How To Become The Best Version Of You With Start With Yourself By Emma Grede

Some days make you question whether you’re actually becoming the person you know you could be. You feel the gap between who you are and who you want to be, and it nags at you in quiet moments. If you’ve been sensing that your old patterns or inner scripts are keeping you from stepping into your next level, this episode is for you.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bull spend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. Are you reaching your full potential? Are you doing your best with everything you've got? I often ask myself that question. And that's what led me to read today's must-read book, Start With Yourself by Emma Grede. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit more about who Emma Grede is, why this book is so important, but today I want to share with you the five biggest takeaways that I got

• 1:30Speaker 00

  from reading this book, Start With Yourself by Emma Grede. I read this book on the beach between games when I was playing at the FIBA Masters Basketball Tournament over in Greece. And the reason why I really wanted to go deep in this episode about this book is because really, at its core, this book is about how to change the scripts that in your head, the old thoughts that often dictate your behavior. If you want to change what's happening in your life, you've got to change what you do. And you only change what you do when you change what's in your head, what you think about. So how do you do that? Well, I'm going to share with you exactly how and other big takeaways, some real gems I got from this book. Now, I've got to say that Emma's style and her whole way of speaking is not everybody's cup of tea.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  This book will challenge you. So let's jump into why and how you can get the most out of what she has delivered in this book.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. So who is Emma Grede? Emma Grede is one of the most successful self-made entrepreneurs. She's the co-founder and CEO of Good American. She is the founding partner of Skims. She's really like a serial brand hustler and builder. And what really resonated with me when it came to Emma's story is that she didn't come from very much. She grew up in a working-class neighborhood, raised by a single mom. She grew up in East London in a very rough neighborhood, and she's a high school dropout.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  So nothing was handed to her. And her book is a New York Times bestseller, and she's become one of the most successful modern-day entrepreneurs. Now, she rubs people the wrong way. Her style is quite aggressive. And a lot of people feel like she is not really helping with hustle culture, and she's all about like, you've got to work hard. I can understand why she says this, and I know this is kind of her mantra, because this is what she had to do to get out of her situation. She had to work hard. She had to defy the odds. She had to do extraordinary things to make sure that she can get out of the ghetto and move into a better life. So I have a lot of empathy for her because I didn't grow up with a lot of money, and I understand the merits of hard work, and it's hard to ignore that, especially when

• 4:09Speaker 00

  you have to do everything in your disposal to be successful to get out of a situation. In the book, she shares how she did this, and part of it is her psychology. And this is what leads me to lesson number one I want to share with you from this book. And it's all about killing your old thoughts. This is really the spine of the book. If you just get this lesson, you're going to be winning. Emma talks about what she calls old thoughts, old scripts, old thinking, outdated ideas. And she says that, hey, these rules that I think that set my life, what's possible, it's not possible, can really change what's possible in my own life, what I can actually do, how much money I can make, how much I can move up in my career, what kind of personal life I can have, what kind of relationships can I have.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  It's all dictated on what I think is possible. So you need to change that way of thinking in order for you to start doing that. So how do you kind of kill those old thoughts, wherever they came from, whether your upbringing, your neighborhood, your family, whatever it might be? How do you change that when it's so cemented from day one since you were born? And here is really the key insight she shares, and I think this is a really good way to look at it. She says that these thoughts that are stopping you from succeeding, that are putting a ceiling on your success, they're just system errors. They're just bugs in the system. And you can rewrite your code and clean those bugs. It's not permanent. When I thought about that, I was like, wow, that is true. There are things that I didn't believe before in my life, and now I do believe in them or I think is possible.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  So it's just a matter of rewriting the code. And as you start growing in business, in life, start achieving some of your goals, you start realizing that even the life that you are wishing for, you're going to have to rewrite that code because you're going to start raising the bar and moving into another territory, and you have to improve the code to do better things. So it's a good way to look at it, like, hey, how do I constantly check for bugs in my system and first remove the bugs, but improve the code? And the reason why this really hit home for me is, like I mentioned, I grew up in immigrant family. We didn't grow up with money. I inherited so many of old thoughts that my parents had, and they tried their best, but this is what they gave me, and I have to figure out if it's serving me or not.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  And a lot of us don't understand, when you don't grow up with money, you have conflicting thoughts when it comes to money. Like, I want more money because a lack of money causes a lot of pain. It causes a lot of fights in your family, it causes a lot of issues, heartache, disappointment. You break promises to people that you love. And the flip side is that, is that greedy if I want more money? So there's some stuff I have to reconcile in order for me to make more money. There's something that's stopping me from going past certain limits because of that code. It's also helpful to know that people have their own code. They have their own old thoughts. For example, when I left teaching to start a business, almost everyone treated it like I lost my mind. Like, you have a stable job, you're moving up in your career, you're a young chair of

• 7:08Speaker 00

  department, why would you leave this opportunity to start a business and you know nothing about business? Those reactions that people had, those were their old thoughts. That was their bugs in the system. I have to recognize the fact that, hey, they love me, they care about me, and they're just doing this because that's the code that they are running on. And throughout the last 20 years of my adult life, I had to consciously delete beliefs and never just accept what is in my head. Just because I'm thinking it doesn't mean it's true. Just because I believe it doesn't mean it's true. I have to constantly question things to say, hey, why not? Why not build this business? Why not get $1 million of revenue in my business? Why not 10 million? Why not 100 million? Why can't I do that? And by doing this, you start to open up possibilities.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  You start asking yourself the right questions, like, what do I need to do to get to $10 million in revenue? What are the things I need to change about myself? What do I need to change about what I do every day? You need to start doing this, even if it's just a few minutes a day, especially when you're struggling in your business or struggling in your life, where you're like, hey, I'm hitting a wall. Well, ask yourself why you're hitting a wall. What are you doing that's actually contributing to you hitting a wall? A good question I like to ask is, what are the rules in my head? What are the scripts in my head that have led me to this point in my life? Something I believe led me to the decisions that led me to my circumstances right now. If I want to change the state of my life, I need to change what I believe so I can

• 8:35Speaker 00

  change my actions, so therefore I can change my reality. That's just how it works. These days, you can get an answer from the internet, an influencer, or AI in seconds. But when it comes to legal matters for your business or your family, a quick answer is not the same as the right answer. With 25 years of experience, LegalZoom knows how to start you off right. When you need a legal hand, visit LegalZoom. Go to LegalZoom.com to get started. LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and its law firm, LZ Legal Services. LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The holidays are the season business owners get pulled in six directions. More calls, more requests, more chances for things to slip through the cracks. Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelt Q-U-O. The business phone built so you never miss a call or a customer. Ever have a lead call or text at 10:00 PM? QUO's AI agent handles both 24/7. It answers questions, gets to the details, and can text them a link to book an appointment. By morning, you've got the summary and can jump right in. And nobody should have to ask customers to repeat themselves. In QUO, every call, text, and voicemail lives in one thread, so anyone on the team can jump in already knowing the whole story. If you have a business where your customers call or text you, this is a no-brainer. You must have QUO. Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Try QUO for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to QUO.com/MBA. That's Q-U-O.com/MBA.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Lesson number two, master your five emotions. Yes, emotions. I know if I read this book five years ago, I would probably stop reading it after chapter one, because I was kind of the person who was like, hey, you know, I'm controlling my emotions. I don't want emotions bother me or affect me or change my path in business or in life. It's a bunch of BS. We can't help it. We're human beings. Emotions are part of who we are. So you need to be aware of the five big emotions that really motivate and change your behavior. So what are those five emotions? Here they are anger, fear, guilt, sadness, and joy. One of the things I really thought was very refreshing in this book is that she says,

• 10:55Speaker 00

  with these five emotions, don't treat them as a bad thing, as something that are problems that you need to suppress. Treat them as signals for growth. When you start to feel one of these things, anger, or fear, or guilt, or sadness, or joy, ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What do I need to do to learn from this kind of emotion that I'm feeling right now? So for example, if I got an opportunity to speak on stage in front of 10,000 people, and I feel the emotion of fear, why do I feel fear? Well, maybe I feel fear because I've never done it before. Okay, that makes sense. But how can I help that feeling kind of motivate me to do better in life? Well, maybe if I prepare and rehearse and get a coach, that fear will wane

• 11:37Speaker 00

  because I'll feel prepared. So like, you have to use that emotion to help you through life. Too many people believe that emotions are the enemy, like there's something that you shouldn't actually experience. You should just treat them like data. Emotions are data that you should take signals that you take on and say, okay, what does this mean for me? Anger is information, fear is information, guilt, sadness, joy, all this stuff is telling you something. The skill, though, is not to just ignore them. You need to read the signal and respond instead of reacting. You know, a lot of us, we just get angry and we start shouting and we start pounding on desks or whatever it might be. That's a reaction. But if you think about, why am I angry? What's happening right now? You're going to get a chance to kind of process that information and

• 12:21Speaker 00

  respond properly. And you see, you can't do this. You can't do this if you are not recognizing the fact that these emotions exist and that they're valid, and you have the self-awareness to stop and say, okay, I'm feeling something right now. Why am I feeling this? Let me just recognize the fact that this is going to affect what I'm about to do in the next step. As a founder of a business, as honestly a competitor, I'm very competitive as a person. If anybody knows me, I'm very competitive. I love any kind of competitive game or sport, whether it's poker or on the basketball court. My emotions can fuel me, or they can also sabotage me. And I have to be very aware of that when I'm competing, whether in life or in games for

• 13:03Speaker 00

  fun. And I often like to channel my emotions to help me rather than hurt me. For example, if I'm not playing well on offense in basketball, I'm missing shots. And that anger is natural, like you're upset at yourself. You usually hit those shots. So instead of like hanging my head low and feeling upset, what I do is try to take that energy and put it into defense and try to make something happen, be an impact person, grab a rebound, do something where I'm using that energy in a positive way. Now, I can't do that if I'm not recognizing the fact that I am angry, right? And I upset. If I just like sit there and be like, oh, upset, that stinks. Hopefully the next shot goes in. No, that's not a good use of that energy. Like, they always say, don't

• 13:44Speaker 00

  let a good disaster go to waste. You know, like, this is a chance for me to use that type of anger in a positive way. Fear, fear can stop you from making the right decision or bold decisions that can impact your business and impact your life. I always say that if the reason why you're making a decision is out of fear, it's usually the wrong decision, right? When you have to choose between two options, and you choose the one that's more comfortable, because the other one seems a little bit too scary, it's usually the one that is going to not pay off in the long term. Angry, right? I get very passionate when I'm discussing a topic, or I'm debating something, or making a decision with my co-founder Nicole, and I have to be very careful that that can come off as, you know, being confrontational. And I found that the difference between a good day and a

• 14:29Speaker 00

  bad day is how well I'm aware of my emotions, of those five emotions that we talked about earlier. Having that self-awareness is the whole game, so that you can be like, okay, I am recognizing something here. I have the choice to react in the way I'm going to feel proud of. Hey, I hope you're getting value from today's episode. I want to tell you about an episode I'm working on, and it's coming out very soon. It's an episode called Multiple Revenue Streams Will Kill Your Business. This is very not popular, this opinion, right? It's unpopular opinion. A lot of people think that, oh, you gotta have like diversify your income, dah dah dah. I'm a big believer that that is not a great idea, especially if you're making less than a million dollars from revenue. Multiple, trying to like spend a million places to make as much money as possible, is actually hurting you more than you believe. And I'm going to prove it to

• 15:14Speaker 00

  you in this episode. So hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Lesson number three, the rule of thirds. This is an amazing rule you should keep in your head always. And honestly, it's worth the price of the book alone, this one takeaway, okay? Emma in the book talks about living by the rule of thirds. What is it? Well, if you're going to do something difficult in life, if you're going to challenge yourself, you're going to try to build a business, you're trying to chase a dream, you're trying to publish an album, whatever it might be, you're chasing your dream with real effort, with real energy, you're pushing yourself to the limits. You're going to expect to be happy one third of the time, you're going to expect another third of the time to just feel all right, kind of even keel, and then one third of the time, you're going to feel real rough, right? It's going to be really bad. It's going

• 15:59Speaker 00

  to be a crappy time in your life. And that's just how it is. Just accept the fact that your life, if you're pushing yourself, you know, in your comfort zone, one third of it, you're going to feel amazing and feel unstoppable. One third is going to be like, kind of, okay, I'm all right, I'm not happy, I'm not sad. And the third is going to be really tough, and almost to the point where like, why am I doing this? I'm so glad that she wrote those words in that book, because that's exactly my experience in my life. And it's very important for people to know what they're in for. If you are chasing a dream, you will be challenged. It's not going to be easy. Otherwise, everybody would do it, right? Everybody would be successful, and everybody would go and do hard things. But it's hard for a reason. And knowing that in advance that, hey, I just got to

• 16:42Speaker 00

  accept the fact that not every day I'm going to be super happy. Not every day am I gonna like, feel like this day is ecstatic and everything's wonderful. You're gonna have things that you don't expect to happen, especially in business. People are going to poach your employees. You're going to have financial problems. People are not going to be loyal. Your best friends are going to maybe get jealous and start to act nasty to you. All that kind of stuff, okay? And you just need to accept it. And that's okay. And personally, I feel like if a year went by, and less than a third of that year, I was not feeling so good about what's going on, then I'm winning. Wow, I kind of cheated that year. That year, I had mostly, you know, happy days. Why is this important

• 17:24Speaker 00

  to know, especially when you're starting out? Well, I talk about this a lot on the show, this concept of you're going to eat glass for years, it's going to be tough, it's a long haul. Well, having this mentality in the beginning makes you understand that I'm gonna not really have a fun time in the beginning until I see some reward. Reward is a little bit delayed, okay? It's like that marshmallow test where you're like, you're gonna have to wait a little bit and kind of suffer a little bit in order for you to do that. Listen, I'm going to give you a perfect example. And I left my job in teaching. I was doing well. I had a pretty good paycheck. I was respected. I was moving up in my career. People looked up to me. My parents thought I was successful. All that kind of stuff. Leaving that and starting from zero in a career I really wasn't great at, and

• 18:09Speaker 00

  having to build a business and having to try to be an entrepreneur, being like the worst entrepreneur amongst everybody I know, right? That is not fun. You're going to suffer for a few years. Your confidence is going to take a hit. Your ego is going to take a hit. You know, I had to lower all my personal expenses so that I have as much runway in my savings to last me, because I didn't know when my paychecks could come in, because I didn't have a paycheck, right? I was freelancing and trying to make money on the side and try to, you know, hustle for clients. I spent a good two, three years, like, really behind in life, right? Like, I was like at a certain level in life, and then I was just like dropped to the floor. And I was like, okay, I have to be okay with roughing it a little bit if I want to achieve something big. And I just told myself, that's just the

• 18:51Speaker 00

  cost of following your dream. Lesson number four, every job is a school. Emma Grede had many different kinds of jobs that she shares in the book. She interned for a bit. She was in the fashion industry. She really didn't have a lot of qualifications. She's a high school dropout. So she did anything she could to earn some money. But she tells you in the book that nothing should be beneath you. You should be able to learn from every experience. Experience is a chance for you to learn for free, right? When you work at a job, yes, you're getting paid, but you're also learning a ton. You're getting experience. If you work for a startup, for example, and you want to build a startup one day, you're going to learn what it takes to run a startup, right? What are the moving parts? You can literally go to every department and talk to accounting and talk to

• 19:35Speaker 00

  marketing, talk to sales, and talk to creative and be like, hey, what do you actually do? You know, and get like basic real research from how a company is built. I look at the jobs I had growing up. You know, my first job at 13 was washing cars at a car dealership, my dad's car dealership where he worked. And I used to do that after school on the weekends. And it taught me about the value of hard work, but also taught me about the attention to detail. My job was to make sure that those used cars that got traded in looked new when they got on the used car lot. When I was in university, I had a telemarketing job, part-time telemarketing job, learning how to sell long-distance phone service. MCI, I worked for MCI, and I was on the phone every day trying

• 20:16Speaker 00

  to sell people on a phone service plan. And I was horrible at the beginning, but I learned how to sell. And that skill really helped me when I started a business. As a school teacher, I taught five times a day, five days a week for over a decade. That taught me how to take ideas, distill them, and make sure that people can understand them, how to actually teach and how to make sure comprehension is taking place. That was my job for over a decade. Now, I use that in today's show, in the podcast, in any kind of workshop I run. So every job you have, whether it's in your business or before your business, you have skills that you could take and utilize and leverage

• 20:58Speaker 00

  them and make sure that you monetize them through your business. They're also skills that you could teach other people in your business, your other teammates, how they can leverage those skills, and they could do a better job in what they do. Every job is a school. Lesson number five is something I say all the time. You can have it all, just not all at once. Emma Grede, the author of this book, she's a bestselling author. She is a CEO of two businesses. She is a wife. She's a mother of four kids. But she believes the anecdote to burnout and feeling guilty is believing that I just can't have it all at once. I need to have chapters in my life. I need to be able to say, in this chapter, in this sprint, in this next year or two,

• 21:43Speaker 00

  I'm going to focus on this, and this is what I'm going to try to achieve. I can't have it all at once. You have to choose your sacrifices in life. You have to choose what are the things you're going to neglect. Because in order for you to focus and achieve something great, you're going to need to do that. You need to say, hey, this year, I'm going to just not be the best friend in the world, right? Like, I'm not going to be able to go to parties. I'm not going to be able to check up on my friends, have drinks on Thursdays. I'm just not going to be that kind of person for this year. Why? Because I'm really trying to get in the best shape of my life, and this is going to take priority. In order for me to do that, I'm going to have to be in the gym five days a week. I'm going to have to watch what I eat. It's going to be hard if I go out to eat and drink and all that kind of stuff. You get the point. There's trade offs in life. And if you want to achieve something, you've got to focus, and you've got to go all in, and you've got to say no to something.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  If you are not saying no to anything, I guarantee you, you're not going to be great at anything. So, one of the best ways to do this is to treat your life in seasons, right? This might be the season of family for you. It might be the season of health for you. Maybe next season is going to be a season where you're going to achieve some personal goals, or go deep in some of your hobbies. Maybe another season is going to be where you're going to try to get as rich as possible. This is really the formula I found that makes me feel like you can actually make progress. I'll share with my own experience. You know, my first 10 years from 20 to 30, I was really focusing on being great as a teacher. You know, I was trying to be great as an educator, move up in my career, learn what it takes to be really good in the university. And I really just dedicated myself to that.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  When I left that career, I really focused on getting rich. I'm not ashamed to say that. You know, I was not doing well financially for most of my life, and I was sick of it. And I thought to myself, okay, I'm going to solve this problem once and for all. It took about seven years to get to the point where I'm financially free, and I was not worrying about money anymore. But it took full focus. I basically did not have a life, okay? Didn't spend any money on myself. I didn't have nice clothes. I didn't go on vacation. I just believe it's very hard for you to achieve something in a reasonable amount of time if you don't do that. And what I told myself during that time, that trough of sorrow, where I'm really like struggling to like find joy in life because I'm working so hard, I always told myself that, hey, this is temporary.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  There's going to be a time where I can go on nice vacations. I can spend time on my hobbies. I can focus on other things in life, once I solve this money problem, okay? And luckily, I did. And I was able to move past that. And now I have time for hobbies. I do have nice holidays. I have nice clothes, all that kind of stuff. The point is, is that it's very hard for you to do it all at once. Solve one problem, graduate, move on to the next thing you want to do in life. I say very hard, but in reality, it's impossible. Like, I don't know anybody who's done it all, all at the same time, and done it at a very high level. So, to wrap up today's episode, the five lessons that I wanted to make sure that you drill into your head from this book, right?

• 24:42Speaker 00

  I recommend you read the book regardless, but here it is. Kill your old thoughts. Examine the script. See the bugs that are in your code. Clean them up, and do this constantly. You don't have to, it's not a once and done thing. You're going to do it so you can keep on living up in your life. Number two, master your five emotions. Be aware of the fact that you will get angry, you'll have fear, you'll feel guilt, you'll feel sadness, you'll feel joy. These are signals. They're not enemies. Number three, live by the rule of thirds. One-third of your life is going to be amazing. One-third of your time of your life is going to be, huh, kind of mediocre, kind of not wonderful, not horrible, okay? And one-third, it's going to be horrible, right? It's going to be tough. It's going to be dark. And just expect it. So, when it happens, you don't feel like it's not par for the course.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  You're like, okay, I knew this was going to happen because, you know, and I'm telling you, if you just have that kind of expectation, you'll find out, and you look back and say, actually, it wasn't one-third, it wasn't that bad. Number four, every job is a school. Make sure you extract what you've learned from any job you've had in your life, or if you're in your job right now, treat it as free training. Number five, you can have it all, just not all at once. Live in seasons. Focus, achieve a goal, move on to the next. Listen, I'll be totally honest, like, when I read this book, most of it was really just great reminders, things I knew, but I needed to be reminded of. But there are some things in there that I kind of needed to go deeper in, especially when it came to examining my emotions and what it's doing in my life and how I'm making decisions.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  So, I highly recommend you pick up this book, Start With Yourself by Emma Grede. If today's episode really resonated with you, I highly recommend you check out another episode we published recently called Not So Obvious Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s. It's actually about six weeks old, so make sure you go up and scroll back on whatever app you're on. It's one of my favorite episodes because I share some of the hard lessons I learned. You can avoid a lot of mistakes I made and avoid some mistakes you're about to make by listening to that episode. So, go ahead and check it out. It's called 20 Not So Obvious Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s. Thanks so much for being here today. Thanks so much for joining us here on our Must Read Episodes. If you have a book you recommend I should read and cover on the podcast, make sure you

• 26:52Speaker 00

  pop it in the comments, or of course, you can join our newsletter over at our website, 100mba.net. You can reply to any of my emails and chat with me, and let me know what you recommend in terms of my next book.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you got to do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Lucky Land Casino. Imagine signing up and finding your welcome surprise already waiting. Spin free with gold coins or collect sweep coins, plus daily login delights.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Sign up now. Let the magic talk. Lucky Land Casino, where the magic happens. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CT&Cs 21+