and went to work on the tube, on the train. And I'm at the turnstiles and you know, it's like, I grew up in a place where my learned default emotion was anger. Whatever was happening, whatever wouldn't go my way, I would turn to anger. And so on this particular morning, I was frustrated because, you know, this woman was messing around in her bag and I was like in that mode of let, let me just get to work. And I said, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. And when I screamed, excuse me, she said, I'm partially deaf. And I shoved this woman and asked her, well, are you blind too? And I moved her and I went down the escalators and I got on the train. And I am so filled with shame as I

• 6:36Emma Grede?

  even recount the story. But it was in that moment that I thought, oh my goodness, you have to get a grip of yourself. You are never going to go where you want to be if this is the way that you behave. And so I immediately enrolled myself into like a Community anger management.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Anger management program.

• 6:52Emma Grede?

  And I stayed in that program for a long time, but I'd never been taught that you could get a grip of yourself. I'd never really understood that you could go.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  That you don't have to behave that way. You don't have to immediately react just because something is happening.

• 7:08Emma Grede?

  And that was the beginning of me understanding the level of power that I held within myself. Because I was like, I don't need to be like that. I don't like her. I don't want to be her, and I have a choice.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Well, you know, lots of people, I have seen particularly people of wealth and means, yell at their staff, yell at other people, yell when somebody's in their way, walking through life expecting everybody to adhere to whatever is going on with them, but they seem to have no recognition of it. That's why I thought this was such an important story, that in the moment you realize, this isn't the person I want to be.

• 7:45Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  So that means it's possible for anybody to do that.

• 7:48Emma Grede?

  You're absolutely right. And I think the important thing to say is that it doesn't go away. And there's a part of me, Oprah, that actually has appreciated some of the aggression that lives inside me, because I think it's part of, and this is going to sound crazy, but a little bit of part of what's made me successful. You know, I did the Hoffman process, I don't know, four years ago. And, you know, you know enough about the Hoffman, but for anybody listening, you know, you're retraining your learned patterns that you learned as a child.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  We did a whole podcast on it.

• 8:16Emma Grede?

  And I listened to it. And that was after I went, so it was so nice to have that perspective. But, you know, I remember saying to them, like, don't, don't take that all out of me, because I need a little bit of that. But it's understanding that that doesn't have to be the default. And a big part of what I write about in this book is being a woman and having your emotions guide your decision making is a really kind of like low vibrational place to be.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:43Emma Grede?

  And if you are going to, you know, live up to your higher self, as you know, you have always said, then that can't be the way you make your decisions.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Well, in Start With Yourself, which is just such a perfect title, when did you know that that was the title?

• 8:57Emma Grede?

  I love that you say that. My working title was. About apology and I decided that that couldn't possibly be the title because it gives you the connotations that you need to something there's something to apologize for. And so to me, start with yourself was everything because it's about not blaming anything that's happening on the outside and knowing that everything that you do or the success that you have and all the hardships that you have and the way that you choose to walk through the world. It all starts with yourself. So when I landed it, I was like, that's it. That's the one. And I liked the way it looked.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  I love the way it looks and I love the way you designed the book.

• 9:31Emma Grede?

  Isn't it nice?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  It's very nice.

• 9:33Emma Grede?

  Beautiful fabric.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Beautiful. People say you can't judge a book by cover, but yeah, you can.

• 9:38Emma Grede?

  Yes, you can.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. A friend introduced me to this book and as soon as she dropped it off, I went, I love this book.

• 9:44Emma Grede?

  Chic.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Chic, very chic.

• 9:45Emma Grede?

  It could sit in your beautiful surroundings.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  That's right. And it goes with everything.

• 9:49Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I don't want my face on there either.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Excellent, excellent, excellent. I love when you say this in the book. If a fortune teller had taken a look at my destiny when I was growing up, she would have predicted I'd become a DJ's girlfriend or a footballer's side piece or marry a gangster. That seems to be the predetermined path for all the women in my life, women who put everyone ahead of their own dreams. So how did you manage to pivot around the life that you saw had been prescribed for you? How did how how did that come about?

• 10:20Emma Grede?

  You know, I was a real dreamer and I've always been in my head and I would have what I now know of, you know, visualizations. I don't think I thought about it that way when I was a kid, but I'm I'm somebody that could take themselves off into a dream. And then, you know, when I was a kid, I used to be obsessed with fashion magazines. But I would take myself into the magazine, like into the show, into the advertising campaign. And I would create collages and I would imagine my life if it weren't in plaster, if it weren't where I grew up. And I just knew that I could do better. I knew that the sadness and the heaviness around me wasn't my.

• 11:00Emma Grede?

  Destiny, I don't know what it was.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  You could feel that inside yourself.

• 11:03Emma Grede?

  I knew it.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:04Emma Grede?

  I'm not supposed to be here.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I appreciated your book so much because I started to feeling that around four years old in rural Mississippi. You just feel like this is not going to be my life.

• 11:14Emma Grede?

  No.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And I don't know how. So you're having a moment. You are having a moment. You're like a history-making turn as the first black female shark on ABC's Shark Tank. And your podcast, Aspire, is just really resonating with so many thousands of people. You're co-creator of these powerhouse fashion brands like Skims and Good American. Do you think that you manifested this moment through your own strategy or is something else happening? Like I've said many times, God can dream a bigger dream. The life force has dreamed a bigger dream for you than you did even for yourself. What is happening?

• 11:52Emma Grede?

  It's such an interesting way to look at it. And I think about it as a culmination of all of those things. You know, my strong belief is that you can't manifest your way alone into anything. Manifestation has to meet really hard work. And I have been in practice to be the type of woman that I wanted to be since I was 10 years old. Whether that was emulating you or it was just getting up and delivering those papers, I wanted to be somebody that was going in a different direction to what I saw around me. And so I think it's a culmination of putting myself in really difficult situations, honestly, you know, because I've been in places where, you know, my first apartment, I didn't have a fridge, I didn't have a way to cook.

• 12:34Emma Grede?

  And so I used to put, you know, the milk on the balcony, but I knew that if I didn't, you know, if I didn't live there, I wouldn't be able to get to college. And if I didn't get to this college, then I wouldn't be able to, you know, have the type of job and work experience that I want. So everything has led to something. And I think I've been planned and purposeful about all of my moves. I've always thought.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Planned and purposeful.

• 12:54Emma Grede?

  One step ahead.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:56Emma Grede?

  All the time.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  You know, we recently did Jim Collins on the show. Jim Collins, who did Good to Great, and now he has another book called What to Make of a Life. And in that book, he talks about that it's not necessarily what you're good at, but what you're coded for. And so. When I started to read your book, I thought you were encoded to become the woman that you are now. You were encoded for entrepreneurship. You were encoded with a business mind. What do you think that is? What do you make of your encoding?

• 13:25Emma Grede?

  I totally agree with you because I think that, you know, I grew up, I'm the eldest of four girls and my mom, you know, raised us as a single mum. And for so many people, that could have felt like hardship. For me, it felt like this is the baseline of what I can tolerate. Like at 10 years old, I could cook a meal for those kids and I could iron all their school shirts and make their packed lunches and just get everybody.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Because you were the oldest, you were responsible for taking care of the rest of the kids while your mom was working.

• 13:52Emma Grede?

  Yeah, my mom was working. It's like my mom's the dad, I'm the mum and we've got three kids together. That's the dynamic of my family and love it or loathe it, but that's the way it is. But to me, I built like such resilience from a young age. And so when I think about where I come from, which is this place at East London, where you had to be so truthful. You had to make sure that whatever you said, you were going to do. There was this like moral baseline of the place that was an expectation of how you should behave. And that set me up to be the type of businesswoman that I am. And so I do think that I've been coded from a young age and all of these experiences. And I think the important thing is that.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  And don't you feel to this, that nothing was wasted?

• 14:35Emma Grede?

  Nothing was wasted.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Even that time with being the older sister and taking care of the family, that all of that has now come into play now.

• 14:42Emma Grede?

  One million percent. And I think the important part is that my mindset never saw it as something that was dragging me down. I was like, oh, I'm just going to stand on all of these things. Like I'm a tough girl, I have a thick skin. How else can I use that thick skin?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Just a quick reminder, if you're enjoying this conversation, you can hear many more like it on the Oprah Podcast. Simply search the Oprah Podcast wherever you listen and follow the show. We release new conversations every Tuesday. Up next, Emma Grede on her controversial take on work-life balance. Why she says mom guilt is not a part of her story and why she believes more women need to start talking openly and honestly about money. Stay with us.

• 15:29Speaker 02

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• 15:31Speaker 03

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• 16:18Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm here with powerhouse entrepreneur, wife, and mother to four, Emma Grede. Her new book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work and Life, offers modern advice for working women, especially mothers. Let's get back to it. And in the introduction, you write, "All women are exhausted. While it's very easy, and we see this all over our culture, to blame men in inequitable systems, that's not how I roll," you say. You say, "Nothing is fair. It's true, but I don't have time to wait for equity. I'd rather make it. I take full responsibility for my life, and I create my own future regardless of what comes back." And I want to ask, how do you take radical ownership of our lives

• 17:00Speaker 01

  without gaslighting ourselves, or dismissing very real barriers that we know exist? How do you hold both truths at the same time?

• 17:10Emma Grede?

  Well, the important thing to know is that two things can be true at the same time.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  That the system may not be fair, but you did not let that determine the size of your future.

• 17:18Emma Grede?

  One million percent, because that is the truth that we all live in, right? We know that the system is not made for us. And if you ask me, I think about women as the greatest untapped power resource in the world. That's how I think about women. And when I wrote this book, I wanted to write something that was... Almost like, uh, you know, like a, a thing for ambitious women to be able to hold in their hands and realize that power. I thought to myself that I could, based on my experience, that if you want money and you want power and you want a great career, my experience tells me that you can't hide

• 18:01Emma Grede?

  any of that behind politeness, you can't hide that behind soft ambition. And I think that as women, we are kind of culturally programmed to avoid.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  To act like you don't want that.

• 18:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah, we're, we're, we're like, and to avoid the behaviors that lead to creating wealth, that lead to power. And here's the thing, I wrote, this book is dismantling the rules that we've all been sold around these things. I honestly believe that, you know, we need, desperately need more women in positions of power right now. And so I look at this and I say, do you know what? If you are an ambitious woman, it is going to require some discomfort. If you want money, it's going to require some level of audacity. If you want a big, big career, you're going to need visibility and proximity. If, and it's not for everybody, but if you want a family, it's going to require some timing and it's probably not what you, what we've been told.

• 18:54Emma Grede?

  And if you want power, then you are going to need to take it because nobody is coming to give you power. And just like I said, we are desperate in this world for more women in positions of power right now.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I love it, you know, one of my, one of my, you have all these girls that I put through school in South Africa, a lot of them came to the United States. And I remember one of my daughter girls, I call them, had graduated from USC and was fortunate enough to get a job right out of college, working as an architect. And four months in, she calls me and says, complaining because there's no work-life balance. And I did not do any gentle parenting. I said, girl, you better get off this phone. And I know recently.

• 19:34Emma Grede?

  Uh-oh.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  You made waves.

• 19:36Emma Grede?

  Where are you going?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  You made waves when you said during the interview that work-life balance is your problem.

• 19:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  That's yours to figure out.

• 19:44Emma Grede?

  It's your responsibility.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And a lot of people didn't like that, but tell us your take on work-life balance.

• 19:48Emma Grede?

  Let's talk about why a lot of people didn't like it. They didn't like it because it kind of hit home in this way.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:55Emma Grede?

  And actually, I would go one step further. I actually think that work from home culture.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Emma Grede?

  Is killing life and it's career suicide. That's seriously how I feel about it.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 20:06Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I really do. Because if you look at some of the kind of like broader cultural trends, marriage decline, the decline in birth rates, like the loneliness epidemic. You cannot like have meaningful connection with people on a Zoom call. You don't get seen and promoted from your living room. You can't be like, you know, a good flirt in a bad outfit on a Zoom like because no one's getting dressed. Do you know what I mean? But I'm serious about this. When you go out in the world, you meet people, you spark connections, you might see a, you know, cute person that you vibe with. Like, we need to be in person, not just for our professional lives, but for our personal lives. And so when I speak about work-life balance, it's because people have made it this default excuse that they should stay away from life.

• 20:51Emma Grede?

  And I'm like, that is so sad. I met my husband at work, my best friends at work. I've had some of the best nights of my life after, you know, great days at work. And so I feel like we kind of made the office and work this enemy. And to me, when you're living a purposeful life and you're doing something great with your life, the two things intermingle. I'm not so stupid to think that everybody has a job that they love. But I just don't think that we should think about work as some kind of enemy. It just isn't.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  And you and your husband, Yens, are business partners.

• 21:22Emma Grede?

  We are.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And you have four children. So how did you move from not only working relationship to romantic relationship? But how do you navigate family and business? I mean, I just marvel, first of all, at any woman who is working outside the home, comes home, has to do all the mothering. I never had children, even though people were saying, and one of the reasons I didn't have children is because I knew I couldn't do both well. And people would say to me, well, you have this entire studio. You could build your own nursery. I thought, well, they'll just be in the nursery and I'll be over here. And Tara Montgomery, who produces this podcast and has been a producer for me for over thirty years, has five kids.

• 22:05Emma Grede?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I don't know how she does it. I don't know how you do it. How do you navigate family and business? Can you turn off your business mind when you get home and be fully present for your kids?

• 22:17Emma Grede?

  So here's, the answer is yes, I can. But I also think that the question really ought to be, how have we made it so that the two things are unfathomable? That it's unfathomable to think about somebody that can kill it at work and kill it as a mum. In my view, I think the idea of what it means to be a mother specifically, not a father.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:38Emma Grede?

  Has gone nuts. Like this idea of performative parenting, that I need to make a lunch and all the, you know, sandwiches need to be in stars and it, you know, needs to be on the Instagram.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  A smiley face.

• 22:48Emma Grede?

  And I don't do any of that. So two, two ways I want to answer your question.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have no guilt about that?

• 22:52Emma Grede?

  Zero.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Zero.

• 22:53Emma Grede?

  Because my kids don't need that from me. My kids need love and they need a certain amount of attention, but that doesn't require eight hours with them. It's probably like twenty minutes per kid per day, if I'm honest. I don't do every school drop off, but I'm there when my kids need me. If my kid's in an art show or, you know, running a race, I am there. But I don't partake in this idea that I'm supposed to usher my kids through life.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And that you're supposed to be there for everything.

• 23:19Emma Grede?

  No, I'm just not because here's the thing, my kids are learning what it is to live up to the expectations of your own life. They see me go out and chase my dreams and I want them to do that for themselves. But I do think that we put ourselves in a position right now where the idea of what it means and what it takes to be a parent is so insurmountable that women are running themselves in circles. You don't need to do that.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  You don't need to do.

• 23:45Emma Grede?

  You don't need to do that.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  And how did you learn that or did you just always know it because of the way you were raised?

• 23:50Emma Grede?

  I experimented on the first kid and, no, the truth of it is that I wasn't raised like that. You know, I saw my mum go out and go to work every single day and she left early and she came home late and I think that me and my sisters turned out pretty good.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:06Emma Grede?

  And I just wasn't raised with that. Expectation that she was supposed to be everything for me. I knew that I had to do some stuff for myself and that I'd have to rely on some lady down the road to help me with something else. There was never this expectation that she should be the be all and end all. And I think that we would do well in society right now if we stopped putting those type of expectations on women.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  So early on in your career, you write, when I was an unseasoned CEO, the business was in financial straits. Rather than letting my direct report to know and sharing accountability with them, I internalized the pressure and then shocked everyone when we suddenly needed to cut fifteen people from our sixteen person team. Not only did I feel like I was gonna die of shame. You entice all these people to give up what they have at other companies and join you on a journey, and then you fail them. So I know taking full responsibility sounds empowering, but it can also feel heavy too.

• 24:59Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  How do you carry accountability without carrying shame when something doesn't work out?

• 25:06Emma Grede?

  Well, you borrow from the boys. Because here's the thing. Business is business.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:11Emma Grede?

  And sometimes it doesn't work out. But you can't take it personally.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  And those boys don't feel any shame about it at all.

• 25:17Emma Grede?

  Not a sausage, nothing.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Not a sausage. I love that speech. I love that expression. Not a sausage.

• 25:24Emma Grede?

  But it's really true. And that isn't to say that we don't care deeply about people. When you have to make, you know, decisions that affect people's lives, you should carry that with some intentionality. But the point is that as women, we take these things so personally and we hold them like I did something wrong.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Like it's your personal thing.

• 25:42Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:43Emma Grede?

  When actually it's like, this situation didn't work out over here. And we see so many men create businesses, lose hundreds of millions of dollars for their investors.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Thousands of people laid off.

• 25:52Emma Grede?

  And raise the next day. You literally go out and raise hundreds of millions of dollars the next day. And the woman is just like sent down and can never do anything again. It's like, what a disaster. Right?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:02Emma Grede?

  So I actually knew in my head that that wasn't the truth. That actually that was something that we do to ourselves. And this is what I want to say to women. I think that we have to make this separation of when we're being led by our emotions and what is true. And I know that I'm a good person. I know that I run my businesses well and responsibly. And when something doesn't work out, I go, okay, I'm gonna take that learning. I'm gonna understand what I'm gonna, you know, what I did wrong, and I'm gonna move on and do it differently next time. I'm not sitting here going, oh, Lord, like, how bad a person am I? Because I'm not.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So what would your most honest employee say about you as a leader?

• 26:40Emma Grede?

  They would say that I have incredibly high expectations, that I don't suffer fools, that I'm firm but fair. Nobody's ever surprised by what I have to say, Oprah, ever. I have it written across my face. I'm like, you know, but I think that I'm a very, very clear communicator and I bring people on a journey with me. Nobody's ever like, what's happening here?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  What are we doing?

• 27:03Emma Grede?

  Because I'm consistent. You know, it's like, I always want the best. I always want more. I'm always going to ask you to go a hundred miles. But in return, you know, I believe that when you hire people, you have like this social contract with them. That it's like, I am going to ask for so much from you and in return, I'm going to reward you richly. And we're going to go on a journey together and you're going to get something from this experience. And when you leave, I'll be the best reference you ever have. But I have very, very, very high expectations on people.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  I think when you're starting with yourself and you don't know anything about business to begin with, you make a lot of mistakes.

• 27:36Emma Grede?

  Yes, you do.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  What are the mistakes that you most regret from the beginning that can help someone else listening? Who's starting with themselves?

• 27:42Emma Grede?

  How long do you have?

• 27:45Emma Grede?

  Because I made every mistake, literally every mistake in this book. And I thought it was important to share those mistakes. Because I feel like right now, we're in this like, you know, social generation where we only put out the best parts of our lives.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  That's right. That's why I love this book is that you let us see underneath what's happening.

• 28:00Emma Grede?

  And I really do. I think I had a lot of delusions about myself and what type of leader I was. I thought that I should behave like the other people I'd seen in business. And I've realized that I am an emotional woman. I am extremely empathetic. And the best way to lead my companies was what, not what I had seen. It was actually making my own version and my own style of leadership. And so I really did that. Like, I know if somebody breaks up with their partner or has, you know, something happen in their family life, they don't come into work in the same way. And I felt like I had to lead by example. As a mother, I am out the door every day at five, which means that my staff can be out the door at five,

• 28:45Emma Grede?

  if they so choose to be. And so I decided that early on in my career, I was trying to be something that I'm not. And I've kind of settled into being myself. And a lot of that comes with age, you know, as you get older, you get closer to yourself. And I have this Sort of relationship with myself and this conversation that goes on in my head. And with a bit of more experience and confidence, I've learned just to just be me. And I'm all right with that.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, one of the things I say about you is that you're a person who's been able to take instinct and turn it into a global brand. Is that a gift? Or is that a strategy? Or is it both?

• 29:24Emma Grede?

  It's both. And it really is because in the beginning, when I was leading by instinct, I think that a lot of people around me thought I was crazy. And for a little while, so did I.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:36Emma Grede?

  I really thought I'd overextended myself. And there was just this little voice in the back of my head that said, just keep going, keep going, keep going. And sometimes you've got to get past the criticism and past all the mistakes and do a bunch of not so good things to get to the place. But I'm not scared of the mistakes. And I think that that is the big difference. Like, I almost, I look for them. I look for like where it's hard, where it's difficult, where, where am I scared? And then I push up against that because I know that's where all the good stuff is coming.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Where did that skim's idea come from? That is one of the great ideas, let me tell you.

• 30:11Emma Grede?

  I would love to tell you that it's mine. It absolutely was not. But then that's part of what I'm good at. When I see something good, you know, I jump on. I think it was Sheryl Sandberg that says, when you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask which seat.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 30:23Emma Grede?

  And I just was like, I'm in.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I'm in.

• 30:25Emma Grede?

  Let's go. Because it was one of those things that when you saw Kim's vision, Kim Kardashian, you couldn't unsee it. And you knew that that was going to be a hit. And so for me, I just was like, yes, I understand this space. I know how to create this product and I'm going all in.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Well, you know what's interesting to me? That there is ambition and then there is ambition with intention, you know, obviously. I talk a lot about intention. And there, I think the intention actually aligns the ambition and gives it a purpose. So you're known for creating and partnering these successful businesses. And I have found that that aligned ambition brings about an intentionality. And, and I want to know if you have found a difference between building uh, from purpose and building from ego?

• 31:16Emma Grede?

  That is a fantastic question. And the short answer is yes.

• 31:25Emma Grede?

  Because I was so poor, so I tried it the other way, because I needed the money. You know, I'm gonna be honest, because I do think that I've done things in my career where it was just like, I just need to do this thing.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:37Emma Grede?

  Because I just need this money.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  There was no alignment.

• 31:39Emma Grede?

  No, alignment, my backside, there was no alignment.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Not even a sausage.

• 31:44Emma Grede?

  Not a sausage alignment. And let's be honest, right, because there's two big, really big, important things to talk about here. Being able to work within the realm of your purpose is a privilege. Because for most people, that's not a choice. They're waking up, they're doing something that they don't really like to pay the bills.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:01Emma Grede?

  And so I don't want to sit here and smugly say, oh yeah, you know, I made this big decision. I was given the opportunity because I started work so early. I never went to college. I started in the workplace early, so I had a bit of a head start. I made a name for myself. I had a lot of luck. I like really doubled down on that luck. And so by the time I got to my early 30s, I had choice. And that choice allowed me to then say, you know what, I'm gonna choose the project and I'm gonna choose something that aligns with how I see the world and the type of woman that I want to be. So that's the first thing. What I will say is I think it's a little bit of a slippery slope when we start to talk about women and purpose as it relates to business. And this is the reason.

• 32:42Emma Grede?

  When we talk about these stats that women get 3% of venture capital, right? And a measly amount, given how ingenious and innovative and brilliant we are when it comes to running businesses. Sometimes we might have to take a little step back and understand, in the spirit of Start With Yourself, what part we have to play in that equation. Oftentimes, what I see are women will pitch impact over profit. Now, make no mistake, the point of business is to make money.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:13Emma Grede?

  And you have to make money before you start talking about how you're gonna give money away. So when I get decks from female founders and I'm six pages in and no one's told me about the money, but you've told me how you're gonna look after the community, I'm like, what is happening here? So we have to separate those things. I have always put social good at the centre of my businesses. Once they were profitable, because when you have a profitable company, you can hire people, pay them the best money.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:41Emma Grede?

  You can do community initiatives, you can give away to nonprofit, but you can't do any of that without a profit.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:46Emma Grede?

  And women don't want to talk about money. And when I have women, like even super successful women on my podcast, that come on, they've sold their companies for a billion dollars, they don't want to talk to me about money. And so I want to say, we have to. Part of this idea of what it means to start with yourself is to start with the money. It's to put the money at the center.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Because that's why you're in business.

• 34:10Emma Grede?

  That's why you're in business. But we also need to say to ourselves, you know what? You can do deeply critical impactful work and care about the compensation. You can care about money and you can care about a lot of other things too. We don't need to separate the things. We just need to get comfortable with the idea that we need to make money.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Right. We have to take a break. Up next, Imma Greed takes questions from our listeners who are business owners, including twin sisters whose deal with Emma on Shark Tank turned their boob solutions brand into a hundred million dollar business. Find out how, next.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm here with Imma Greed. She's famous for being a serial entrepreneur. We're on my front porch to talk about her new book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work and Life. So you have done things just to make money.

• 35:06Emma Grede?

  Absolutely.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 35:07Emma Grede?

  Just to underline double score. Yes.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, just to make money.

• 35:11Emma Grede?

  Yes, and I can't say that I won't ever do that again. I just have greater choice now.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Greater choice now. I love that answer. You write about two women, Taylor and Casey. Yeah, twin sisters who were the founders of a company called Cake's Body, and they secured a deal with you on Shark Tank. During the pandemic, twin sisters Taylor Capuano and Casey Sarai took just $10,000 and turned their side gig. Washable reusable inserts. Into a must have brands for women. Cake's Body, washable, reusable nipple covers that many women swear by. Now with partner Imma Greed.

• 35:48Emma Grede?

  300K for 10% final offer.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  Okay, done.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  They've expanded into a $100 million full line of boob solutions, helping women feel more confident in their skin.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Casey and Taylor.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Hey ladies.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Hello. Hi.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  We're on Oprah. So good to see you. We're like so emotional watching you guys. There's so much charisma, inspiration. We're just so happy to be here.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. What was it about Emma that caused you to accept that offer and be excited about it? Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  Well, you know what? When we went on Shark Tank, we thought it, we were about a year into our business. We had started it from really nothing. We're going viral on TikTok. We're doing about a million dollars in revenue a year. And we thought it'd be great exposure. We weren't really expecting to do a deal with the shark. And then we found out about a week before that Emma was going to be a guest, which was the universe answering our prayers. And going in together too, like you can't really talk about the deal. So we had to go in with the deal that we would accept from the sharks and then the deal that we would accept from Emma the shark.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  And it was very different because we knew how much value Emma could bring to the table. And I mean, there's a really long list of why we were so grateful to do the deal with Emma. But behind closed doors, she's like, what you see here times a thousand and you just can't fake authenticity.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I felt that reading her book. I felt like Emma is in my face, in my ear, in my head. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Well, one of our favorite stories is when we first closed our deal with Emma, we gave her a call and she called us right back and she was like, "I'm so sorry. I was just with Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates, but I'm so excited to talk to you guys and it just means a lot." Like the same energy she brings with you Oprah, she gives to us and just everyone in our orbit. So we're very grateful.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  So what did you see in them? What was it you saw?

• 37:56Emma Grede?

  You know, and it's so interesting because you do just catch a vibe. First of all, I loved the product and I knew immediately that there was a market for this product. But sometimes you invest in the people and that was one of those times because, you know, you're on TV, so you get this millisecond to make a decision. And I just looked at these two and I was like, they will be successful, whatever it is that they do. They'd taken their own money, they had corporate jobs, they'd saved a little bit of money, they took that money and they did and created an innovation. That's very different from writing a business plan, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. They made a product that didn't exist in the market and that shows a certain tenacity. So to me, I was investing in that tenacity, not Cake's body. It just so turns out that Cake's body's a winner. But, um, but that's really what it was.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  How has Cake's grown since teaming up with Emma?

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh. When we met Emma, we were doing about five million dollars of business that year. We have grown, um, with Emma to a hundred million dollars. And really, we said on the show and we say, our mission is to do what Spanx did for butts, but for boobs. And really redefine this whole category of how women are dressing today. And it was really Emma who worked with us to really establish, like, we have this product idea, but how do we really make this like a movement that lasts in the culture and complements how women want to dress, how women want to feel. They don't want to be worried about what bra they're gonna wear. They just want to be able to walk out the door and go tackle whatever, um, amazing things they, they have to do that day.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  So from five million to a hundred million, pretty good, I would say.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  I think the thing when someone like Emma tells you, this is gonna be big, it gives you permission to think that for yourself. And I just think, and you don't need, you know, someone to say that to you, but it almost allowed us to think bigger and dream bigger and think of this, this isn't just a product. This isn't just like a great product idea or a great single product that's going viral on social media. What if this becomes something much bigger? It's just like really changed the trajectory of where we were going, what we believed for ourselves. And it's just so fun. Like Emma's hilarious and fun and just amazing to be around, so.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Thank you, Casey and Taylor, and good luck with those cakes.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Great. Bye guys.

• 40:19Emma Grede?

  I mean, these two are incredible because I have a lot of business investments. And what I say about them, it's, it's, the relationship has formed because the way they interact with me. And I will say this so many times to different people I invest in, when you have a mentor or when you have somebody who's put money in your business, the way that you choose to work with them will say everything about the longevity of your relationship. And what they do is come to me with ideas and things to bet. They're never like, what should we do next? Like, which way should we go? They have a few scenarios and they say, here's the pros and cons and what in your experience have you seen? And that's the way that you work with a good mentor. You don't wait for them to, you know, spoon feed you information. You've got to be proactive.

• 41:03Emma Grede?

  And so there's, you know, when they had five to 10 million dollars in sales, they were so hungry and they were charting a path to 50. They weren't waiting for me to say, guys, this is a hundred million dollar business. They had that ambition for themselves. They just needed a little bit of experience and some expertise to really like catapult the business.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Wow. Well, Dana is now joining us from Los Angeles. She's been in business for herself for the last eight years. Hi Dana.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Hi, hi, hi. You have questions for, questions for Emma?

• 41:33Speaker 05

  Yes, first, thank you so much for having me. So I am the owner of the Dino Book Collection. It's a home luxury lifestyle brand. Launched in 2019, 2020 hit ground running. It was a pandemic. I was one of like those pandemic brands. So everyone was home ordering my brand slippers, pajamas, candles, all those things, right? You know, it was a very unique first year for me. That same year Beyonce featured me in her Black Parade, as well as I was featured on Good Morning America. So like I said, a very unique first year. So then as time went on, you know, things like slowed down, but I was still being profitable. Still, everything was steady. But my question as a small business owner, when do you know when to scale? Especially when you make your mark as a small business owner.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  That's a question.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  You know, that's, that's how people know me. And then I know when I do scale, it's going to be a bigger overhead. I don't know if I'll have. As much say in everything. So that's just my like fear. I know my brand can be so much bigger. But is that thing of kind of being comfortable and being grateful like we're still doing great. Because my beginning was so strong. So it's kind of like, when do I know it's time to take that leap? Or does every small business need to take that leap?

• 42:50Emma Grede?

  Well, I love that you ask the question and you frame it in that way because the the truth is we live in a moment where we're so bombarded by these ideas of everything being big, like everything has to be a unicorn. And I actually talk in my book a lot about the women that I'm surrounded with that just have these incredible small businesses that look after them and a couple of employees and do really great. But to go back to your question about the timing of it all, I would take a step back and ask yourself, what is it that you really want? How do you want to live?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Isn't that the most important question ever?

• 43:23Emma Grede?

  Ever.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  There's never a more important question. I was gonna say the same thing. Do you want to be big?

• 43:29Emma Grede?

  Right?

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Do you want to be bigger? Because you just said in your thing, we're actually doing pretty good. So is that that comfortability where you want to be and where you want to stay?

• 43:38Emma Grede?

  And it's back to Oprah's question of me earlier, what is ego and what is your intention?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:43Emma Grede?

  And I think that you might well answer the question, say, you know what? I do want to be big. I do want to transition from where I am right now. And that is perfectly fine because we're in this golden age right now where you can take advantage of what's happening in AI and really look at your business and say, how do I make optimizations without having to take on this like crazy overhead? When you have a company like mine and you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, changing things and getting people to work in a new way is really hard. But you're just you. So you can actually start right at the beginning and decide that this is the way your business is going to grow. And there's a lot of optimizations that you can make across what you're doing, from logistics to infrastructure, from finance to accounting,

• 44:27Emma Grede?

  inventory that you can say, you know what, I don't need to hire somebody to do any of that. But it all has to start with yourself, excuse the pun. So take that step back first and decide what is it that I want? And then think of untraditional ways to light a fire under what you're doing.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 44:44Emma Grede?

  And you can ask AI for the way as well. It will tell you.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Do you have an answer for that Dana? Do you have an answer for what do you really want? I mean, I have found in life, no matter what the situation, that is the most important question. And when you sit with yourself and you have an answer that comes from the purity of yourself.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  What do I really want? And if you make the decision that you're going to make it bigger and grander, you also have to make that decision out of why you want it to be bigger.

• 45:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Is it to prove something to yourself? Is it to prove something to other people? Is it because you feel that, you know, going bigger is going to help more people? You know, whatever the answer is, but you've got some soul searching to do for yourself, I think.

• 45:27Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  That's a great place to start.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  That's a great place to start. Start with yourself.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks Dana. Good luck.

• 45:37Emma Grede?

  So nice to meet you.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  You are such a powerful force, as I was saying in the beginning. And, you know, I worked so intensely for so many years. It's what Michelle Obama described in her book Becoming. She was saying, "The velocity was so high." When I was doing daily shows, two shows a day for 25 years, the velocity was so high, I couldn't even remember, you know, at the end of the week, all the people that I talked to. So I'm wondering, how do you restore yourself? What does restoration look like for you? And do you have to have it in order to keep going?

• 46:12Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I really do.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  How important is it to get rest?

• 46:15Emma Grede?

  It's a 10 important. I prioritize myself really highly, you know? And again, as a wife and a mother, like I am high up on my list of to-dos. And I take it as part of the work, you know? And when I say that, it's not like self-care, you know, like a massage or a mani-pedi. It really is the slowing down and the quieting of my mind. I have a house in Malibu. And when I go to Malibu, that for me is like the kind of simmering down. I get like onto the PCH and you know, I'm like driving by the ocean and I feel the temperature.

• 46:58Emma Grede?

  Are coming down and I have this like visualization like when I'm opposite the ocean of like all the things that I want and I need and I'm trying to do like coming into me, but I'm really serious about taking time for myself and and again, maybe sometimes like a little bit frowned upon for a mother of four, you know, that level of sort of selfishness. But I don't really apologize for it because I need that. I need to take time and a moment for myself to be good for everyone else.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  In order to be a better mother.

• 47:28Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I recently read that you started a meditation practice.

• 47:32Emma Grede?

  I did.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And how has that impacted you?

• 47:34Emma Grede?

  It's, I mean, in in the most fundamental way, it's the biggest thing that I've done. Maybe in my adult life, I think, is to take meditation seriously. I've always tried, you know, I've downloaded a little app and, you know, I've done it for ten days and then I've gone off. And I learned transcendental meditation with a teacher.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:53Emma Grede?

  I may have been influenced. So I, surprise. Um, so I I got a teacher. And she came to my house for five days on a run and, you know, gave me my mantra and it just stuck. Now, I I have to be really honest. I don't get to the twenty minutes twice a day.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 48:10Emma Grede?

  But I do usually do fifteen to twenty minutes most mornings. I'd say five days a week. And and it works for me because I always thought about like taking this time out of my day and I think it puts time in my day. It leaves me with space and clarity and it also reminds me.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Everything smoother.

• 48:28Emma Grede?

  Everything smoother.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Makes everything smoother.

• 48:29Emma Grede?

  And because, you know, still somewhere deep down in me, I have this, you know, angry ten year old. I can speak to her and I can say, here's a better way to deal with the day. Here's a better choice for you. And, um, you know, she's your friend and she's my friend too, Diane von Furstenberg. She has this lovely thing that she says, you know, the most important relationship you'll ever have.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Is with yourself.

• 48:53Emma Grede?

  Is the relationship you have with yourself. And I really believe that. So I try like all the time to get a little bit closer to myself and to understand like why am I making certain decisions? Why am I feeling a certain way? Is that the truth?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  After a quick break, Imgrid shares a personal story about how she manifested a dream she had as a little girl. I love this story and I love manifestations and why she believes her dyslexia has become a superpower.

• 49:19Emma Grede?

  Stay with us.

• 49:22Emma Grede?

  Housing is one of the biggest payments most people make every month. Whether you rent or own, for a long time, it was just treated as a payment you made, not something that could become part of a rewards membership. That is what makes Bilt interesting. When you become a Bilt member, you can earn points on every housing payment, whether that's rent or mortgage. Then you can redeem those points towards things like flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments and more. I also think the neighbourhood concierge in the Bilt app is worth paying attention to. It's connected to your home and more than 50,000 merchant partners. So you can ask it to do things like make a dinner reservation, book a fitness class, schedule a lift or pay your rent. It is not just giving you information.

• 50:07Emma Grede?

  It can actually take action in the app and apply your member benefits along the way. For anyone thinking about what AI looks like when it's actually useful in daily life, this is a good example. It's tied to where you live, what you do around your neighbourhood and the things that you're already paying for. Download the Bilt app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com/emma. That's J O I N B I L T dot com slash emma. Use our link so they know that we sent you.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  We're back with business mogul and author of her first book, Start With Yourself, Emma Greed. If you know a friend who owns a business or is thinking of starting one, you're definitely going to want to send them the link to this episode. And while you're at it, hit subscribe to the Oprah podcast. Costs you nothing. I love this moment in the book where you, as a little girl, had drawn, drawn pictures, the Christmas tree and the mantle. And then one day you're sitting with your, with your baby, your first child, and you look around and the picture that you had drawn, when you were how old?

• 51:16Emma Grede?

  Seven, eight, nine, ten.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Is the picture that you're living in, so describe that for us.

• 51:22Emma Grede?

  To, to the tea. So I come home, I had my first baby, Gray. I was about thirty one years old and I'd bought my first property in East London. Beautiful townhouse, very different from how I grew up and it had these giant sash windows. It's December twentieth because I gave birth on my mother's birthday, of course I would. And I get back home, holding little Gray and, you know, I shed my first tear. And Jen says, isn't it amazing, like, we have this beautiful little baby. And I said, no. What is amazing is that I drew this exact vision with the Christmas tree and with the mantle and with the, uh, sash windows. And I, I can't tell you, like, I'm not a good drawer.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:01Emma Grede?

  I drew it exactly as it was. And I didn't even know about, like, nineteen seventies Danish dash, you know, like sideboards. That's not how I was raised, funnily enough. That was a Jen's purchase. But I just couldn't believe it because it was exactly as I'd envisaged what it would be to, like, have this, like, insane, beautiful family Christmas. And there I was with the baby and the husband and the house and the tree and the window. And I just thought, I, I can't actually explain this. But it was like one of those moments, and there's probably been a couple in my life where I was like, oh, life is actually magic. Like, it's completely magic. I made that happen.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I love that moment so much because I had a moment like that. I had gone to a friend's house early on when, in my career. And she was like the richest person I knew and she had these six trees in her yard. And I went, oh my god, six trees. And one day I was, uh, if I ever get some money and, and I can buy my own house, I'm gonna have six trees. And one day I was having coffee in the kitchen and I looked out and I saw the six trees in the kitchen. And when you walk outside, there were hundreds of trees beyond the six trees. So I realized I had somehow manifested that for myself. And in that moment where you have drawn the picture as a little girl and now you're sitting in the picture, looking at the mantle that you had drawn, that you didn't even know where that came from as a little girl.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  What did that teach you about dreams and manifestation and being able to? Bring on a future that you weren't even aware could come.

• 53:32Emma Grede?

  I it really and I can see I I remember the feeling so clearly. I was like, you can do anything. And in that moment, because I had a little baby and, you know, my company was my baby at that point as well, you know. And I remember thinking, this company won't survive without me there. If I have to take time to spend on this baby, that thing will disappear. And that was the moment everything came together and I was like, no, no. You can you can do all of this. You can have all of this stuff. You just have to work for it.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  That's when you realize if you could see it, you can achieve it.

• 54:07Emma Grede?

  A hundred percent. I just knew it. I was like, I'm gonna figure out the way to pull these two things together. You know, when you have a baby of a little Moses basket. And I was like, I'm just gonna take the baby with me. I'm gonna take up that basket and that kid's coming to the office because I can't let the other baby go. But it was the fusion of like, this is going to work now because I've seen it, I've imagined it. And I'm just gonna imagine the next stage of it.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  That's that's the beginning of teaching you about vision.

• 54:31Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  One of the reasons why I think Start With Yourself is going to be such a compelling and impactful book for so many women is because you didn't take the ordinary path. I mean, dropping out of school at fifteen years old. And I know I have other friends who didn't finish school or didn't go to college and lived with that, I'm not good enough, I'm not quite as good as the other people. I wonder if other people in the room are smarter than me. And you are always in these places where women are usually not seen and certainly not so boldly heard. What do you take with you into that space? Knowing that you didn't come from the same kind of backgrounds, you didn't come from the same kind of education.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  How did you overcome that?

• 55:19Emma Grede?

  So the truth is, there's always a tiny little piece of it that is there. But when I was a kid, my mum would always say to me, you know, Emma, you're not better than anyone, but nor is anyone better than you. And I really believed her. I was like, nobody's better than me. And so when I was a kid and, you know, I went to do these like fancy work placements of these like, you know, lady this and lord that, these companies in London. I never thought they were better than me. I thought they had a better education. I thought maybe they had, you know, cuter clothes or a nicer car. But I didn't believe that they were better than me. And that's just my default. And then when you get into the world, because I'm a person that was like in it, you know, I worked all the jobs. I had a paper route and then I worked in the deli and then in the shops and I really like did all the jobs.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Well, didn't that paper route teach you so much? Oh my gosh.

• 56:07Emma Grede?

  Oh, Brett, the morning.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  The morning, the discipline.

• 56:09Emma Grede?

  I never understood the morning. I used to see all these people and I'd be like, what are they doing? Where are they going to work, Emma? Like they're getting up and they're going to their job. On a construction site or in a cafe. And I was like, I just wanna be one of those people that gets up every day and has a thing and does it and does it with consistency. Cause that wasn't how I was raised. I had my mum, she was that brilliant, brilliant role model for that. But it wasn't what was around me. And so I just thought, I'm gonna choose better. But I never doubted myself. You know, I never had, uh, I'm, I'm not a people pleaser. I'm not somebody that is looking for outside validation.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  You were encoded. You were encoded.

• 56:49Emma Grede?

  I'll take it. I mean, I'm hoping so.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And the reason why you wanted to write the book?

• 56:56Emma Grede?

  Hmm.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, was what?

• 56:58Emma Grede?

  I wanted to do it because I feel like I am surrounded by people every day. You know, they slide into my DMs or they come and see me at a conference. And women always imagine that I've found like the 25th hour in the day.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 57:12Emma Grede?

  And I'm like, no, I, I, I have not. And they're not asking like, how did I do it? They're like, how can I do it for myself?

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:21Emma Grede?

  And so I wanted to have a level of honesty. There's a lot of business books out there, a lot of great business books. But not really many that are written by.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Women.

• 57:29Emma Grede?

  Women, fifteen year old school leavers with four kids.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 57:32Emma Grede?

  And so I was like, there's another way. But it re- it it really requires some way of thinking. You know, I wrote the book backwards. I wrote about building a brand and starting a company. And then I was like, why can I do all of that stuff? Oh, because I've learned to control my emotions. And then I was like, yeah, but what do you have, Emma? It's like, oh, I have vision.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:53Emma Grede?

  I had a story.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  But it also started with that darn paper route.

• 57:56Emma Grede?

  Right?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:57Emma Grede?

  Right from the very beginning.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  From the very beginning.

• 57:59Emma Grede?

  And so when I put the book together in that very dyslexic back to front way.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right. We didn't mention your dyslexia.

• 58:05Emma Grede?

  I have severe dyslexia. But you know, I I think it's important to say that just because the experience of writing the book was really, really difficult for me. But I did it because I knew that there would be a lot of people, especially women, that would say, oh, I felt like that. I've been there before.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:23Emma Grede?

  And I think that there is another way.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  And you actually consider your dyslexia a superpower.

• 58:28Emma Grede?

  It is a superpower. It, you know, it really is a superpower because I don't see obstacles. My, I'm such a straightforward person. And because the problem is probably too hard for me to work out, I have to find a shortcut. And I do that all the time. I do that in business. I go like, there's an easier way.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  So your dyslexia takes the form of what? You see things backwards? You see things?

• 58:48Emma Grede?

  I see, like, in every, like, I'm like the worst type of dyslexic. I see things inverse, absolutely. And I can't read numbers. I can't, as soon as you put numbers on a spreadsheet, forget about it.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Really?

• 58:59Emma Grede?

  Says the CEO.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Says the CEO.

• 59:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah. I really, and and what's interesting is I can see, once it's explained to me, I can see the patterns in the numbers. So if you, if, you know, and I hire fantastic CEOs to work alongside me, if they tell me what's happening, I can tell you what's going to happen. So I see the patterns in the numbers and how things link together. But I need it explained to me. I don't, I can't grasp it from just looking at the numbers.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  And so then there was that period of time in school where you didn't know it was dyslexia. There was no word for it. And so you just think that you're not smart as the other kids.

• 59:31Emma Grede?

  I just thought I wasn't smart. And I thought, this place is not suited to me. I thought I was wasting my time at school. And I knew that when I was in these work placements, I was getting so much because I'm a superstar worker. I would turn up early, I would leave late, I would do whatever it took. And you know, I'm a, I'm a people person, I'm an in-person person, so I made myself indispensable. And it was a great time because that was back in the day when you could work for free. You know, and companies took advantage of free workers.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:58Emma Grede?

  But for me, that was a magical time because I would never have got my foot in the door otherwise.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And do you believe that every person is, even if they start with themselves, is cut out to become a business person or businesswoman? Is it for everybody?

• 1:00:15Emma Grede?

  No.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Emma Grede?

  I don't believe that. I think that, and I don't think anything should be for everybody because I think the beauty of the world is that we're all different and we all have a different role to play. And I can see people within my organization and what is meant for them. And not everybody needs to be an ambitious little monster. Not everybody needs to want to push things to the edges every day. But if you do, and if you're a woman, I want you next to me. And I want you to read this book because we're in a place and a space in time where there's a desperate need.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  For women empowered, who, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:53Emma Grede?

  To see women in power. We, we need it so badly. And I wake up thinking about it and I go to sleep thinking about it. And when I meet women who are starting to understand that they can have some power. I want to be the person that says like, come, come with me. Come and see how this can be done and be a model for it. And I, I look at you. And the reason I've been so fascinated with you for the longest time is because you have this unbelievable commercial success. And yet, everything that you do is wrapped in integrity. It's not like laid on the top. It's like in the thing, like it's made of integrity. And that is so unusual in this world, and that's what I want to do.

• 1:01:34Emma Grede?

  And so I think that we have to be models for people, like, and I want to be that type of person. I want like a million little lemmers, like girls that came from the hood, that didn't have the education, that figured out their superpowers and that went for it. That's, that's what I would like to do.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Well, you are quite the force. I just, I, I've never seen anybody like you. I really haven't. And so for a woman who appears to have it all. But not all at once, as you talk about in the book, and I've said so many times. How would you describe, Emma, a well-lived life? What do you think that is?

• 1:02:09Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's a good question. Because at this time in my life, you know, and I think it would have changed throughout my life. Right now, it's like really understanding

• 1:02:24Emma Grede?

  the power that I have. And it's really choosing carefully. Because you can do a lot of things, you know? And I have a lot of options.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  And everybody's coming at you from every, yeah. This is the time.

• 1:02:35Emma Grede?

  I've seen it. I've seen the cycles. You're hot for a second until you're not, you know?

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:40Emma Grede?

  And so I think that for me, a well-lived life right now looks like choosing carefully. Like, where am I putting my energy? Who am I spending time with? What choices am I going to make? And how do I make the best of myself? You know, like, that's what I think now. That's a well-lived life.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  I think you're doing that. And I thank you so much for coming all the way here to be on my porch. Emma's new book is called Start With Yourself. I can't say enough about it. It's a new vision for work and life, but also a manual, if you are starting a business and starting to look at how you can better yourself in the business. It's a good reminder that a well-lived life actually starts with you. And my thanks to you, Casey and Taylor and Dana for zooming in. And I'll see you all next time. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.