It’s Time to Start With Yourself

Emma’s debut book, Start With Yourself, is out today. This is the episode she’s been building toward since the very beginning of Aspire. She’s doing something she’s never done on this podcast before. She’s taking on your questions about what’s at the heart of the book, including: The core ideas behind her framework for work and life Why this isn’t just a book for someone wanting to start a business What she’d say to the woman who’s been putting herself last for too long The uncomfortable truths she had to face about her own thinking before she could put them on paper for anyone else Then she reads from the book for the first time anywhere, about a moment that completely changed her mindset and became the reason she had to write it. If you’ve felt stuck or scared to go after the next thing, Start With Yourself is for you. It’s available here. https://www.emmagrede.com/

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

• 0:09Emma Grede?

  Okay, so today is book launch day. My debut book, Start With Yourself, is finally out. And I am relieved and anxious and nervous and thankful and hopeful that you will buy it and that it will light up something inside of you.

• 0:33Emma Grede?

  The Start With Yourself tour kicks off on April 15th in New York City. Tickets are on sale now at emmagrede.com.

• 0:43Emma Grede?

  So today, my plan is to read some of the book directly to you. It's right here in all its glory, and I'm going to read it to you. And that part is about a moment that changed my life. But first and before that, I want to get into a few of your biggest questions. And you know, I've been out here, I've been on social media, but I know your questions, and I really want to make sure that in today's episode, I'm addressing everything that I can about this book in the hope that you'll go out and actually buy it and read it because it's very important to me. So the first question is, so why now and why a book? Which I think is a really good place to start. Now, I wrote this book because I'm convinced that when you ask me how I've become successful

• 1:28Emma Grede?

  or how I've done what I've done, you are not asking me because you're interested in me. You're asking me because you want to know how you can do it for yourself. And here's the thing, I am entirely, entirely convinced that you can. And I'm telling you that this book, it's going to help you get there. Not because it's a magic wand that's going to change your life, but it's going to do two things for you. First, it's going to show you what's holding you back, and it's going to rewire your thinking so that you can move forward into the life and the work that you want and that you so rightly deserve. Start With Yourself really is, it's a game-changing, no bullshit guide for any of you that are seeking meaning.

• 2:10Emma Grede?

  Full success on your own terms and that part is really important. And secondly, it's actually a framework. It's one that is going to give you the tools and the mindset to unlock your full potential in your life and in your business. It's based on my learnings, but it isn't about me at all. It's all about you. The next question is, what exactly does it mean when I say to start with yourself? Now, if I'm honest, what I'm actually giving you here is my personal philosophy. It's how I think and how I live every day. First, it's about literally starting with yourself, meaning to put yourself at the very top of your list of priorities. Yes, exactly that.

• 2:53Emma Grede?

  Even if you're a mum or if you have a lot of people relying on you, or even if you consider yourself a team player, or you've become so freaking accustomed to putting yourself way down on your list of things to do. You can and you still should start with yourself every damn day. Now, to start with yourself actually means taking ultimate responsibility for yourself, for your thoughts, for your attitude, for your learning and for all your failings, all of it. No questions asked, no excuses, no fucks given. I want you to start with what you can control. I want you to have a vision for yourself. And then I want you to learn to manage your emotions and tune out whatever doesn't serve you.

• 3:36Emma Grede?

  Easier said than done, I hear you say it, but I promise you that this is a blueprint and it's something that you will be able to follow. This, my darlings, is a start with yourself mentality and it is all in the book which launches today. So the third question, here we are. But there's so much business and self-help content out there. I hate the idea of self-help content. What makes start with yourself different and what should we not expect from this? It's a very good question. Okay, let me tell you what I will never ever do. I will never lie to you. I will never overpromise or simplify things. I will never tell you that you can manifest your way to success or vision board your way to making millions. No, ma'am. If that shit worked more.

• 4:20Emma Grede?

  People would have more success. Ambition has to find you working and ambition requires discomfort. If you want to get paid what you're worth, you actually need audacity. But it must be coupled with a work ethic to match the level of ambition. I'm going to hold up a mirror in some parts of this book. And sometimes that's going to be painful or it's going to be uncomfortable. Because it really is hard to imagine that some of the shit that holds you back actually comes directly from you. But the good news, a really good news, is that the ability to change some of it is entirely within you too. What is the use of thinking about the stuff outside of your control anyway? It's not a good use of your time or your energy, and I promise you that.

• 5:05Emma Grede?

  What is true is that we are all handed a different start in life. And I acknowledge that and I recognize it for you and in you, as I actually did for myself. It's never fair. I'm honest about what kept me stuck. But I will tell you, the start of my story was never ever going to determine the end. And if you give me the chance, I'm going to show you how to reimagine how you show up for yourself by starting with yourself. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know by now that I love to read. I ask everyone who comes here to tell me a book that changed their life. I've read every business book out there and I'm really happy to be able to add my point of view into the collective wisdom. There really aren't nearly as many business books written by women as there should be.

• 5:50Emma Grede?

  And there certainly aren't a lot of books that are written by mums. Certainly mums are for high school dropouts, those that have built billions of dollars of capital value. So I have a lot to say that you won't have heard already. I wrote the book as a blueprint to my mindset and how I think about business and life. And I structured it with really super easy takeouts, like short, snackable chapters, so that you can get what you need fast. But I've also been honest and I wanted to share my background and my story in a way that's going to allow you to immediately apply my philosophy to whatever it is that you're trying to build and whatever you're trying to create for yourself. The next question. Who exactly is the book for? And what if I don't have a business?

• 6:35Emma Grede?

  Well, of course, I love this question. Let me tell you something. One of the biggest unlocks for me in my life was realising that I'm actually wired differently. I owe this to my upbringing, to my family, to my dyslexia. So I don't have the same stories running in my head about what's possible. And this is key because not accepting the prevailing wisdom as a given in your life is actually going to set you free. It's going to allow you to move differently. Now, within the book, I've called out some outdated ideas and set in stone rules that are really ingrained in our culture about work and life and balance, rules that we're told and that are reinforced every day about the crassness of speaking about and even wanting a lot of money

• 7:19Emma Grede?

  and the unseemliness of ambition specifically for women. Now, we've all heard people speaking negatively about someone who understands her worth and someone who dares to ask for it, or someone who can just come across as too ambitious and too full of themselves. But guess what? These aren't rules at all that we're following. They're just biases and they are bullshit. They're system errors and I need you to strike them from your mind so that you can gain a greater sense of control and master your day to day and your long range goals. Start with yourself is for you if you're tired of feeling like a bystander or a passenger in your life.

• 7:59Emma Grede?

  It's for you who's got big dreams and wants to get on the path to achieving what you know you're capable of. It's for you if you're the type of person who's just got a promotion but the self doubt and the imposter syndrome is starting to creep in. It's for you if you've just started a business and you feel overwhelmed and you feel scared of what's ahead and you're doubtful that you should even have started at all. It's for you, the founder who's raised the money and feels all the pressure to deliver and live up to the non stop expectations. It's for the mums trying to figure out how to prioritise and the leaders who know that they're capable of another level. And let me tell you why. It is because I am and I have. Been all of you at some point in my life, all of those things.

• 8:43Emma Grede?

  But I knew I was a lot more too. What I'm going to give you are some applicable right now solutions to create a mindset and an overall system of thought that's going to allow you to manage your emotions, to clarify your ideas, and it's going to light up the right next step. Start with yourself is actually about gathering yourself after failure. It's about being accountable, but also about forgiving yourself. It's about not accepting any shortcuts, but never being bashful about grabbing them when they appear. It's about pushing hard for the wins and never apologizing for your dreams. In the book, I'm going to give you a new vision for work and for life that's going

• 9:27Emma Grede?

  to encourage you to take responsibility for your own thinking so that you can achieve your highest personal and professional success. That's it. It's exactly what it's going to do.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  And I'm Scott Galloway.

• 9:45Speaker 01

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

• 9:49Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:07Speaker 02

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

• 10:12Speaker 01

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

• 10:17Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Boom.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Do you ever wish you could ask nosy questions about people's money?

• 10:33Speaker 04

  I have $729.71 in my bank account.

• 10:37Speaker 05

  We bought, you know, a $1.3 million house on a $350,000 income.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  On the podcast, What We Spend, we ask those questions. It's a show about money and all the feelings that come with spending it.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  I want to be the kind of person who can just take care of the people in my life.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Listen to What We Spend, an Odyssey original, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 11:05Emma Grede?

  Question five, what did you learn about yourself after writing this book? So much, as it turns out. Now, can I tell you that when I set out to write this book, I thought that I would be writing something solely about building a brand and a business, about navigating career when you have a family, about the leadership lessons that I'd learned the hard way, obviously, and money and trade-offs and all the things that I like to talk about the most. And I do write about all of those subjects in this book extensively. But why I understood really quickly, while those things are subjects that come really easily to me, they are what set me apart. And so I had to do a lot of self-examination

• 11:49Emma Grede?

  to even begin to understand what led me to where I am in my life, but also what would be useful to you when you take the time to read this book. And when I say useful, I mean writing something that you could actually use, not just read. I want you to take, start with yourself, into your own life. I want you to take it into your heads and your hands and use it as a tool to get somewhere else, somewhere that you have chosen. Now, because of where and how I was raised in East London, which was and still is like a really tough neighbourhood, I grew up in an environment where there were real things to be fearful about all the time. And I remember that feeling of actually being scared.

• 12:31Emma Grede?

  Small things like the reality of getting your bike stolen on a given day after school, or, I don't know, bigger problems that have made me hypervigilant and really untrusting my whole life. As a teen, I dropped out of high school and I went straight to work. But I didn't want to be reliant on anyone for anything. And when I was in my late teens, I decided to stop blaming the world and to take responsibility for my own experience. Now, both the subject of what I do with fear and this idea of radical self-responsibility, they're weaved throughout this book, as they have been throughout my life. Because there's so much out there about vision boards, visual Realisation, manifestation, I wanted to be clear about my point of view here.

• 13:16Emma Grede?

  And I actually begin the book with what I believe is one of the most important things that you can think about. And it's an important place to start, it's vision. And by that, I mean, holding a clear vision for your career and for your life. You've heard me talk about it before in Plan Your Life Like a Business. It's one of my episodes where I talk about building a business plan for your life. But I have throughout my life been someone who held a really clearly articulated vision for myself. I knew exactly what type of woman I wanted to be. When I was a kid, I manifested it in scrapbook after scrapbook with like little cutouts from old Vogue magazines. I was dreaming about a different life for me and a different life for my sisters.

• 13:58Emma Grede?

  I knew that it was out there because I could see it in the magazines and more importantly, in my mind. What I understood from a really young age is that I could trust the visions that were in my head. And I could use them as a signpost for what might be ahead. But importantly, I never assumed that they were foregone conclusions or a given eventuality. As a kid, I didn't quite know like how I would achieve them, but I knew I would figure it out. I understood that my dreams would require work. And correlating your vision to your output is what I want to show you. My next question. What was the hardest part of the book to write? I think there's so many of you have asked me, like, what was the hardest part to write?

• 14:42Emma Grede?

  And it was without a doubt the section on managing emotions, not just because it's really highly personal. But also because I wanted to share where I got that really wrong in the past. This book is full of my mistakes and I put those in there so that you might learn from me. It was important to me to explore the role that managing emotions has in our overall decision making. Especially in a book that is all about taking control and responsibility for yourself. Now, emotional literacy and emotional intelligence are skills that so many of us women have. And they are critical skills for reading a room, for tapping into cultural trends and for understanding the motivations of other people.

• 15:27Emma Grede?

  But to reap the benefits of your gut-based intuitions and to use your emotions in a healthy way. You are going to need to learn how to modulate and manage your emotions. Our feelings are an essential source of information. Any woman knows that intuitively, but you cannot live a healthy or functional life if you're running a decision-making process based on your anger or your fear or your guilt. It just isn't possible. How many times have you agreed to do things that you absolutely don't wanna do? Like, I'm telling you, it's countless times. This has happened to me so many times in my life. But let me tell you, it's a type of betrayal to yourself and we need to stop doing it.

• 16:11Emma Grede?

  So before I could get deeper into mindset, assessing the old thoughts that shaped me, that so many of us show in the world, I needed to clear the emotional decks first and so will you. So in this part of the book, I decided that I would put chapters on guilt and fear and anger and joy and sadness because without a good understanding of how these play a role in your decision-making and how you show up, it's really hard to move forward. Impossible, I would say. Okay, the next thing. You have gotten criticised for your views on work-life balance. Are you addressing this in the book? Yes, I guess I would have to.

• 16:53Emma Grede?

  I feel like the, I gave a couple of comments and those comments will just not go anywhere. So I thought I'd just write chapters about them so that we could all think about it. I think that we have to talk about the old thoughts and the new thoughts piece in this book because you are gonna recognise this. And yes, of course, we're going to talk about work-life balance. I think it is fairly and abundantly clear that we've all been told that you should strive for work-life balance and I'm pretty sure if you're listening to this podcast, you know my views on this already. But when I went on Diary of a CEO and expressed my opinion that I still stand by, by the way, that work-life balance is your problem and not your employer's and that, by the way,

• 17:37Emma Grede?

  it's the wrong goal altogether, I was blasted. Let me tell you what I think the helpful new thought is. Rather than wasting your time searching for a work-life balance, which is the wrong Focus striving instead for alignment to your ultimate ambition. I want you to make sure you hear that, right? Alignment to your ultimate ambition. This is the right goal. If you wanna go big, think about what it is that you want. And for a period of time, do everything it takes to get there. Be all in, if that's what you're aiming for. In for the long hours, in for the office, like five days a week, because you know this. What you lose in remote work is profound.

• 18:19Emma Grede?

  And the downside is deceleration, which is a curse for ambition. In the book, I talk about hustle culture. And I get that people are tired and burnt out. But an extraordinary career is always the result of extraordinary effort. I can guarantee that if I had been work from home in my twenties, that I wouldn't be anywhere close to where I am now. I'm gonna go one step further on this point and tell you that remote work is killing life and it's career suicide. But maybe you just need to read the book for more. So, look, here's my thoughts. I am an in-person person. I wanna be with people, I wanna collaborate. I love detail, I love specificity, I wanna do things quickly. I mentor a lot of young men and women inside my business.

• 19:05Emma Grede?

  And work culture right now makes that very, very hard. I can't teach you through a screen. If you're not with me, you won't see how I move or how I operate. You need proximity to me, you need to understand the flow of what is happening. The way we work now actually makes me a little bit sad because I don't think we're having all of the exchanges that are the result of being in a really dynamic environment, where you're able to learn from people on the fly and all the time. We're just simply not as together as we used to be. Even if we actually work five days a week and in person, there's an element of almost like self-imposed solitude in modern life. We're not connecting because of social media, because of online shopping and because you don't even leave your house for food.

• 19:49Emma Grede?

  So, after-work drinks goes totally out of the window. And our personal and professional relationships really are suffering because of it. It just isn't as much fun. If you work in a business with other people, or you wanna build a business of scale someday, the idea that you can do it alone is a joke. You're not gonna get far unless you surround yourself with people, because nobody is successful working on their own. Absolutely nobody. And my experience tells me that that's a fact. If you wanna lead or be at the decision-making level of any company, together, connected and in person is the only way. I honestly just haven't seen it work any other way. And I promise you, I'm

• 20:30Emma Grede?

  not trying to upset anyone. I can only tell you what worked for me. And for the record, I'm not saying that this is the rule for everyone. But if you're an ambitious little monster like me, if you wanna keep moving and progressing, if you wanna make a lot of money in your chosen field and become best in class at anything, there is a trade-off, and it doesn't include much balance for a period of time. As I've said, I've never seen it work any other way. And funnily enough, when men have said the exact same thing out loud, zero comeback, I'm just saying. So that's my point, and I hope I've cleared it up. And if I haven't, there's more in the book. Okay, one more question. Here we

• 21:11Emma Grede?

  go. This person asked, I'm conflicted whether I should go after my dream career right now, then wait to start my family, or start my family first when I'm still figuring it out. Well, of course, little old me, mother of four, has a point of view on this. And it's something that I talk about so much in the book. There is an entire chapter on family. But here is another old thought I think we really need to move on from. The thought that you should get your career totally dialed in before you have kids. I'm going to be so unpopular in this book, but never mind. A couple of things I just wanna get out of the way, because I know that this is a really touchy subject. The first

• 21:52Emma Grede?

  thing is, there is no perfect time to have a baby. There is, however, a biological reality. Careers recover, fertility doesn't. IVF is a privilege, not a plan. And waiting for stability is how so many women actually lose choice. Now, I know firsthand the joy of having a baby. And sadly, I know the pain and the frustration and the anxiety of not being able to get pregnant. Now, to be clear, I am Absolutely not advocating for teen pregnancy, but I am suggesting that waiting until you're thirty eight isn't smart. Thankfully, we have IVF and even surrogacy, which I was able to utilise for my twins.

• 22:37Emma Grede?

  But that shit is expensive and it's not for everybody. As someone who employs countless women, I think there are three main reasons that women are choosing to get pregnant later in life. Number one, we prefer to wait to further our careers. Two, looking for the perfect partner. And three, because parenting, or what we think of as more than day parenting, has gone completely mad. Now, if you put those three things together, here we are. The average age of first time mothers in the US is now twenty seven and a half. In nineteen seventy, it was twenty one. If you're college educated, it's even higher, thirty for women with a bachelor's degree and thirty three if you have a professional degree like according to the CDC.

• 23:22Emma Grede?

  Now, granted, many women are choosing not to have a baby. It is not the be all and end all, and for the record, I am not talking to those women. I applaud and support any woman's choice. I have so many happy and fulfilled friends who are just good being aunties. But we know that many women do want to have kids and we're putting it off to a point where it's just no longer our choice. Age kicks in and we're left with too few options or completely heartbreaking, or in my case, both. I had a baby at thirty one and at thirty four, and I had my twins by surrogate at thirty nine after multiple IVF attempts. I have countless friends and colleagues who left it too late.

• 24:06Emma Grede?

  IVF isn't a safety net. Live birth rates using your own eggs drops from fifty five percent when you're under thirty five to forty one percent when you're thirty five to thirty seven, down again to twenty seven percent at thirty eight to forty and to thirteen to only four percent at forty one, forty two and over. As a result, so many women I know are miserable. Now, as someone who has done it the hard way and the easy way, I want to tell you, and I want. Want to help women navigate the three big reasons that they're choosing not to have kids. And I wanted to use my book to help dispel a couple of really big myths that are out there. Trust me, your career will recover.

• 24:48Emma Grede?

  Finding a perfect partner that ticks every box is impossible. Newsflash, people, there is no such thing as a perfect partner or someone that can meet all of your needs. There is just a bunch of stuff you will need to provide yourself outside of your romantic relationship. That's a conversation for another episode. Parenting has lost the plot, yes, but trust me, as a mother of four, it's just not that deep. It's not that hard. You don't need all the things that you think and your kids don't need everything you're being told either. This idea that you are solely responsible for your kids' lives and it's your responsibility to protect them from the world. And it's just like an additional full-time job. It's just not so.

• 25:33Emma Grede?

  I have stopped being ambitious on behalf of my kids. And I go into this in so much detail in the book, I can not tell you. Now, I've just touched on a few of the many, many rules that I wanted to spell and create a conversation around importantly. And within the book, of course, I'm going through it in a lot finer detail to help you think for yourself around these subjects. It's all in there. My corporate career journey before I started building businesses. The stories about the businesses I've built and the leadership lessons that I have learned. I end the book with my basic rules for success. What I want to do now is read the intro straight from the book about a moment that changed my trajectory.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Anthropic is a research company first, built to make sure the transition to powerful AI goes well. When they launched Claude in 2023, its first users were businesses. Since then, it's been tested inside leading startups and enterprises. At DoorDash, a code migration that would have taken Four engineers months to complete took one person three weeks. At Carvana, one team used to hunt through old tickets and code to answer a question. With Claude, they get answers 65% faster. And at Rakuten, engineers have achieved 99.9% accuracy on tough coding jobs using Claude.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Today, nine Fortune 10 companies run on Claude for the work they want to get right. And these businesses are helping Anthropic shape what comes next. Build your business with support from Claude at claude.ai/odyssey.

• 27:19Speaker 07

  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 want to grow your wealth. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app.

• 27:54Emma Grede?

  So before we wrap, a quick reminder that Start With Yourself is available for preorder and tickets for the live shows are available now. Starting April 15th, we're coming to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Boston, Atlanta, and London. Visit emigre.com for tickets and full tour details. I cannot wait.

• 28:17Emma Grede?

  Start with yourself. It's a new vision for work and life. And this is the introduction. Where was Marcus? I was on the 10th floor of a very gray, very shitty, 21-floor apartment complex in Stratford, which for the uninitiated is in East London. It was a concrete dump, but for me, it was free. As I walked to the station every day to take my train into town, you would never have thought I was living in a flat with no stove or fridge. Marcus and I would joke that in England, a balcony is sufficient to keep milk cold. It's possible that on this day, there was a Gucci diamante thong peeking out from the top of my jeans, as was the questionable style of the day. But what's for sure is that I look fantastic.

• 28:59Emma Grede?

  I've always known how to put myself together, even when everything in my life was a mess. And on this particular day, everything was a disaster. The apartment was small. I slept on the couch in the living room, Marcus in the single bedroom. And so it didn't take me long to deduce that he wasn't there. And then the phone screamed through the silence. It was Marcus. "Emma," he said, "I've been arrested. You need to go on a walk. My mate is coming over to get some of my things. Until he does, Emma, don't go home." "All right, all right," I replied, scared and thoroughly confused. So I went for a walk. I stayed away until well after dark, and with each step, I turned Marcus's words over and over in my mind. What was his mate gonna do in our apartment? Why couldn't I be there at the same time?

• 29:45Emma Grede?

  What was his mate gonna do? The more I thought, the more scared and confused I felt. All I knew for sure is that I needed to follow Marcus's instructions precisely. I had known him my whole life, and I trusted him like family. Marcus ended up spending twenty-two years in jail. Only much, much later did I sort of surmise that his mate must have come by to collect some essential contraband. I didn't want to know back then, and I still don't. For me, the main point then and now is simply that Marcus, on the edge of the abyss, was thinking of me, trying to keep me safe. That felt meaningful and symbolic. My future deserved his protection, and I carried that from that moment onward, the knowledge of his faith in me, the belief that I was destined for more, and also the

• 30:28Emma Grede?

  realisation that I would need to cross a bridge from the world he and I came from to the world where I wanted to live. Marcus could have easily told me on the phone that day that I needed to find a place of my own, but he made sure that the rent on the council flat was paid for years, as I had no money and nowhere else to go. I paid his mum twenty quid a week to stay. I was seventeen years old and working my way through fashion school, and that's all I had to spare. Marcus is not the only family member or family friend who went to jail when I was a kid. This was part of my reality. My extended family and family friend circle looks like a casting call for a Guy Ritchie movie. They're good-looking, they're fast-talking, and they have nicknames like Bonesy and Mads. My mum, Jenny Lee, is white and British and raised me on her own.

• 31:14Emma Grede?

  My dad, Steve, who is Trinidadian, though born in England, is a good person and really fun, but he was completely absent during my childhood. He's been a British telecoms engineer for his entire adult life, earning a modest income. We're great friends now, but I could no doubt have used his steady presence in my young life. 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 seemed to be the predetermined path for all the women in my life. Women who put everyone ahead of their own dreams and fell into rudder expectations that yielded mostly heartbreak and financial dead ends. My mum was a little different. She'd fangled a job on a trading desk,

• 31:57Emma Grede?

  and while she encountered some hurdles in her life, she had a legitimate job at a bank for most of my childhood. My mum is very smart, though she was a tough role model at times too. I didn't officially graduate from high school. I was asked to leave for being disruptive, only to learn as an adult that I'm dyslexic and struggled to keep up because they didn't know how to teach me. I dropped out of the London College of Fashion after my first term because I couldn't afford to stay. I grew up in chaos with occasional violence and very few means. And yet, here I am. Nobody would have predicted that I'd have launched many, many successful businesses and earned a spot on Forbes America's Richest Self-Made Women list by the age of forty.

• 32:39Emma Grede?

  Nobody would have predicted that I'd be in a loving and warm marriage of sixteen years with a brilliant and supportive Swede from an artsy family. Nobody would have predicted, after a childhood where I was overly involved in raising my three younger sisters, that I'd go on to become the mother of four incredible kids who I am rightly obsessed with. Nobody would have predicted that I'd be able to therapise so much of my anger and have access to so much happiness. I always knew though. One of the things my mother used to say to me is, "You're not more special than anyone else, but nobody is more special than you." My mum had an inconsistent relationship with reality, but this felt like one of the truest things she ever said,

• 33:20Emma Grede?

  and I integrated it deeply into my thinking. Why me? And also, why not me? While I was a responsible and overly parentified ten-year-old, somebody had to get my sisters to school, feed them and show up for parent-teacher conferences because my mum couldn't get the time off of work. I recognised at an early age that it would be best for me to assume complete responsibility for myself too. Rather than looking for people and factors to blame for why everything in my life was shaky and unstable, I decided to get on with it and do everything differently from the people around me to create safety and security for myself. I didn't have any mentors until I'd already become successful, but that didn't

• 34:00Emma Grede?

  prevent me from paying attention. I looked for teachers everywhere. I followed my curiosity into many books as I could get my hands on. I questioned everything and I learned from every encounter. Nobody was going to give me any breaks, so I asked for them instead. I wedged my foot into any door that was even remotely cracked open. I pushed, I hustled, I showed up again and again, keeping my word and doing what I said I would do along the way. I get a lot of questions about how I've done what I've done. People find me on shows like Shark Tank in the US and Dragon's Den in the UK. They slide into my DMs and pull me aside at conferences or on the street. They want guidance on when, if, or how to start a family or a business, and ultimately how to balance the two and scale. Explaining

• 34:45Emma Grede?

  how I've done what I've done so other women can do it too was the core impetus for writing this book, along with my frustration that there's a lot of marketing for women in business that frankly feels wrong, or like it plays into the insidious programming that keeps us all small. People often talk about playbooks for success, and I'm here to tell you that there is no playbook, particularly for women. While it's true that the rules of the old boys' club still sometimes work out for men, that's not always true either. What I've learned from operating, scaling, and monetizing many businesses for more than 20 years is that it's not really about prescribed actions, do this and do that and get this result.

• 35:25Emma Grede?

  It's about the thinking that determines those actions. This is a book about mindset, about managing your emotions, clarifying your thoughts, and taking the right next step, all while holding a positive vision for your future. It's about collecting yourself after failure, expecting no shortcuts, but taking any you can find, and pushing hard for the wins. It's about thinking for yourself and finding your own path while learning from everyone else's mistakes along with your own. While a lot of people look to me for guidance on scaling billion dollar businesses, this book isn't just for entrepreneurs who hope to IPO someday. This book is for anyone who's tired of feeling like a passenger in their own life and wants something different for their future.

• 36:09Emma Grede?

  That could be more ease and abundance with money, a balanced home life, or a blueprint for building a profitable side hustle that requires no financial investment. In the following pages, I'm going to tell you about the foundational operating system that guides my life, which I learned in the streets of a very specific place, East London. I'm going to explain how I came to manage and moderate my emotions so that I didn't use any perceived affront from the exterior world as a justification to unload my anger, sadness, fear, or guilt on other people, only setting myself back in the process. And then, one by one, I'm going to take down a series of what I call old thoughts. Women will recognise these old thoughts as core to the way

• 36:54Emma Grede?

  we tend to think about the rules of life and business. These thoughts include needing to know the right people or being invited to the right events, that money is inelegant, unspiritual, scarce and dirty, that doing it all is an achievable goal so long as you unlock the code to balancing your work and family life perfectly, and so many more. There are good reasons why we buy into these old thoughts. Our culture provides manifold evidence that they're true and that we need to abide by them to be socially acceptable. But I haven't, and because of this, I have a lot to show for it on the other side. My life isn't perfect and I still work on myself every single day, but I live the life I always dreamed of with a family I'm so in love with,

• 37:36Emma Grede?

  a beautiful house with two working fridges, and every day I get to do work that I enjoy. I can hear a lot of butts rising in people's throats. But what will people think of me? But what will I need to sacrifice to pursue my dreams? But nothing about this world is equitable or fair. I hear you. I'm not going to gaslight you. I'm not going to bathe you in toxic positivity or rain platitudes down on your head. Yes, the world is typically more difficult for women, people of colour. And poor people. And yes, I am and have been all three. There are very few factors that feel ideal for mothers to succeed. I understand that men have much less pressure to be all things to all people

• 38:17Emma Grede?

  and that nobody asked Steve Jobs or Elon Musk how they balanced their parenting while they built Apple or Tesla. Instead, we've largely celebrated their single-minded focus on their goals, even when they've come to the detriment of society. We see the quirks and the faults of powerful men through our fingers. I cannot name a single woman who has been afforded the same luxury. This is all true. And yet, we cannot wait for the world to meet our preferences in order to take action. Besides, women are exceptional. In the following pages, I'm going to remind you that your exceptionality is true and more accessible when you learn to turn down all the voices in your head suggesting you're not doing it right

• 39:01Emma Grede?

  and turn up your own voice instead. We are full of potential. When that potential meets grit and determination, everything is up for grabs. And now, we need to grab it. We can't wait for the world to decide that it's our turn to lead and succeed. That ain't going to happen. But we need something different. After all, when I look around at the state of women, I'm both impressed and also very disappointed. The halls of power and cap tables don't reflect our exceptionality, nor do I meet a lot of women who feel fantastic about the balance of their lives. Far too many women feel like they're failing or creatively stifled or functionally blocked. All women are exhausted.

• 39:43Emma Grede?

  While it's very easy, and we see this all over our culture, to blame men and inequitable systems, that's just not how I roll. Not because it's not sometimes valid, but because it's not how change happens. 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 to me. If we're going to change the world, we have to start with ourselves. We have to get on our own teams and we have to choose ourselves first. We have everything we need. Let my life be proof that our lives are unpredictable and that you can push against expectations and come out way on top.

• 40:27Emma Grede?

  I do not follow scripts. I do not abide by prevailing and often toxic thoughts. While there's ample cultural proof that these thoughts are right or common or foregone conclusions, I see things differently and I live my life accordingly. This has worked out for me quite well. While nothing happens overnight or without a lot of hard work, you can engineer your life to match your wildest dreams. This process starts by identifying what those dreams even are, doing the work to manage your emotions and then changing the way you think about what's possible. While my achievements seem singular, especially in the context of where I came from, I'm pretty convinced that I've done what I've done precisely so I can teach you how to do it too.

• 41:11Emma Grede?

  Let's begin. So if you liked that, the audiobook is coming for you. But that is where it all started. I hope you've learned more about the why behind my book today. It's out now and I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on it. We're going on a book tour and there is so much more that I want to share with you. So I would love to see you there.

• 41:35Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. You'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Executive producer, Ashley McShan. Derek Brown. And me. Our executive producers from Odyssey, Leah Reese Dennis, Asha Saluja, Lauren Legrosso. Producer KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, and Carlos Delgado. Social media by Olivia Homann, Catherine Bale.

• 42:19Emma Grede?

  Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company, and WME. Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schaff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meeke, Shaun Cherry, and Lauren Viera. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemagreed. Greed is spelt G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E, with emagreed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emagreed.me.