Emma’s Blueprint: 10 Principles That Can Change Your Life

0:09Welcome to Aspire with me, Emma Greed. Over the past 20 years, I've built, run and invested in some incredible businesses. I co-founded a multi-billion dollar unicorn and helped grow companies worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And at the same time, I'm raising four kids right here in Los Angeles. But trust me, that's a long way from where I started. I grew up in a rough neighborhood in East London, one of four sisters raised by a single mom. I've really come a long way and I've learned a lot. But this, this podcasting thing is brand new territory for me. I've built businesses rooted in purpose, but they weren't always my purpose.

0:51It wasn't until I stepped into leadership, mentoring others, guiding teams, that I actually realized what really drives me. Helping people find their own path, their own success, that's what drives me. So when I thought about launching this show, two words kept coming up for me, intention and purpose. That is the heart of Aspire. My intention's really simple, to bring you conversations with some of the most brilliant thought leaders and minds in business, to give you insights, tools, and takeaways to build the life you want on your terms. I want every guest to be the mentor in your head, the voice that pushes you, that inspires you, and that reminds you just how powerful you are.

1:35But if there's one truth I've learned, even when I had to learn it the hard way, it is this. The road to success starts with yourself. It doesn't matter where you come from, who your mentors are, what's held you back, or what you've done wrong. You need a strong belief system that guides everything you do. because when every step you take starts with you, everything becomes possible, especially when you put in the work. And to borrow from one of my favorite mentors, the mentor I have in my head, Oprah Winfrey, it's one of the only things I know for sure. So today I want to take some time with you to break down what that really means, to share the real stuff, 10 key takeaways that have shaped my journey.

2:21Some I wish I'd known sooner, and I'm going to keep it 100 % honest.

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4:59Number one, know what you don't know. Let's be honest, how well do you really know yourself? I'm not just talking about what type of personality you have or what you're good at. I'm asking, do you know what you don't know? What are the things you're not great at? What are the skills that you lack, the areas where you need help? In other words, are you honest with yourself about your weaknesses? We all have them. I'm dyslexic. I find it really hard to read spreadsheets, especially those full of numbers. I have a very short attention span, I hate long meetings, and I really don't like big meetings with more than four or five people.

5:40And yet, every week I need to sit in collection reviews with 40 or 50 people present from all divisions of the business. I know these things, these weaknesses about myself, and I would never be successful if I haven't figured out a way to combat them. I can tell you right now, one of the biggest breakthroughs I had was when I finally admitted I don't know everything. And the next breakthrough I had was when I stopped pretending to everybody else that I did. As with so many women, I've been stuck in the perfectionist trap where I felt like I needed to be great at everything and have all the answers.

6:17The fear of not being good enough or falling short of expectations can be overwhelming. Perfectionism often arises from this desire to avoid criticism or rejection, which is so real when you're out of your comfort zone, just like I am now somewhat. But when you're starting something new and when you're pushing yourself, it really comes up over and over again. I've sat in meetings and I've masked what I didn't know. And I thought for a long time that not being particularly strong with numbers or with finance meant that I should actually never be allowed to run a business. Until that is, until one day I started asking questions, not just to the people I had directly around me, but actively making calls to anyone I thought that might want to chat and help me work for a problem.

7:03I called my agency clients, I called my old colleagues, I spoke to the bosses of friends, I even called competitors, and I started to become someone who would find answers. When I started my first business, I thought I should be able to do it all. I thought being in charge meant having every answer. I micromanaged everything. I thought if I didn't control it, then it would never get done. But you know what? That only created chaos. And the moment I stepped back and trusted the people that I hired, my business exploded. But in reality, what it actually meant was being honest with myself and being crystal clear on what I wasn't good at and what skills I needed to hire for.

7:43It took me a while to get there, but being willing to hire the best people and get out of their way was a breakthrough. Today, if I'm really honest, one of the best parts about my job is finding talent. I love nothing more than bringing the best people from all over the world to work with me. And I lean into what I don't know. I don't despair that they might be more knowledgeable, that they might have more experience, that they might be more articulate or present better than I do. In fact, it's the absolute opposite because surrounding myself with the best people makes me look good and I don't need to go around pretending.

8:19I can double down on what I do uniquely well and what I bring to the table. The key take out here is that you don't need to be an expert at everything. Just make sure that you create awareness of your weaknesses. Don't fake it. Find people that know better than you do and learn to ask the right questions whenever you have the opportunity. And know your strengths and then hire people that are better than you in areas where you're weak and then get out of their way and let them work. In other words, know what you don't know and be in relentless pursuit to ask the right questions. Next, number two, leverage what you've got.

8:59This is a key strategy that changed the trajectory of my career. Leverage is taking one thing, whether it's an opportunity, a skill or even a relationship, and using it to springboard into something bigger. Now, listen, I don't know about you, but I've never had a problem with vision. I've always been able to see into the future and know exactly what was coming down the path for me. But I'd be lying if I said that it had all worked out or that I knew exactly how I was going to get there. And that's why I started making plans shortly before my 30th birthday. So I could really chart how I was going to be successful and what I needed to do to get there.

9:38I ultimately realized that one of the superpowers I have is the ability to leverage. And what I mean by that is that I've made it a habit to take whatever I've had, whatever the situation was, and use it as a springboard to get me to the next place. So let me give you a couple of real examples. I started my career working in a fashion show production company, which sounds very glamorous, but essentially I was building the sets for catwalk shows, which is a completely thankless task. You spend three months developing this beautiful concept alongside a designer and their team. The show goes up and down in seven minutes.

10:13And as the event producer, you're backstage. You don't see any of it, like not a sausage. And you would be taking down your work to restore the venue back to what it was before you started right afterwards. Three months of work, just poof, gone. Meanwhile, everybody else is talking to the press or going off to the next show or the next party that you are completely uninvited to. This was my life for over five years. It might well have been the least rewarding job I've ever had in my life. Or was it? Ultimately, I used that job to understand fundamentally how the fashion business worked. Why were people at the fashion shows?

10:50Well, they were there to buy the collections and create press stories and reviews to publicize the shows. And every single person that attended those shows was a potential good contact for me. Every client who had a show could be useful to me in some way, shape or form. And so when I eventually left that company, not only did I have a lot of contacts that I could leverage, but I also had a reputation that I could leverage. My reputation at that young age wasn't about doing anything dramatically good or different, but I was known as a really hard worker, as someone that had so much passion for the industry and someone that was clearly going to do whatever it took to get to the next stage in her career.

11:30And so I leveraged those things about myself into my next position and ultimately found the client base for my first agency business within those contacts that I'd made. And so the story went on. Those contacts became my clients. Those clients gave me bigger and bigger and bigger projects and opportunities. And eventually when I needed to raise money for my first startup 10 years later, who did I go to? Not a fund or a VC. I didn't know any of those type of people. I went to a client who I had a reputation of delivering excellent work with and a long and trusted working relationship with. And not only was I able to pitch my idea and the potential of an investment, but I also managed to make that person a trusted advisor and someone that would help me throughout the years.

12:15The key takeout here is that it's not always easy to see your path forward. And I have so many people that come to me asking about the next step. How do they get from where they are today to where they want to be? And my simple answer is that you have to be excellent at what you're doing right now, where you are today. The single best way to be noticed and to be able to use the leverage that you might have is for people to notice how good you are right now at what you're doing in this moment. And for you to find ways that you can take what you have today and use those things to springboard you to your next move.

12:52That's leverage and it's really something that all of us can access. Number three, always be yourself. Always be yourself, everyone else is taken. I think it was Oscar Wilde that said that and I love this quote. Depending on what type of person you are, the idea of being yourself is either something that's so obvious or not even a discussion point, or it's something that you'll really struggle with. I've always felt pretty comfortable in my own skin. Until I was about 17, I was doing a lot of work experience. I'd go into different PR agencies in London and I would realize very quickly that I wasn't like the other interns.

13:29I didn't look like the other interns. I definitely didn't speak like the other interns. And I didn't have the lunch budget of these kids, which really, really annoyed me. They'd all go off to these fancy lunches and I was so pissed about it. For a while, I thought the name of the game was to fit in until it came to being chosen for a specific assignment. And I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Quite rudely, one of the account directors said, I'll use her and went on to refer to me as the one who sounded like a Cockney Barrow boy. Now to a lot of American listeners, you won't really understand that, but let me tell you, it is not a term of endearment.

14:03But rather than take huge offense, something inside me was so happy are being chosen to work on this specific account, I just let it slide. Once I had a chance to digest the very shitty comment, I reasoned that for me and in that moment, it was better to stand out, to not change my accent and the way that I was raised to speak. And in that second and from then on, I've really understood what it means to be unapologetically yourself. What I learned as I got older is that all the things that made me stand out in a room at work and in business are the things that became huge points of differentiation for me.

14:38The fact that I dropped out of college and went straight to work meant that I was younger than most of the people that I was working around. And as a result, people really looked after me. I was like the baby. And for a while, that was really good for me. Because I hadn't been trained in attacking a problem through the lens of business school, I would go straight into figure it out mode. Nowadays, we call it test and learn. But back then it was just throw it at a wall and see what sticks. I have tried so many things that haven't worked but you only need to be right once and once things worked I got a reputation for being someone who would make shit happen.

15:15Being a black woman in an all-white office was a great thing for me because I stood out to clients and everyone was constantly asking me for my opinion which at the time I took every opportunity to give where I knew what I was speaking about or not and as I've got older I've understood that it is all my differences that make me who I am and uniquely able to do what I do, to see things the way I see them and to operate the way that only I can. The quote, you might as well be you, everybody else has taken is a great quote because to me, it says that we're all unique, that we can all bring something to the table.

15:48And when you really embrace the idea of being who you are, being yourself, understanding yourself, it's not only freeing, but it becomes like a kind of magic. Being me and leaning into being myself has got me to where I am today. And it is far less exhausting than the alternative. So I choose it and you should choose it for yourself every damn day. Number four, you have to deal with all your old shit. Take it in for a second because I'm going to get super real here. Every single one of us carries baggage. And let's face it, your past can be a heavy weight to bear. For me, it was childhood trauma, a lot of anger, unresolved emotions.

16:30And when you're building something big, whether it's a business, a career, or just your life, those old wounds will catch up to you. At one point in my 20s, I realised that my anger and my unresolved issues were really holding me back. I couldn't keep blaming my childhood or my circumstances for where I was at that moment. If I wanted to move forward, I had to do the hard work of healing. And that meant sitting down, confronting everything and being willing to deal with all of that old shit. I've been in and out of therapy since my late teens. And I honestly believe it's been one of the single most rewarding aspects of my life.

17:08Two years ago, I did the Hoffman process, which is like an intensive course over nine days where you deal with your childhood trauma. I'm someone who finds it very, very difficult to compartmentalize. It's not like I have like a work day and a family part of my day and a podcast part of my day. Everything is everything. It all melds into one thing. And when I'm super pissed off, I can't park it and come into the room a different person for a different project or for a different mood. So the reality is that in order to do all the things I do, I have to deal with the fundamentals. And so will you.

17:41I am so glad that we're living in a time when there's no stigma around therapy for most people. but when I was much younger, there definitely was. As a busy working mum of four, I also struggled to find the time to work on myself and sometimes it can definitely feel overindulgent. But making the time to understand why you do what you do and how you come to those decisions enables you to make changes where you really need to. When you identify something in yourself, if you can pinpoint where it comes from, you can work on it. And even when you start to notice things that aren't about you, that are happening around you, it's an opportunity to look inwards.

18:20I had an amazing therapist that used to say to me, you spot it, you got it, which I think about all the time when I have my little judgy hat on. I said it at the start of today, but you can't be successful in business unless you're successful in life. So working out all your own shit will allow you to move through your life in a far more successful way than if you choose not to. The key take out here, you cannot outrun your past. You can't keep pushing it aside and expect to move forward. If you want to grow, you have to face your demons head on. It's hard, but it's absolutely necessary.

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21:09Number five, take responsibility for your life. So here's a tough one. How much of what happens in your life are you able to take responsibility for? It's a tough question and one worth thinking about. I feel like I was brought up in quite a blamey culture. Nothing was our fault. Everything was about what the neighbour did, what the government was doing, what, you know, anybody else was doing. Everything happening all around was about what somebody else was doing, but it was never about us. It was never our personal responsibility. I grew up in East London, an impoverished part of inner city London.

21:45I went to a really tough school, when I did go to school that is, and I've always been a little bit frustrated that I didn't have a better education. When I got to the London College of Fashion, I went to school with a lot of girls that had been privately educated and they were a hell of a lot smarter than me. And I was very blaming that I hadn't had a similar education and I started to say and tell myself that I would never get through this college class. How could I? Everybody else that's here has had a better start and therefore they'll have a better ending. At this point my mother had moved a couple of hours outside of London and the commute for me to get to college every day was exhausting but more than that it felt unfair.

22:25These certainly weren't the only reasons but they amounted to enough of a reason that I dropped out of college after less than a year. I just didn't think it was for me and I'm not the type of person that wants to come in fourth or fifth or sixth place. So I left. After leaving, it was really hard to get a job. And once again, I was pretty annoyed and ready to point the finger because I just didn't have the type of friends or family that knew anyone to get me into a place that would be useful for work experience and that would be a great opportunity for me. So I started to look outside myself and blame life and my circumstances once again.

23:00Until one day, I watched an episode of Oprah and there she was talking about the power of taking ultimate responsibility for everything and it changed my life forever. Now, it's really important to say that we all start out in different places in life and it's absolutely true to say that many, many people start out with an unfair hand and have to work a hell of a lot harder for things that are just a given for someone else. But if you're like me, if you believe in mindset, if you believe that the stories you tell yourself become your reality, then you'll know that the quickest way to change your trajectory is to take responsibility for yourself.

23:39Another one of my favorite quotes is that if you don't know what to focus on, focus on yourself, which is exactly what I did in the moments after watching that fateful Oprah episode. I was focused entirely on what I was in control of. I took responsibility for the time that I woke up in the morning, for the number of letters that I would write to prospective employers. I took responsibility for following up those letters with a phone call in a timely manner. Sometimes I would even hand deliver letters just because I'd been ignored so many times and I wanted to make sure that they were actually receiving the post.

24:12I worked seven days a week and I opened my eyes to everything that could become an opportunity and when things didn't work out, I told myself that it was my responsibility and I figured out whatever part I might have to play in the things that didn't go my way and even if sometimes I thought I was forcing those reasons, there would be some inkling of truth or some small learning that would mean I didn't fall into the same trap next time. My experience has been that when you're in a downward spiral, taking responsibility in the capacity you have is the single best thing that you can do. Now I'm talking about a particularly early part of my life but when I think about how that translates to what I do now, I think that it's my responsibility to figure out how to make myself happy.

25:00It's my responsibility to work out how to be the best parent to my four kids while I balance my ambition and when I'm exhausted and I'm frustrated and I feel a sense of overwhelm, I know my responsibility is to correct that and figure out a path forward. No one is coming to save you. No one. This was a hard pill for me to swallow. When things went wrong, it was easy to point fingers at other people, at circumstances, at things outside my control. But here's the truth. I am responsible for where I am today, for the good and for the bad. Right, that key take out part again. Taking responsibility means owning your choices.