The Business Expert: How To Build A Brand In 2025! They're Lying To You About Work-Life Balance!

Emma Greed, co-founder of billion-dollar brands Good American and Skims, shares insights into her journey of success, emphasizing the importance of grit, focus, and authenticity. Raised in East London by a single mother, Emma learned early on the value of hard work and resilience. She discusses the challenges of balancing ambition with personal life, noting that work-life balance is a personal responsibility. Emma highlights the significance of hiring the right people, taking risks, and staying true to oneself. She also reflects on the impact of her supportive relationships and the drive to mentor others through her upcoming podcast, Aspire.

• Work-life balance is an individual's responsibility, not the employer's. Success requires personal management of ambition and personal life.
• Being successful often demands sacrifices, including time usually reserved for personal life.

"Work-life balance is your problem. It isn't the employer's responsibility."

• This quote emphasizes personal accountability in managing one's work and personal life balance.

• Emma was raised by a single mother in East London, which instilled a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility.
• Her upbringing taught her that nothing comes easy, shaping her into a gritty and determined individual.

"I was raised by a single mom, one of four girls, and I had a very big hand in raising them to help my mom keep our family afloat."

• Emma's early responsibilities helped her develop a strong sense of responsibility and work ethic from a young age.

• Success in business requires grit, determination, and the ability to focus on one's goals.
• Emma emphasizes the importance of taking action and being proactive in pursuing opportunities.

"I have an ability to focus on what I'm doing. I have an ability to get better at what I'm doing."

• Emma attributes her success to her focus and continuous improvement in her chosen field.

• While visualization can be a tool, Emma stresses the importance of hard work and planning to turn dreams into reality.
• She believes in the power of action over merely dreaming or visualizing success.

"Yes, you can dream it, you can believe it, you can create a vision board... but don't forget what comes under that and what comes under that is an enormous amount of work."

• Emma highlights the necessity of effort and planning in achieving one's goals, beyond just visualization.

• Emma values feedback, especially from customers, but balances it with her own judgment and intuition.
• Customer feedback is crucial as it reflects their truth, but decisions must also align with business goals.

"When I make a decision on behalf of my business, that has to come from my gut and from the intentions of where I want that business to go."

• This quote underscores the importance of balancing external feedback with internal decision-making processes.

• Emma did not have formal mentors but learned from those around her by observing and asking questions.
• She believes in being inquisitive and learning from every opportunity and interaction.

"I don't think that you should walk around looking for a mentor. I think you have to walk around asking questions."

• Emma encourages proactive learning and seeking knowledge from various sources rather than relying on a single mentor.

• Grit is a defining characteristic for Emma, driving her to achieve success despite lacking formal qualifications.
• She believes grit involves being clear about one's goals and finding a way to achieve them.

"I'm just gritty. I'm very clear about what I want and what I need and I will find a way whatever it is."

• This quote encapsulates Emma's belief in grit as a crucial element for success.

• Emma values in-person collaboration and believes it fosters stronger relationships and learning opportunities.
• She hires for attitude over experience, looking for a winning mentality and flexibility.

"I hire much more for attitude over experience, right? I really want the people that come in with like a winning mentality, a figure it out mentality."

• Emma prioritizes mindset and flexibility in her team members to adapt to changing business environments.

• Emma considers questions about work-life balance during interviews as a red flag, indicating potential issues with personal responsibility.
• She believes work-life balance should be managed by the individual within the flexible structures of modern organizations.

"Work-life balance is your problem. Like, that's yours to figure out."

• This quote reflects Emma's stance on personal responsibility for managing work-life balance.

• Many individuals prioritize work-life balance over other professional achievements, such as perfect work performance or leading others.
• The speaker believes that work-life balance and business profitability are interconnected; for a company to offer a good work-life balance, it must be successful and efficient.
• The expectation in the speaker's business is not for employees to work seven days a week, but those with ambition may need to work more to reach higher positions.
• The speaker emphasizes honesty about the effort required to be truly successful, suggesting that extraordinary success requires extraordinary effort.

"In order to run an organization where there is the ability for your people to have a good work-life balance, you have to be profitable."

• This quote highlights the connection between a company's profitability and its ability to offer employees a good work-life balance.

"I think that we have to have a level of honesty about what it takes to be really successful."

• The speaker stresses the need for transparency about the effort and commitment required for achieving significant success.

• Leaders must not be people pleasers; they need to focus on the business's goals and be relentless in achieving them.
• Leadership involves balancing empathy with making difficult decisions, such as downsizing, which can be challenging for empathetic leaders.
• The speaker emphasizes the importance of having a clear management style and bringing the team along in decision-making processes.

"You can't be a leader and a people pleaser at the same time."

• This quote underscores the necessity for leaders to prioritize business goals over trying to please everyone.

"I have a very straightforward management style and I bring everybody along with me."

• The speaker describes their leadership approach, which is direct and involves team participation in the decision-making process.

• Post-pandemic, founders face confusion due to changing work norms and advice from various platforms on business management.
• Founders must maintain an "enterprise mentality," putting the business's needs first while balancing employee considerations.
• Social media poses challenges for founders, as employees can publicly criticize leadership, but the speaker advises staying true to one's values.

"It's a difficult time to be a founder because you've almost got to step out if you know what I mean."

• This quote reflects the challenges and confusion founders face in navigating the post-pandemic business landscape.

"I certainly am not sitting here sweating what somebody might do on TikTok because I know who I am and I feel good about the decisions that I make."

• The speaker expresses confidence in their leadership decisions, despite potential criticism on social media.

• The speaker discusses the importance of personal responsibility in balancing work and life.
• They highlight learning from past experiences, such as downsizing, which helped them become a better leader.
• The speaker advocates for regularly stepping back to gain perspective on the business and market.

"What makes women phenomenally good leaders and makes them fantastic at mentoring staff...is sure as the underbelly when it comes from perhaps downsizing their team."

• This quote discusses the dual nature of empathy in leadership, which can be both a strength and a challenge.

"Every kind of quarter at least every six months I try to float up and see like what is happening."

• The speaker shares their practice of regularly gaining a broader perspective on their business and the market.

• The speaker emphasizes the importance of having a supportive partner who believes in one's abilities and aspirations.
• They discuss the dynamics of working with their partner, highlighting mutual respect and interest as key to their relationship's success.
• The speaker advises individuals with unsupportive partners to prioritize their own goals and self-belief.

"You have to be willing to put what it is that you care about, what it is that you want more than anything first."

• This quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing personal goals and self-belief in the context of relationship dynamics.

"The secret is just being interested in each other. The secret is just growing together."

• The speaker describes the foundation of their successful relationship with their partner as mutual interest and growth.

• Emma Grede was inspired to create Good American due to dissatisfaction with her pay and recognizing a market gap in the fashion industry.
• The idea was to create a denim company that offered a wide range of sizes, ensuring inclusivity and fashionability for all body types.
• Emma leveraged her experience in denim marketing and connections with industry professionals to launch the brand.

"I was like, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to create a denim company. I'm going to make all of the sizes all the time and I'm going to make everyone look hot.'"

• Emma identified a gap in the market for fashionable plus-size clothing and envisioned a brand that would fill that void.

• Good American's initial hypothesis was that there was a significant demand for inclusive sizing in fashion.
• Unlike traditional retailers, Good American aimed to provide the same styles across a wide range of sizes without modification.

"We were like, do you know what? We're just going to connect all of those things. We're just going to make one product. We'll make it in 19 sizes and whatever we do, we'll let the customers choose."

• The strategy was to allow customers to decide what they wanted, proving successful as it addressed unmet demand.

• Social media strategies that worked in 2018 are now obsolete due to changes in algorithms and customer acquisition costs.
• Emma emphasizes the importance of having a profitable business model rather than focusing solely on customer acquisition.

"The arbitrage that existed in social media then, like how you could pay to acquire a customer, is almost entirely gone."

• The company focused on creating a strong foundation with a digital presence while also expanding into physical retail.

• Post-COVID, there is a significant shift towards experiential marketing and real-life customer interactions.
• Creating memorable in-person experiences is now seen as more valuable than digital interactions.

"I really am blown away by what happens when you meet customers in real life... post-COVID people want to be together and they want to be in person."

• Emma highlights the success of experiential events, such as the Skims store opening, which create lasting impressions.

• Community-building and having a strong brand purpose are increasingly important for modern businesses.
• Good American's success is partly attributed to its commitment to inclusivity and continuous evolution of its brand purpose.

"The sense of like standing for something, having some kind of purpose, galvanizing people around something that isn't just about your product is probably the way to go."

• The company became B Corp certified, reflecting its commitment to social and environmental responsibility.

• Emma emphasizes being true to oneself and having conviction in one's instincts as crucial for business success.
• Recognizing one's weaknesses and hiring to fill those gaps is considered a superpower.

"Know what you don't know because there's a lot of places where I'm weak. And one of my greatest strengths has been to hire people into the kind of gaps and the holes that you have in your own knowledge."

• Taking calculated risks is essential for growth and overcoming initial fears and challenges.

• The ability to articulate and sell an idea is critical for entrepreneurs and a key factor in investment decisions.
• Emma relies on intuition and passion to guide her business decisions, distinguishing between genuine gut feelings and mere excitement.

"If you can't sell, you ain't getting my money. Like, no way. You can't outsource that stuff."

• Developing a strong sense of intuition helps in making informed and emotionally resonant decisions.

• Hiring the right people and knowing when to let go of those who no longer fit the company's growth stage is crucial.
• A founder's attachment to early team members can hinder scaling and adapting to new challenges.

"The people that get you to 10 million are not the people that get you to 100 million."

• Emma stresses the importance of being clear about organizational goals and not letting success mask underlying dysfunctions.

• Exceptional teams are built by attracting top talent and fostering an environment where they thrive and self-regulate.
• Emma emphasizes the importance of hiring exceptional people and maintaining high standards for team performance.

"When you get enough A players together, they really like working with each other because they've never had a chance to do that before."

• The culture of a company is defined by who is hired, fired, and promoted, making these decisions critical for success.

• Exceptional organizational culture can elevate employees from average to outstanding, emphasizing the importance of a supportive work environment.
• Hiring decisions should be made with rigor and thoughtfulness, using all available tools to ensure the right fit for the company.
• The initial hires in a company are critical to its success, and founders should prioritize thoughtful recruitment and development of these individuals.

"You can bring in somebody not quite exceptional into an exceptional culture and company, and the organization makes them great."

• This quote highlights how a strong organizational culture can transform average employees into exceptional ones.

"Who those first three, five, ten people that you bring into your organization will be the difference between good and great."

• Emphasizes the importance of initial hires in setting the tone and success of the organization.

• Prejudice and stereotype threat can affect individuals' performance and self-perception, but it is important not to internalize these biases.
• Organizations should reflect on their hiring processes and ensure diversity and inclusivity.
• Personal experiences with prejudice can vary, and it is crucial to focus on self-worth and confidence.

"There's a really great study... if they got them to talk about their race before, their performance dropped."

• Discusses the impact of stereotype threat on performance, illustrating how awareness of stereotypes can negatively affect outcomes.

"The great thing about prejudice is you very rarely know if it actually happened to you."

• Suggests that while prejudice is real, it often goes unspoken, and individuals should not let it deter their self-worth or ambitions.

• Self-assurance and a high value on personal opinions can reduce the impact of others' perceptions.
• People often overestimate how much others think about them, leading to unnecessary stress and self-doubt.
• Recognizing that others are not as focused on us as we might think can be liberating.

"Nobody wakes up and thinks about me as much as I do."

• Highlights the common misconception that others are constantly focused on us, encouraging a more relaxed approach to self-perception.

"I just have such a high value on how much I care about what I think that maybe what other people think just kind of like pales into insignificance for me."

• Emphasizes the importance of self-worth and prioritizing one's own opinions over others'.

• Fertility journeys can vary significantly, with some experiencing ease and others facing challenges such as infertility and pregnancy loss.
• Open conversations about fertility struggles can provide support and reduce feelings of isolation.
• The decision to pursue options like surrogacy can be emotionally complex but also lead to profound experiences.

"I had the most easy, unbelievable, brilliant fertility journey with my first two and then probably the saddest, most disappointing, hardest time in my life with the second two."

• Describes the contrasting experiences of fertility, highlighting the unpredictability and emotional impact.

"I ended up deciding that I would have a surrogate... it was amazing."

• Discusses the decision to use surrogacy and the positive outcome of that choice.

• Podcasting can serve as a scalable form of mentorship, providing valuable insights and guidance to a wide audience.
• The lack of diverse voices in podcasting, particularly in business, presents an opportunity to introduce new perspectives and experiences.
• Sharing personal journeys and honest conversations can inspire and empower listeners.

"The podcast was honestly from the beginning about figuring out how can I scale mentorship."

• Describes the motivation behind starting a podcast as a means to extend mentorship to a broader audience.

"There's so many men hosting podcasts. And when we start to think about business, it becomes even more male-dominated."

• Points out the gender disparity in podcasting, especially in business, and the need for diverse voices.

• Being a unique figure in a field comes with the responsibility to inspire and pave the way for others.
• Representation and relatability are crucial for breaking down limiting beliefs and encouraging others to achieve their potential.
• Building a legacy involves creating opportunities and fostering growth for future generations.

"There's not another Emma. So, she almost has a responsibility to that gap."

• Emphasizes the unique position and responsibility to inspire others and create a lasting impact.

"It could go on to create 100,000 Emma and that you it's hard to think of a more like astonishing important legacy than that."

• Highlights the potential for significant influence and the importance of leaving a meaningful legacy.

• Being loved deeply by others can expand one's capacity for growth, learning, and giving.
• Love provides a sense of security and confidence, enabling individuals to take risks and pursue their goals.
• The support of loved ones can be a powerful motivator and source of strength.

"When you are so loved, you know, and I feel like someone who is so loved... you have such capacity."

• Explains how love from others can enhance personal capacity and drive.

"I think that I know I feel so safe and so secure and so seen that I can do anything."

• Illustrates the empowering effect of being loved and the freedom it provides to pursue one's ambitions.