← Aspire with Emma Grede
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I am so excited to share my debut book with you all. Start With Yourself, which is available now. You might have seen the headlines, you might have seen the social, but this book is exactly what I intended. A conversation that will make you think and it's a blueprint for anyone who wants success without the toxic positivity. Start With Yourself is about self leadership because wherever I go, women ask me how I got to where I am. But what you really want to know is is how you can get there. So I'm doing what I do best, sharing and never gatekeeping what's works for me in the hope that you can borrow from a philosophy that has served me so well. The truth is, I'm not an expert. I've just lived it. I've made the mistakes, I've had the failures and I've learned what actually works. It takes a lot. It takes the most. And this book is for anyone who's tired of feeling like a passenger in their own life. It's about taking responsibility for your thinking, managing your emotions and getting clear on your ideas and then knowing your your next step. It's about picking yourself up after failure, being accountable, but also forgiving yourself, pushing for wins and never ever apologizing for your ambition. It's also about challenging the rules that you've been told. There is no perfect time. Balance isn't the goal, alignment is, and there's nothing wrong with you wanting more. I'm precisely sure that the reason I've been so successful is so I can share it with you. Start With Yourself. My debut book is available now. Visit emmagree.com to purchase the book. Also available on Amazon, your favorite audio platforms and all good bookshops. Hi my darlings, and welcome to another episode of Aspire with me, Emma Grete. Now, a few weeks ago I did an episode on how to interview and the whole point of that episode was this. You are not auditioning, you're actually choosing. You're assessing whether or not this company, this role, this room deserves your time and your energy. And I got so much feedback from that. People told me it changed the way they walked into interviews. They stopped being nervous, they started asking better questions. And I loved that. But what I didn't talk about was the other side of the table. Because at some point, and I hope this is you, I hope you get there, you're the one doing the choosing. You're the founder, you're the hiring manager, you're the person building a team. And let me tell you something, that side of the table is Actually harder. I promise you, it's so much harder. When you're the candidate, the worst thing that happens is you don't get the job. And when you're the one hiring, the worst thing that happens is that you bring the wrong person into your business, into the thing that you've built, the thing that you care about more than anything else. And it costs you. It costs you money, it costs you time, it costs you energy, and sometimes it can cost you relationships. So even if you're the one being interviewed right now, stay with me. Because understanding how a hiring manager actually thinks is going to change the way that you show up in that room. So while we were on tour, somebody asked me a question. She said, I know how to measure skill set, but how do you measure mindset in the interviewing process? And I told her something that I want to tell all of you because it's the most important thing that I know about hiring. You always, always have to hire for your own weaknesses or for the problem that you're trying to solve. Always. And the first part of that, the part that nobody wants to do, is get really sharp on what your weaknesses are. Now, you probably know your strengths, but do you actually know what you're bad at? Most people don't. Most people have a vague sense that there are just things that they're not great at, but they've never done the work to actually name them. So today we're gonna talk about hiring, but not in the way that you might expect. We're not gonna go for a checklist of interview questions or talk about resume red. What I want to do is talk about the mindset behind hiring, because the team that you build is a direct reflection of how well you know yourself and how well you understand the problem that you're trying to solve. And if you don't know yourself, you're going to build a team that mirrors your blind spots instead of covering them. And that's what we've got to get into. This bonus episode is brought to you by our fashionable friends at Macy's. So first things first. Before you even think about hiring a candidate, you have to make sure that you're setting them up for success. And that means taking a really good look at what you're actually bringing somebody into. A few questions you need to ask. Is the team structured correctly? Are the right resources in place for whoever comes into that role to actually make an impact? Are your expectations for the role fair? Have you done the necessary research and ask the right questions so that when you bring somebody in they can actually do what you envisaged for them to do. Now, these are not questions to figure out during the process or once you start looking. They have to be settled way up front and decisions need to be made. It's entirely unfair to bring candidates into a process that you're still trying to figure out for yourself. So do the work upfront. Now, let's get into it. My book, Start With Yourself is structured on the idea that we're all plagued by old thoughts that actually hold us back, old rules that we never agree to, that we follow anyway. So today I'm gonna walk you through four of them, four old thoughts about hiring. And for each one, I'm gonna give you a new thought. I'm gonna give you a new thought that replaces the old one, the one that's actually going to help you build the team you need. And that is what this episode is all about. How are you gonna build the team that you need? So let's start the old thought. Hire the best person for the job. And let me tell you what the new thought is. You have to hire for the problem that you actually have. Now, here's the thing. When most people hire, they think about it as finding the best candidate. The most qualified, the most experienced, and the person with the most impressive resume. And I get all of that. Of course, you want great people, but that framing is actually wrong. And I'll tell you why. The best person is meaningless if you don't know what problem you're actually solving. Now, every role in your company or your division exists because they there is something broken, something is slow, something is leaking money, something isn't scaling the way that it should. And if you haven't got really sharp and really honest with yourself about what that thing is, you're gonna hire somebody impressive who solves absolutely nothing. I've actually done this, so I'm speaking from experience. I've hired people that looked incredible on paper, incredible experience, amazing references. They either came from a competitor, they'd done it all before, and they were completely wrong for us. Not because they weren't talented. They were definitely talented. The problem I needed solved just wasn't the problem that their experience was built to solve. I was actually hiring for a title when I should have been hiring for the Pain Point. I need you to think about that a little bit, because I talk about that so much in my book that I don't hire for experience. I hire for attitude. And I have never been wrong about that. It is one of the things that has actually Set me up for success over and over again. Now, I don't care so much about whether or not somebody has the exact expertise required, because I'm confident that if they've got the right attitude, then they will figure it out and they're going to learn really quickly on the job. What I cannot teach, however, is how somebody thinks. I cannot teach curiosity. I cannot teach care. I cannot teach somebody to give a shit about the quality of their work. Now, you can make a million mistakes, you can ask a million questions, but if I think that you don't care about the quality of your work or how you show up with your colleagues, then we're probably not meant to work together for very long. And this matters even more when you're hiring for senior roles. I hire a lot of people that are in their 40s or their 50s for executive leadership roles. And I'm very, very conscious to rule out anyone who is overly fixed or rigid or certain. If you come from a competitor and you say to me, the only way to get from here to there is the way that I've been doing it for the past 20 years, then let me tell you, we are not going to be the right fit. I want the vast experience. I expect the vast experience, absolutely. But I need it paired with flexibility. Because what's happening right now is that technology means the customer's expectations, they're changing all the time. So the way that we solve problems and the way that we do business is, in turn shifting every single day. What worked two years ago just might not work today. And you need to have an openness to that. I need people that can hold their expertise loosely, loosely enough that they can actually adapt. Now, I said you have to hire for your own weaknesses. So how do you even figure out what those weaknesses are? And I'm going to tell you exactly what I do, because I'm an expert at knowing what I don't know. Here's what I do, and it's something that I shared while I was on tour because I think it's a really useful exercise. And let me tell you, understanding your own weaknesses isn't just good for hiring, if you know what I mean. It's just good for life. We all need to know what we don't know. So don't skip this part. Before you write a job description, before you even decide what role you need to fill, you need to speak to three people. Number one, somebody that you used to employ you like a former boss. Number two, a colleague that you work with now, and someone that Actually gets to see you in action every day. And number three, a really good friend. Well, our friend that's a little bit upset because you're doing well. I'm talking about a really, really good friend. Somebody that loves you enough that they can be honest with you and you trust them. Now, those three people are going to give you three completely different perspectives on your weaknesses. Your former boss is actually going to tell you where you fell short professionally. Your colleague is going to tell you about what frustrates them about working with you, things that you miss, what you avoid, what you're kind of slower. And your friend, your friend is going to tell you the personal st patterns, the blind spots, the things that you don't see about yourself because you're just too close. And that, my friends, is gold. That tells you what you need to hire for. And honestly, it tells you where you might grow and you're probably going to learn a little something in the process. And once you've done that work and brought the right person in, your job changes. Now your job is to actually grow that person. Now, the single best move I've made in my career is in investing in people, taking my time to actually understand what they want and what their ambitions are and teaching them what I know, giving helpful, thoughtful, honest feedback. I'm always looking at the 120% people in my organization, the ones who are blowing my socks off. And I'm thinking about how I can give them much wider remits, how I can move them into different functions and let them see the business from so many different angles. The more the team understands your business as a whole, the better they can function with increasing responsibility and the better the business is going to do as a result. Now, I have done so many sidesteps in my career, from one department to another. I've done that in a few of my jobs and it's always actually served me well. So if you have somebody who's amazing in one department, they work in wholesale and they want to learn E Com and they want to learn how to buy for direct to consumer. I'm going to support that mission because I'm very invested in team members who are interested in the entire business and not just their lane. Now, the next thing, another old thought I need you to contend with. The interview is just about their answers. And let me tell you what the new thought is. The interview shows you about the way people think. So you've done the self work. You know your weaknesses, you know the problem that you're hiring for and now you're actually sitting across from somebody. And this is where most people get it wrong. They treat the interview like it's a test, and it is not. They ask the questions, and they listen for the right answers. But the right answers don't tell you anything, because guess what? People rehearse. People are good at performing in interviews the same way that they're good at performing on first dates, for example. Now, I said it on my book tour that being really good at dating around as a young girl makes you really good at interviewing. And I stand by that. Call it what you want, but I know how to choose. And the reason is the same, because you learn to read people. You learn to trust your gut and notice when something feels off, even when everything actually looks really right on the surface. Every woman who's been on a bad date knows exactly, exactly what I'm talking about. The resume's fine, the experience checks out, the conversation flows, the shoes are good, but something just doesn't sit right. You need to trust that, because that instinct is one of the most powerful tools you have as a hiring manager. Here's what I'm actually looking for when I interview someone. Number one, care. I have incredibly high standards, and my team would tell you that. But I also have a very fair way of making sure those standards are met. I'm kind in how I ask for things to be done, but I have a very low tolerance for what I perceived to be a lack of care. That's the thing that I'm scanning for in an interview. Not whether they have the right answer, whether they care enough to have thought about it at all. Number two, and this is a really, really big one, I'm looking for what I call agency, and I write about this again in the book. When I assess founders or potential hires, I look for the same thing that I look for in myself. Do they see themselves as the creator of their own life? Are they someone that acts directly on the world and both suffers and celebrates the results? Or are they a passive actor? Are they actually waiting for someone to give them good lines and to tell them where to stand? And you can spot this in how people talk about their careers, but you have to be listening. You listen for the verbs. Did they build something, or were they given the opportunity to build it? Did they make a decision or did the team make it? Did they fail at something and own it, or did it not work out? I'm not looking for arrogance. I'm looking for ownership. I want the person who says, I did this. It didn't work. And here's what I learned. That is, like, the dreamiest thing to hear. Not the person who says, well, you know, there are a lot of factors. No, no, no. You need somebody who has agency. Now, number three, I'm testing for flexibility. I told you, I rule out anyone in senior roles who's overly fixed or overly rigid in the interview. That shows up when someone can only talk about what they've done, not what they'd do differently, not what they're curious about, not what they'd want to learn. When someone tells me the only way to get from here to there is the way they've been doing it for the past 20 years, I already know. We're just not the right fit. Okay, here we go. Another old fault. A good hire is someone who fits your culture. Makes a lot of sense, right? No, no, no. Never. The new fault. A good hire is someone who challenges your culture. And this one is gonna be a little uncomfortable for you because it's definitely been uncom for me in the past. But I promise you, it works because we all love the idea of a culture fit. It sounds so good. We want people who get us, who align with our values, who feel like they belong. And I'm not saying culture doesn't matter. Of course it matters. But let's be honest about what culture fit has become. It's become code for someone I'd want to have lunch with, someone who feels comfortable, someone who doesn't rock the boat. And here's the problem with that. If you only hire people that feel comfortable, you're going to build a company that is very, very comfortable and probably not very good. The best hires that I've ever made are the people that challenged me, people who disagreed with me in meetings, people who said, I hear you, Emma, but I actually think you're wrong about this. And here's why. Those people, they made me better. They made the business better. And it takes a certain type of humility to welcome that. Your instinct as a founder is to surround yourself with as many people who believe in your vision and those that come to execute it. But I write about this in my book. Founders can be too close to what they're making to invest it in their own point of view. And the result gets colored by emotion and attachment, and it ends up totally missing the market. That happens a lot when people don't have enough people on the team that feel emboldened. To tell you the truth, that's the real culture fit test. Not do they agree with me, but will they tell me when I'm wrong. Are they brave enough to push back? Because if they're not, you don't have a team. You have an and echo chambers kill businesses. You know that feeling when an outfit just clicks? You're standing in front of the mirror and suddenly you're walking a little taller and moving a little differently. The whole day takes on a slightly different shape. That feeling where your clothes are actually doing something for you instead of just covering you up is what I think great style is really about. It's not only about decoration. It's a small daily act of stepping into who you want to be. The brands and the designers that understand that are the ones I find myself paying attention to. Not the ones chasing a trend, but the ones that give you a piece of what makes you feel a little bit more like yourself, a little more elevated and a little more intentional. That's why Macy's new collab is one worth noting. On 34th is Macy's own private brand known for wearable city inspired pieces. And they've just teamed up with the legendary Molly Rogers. She's an Emmy award winning costume designer. Behind some of the most iconic fashion forward New York TV looks of the last few decades. She created what now feels like quintessential New York style. The kind of wardrobe you saw your favorite actors wear on screen that made you want to reinvent your closet overnight. Now here's what I think is interesting about a great costume designer. They're not designing for trends, they're designing for character. They're answering the question of who someone is before that person says a single word. And that's a real craft and one that most fashion never lets you experience as a customer. For this collection, Molly reimagined some of the most unforgettable looks from her career and translated them into pieces you can actually wear. The details are the best parts. Pockets where you don't expect them, Prints with personality and small flourishes that make a piece feel like something with a story behind it. It's the kind of collection where your closet suddenly has a story to tell. And that's what I love about a collaboration done well. It's not just access to a name, it's access to a point of view. A piece of someone's creative vision you can carry into your own life. So if you ever wanted to step into your own New York fashion fantasy, now is your moment. Shop the collection now@macy's.com or in store. Now. I posted a reel recently about something that I wrote in the book that if somebody wants something from you, they need to make it worth your while. And I got a lot of feedback on that too. Some people loved it, some people thought it sounded just a bit too cold, transactional. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that word especially because I think that we need to rehabilitate it. Everything in life is an exchange. The question isn't whether it's transactional, because it just is. The question is whether you're conscious of the exchange or whether you're just giving and giving and giving and crossing your fingers and hoping that it all works out for the best. And I do see this in hiring all the time. With women especially, we keep people because firing them feels like betrayal. We promote someone because they've been loyal, not because they've been exceptional. And we avoid the hard conversation because it feels cold. And nobody wants to come across like that. And trust me, I get it. I understand the impulse because I feel it too. I will always struggle with the people part of business because it's acutely painful to hit a wall where you have to downsize or where you have to let someone go. The only thing that helps is to lean on an enterprise mentality. If I need to let 20 people go, it helps to think about the 140 people whose roles I'm saving, whose jobs I'm stabilizing. All of those futures are also in my hands. And I'd be lying if I said this gets easier or that it doesn't fill me with anxiety or grief. It never ever feels good and it never gets easier. But. And it's a big but, it is necessary. And clarity isn't cruelty at all. Clarity is the most respectful thing that you can offer someone. Now, I want to tell you about something that happened that I think actually illustrates this perfectly. Now, a few years back, I had one department at one of the companies where the staff turnover literally made no sense at all. It was unbelievably and exceptionally high. Completely out of whack with the rest of the business. And the rest of the business was already running pretty high. Because given the pace of growth, given that you're in a high growth company turnover, it isn't unusual that in a hyper of growth business turnover would be super, super high. But this division was different. In this division, people just kept leaving. I'd hired an exceptional leader and somebody with more than 20 years of experience. She was excellent at hiring. She brought on so many incredible executives. But she was incapable of letting one bad actor go. She Kept one bad egg in a job and that one person was creating severe dysfunction and driving the other good people that she'd hired out of the door one by one. She had too much loyalty to the bad egg. They'd started around the same time and they'd bonded over a similar background. So she found it impossible to give that particular person feedback and then tolerated bad behavior. As a result, she frustrated so many great staffers and tore her own team apart. In the end, I had no choice. I had to let both of them go. I chalked that enormous loss. Five team members out the door up to one person who just couldn't give good feedback. This plays out with women specifically, and I see it on my teams. I've observed that many women are overly concerned with other people. They're worried that this person isn't getting paid enough. They're worried that that person isn't getting enough rest. They're worried that this person isn't fulfilled. And I've recognized that nurturing might be conditioned into us or maybe it just comes more naturally to us as women. But I also believe the tendency can be attributed to something else. Putting yourself first, surging forward in your career regardless of everything else is simply hard. And we don't have enough models of women doing it without misgivings. Instead of focusing on what you want, it becomes actually easier to look around you to find other places to spend your energy. And I really want us to stop doing that. Start with yourself. Putting yourself first isn't selfish, is actually essential. This applies when you're building a team too. And if you're spending all your energy managing other people's feelings about the team, instead of building the best team, you are betraying yourself and your business. One thing I see a lot, and this drives me totally mentor. Every time HR comes to me at one of our companies to approve an offer for a potential hire, it's always, always because a man is asking for more and they need sign off to lift the salary band he's negotiated his way up to me, the woman. They take the first offer and the female leaders on my team feel badly that as 30 year veterans, they make a lot more than their most junior H. They worry that it isn't fair. They feel uncomfortable with their own compensation and they want to balance it out. They want to be closer to the group so they don't stand out. But their experience and their wisdom is unparalleled in the organization. It's a huge asset. That discomfort with standing out, that's the thing that I actually want you to examine. If you're building a team, you need to create a culture where standing out for being excellent is celebrated. Never, ever. Something to feel guilty about. Here's another old fault for you. I can't afford great people right now. And the new fault you can't afford to keep under investing in people. This last one is for the founders, especially those who are early in building something and feel like they can't spend the money on talent. And I hear you, because I've been there. I actually know exactly what it feels like to run a business where the margins are so thin and, and every hire feels like a gamble. But I need you to hear me when I say this. You have to calculate the cost of not doing what you need to do. It's called the opportunity cost, the cost of staying small. And if you literally can't find the money to make the hire, you must, must, must go back to the drawing board and relook at your business. Because that is a whole separate issue and it should be a red flag. The most expensive thing you will ever do is hire the wrong person or underpay the right way. But you must, must hire. And let me tell you what happened to me. When I started Good American, we had an explosive start. A million dollar first day, we sold out of the collection in two hours. I was sitting on the floor of the airport missing my flight while we worked through a bunch of site issues. And very quickly I realized that all the things I wasn't good at, pricing, planning, distribution, all of those things were starting to go wrong. Being creative and a good marketer will only get you so far. Your goods need to be rightly priced, rightly planned, and correctly distributed. I had no clue about any of that. So what did I do? I went on a hiring rampage. I started pulling in people who were experts in the areas the business needed to thrive, people who had done it before, people who had been successful at competitive companies, who could help me do it all again. I stopped trying to do everything myself and I invested in people who could solve the problems that I couldn't. That's what I mean when I say you can't afford not to invest in people. I know what I'm bad at and I. I know I'm going to go and get the right people who are great at it. And I also want to say this, and I mean it. I am not self made. I chafe when business people are described that way. I've been supported by an incredible team and great business partners, including people that believed in me before I even believed in myself. I know my superpowers. I'm a generalist who came up in an unexpected way. And I can sell anything to anyone. I can spot a gap in the market. I can bring people and ideas together in a way that creates something entirely. But I also know that I don't know everything. And the best investment I've ever made isn't a product or a campaign. It's the people that can see what I can't. If somebody wants something from you, they need to make it worth your while. I said that in my reel and it blew up. But I want to flip it. If you want great talent, you need to make it worth their while too. You've got to pay what the role is worth. And you've got to create real growth paths for people. Don't expect people to stay because they believe in the mission. If the mission doesn't believe in them back. And as I tell members of my team, you're never going to be able to do what you say you want to do. Working three days a week, you can't do pilates, walk your dog, go surfing, work three days a week and then come to me for a pay rise. That is obviously my most popular line, by the way. But if you're showing up, if you are Excellent, if you're 120% person, I will invest in you in a way that changes your career. That's just the deal. And that deal has to go both ways. And I know that. And remember, when new people come into your company, you do. You have to set them up for success. You need to read the room. But it's a two way street. You gotta create the conditions for check ins. You've gotta give feedback frequently and know that that perspective somebody has coming into a new situation is invaluable. They have an outsider's visibility on what you're doing and that disappears within a few months. If you can use it, if you can take that perspective and what they're seeing, it can be a game changer and so helpful for your business. So I want to leave you with this. The team you build is a reflection of the thoughts that you're willing to challenge about yourself. If you hire from scarcity, you're going to build a scarce company. If you hire from guilt, you build a company that can't make hard decisions. If you hire from ego, if you only bring people in that agree with you and tell you what you want to hear, you build a company that feels great right up until the point of collapse. Start with yourself. Know your weaknesses before you write the job description. Be honest about what's broken before you ask somebody to fix it. And remember that hiring well is transactional. And transactional, it isn't a dirty word. It means both people are getting something real. It means the exchange is a conscious one and it's mutual and nobody is over giving while the other person just takes, takes, takes. I learned this the hard way. And this is then I figured out the right way through Good American, through skims for building teams that actually challenged me and made me better and pushed me to see things that I just couldn't see on my own. Now my wonderful husband Yen said something to me once that changed everything. He said, stop having an employee mentality. And what he meant was, stop looking for a boss. Stop subordinating yourself to someone who must know better. You are the leader. Acts like it. I think about it every time I sit down to hire someone. Because the way you hire tells you everything about how you see yourself. If you're scared to hire someone smarter than you, that is a self worth problem. And it is your problem. If you can't let go of someone who isn't performing, that's a guilt problem. If you're doing everything yourself because you think nobody can do it as well as you, that's a control problem. And all of those problems, they start with you. Now the three big things. Before I let you go, let me just boil this down. If you're putting together a team, here are the three things I really want you thinking about. Number one, know your weaknesses before you write the job description. Not your strengths, your weaknesses. Go and have the three conversations. The former boss, the current colleague, the friend that loves you enough to be honest. You cannot hire to cover a blind spot you refuse to look. Number two, Hire for how someone thinks, not for what they've already done. The resume tells you where they've been, it doesn't tell you where they're going. It doesn't tell you whether they care, whether they take ownership, whether they can adapt when the thing you hired them for actually changes. And it will change. Interview for the mind, not for the milestones. Number three, be willing to be challenged and be willing to pay for it. The best hire is never the most comfortable one. It's the person that will tell you you're wr. And if you find that person, make it worth their while. Great talent is the one investment that pays you back every single day. That's it. Three things. Know yourself. Hire the thinking and welcome the challenge. So start exactly there. Start with yourself and build the team you actually need. It's as simple as that. If this resonated with you, I would love to know what you think. Tell me. I love a bit of feedback as you well know. You can DM me. Leave me a comment. I read them all. And if you want to go deeper on this, Ms. The book is Start with yourself. 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. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Greed is presented by Audacy. I'm your host Emma Greed executive producer Ashley McShan, Derrick Brown and me our executive producers from Audacy. Leah Rhys, Dennis, Arsha Saludja, Lauren Legrasso Producer, KK Sublime Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black Video production by Evan Cox, Kirk Courtney, Andrew Steele and Carlos Delgado Social media by Olivia Homan, Kathryn Bale Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, my teams at the lead company and WME Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson, Rose, Tim Meecol, Sean Cherry and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you could DM me @aspirewithemagreed. Greed is spelled G R E D E. That's Aspire A S P I R E with Emma Greed. Or you can submit a question to me on my website. Emagreed me.