← The Interview
The Interview
Emma Grede, entrepreneur: Success needs trade-offs
00:23:01
Amol Rajan speaks to entrepreneur Emma Grede about trade-offs and success.
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- [00:00]
Amol Rajan
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- [00:06]
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- [01:10]
Amol Rajan
Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen@schwab.com washingtonwise that's schwab.com washingtonwise hello, I'm BBC presenter Amol Rajan and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC People shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid then you're not paying attention.
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We have never seen a people so united.
- [02:00]
Emma Greed
Do not make that boat crossing do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American having
- [02:06]
Advertisement Voice
people treat me like I'm not.
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Emma Greed
We're more popular than populism.
- [02:11]
Amol Rajan
For this interview I met entrepreneur Emma Greed, co founder of the brand Skims created with her husband Jens and Kim Kardashian, and the CEO and co founder of fashion label Good American. She also serves on the board of the Obama Foundation. You're going to hear about a career that stretches from ordinary beginnings in East London to the forefront of global consumer brands and social influence in la. She talks about the trade offs we have to make to get to where we want to be in life and she says that to be successful you have to start with yourself and travel to where the action is. We also discuss how she wants to break down old ideas of working women and motherhood.
- [02:51]
Emma Greed
All women that I know Working women that work either in or out of the home are completely exhausted. And I don't think that motherhood got harder. I think the expectations around motherhood got really hard. And all I'm saying is what works for me is not walking around with this ball of guilt. And if you have guilt, which most mums will, you've got to make sure that you're measuring that guilt against your own expectations. Not something that you're getting from the outside.
- [03:22]
Amol Rajan
Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Emma Greed.
- [03:28]
Emma Greed
I honestly believe that there are like a set of rules and like this idea of like how women specifically are socially conditioned that in fact do the opposite of what we need to be doing right now. They actually create behaviors that make us avoid what it takes to create wealth in our lives and create success and become who we want to be. And so when I talk about trade offs, it is to really understand what it takes for you to be successful. And everyone that I know, including myself, is doing whatever they're doing, but they're giving up a bunch of other stuff that they would really like to do. And I think where we are in the media and in the culture at large right now, there's this idea that you kind of like can, you know, sail your way to success or have some overnight success or kind of come upon success relatively easily. And that's just never ever been.
- [04:21]
Amol Rajan
One of my favorite phrases is this idea that it took me two decades to become an overnight success. Right, exactly. What are the trade offs that you have been through, which you're glad to have been through? What have you had to give up to get to where you've got to?
- [04:33]
Emma Greed
Well, so much. I mean, the first thing is I don't live in England anymore and I think that was a major trade off for me because I'm such a Londoner. That's so much a part of who I am and how I go about my life and my business. And so leaving was a massive trade off. And then leaving to go to LA was again a big trade off because I had no aspiration to live in la.
- [04:50]
Amol Rajan
How do you approach trade offs?
- [04:52]
Emma Greed
I really think about what I need to do, like what are my goals and what are the things that are necessary for me to get towards my goals and then I give up everything else. I say no to everything else because otherwise you will not get to where you want to go. It's that simple.
- [05:07]
Amol Rajan
Focus. We're going to come back to your
- [05:08]
Emma Greed
superpowers and limited focus. Right. It's like really about knowing that you can have everything, but not all at once. And so for me, I'm really trying to say I am like life comes in seasons. There are moments for what you want and you can literally set your goals and be really clear about about them, but you're not going to get it all at once. Like something has to give.
- [05:26]
Amol Rajan
I know about your reputation and let me just say openly, people that work for you, really, really respect you, really, really like you. They rate you, they say you're a kind boss. They do say you've got a pretty crazy appetite for hard work. And you have a pretty unusual appetite for focus, which we might come back to. But you have this ability to say this is the thing that matters. And that means I'm going to say nine no's and the one. Yes, absolutely.
- [05:45]
Emma Greed
I have 10 standards. I have high standards for myself and I have high standards for everyone around me. I'm very fair.
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Amol Rajan
Moral standards or professional standards?
- [05:52]
Emma Greed
I think all of it. I have high moral standards, high professional standards, I have high energy standards. I have. I'm just high, high, high. That's how I am. But I have them for everyone around me. And I think as a leader, your job is to lead by example. I'm also out the door at 5pm every single day because I am a mum at four. But that creates the conditions for everyone else to leave at 5.
- [06:10]
Amol Rajan
What's the old thought about money that we need to put away?
- [06:13]
Emma Greed
Well, here's the thing. I think that we have to be free to speak about money and that is really important. It's like you can do deeply imp impactful and important work and care about money too. You can care about money and care about a lot of other things. So all I'm saying is like, if you think that earning money and actually being paid what you deserve is important for you, then you have to put money at the center of your plans. You can't hide behind soft ambition or like performative purpose.
- [06:41]
Amol Rajan
Do you think it's easier for you to talk about money, Frank, if we're being really honest because you came from a lack of it, we'll get into this. But you know, you grew up with a single mum. Your dad left when you were how old?
- [06:52]
Emma Greed
5ish.
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Amol Rajan
5?
- [06:53]
Emma Greed
Yeah.
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Amol Rajan
Not great. Not great when you're the oldest.
- [06:56]
Emma Greed
Ideal.
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Amol Rajan
Not ideal. You, I think you had two sisters, then you went on to have three. You know, you're the joke in your family was that your mum was the dad and you were the mum. Yes, right.
- [07:05]
Emma Greed
And we have three Kids together.
- [07:07]
Amol Rajan
Yeah. And there was. And you had to, you know, you did the ironing and you sorted the kids out and you sort of their pet lunches out. And that's made you maybe who you are. But do you think it's easier for you to talk about the importance of money because you've been on this social mobility journey? Whereas perhaps people born into great wealth feel they have to be a little bit, you know, awkward and English about it and a little bit reticent because they don't want to be seen to boast.
- [07:29]
Emma Greed
No doubt. I mean, I'm. I'm 100 sure that that is the case. But I also think that what is really important specifically when we talk about women is that if we are going to talk about, like, gender equality as it relates to pay, if we're going to talk about closing the racial wealth gap, we have to articulate our needs around money. If you elegantly avoid the subject of money, money will elegantly avoid you. And so all I'm saying is that it's really, really important that we are doing what we can for ourselves. So you have to start with your needs, you have to start with what it is that you want, and then you have to talk about it. You have to put it out there. You cannot live in your head. You can't keep a business idea in your head. You can't keep the amount of money that you want in your head. You've got to get it out and make sure people understand.
- [08:16]
Amol Rajan
So what about if we moved more towards. It'll take a while to get there, but more towards maybe a slightly more Scandinavian culture of being radically transparent about money. Because when I started at the Beeb or BBC News about nearly a decade ago now, 2016, there was this big move to publish the salaries of the top earners. And initially people were like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. Particularly people whose salaries would be exposed because it's awkward, it's not a comfortable thing to do. But a lot of good came of it, including the revelation that a huge number of women were being paid less for doing damn work.
- [08:49]
Emma Greed
Which, by the way, surprise, surprise, by
- [08:50]
Amol Rajan
the way, that's illegal because we've got something called the Equal Pay act and that's illegal. And that led to a huge amount of headlines and scandal commercial production. By the way, the BBC is much better on that than a lot of the people criticizing the BBC. And the BBC's got a smaller gender pay gap. Gender pay gap being slightly different to equal pay. Which is a legal right. But there was this sort of move towards transparency and a lot of the people who had been against the public disclosure of salaries changed their mind and said, actually, this is quite good because, you know, we've got more equality of exposed and bad things. Do you think we should all just talk about how much we earn a lot more, kind of openly?
- [09:22]
Emma Greed
I do, and I think it's essential for two reasons. First of all, I live in California right now, where there's a requirement, whatever job you post as a company has to have a salary band attached. They have that level of transparency. And what that's done both internally at your company, but also for candidates, is really open it up. People understand. They're like, wait a minute, this job is for me and here's the money that I could potentially be paid for it. And so you don't even have to have that negotiation because you've got the transparency, which actually makes it way easier for everybody involved. You know what you're dealing with right from the outset. But the other piece of this is really thinking through this idea of, why are we hiding? Like, what are we actually embarrassing poor
- [10:06]
Amol Rajan
as you know, and I know less so than other people, but I know a little bit about. I certainly know what it's like to be skinned and to grow up in a family where at times money's really tight and the atmosphere.
- [10:15]
Emma Greed
Yeah.
- [10:16]
Amol Rajan
Of the house is made by the fact that you can't afford something. You can't have that holiday, you can't have this thing. It's embarrassing to be poor.
- [10:21]
Emma Greed
I mean, listen, I remember being. I remember being very poor. I remember hiding from the milkman. You know, back in the day when the milkman will come once a week and you had to pay a bill. But I think that my mom had really good and transparent money habits. She never heated anything.
- [10:36]
Amol Rajan
You hit from the milkman.
- [10:37]
Emma Greed
Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Like, literally behind the sofa. We used to call him Milky, but we would literally. She'd be like, get down, Milky's here. And we would hide from the milkman.
- [10:44]
Amol Rajan
Well, because you had to pay for your milk.
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Emma Greed
Yeah, you have to, like, skip a week. You know, you might have to just, like, just.
- [10:49]
Amol Rajan
What did your mum do as a.
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Emma Greed
For a living? So, you know, it's interesting because my mum actually started out in fashion and then she ended up working in finance and banking, and so she worked for Morgan Stanley for many, many, many years. But she had a way of teaching us about money that actually was so valuable for me because she would sit at the dining room table, and she would write every single thing down that was outgoing. So she was like, here I am. That was back in the day, you know, when you'd actually physically write a
- [11:15]
Amol Rajan
check line by line in a diary.
- [11:16]
Emma Greed
She'd sit there with the Abbey national and she had a little book. So I understood, like, here' what the heating costs and here's what the gas cost, and here's what we owe Milky and here's how much our groceries, literally. But to me, there was a sense of like, okay, like, prioritization. Here's what has to be paid, here's what's a must have, here's what's a nice to have. But it wasn't that sense of like, you know, we have plenty. It's like, here's what we need to do to get through our life. And I still think like that even to this day, even when that's, like, not necessary for me.
- [11:44]
Amol Rajan
So it's interesting. You talk about your mum quite a lot. What you do and what you do on your podcast, which features a lot of extraordinarily powerful women. And I should say, for those who don't know, you're on the board of the Obama foundation, you spent a lot of time with Michelle Obama, is you're really trying to make women and working women think differently about their careers, the trade offs, the reality of things like what we call the motherhood penalty. What are the old thoughts that you would like to disentangle, attack, break down when it comes to A, women and B, motherhood?
- [12:14]
Emma Greed
Well, you know, the motherhood thing is a really, really big one, because I think that all women that I know, working women that work either in or out of the home, are completely exhausted. And I don't think that motherhood got harder. I think the expectations around motherhood got really hard. And all I'm saying is what works for me is not walking around with this ball of guilt. And if you have guilt, which most mums will, you've gotta make sure that you're measuring that guilt against your own expectations. Not something that you're getting from the outside. So not this idea that you saw somebody doing this, like, big performance parenting thing on Instagram and you've decided, oh, my goodness, I'm not doing that, and I need to live up to that impossible standard, but rather that you have a vision for your family and how you guys want to live, but just. And then you live up to that,
- [13:03]
Amol Rajan
you're not for a minute disputing that. There is something called the motherhood penalty that there are lots and lots of women who do work and who at the absolute moment in their career, maybe they're in their late 20s, early 30s, maybe a bit older, when they want to be soaring and they see blokes, frankly, you know, really soaring, you know, going up three or four levels of the career ladder very, very quickly. They have to take several years out, and not just several years out, but they're kind of absolutely knackered and they want men to pull their weight. The motherhood penalty is real. And it is the. I mean, the evidence shows it is the main driver still of the gap between men and women at the top of the tree.
- [13:37]
Emma Greed
100. In fact, I'm reinforcing that. And I'm also saying that it is something that you have to manage, right? Nobody is coming to help you manage that conundrum. And I think that actually what women have been sold around, you know, waiting to have kids, pushing out, having kids for their careers is crippling women. I actually think that. And listen, I'm certainly not advocating for teenage pregnancy. Nothing near it. But also, waiting until you're 38 probably isn't a plan either, because at the end of the day, there is a biological reality as to when women are naturally going to conceive. Now, I can say this because I've got four kids. I had my first two kids naturally. I had my second two kids with a lot of help. I went through rounds of ivf, ended up having my second two by surrogate because I had waited too long. So as a boss and a leader and somebody who has sat in my organization said, don't worry, girls, we have a benefit. You can freeze your eggs. Perhaps that isn't the ideal thing to do. There is a reality to when we should be having and thinking about having children. And that's why I talk about seasons in your life. There will be moments when you have to put the pedal to the metal. In my 20s, all I did was work. I was 150%. Then there was this period, early 30s, where I kind of had to go, all right, do you know what? I'm going to go to work every day. But I've got these little babies and I talk a lot about accepting help, knowing when to lean in, knowing when to lean out. But it has to be about your decisions, not trying to live up to impossible standard.
- [15:06]
Amol Rajan
Do you ever relax?
- [15:07]
Emma Greed
I do. And it's so funny. I relax with.
- [15:10]
Amol Rajan
Sounds quite offensive all of a sudden.
- [15:11]
Emma Greed
No, you know what? I'll tell you, no. I love that you say that because I think people think. I don't relax because people imagine I found like a 25th hour in the day. The reality is I have a lot of help. I do. There's. There's so much that people look at me and they go, God, she must be doing a lot. Let's talk about the things that I don't do. Because that is what makes women feel bad. This idea that you think, God, she's out there killing it and she's got these four kids. I don't cook, I don't clean. I'm not at the school gala, I'm not at the school gate. There's a bunch of stuff that I don't do. And as a opposed to like, hiding behind this and trying to put forward an image of like, perfection, I'm actually saying, do you know what? I had to trade off? I had to make a decision about what type of parent I wanted to be. And sometimes that was about putting myself first. I am a mother of four who says, actually, guess what? I'm the top of my list. I am right on the top. And people go, goodness me, that's so selfish. And I'm like, actually, that is my choice.
- [16:08]
Amol Rajan
You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.
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- [17:20]
Amol Rajan
I have to say I found Emma Greed one of the more engaging and brilliant and fascinating conversationalists and interviewees that I've met in recent years. She's very clear, she's very opinionated, she's got a remarkable backstory. But she also has genu impressive business credentials and right now she's having a bit of a moment online. She's done other podcasts, she's done lots of other interviews with really big names, particularly in America, and she knows how to command our attention. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Emma Greed. If you want to have the kind of success Emma Greed has had, do you need to go to where the action is and that means the big city?
- [17:56]
Emma Greed
I think so, yes. And look, that's really difficult to say. And I think that there's a couple of reasons for it. Right. I actually remember speaking to a fantastic British entrepreneur who shall remain nameless, who had her company based in Manchester, I think, and I was like, for me and for you to have global success, that is somewhat limiting. Not because there's anything wrong with Manchester, but it's all of the other stuff that's attached to that. Your ability to access talent, your ability to make sure that you catch the fleeting opportunities that in business, to be successful, you just have to grab onto. And so what you're doing is just actually taking away some of the chances to be great. That doesn't mean you can't be successful in those places. But, you know, as an entrepreneur, you got to take every single chance. And if you're immediately saying, okay, I'm going to be like, out of the action, out of the circle of interest, not going to this thing, not invited over here, not attracting this type of talent because I'm putting myself geographically outside of the sphere of opportunity. Opportunity, then it's tough. And I do think that, you know, when I moved to America, it was for a very, very specific reason. I don't know that I could have had the same level of success in the same amount of time. And that was just because I chose an idea where access to capital was paramount and there isn't that same access in the same way. Then you add, you know, I don't think anyone ever judged me in a meeting because of my accent in America. In fact, it was a net positive. It wasn't like, wow, I wonder if she has the education that will enable her to run this company. Never, ever. Was that a question? Because the understanding of where I come from wasn't immediate. Because you weren't attaching, oh, yeah, she must be from X, Y and Z.
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Amol Rajan
And be where the.
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Emma Greed
There's an element of it.
- [19:51]
Amol Rajan
Be where the action is. Where the action is is where you can have access to capital and access to connections. What about timing 25 years of. Of work into your career? You could look back and say, one of the Things about Emma Greed. Hugely successful, worked with some of the biggest names in the planet, launch multiple businesses, investor, entrepreneur, blah, blah, blah. But she was ahead of the curve, particularly when it comes to social media. The nature of influence, the ability to use modern technology to build these things we call brands. How important in retrospect, even if you didn't do it consciously, was it for you to be ahead of those trends?
- [20:26]
Emma Greed
So just to answer the question, absolutely didn't do the early moves consciously because
- [20:32]
Amol Rajan
you wanted to be in fashion, right?
- [20:33]
Emma Greed
Yeah, I really wanted to be in fashion. And I have to tell you, the fashion industry moves really slowly and all the space for kind of, you know, to do great work was taken up. So the move into social media was more about like nobody occupied that space and so it was easier for me to get in as opposed to all of these sort of like deep relationships that go back in fashion that for me I was locked out of as somebody that, that, you know, had a marketing agency. So I think what is interesting is that the best businesses always happen when they're timed with what's already happening in the culture. And I happen to be pretty good at really looking and understanding these like cultural shifts and movements, looking around corners.
- [21:16]
Amol Rajan
Yeah, you are, how can I put this? World class preeminent when it comes to launching, growing and selling brands In a couple of senses. What is the key if people want to do this? Business advice. Grow a brand, skims good American, whatever it might be as successful as you've done, what's what people need to think about?
- [21:35]
Emma Greed
Focus on the product. If you have a product that is uniquely solving a problem and something that you believe is best in class, that is the foundation of everything. Don't get carried away by gimmicks and marketing and your root into something that feels like a, a fancy party or like social media. It's like at the end of the day, brilliant businesses will be found, brilliant products drive business. And if you've got something that you think is an idea and can be unique, you gotta get out of your head and start. That's it.
- [22:11]
Amol Rajan
Just do it.
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Emma Greed
Just do it. Just go. Get out of your head and just go.
- [22:15]
Amol Rajan
What did therapy teach you?
- [22:16]
Emma Greed
Everything. What do you know?
- [22:20]
Amol Rajan
Some people won't know that you. You undertook a pretty extensive course in anger management.
- [22:24]
Emma Greed
Oh yes.
- [22:25]
Amol Rajan
When you were pretty young. Are you no longer the person that needs anger management therapy?
- [22:29]
Emma Greed
I'm a person that needs to constantly remind herself of the things that she's learned.
- [22:33]
Amol Rajan
Are you prone to rage?
- [22:35]
Emma Greed
No, I wouldn't say Rage, Fury. Yes. Yes, I can definitely listen. It's like, in me, it's here. I feel like it's something that I manage consistently because default emotions are always there when you're trained in a certain way. You know, what do they talk about? Like, you're firing as you're wiring. Like, that's how I'm wired. And so I have to work against my better instincts. And that is just one of the many things that I think, again, has made me successful, because I know I can train myself out of any type of behavior. That means I can train myself into any type of behavior, too.
- [23:10]
Amol Rajan
Final thought. Are you, in a weird sort of way, almost glad that your life was so tough to begin with? Because that toughness made you sound like you do today. You sound like someone who's learned a lot. It's been very successful. You've got a zeal, you know, you've got a drive and energy. And I just wonder a little bit where that comes from and whether or not it comes from that girl who's hiding behind the sofa because the milkman was going to charge her.
- [23:35]
Emma Greed
Listen, no doubt, you know, the academics call it grit, right? And any parents of, you know, that are raising kids that are more privileged than them, constantly worried about their level of grittiness. Like, I'm like, how do you get grit when you live in Bel Air? Like, it's just not going to happen. You know, like this. This is not something, a feeling, and, you know, a trait that I can manufacture for my children. I'll tell you a very quick story. I went to something called the Hoffman process, which is like, this kind of, you know, deeply therapeutic eight days in the middle of nowhere where you work on, you know, all the patterns that you learned in your childhood to train yourself how to not have repetitive patterns. And after three days, I went and saw one of the main counselors, and I was like, listen, there's some stuff I don't want to get rid of, because I think it's been really useful. And there's a little bit of that anger, there's a little bit of that fire, a little bit of that grittiness that I was like, don't get rid of it, because that's made me who I am. That's made me good. And so the answer to your question is, yes, I do believe that. But that also is something that I have to be really careful with, right? It's also something that now that I don't have that, can I still, like, like, muster all that magic and can I still be good? And can I still be successful? And so at the end of the day, I think that I am in training constantly to be the type of woman that I want to be. And because I'm ambitious and because that bar constantly keeps going higher, I just never stop training. Like, I never think I'm done. I never think, oh my God, I made it. It's all amazing. There's always something more, there's always something else to do. And so I never rest on my laurels.
- [25:16]
Amol Rajan
Thank you for listening to the interview. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can find more episodes of the Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including ones with singer, songwriter Arlo Parks, AI expert Palmy Olson and director Chloe Zhao. Until the next time. Bye for now.
- [25:49]
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- [26:30]
Emma Greed
The most important thing is to be yourself.
- [26:33]
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From the world of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes a new Britbox original drama, Mary, you Will Flourish, based on the best selling novel the Other Bennett Sister, now streaming only on Britbox. Watch for the free trial@britbox.com.