Oprah Winfrey Interviews Emma Grede on Her Debut Book "Start with Yourself”

25:10And I think that we would do well in society right now if we stopped putting those type of expectations on women. So early on in your career, you're right. When I was an unseasoned CEO, the business was in financial straits. Rather than letting my direct report to know and sharing accountability with them, I internalized the pressure and then shocked everyone when we suddenly needed to cut 15 people from our 16-person team. Not only did I feel like I was going to die of shame, you entice all these people to give up what they have at other companies and join you on a journey, and then you fail them.

25:41So I know taking full responsibility sounds empowering, but it can also feel heavy too. How do you carry accountability without carrying shame when something doesn't work out? Well, you borrow from the boys because here's the thing. Business is business. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't work out, but you can't take it personally. And those boys don't feel any shame about it at all. Not a sausage. Nothing. Not a sausage. Not a sausage. I love that. I love that expression. Not a sausage. But it's really true. And that isn't to say that we don't care deeply about people. When you have to make, you know, decisions that affect people's lives, you should carry that with some intentionality.

26:20but the point is that as women we take these things so personally and we hold them like i did something like you like it's your personal thing yeah yeah when actually it's like this situation didn't work out over here and we see so many men create businesses lose hundreds of millions of dollars for their investors thousands of people the next day yeah literally go out and raise hundreds of millions of dollars the next day and the woman is just like sent down and can never do anything again. It's like, what a disaster. Right? So I actually knew in my head that that wasn't the truth, that actually that was something that we do to ourselves.

26:56And this is what I want to say to women. I think that we have to make this separation of when we're being led by our emotions and what is true. And I know that I'm a good person. I know that I run my businesses well and responsibly. And when something doesn't work out, I go, okay, I'm going to take that learning. I'm going to understand what I'm going to, you know, what I did wrong and I'm going move on and do it differently next time i'm not sitting here going oh lord like how bad a person am i because i'm not so what would your most honest employees say about you as a leader they would say that i have incredibly high expectations that i don't suffer fools that i'm firm but fair nobody's ever surprised by what i have to say oprah ever i have it written across my face.

27:41I'm like, you know, but I think that I'm a very, very clear communicator and I bring people on a journey with me. Nobody's ever like, what's happening here? What are we doing? Because I'm consistent. You know, it's like, I always want the best. I always want more. I'm always going to ask you to go a hundred miles. But in return, you know, I believe that when you hire people, you have like this social contract with them, that it's like, I'm going to ask for so much from you. And in return, I'm going to reward you richly. And we're going to go on a journey together and you're going to get something from this experience.

28:11And when you leave, I'll be the best reference you ever have. But I have very, very, very high expectations on people. I think when you're starting with yourself and you don't know anything about business to begin with, you make a lot of mistakes. Yes, you do. What are the mistakes that you most regret from the beginning that can help someone else listening who's starting with themselves? How long do you have? Because I made every mistake, literally every mistake in this book. And I thought it was important to share those mistakes because I feel like right now we're in this like, you know, social generation where we only put out the best parts of our lives.

28:44That's why I love this book is that you let us see underneath what's happening. And I really do. I think I had a lot of delusions about myself and what type of leader I was. I thought that I should behave like the other people I'd seen in business. And I've realized that I am an emotional woman. I am extremely empathetic. and the best way to lead my companies was not what I had seen. It was actually making my own version and my own style of leadership. And so I really did that. Like I know if somebody breaks up with their partner or has, you know, something happen in their family, like they don't come into work in the same way.

29:23And I felt like I had to lead by example. As a mother, I am out the door every day at five, which means that my staff can be out the door at five if they so choose to be. And so I decided that early on in my career, I was trying to be something that I'm not. And I've kind of settled into being myself. And a lot of that comes with age. You know, as you get older, you get closer to yourself. And I have this sort of relationship with myself and this conversation that goes on in my head. And with a bit of more experience and confidence, I've learned just to just be me. And I'm all right with that.

29:58Well, you know, one of the things I say about you is that you're a person who's been able to take instinct and turn it into a global brand. Is that a gift or is that a strategy or is it both? It's both. And it really is because in the beginning, when I was leading by instinct, I think that a lot of people around me thought I was crazy. And for a little while, so did I. I really thought I'd overextended myself. And there was just this little voice in the back of my head that said, just keep going, keep going, keep going. And sometimes you've got to get past the criticism and past all the mistakes and do a bunch of not so good things to get to the place.

30:38But I'm not scared of the mistakes. And I think that that is the big difference. I almost, I look for them. I look for like where it's hard, where it's difficult, where am I scared? and then I push up against that because I know that's where all the good stuff is coming. Where did that Skims idea come from? That is one of the great ideas, let me tell you. I would love to tell you that it's mine. It absolutely was not. But then that's part of what I'm good at. When I see something good, you know, I jump on. I think it was Sheryl Sandberg that says, when you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask which seat.

31:10And I just was like, I'm in. I was like, let's go. Because it was one of those things that when you saw Kim's vision, Kim Kardashian, you couldn't unsee it. And you knew that that was going to be a hit. And so for me, I just was like, yes, I understand this space. I know how to create this product and I'm going all in. Well, you know what's interesting to me that there is ambition and then there is ambition with intention, you know, obviously. I talk a lot about intention and there, I think the intention actually aligns the ambition and gives it a purpose. So you're known for creating and partnering these successful businesses.

31:48And I have found that that aligned ambition brings about an intentionality. And I want to know if you have found a difference between building from purpose and building from ego. That is a fantastic question. And the short answer is yes.

32:11Because I was so poor, so I tried it the other way. I needed the money. You know, I'm going to be honest because I do think that I've done things in my career where it was just like, I just need to do this thing. Yeah. Because I just need this money. There was no alignment. No, alignment, my backside. There was no alignment. Yeah, yeah. Not even a sausage. Not a sausage alignment. And let's be honest, right? Because there's two big, really big, important things to talk about here. Being able to work within the realm of your purpose is a privilege. Because for most people, that's not a choice. They're waking up, they're doing something that they don't really like to pay the bills.

32:48And so I don't want to sit here and smugly say, oh yeah, you know, I made this big decision. I was given the opportunity because I started work so early. I never went to college. I started in the workplace early. So I had a bit of a head start. I made a name for myself. I had a lot of luck. I'd like really doubled down on that luck. And so by the time I got to my early 30s, I had choice. And that choice allowed me to then say, do you know what? I'm going to choose the project and I'm going to choose something that aligns with how I see the world and the type of woman that I want to be. So that's the first thing.

33:20What I will say is I think it's a little bit of a slippery slope when we start to talk about women and purpose as it relates to business. And this is the reason. When we talk about these stats that women get 3 % of venture capital, right? And a measly amount given how ingenious and innovative and brilliant we are when it comes to running businesses. Sometimes we might have to take a little step back and understand in the spirit of start with yourself what part we have to play in that equation. Oftentimes what I see are women will pitch impact over profit. Now make no mistake, the point of business is to make money.

33:59Money, yes. And you have to make money before you start talking about how you're going to give money away. So when I get decks from female founders and I'm six pages in and no one's told me about the money, but you've told me how you're going to look after the community. I'm like, what is happening here? So we have to separate those things. I have always put social good at the center of my businesses once they were profitable. Because when you have a profitable company, you can hire people, pay them the best money. You can do community initiatives. You can give away to nonprofit, but you can't do any of that without a profit.

34:33And women don't want to talk about money. And when I have women, like even super successful women, on my podcast that come on, they've sold their companies for a billion dollars. They don't want to talk to me about money. And so I want to say we have to, part of this idea of what it means to start with yourself is to start with the money. It's to put the money at the center of the idea. Because that's why you're in business. You're in business. That's why you're in business. But we also need to say to ourselves, do you know what? You can do deeply critical, impactful work and care about the compensation.

35:05You can care about money and you can care about a lot of other things too. We don't need to separate the things. We just need to get comfortable with the idea that we need to make money. Right. We have to take a break. Up next, Emma Greed takes questions from our listeners who are business owners, including twin sisters whose deal with Emma on Shark Tank turned their boob solutions brand into a$100 million business. Find out how next. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. I'm here with Emma Greed. She's famous for being a serial entrepreneur. We're on my front porch to talk about her new book, Start With Yourself, A New Vision for Work and Life.

35:49So you have done things just to make money. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just to underline double score. Yes. Just to make money. Yes. And I can't say that I won't ever do that again. I just have greater choice now. Greater choice now. I love that answer. You write about two women, Taylor and Casey. Twin sisters who were the founders of a company called Cakes Body, and they secured a deal with you on Shark Tank. During the pandemic, twin sisters Taylor Capuano and Casey Sarai took just$10 ,000 and turned their side gig. Washable, reusable inserts. into a must-have brand for women, Cake's Body, washable, reusable nipple covers that many women swear by.

36:33Now with partner Emma Greed... 300K for 10 % final offer. Okay, done! They've expanded into a$100 million full line of boob solutions, helping women feel more confident in their skin. Casey and Taylor! Hey, ladies. Hello. We're on our app. So good to see you. We're, like, so emotional watching you guys. There's so much charisma, inspiration. We're just so happy to be here. Yeah. What was it about Emma that caused you to accept that offer and be excited about it? Yeah. Well, you know what? When we went on Shark Tank, we thought we were about a year into our business. We had started it from really nothing.

37:18We were going viral on TikTok. We were doing about a million dollars in revenue a year. And we thought it'd be great exposure. We weren't really expecting to do a deal with the shark. And then we found out about a week before that Emma was going to be a guest, which was the universe answering our prayers. And going in together, too, like, you can't really talk about the deal. So we had to go in with the deal that we would accept from the sharks and then the deal that we would accept from Emma the shark. And it was very different because we knew how much value Emma could bring to the table. And I mean, there's a really long list of why we were so grateful to do the deal with Emma.

38:03But behind closed doors, she's like, what you see here times a thousand. And you just can't fake authenticity. I mean, I felt that reading her book. I felt like Emma is in my face, in my ear, in my head. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Yes. Well, one of our favorite stories is when we first closed our deal with Emma, we gave her a call and she called us right back and she was like, I'm so sorry. I was just with Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates, but I'm so excited to talk to you guys. And it just means a lot. Like the same energy she brings with you, Oprah, she gives to us and just everyone in her orbit. So we're very grateful.

38:40So what did you see in them? What was it you saw? You know, and it's so interesting because you do just catch a vibe. First of all, I loved the product and I knew immediately that there was a market for this product. But sometimes you invest in the people and that was one of those times because, you know, you're on TV so you get this millisecond to make a decision. And I just looked at these two and I was like, they will be successful whatever it is that they do. They'd taken their own money. They had corporate jobs. They'd saved a little bit of money. They took that money and they did and created an innovation That's very different from writing a business plan, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

39:14They made a product that didn't exist in the market and that shows a certain tenacity. So to me, I was investing in that tenacity, not Cake's body. It just so turns out that Cake's body's a winner. But that's really what it was. How has Cake's grown since teaming up with Emma? Oh my gosh, when we met Emma, we were doing about$5 million of business that year. We have grown with Emma to$100 million and really we said on the show and we say our mission is to do what Spanx did for butts but for boobs and really redefine this whole category of how women are dressing today and it was really Emma who worked with us to really establish like we have this product idea but how do we really make this like a movement that lasts in the culture and complements how women want to dress how women want to feel they don't want to be worried about what bra they're going to wear They just want to be able to walk out the door and go tackle whatever amazing things they have to do that day.

40:12So from five million to a hundred million. Pretty good, I would say. I think the thing when someone like Emma tells you this is going to be big, it gives you permission to think that for yourself. And I just think and you don't need, you know, someone to say that to you. but it almost allowed us to think bigger and dream bigger and think of this. This isn't just a product. This isn't just like a great product idea or a great single product that's going viral on social media. What if this becomes something much bigger? It's just like really changed the trajectory of where we were going, what we believed for ourselves.

40:52And it's just so fun. Like Emma's hilarious and fun and amazing to be around. Thank you, Casey and Taylor, and good luck with those cakes. Thank you. Wish you were there. Bye. Bye, guys. I mean, these two are incredible because I have a lot of business investments. And what I'll say about them, it's the relationship has formed because the way they interact with me. And I will say this so many times to different people I invest in. When you have a mentor or when you have somebody who's put money in your business, the way that you choose to work with them will say everything about the longevity of your relationship.

41:28And what they do is come to me with ideas and things to bet. They're never like, what should we do next? Like, which way should we go? They have a few scenarios and they say, here's the pros and cons and what in your experience have you seen? And that's the way that you work with a good mentor. You don't wait for them to, you know, spoon feed you information. You've got to be proactive. And so there's, you know, when they had$5 to$10 million in sales, they were so hungry and they were charting a path to 50. They weren't waiting for me to say, guys, this is a hundred million dollar business. They had that ambition for themselves.

42:03They just needed a little bit of experience and some expertise to really like catapult the business. Wow. Well, Dana is now joining us from Los Angeles. She's been in business for herself for the last eight years. Hi, Dana. Hi. Hi, hi, hi. You have questions for Dana? Questions for Emma? Yes. First, thank you so much for having me. So I am the owner of the The Dino Book Collection is a home luxury lifestyle brand launched in 2019, 2020 hit the ground running. It was a pandemic. I was one of like those pandemic brands. So everyone was home ordering my brand slippers, pajamas, candles, all those things.

42:38Right. You know, it was a very unique first year for me that same year. Beyonce featured me in her black parade as well as I was featured on Good Morning America. So like I said, a very unique first year. So then as time went on, you know, things like slowed down, but I was still being profitable. still everything was steady. But my question as a small business owner, when do you know when to scale, especially when you make your mark as a small business owner? Yeah, that's a question. You know, that's how people know me. And then I know when I do scale, it's going to be a bigger overhead. I don't know if I'll have as much say in everything.

43:15So that's just my fear. I know my brand can be so much bigger, but is that thing of kind of being comfortable and being grateful, like we're still doing great because my beginning was so strong. So it's kind of like, when do I know it's time to take that leap? Or does every small business need to take that leap? Well, I love that you asked the question and you frame it in that way, because the truth is we live in a moment where we're so bombarded by these ideas of everything being big, like everything has to be a unicorn. And I actually talk in my book a lot about the women that I'm surrounded with that just have these incredible small businesses that look after them and a couple of employees and do really great.

43:58But to go back to your question about the timing of it all, I would take a step back and ask yourself, what is it that you really want? How do you want to live? Isn't that the most important question ever? Ever. There's never a more important question. I was going to say the same thing. Do you want to be big? Right. Do you want to be bigger? Because you just said in your thing, we're actually doing pretty good. So is that that comfortability where you want to be and where you want to stay? And it's back to Oprah's question of me earlier, what is ego and what is your intention? Yes. And I think that you might well answer the question saying, you know what?

44:32I do want to be big. I do want to transition from where I am right now. And that is perfectly fine because we're in this golden age right now where you can take advantage of what's happening in AI and really look at your business and say, how do I make optimizations without having to take on this like crazy overhead? When you have a company like mine and you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, changing things and getting people to work in a new way is really hard. But you're just you. So you can actually start right at the beginning and decide that this is the way your business is going to grow.

45:05And there's a lot of optimizations that you can make across what you're doing, from logistics to infrastructure, from finance to accounting, inventory, that you can say, you know what, I don't need to hire somebody to do any of that. But it all has to start with yourself, excuse the pun, to take that step back first and decide what is it that I want, and then think of untraditional ways to light a fire under what you're doing. Absolutely. And you can ask AI for the way as well. It will tell you. Do you have an answer for that, Dana? Do you have an answer for what do you really want? I mean, I have found in life, no matter what the situation, that is the most important question.

45:46And when you sit with yourself and you have an answer that comes from the purity of yourself, what do I really want? And if you make the decision that you're going to make it bigger and grander, you also have to make that decision out of why you want it to be bigger. Is it to prove something to yourself? Is it to prove something to other people? Is it because you feel that, you know, going bigger is going to help more people? you know, whatever the answer is, but you've got some soul searching to do for yourself, I think. For sure. Yeah. That's a great place to start. That's a great place to start.

46:18Start with yourself. Thank you. Thanks, Dana. Good luck. So nice to meet you. You are such a powerful force, as I was saying in the beginning. And, you know, I worked so intensely for so many years. It's what Michelle Obama described in her book Becoming. She was saying the velocity was so high. When I was doing daily shows, two shows a day for 25 years, the velocity was so high. I couldn't even remember, you know, at the end of the week, all the people that I talked to. So I'm wondering, how do you restore yourself? What does restoration look like for you? And do you have to have it in order to keep going?

46:59Yeah, I really do. How important is it to get rest? It's a 10 important. I prioritize myself really highly, you know, and again, as a wife and a mother, like I am high up on my list of to-dos and I take it as part of the work, you know. And when I say that, it's not like self-care, you know, like a massage or a mani-pedi. It really is the slowing down and the quieting of my mind. I have a house in Malibu. And when I go to Malibu, that for me is like the kind of simmering down. I get like onto the PCH and I'm like driving by the ocean and I feel the temperature coming down. And I have this like visualization, like when I'm opposite the ocean of like all the things that I want and I need and I'm trying to do like coming into me.

47:55But I'm really serious about taking time for myself. And again, maybe sometimes like a little bit frowned upon for a mother of four, you know, that level of sort of selfishness. But I don't really apologize for it because I need that. I need to take time and a moment for myself to be good for everyone else. In order to be a better mother. Yeah. Yeah. I recently read that you started a meditation practice. I did. And how has that impacted you? It's, I mean, in the most fundamental way, it's the biggest thing that I've done, maybe in my adult life, I think, is to take meditation seriously. I've always tried, you know, I've downloaded a little app and, you know, I've done it for 10 days and then I've gone off.

48:37I learned transcendental meditation with a teacher. I may have been influenced. So I, surprise. So I got a teacher and she came to my house for five days on a run and, you know, gave me my mantra. and it just stuck. Now, I have to be really honest. I don't get to the 20 minutes twice a day. But I do usually do 15 to 20 minutes most mornings. I'd say five days a week. And it works for me because I always thought about like taking this time out of my day. And I think it puts time in my day. It leaves me with space and clarity. And it also reminds me. It makes everything smoother. Everything smoother.

49:15It makes everything smoother. And because, you know, still somewhere deep down in me, I have this, you know, angry 10-year-old, I can speak to her and I can say, here's a better way to deal with the day. Here's a better choice for you. And, you know, she's your friend and she's my friend too, Diane von Furstenberg. She has this lovely thing that she says, you know, the most important relationship you'll ever have. Is with yourself. Is the relationship you have with yourself. And I really believe that. So I try, like, all the time to get a little bit closer to myself and to understand, like, Why am I making certain decisions?

49:49Why am I feeling a certain way? Is that the truth? After a quick break, Emigre shares a personal story about how she manifested a dream she had as a little girl. I love this story and I love manifestations and why she believes her dyslexia has become a superpower. Stay with us. We're back with Business Mogul, an author of her first book, Start With Yourself, Emigre. If you know a friend who owns a business, or thinking of starting one, you're definitely going to want to send them the link to this episode. And while you're at it, hit subscribe to the Oprah podcast. Costs you nothing. I love this moment in the book where you, as a little girl, had drawn pictures, the Christmas tree and the mantle.

50:37And then one day you're sitting with your baby, your first child and you look around and the picture that you had drawn when you were how old? Seven, eight, nine, ten. Is the picture that you're living in. So describe that for us. To the T. So I come home, I had my first baby, Grey. I was about 31 years old and I'd bought my first property in East London, beautiful townhouse, very different from how I grew up. And it had these giant sash windows. It's December 20th because I gave birth on my mother's birthday of course i would and i get back home holding little gray and you know i shed my first tear and jen says isn't it amazing like we have this beautiful little baby and i said no what is amazing is that i drew this exact vision with the christmas tree and with the mantle and with the uh sash windows and i i can't tell you like i'm not a good drawer yeah i drew it exactly as it was and i didn't even know about like 1970s danish dash you know like sideboards That's not how I was raised, funnily enough.

51:40That was a Jens purchase. But I just couldn't believe it because it was exactly as I'd envisaged what it would be to have this insane, beautiful family Christmas. And there I was with the baby and the husband and the house and the tree and the window. And I just thought, I can't actually explain this. But it was one of those moments, and there's probably been a couple in my life where I was like, oh, life is actually magic. Like, it's completely magic. I make that happen. I love that moment so much because I had a moment like that. I had gone to a friend's house early on in my career and she was like the richest person I knew and she had these six trees in her yard.

52:18I went, oh my God, six trees. And one day I was, if I ever get some money and I can buy my own house, I'm gonna have six trees. And one day I was having coffee in the kitchen and I looked out and I saw the six trees in the kitchen. And when you walk outside, there were hundreds of trees beyond the six trees. So I realized I had somehow manifested that for myself. And in that moment where you have drawn the picture as a little girl, and now you're sitting in the picture looking at the mantle that you had drawn that you don't even know where that came from as a little girl, what did that teach you about dreams and manifestation and being able to bring on a future that you weren't even aware could come?

53:03It really, and I can see, I remember the feeling so clearly. I was like, you can do anything. And in that moment, because I had a little baby and my company was my baby at that point as well. And I remember thinking, this company won't survive without me there. If I have to take time to spend on this baby, that thing will disappear. And that was the moment everything came together and I was like, no, no, you can do all of this. You can have all of this stuff. you just have to work for it. That's when you realize if you could see it, you can achieve it. A hundred percent. I just knew it. I was like, I'm going to figure out the way to pull these two things together.

53:42And you know when you have a baby of a little Moses basket? And I was like, I'm just going to take the baby with me. I'm going to pick up that basket and that kid's coming to the office because I can't let the other baby go. But it was the fusion of like, this is going to work now because I've seen it, I've imagined it, and I'm just going to imagine the next stage of it. That's the beginning of teaching you about vision. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. One of the reasons why I think Start With Yourself is going to be such a compelling and impactful book for so many women is because you didn't take the ordinary path.

54:13I mean, dropping out of school at 15 years old. And I know I have other friends who didn't finish school or didn't go to college and lived with that. I'm not good enough. I'm not quite as good as the other people. I wonder if other people in the room are smarter than me. and you are always in these places where women are usually not seen and certainly not so boldly heard. What do you take with you into that space, knowing that you didn't come from the same kind of backgrounds, you didn't come from the same kind of education? How did you overcome that? So the truth is, there's always a tiny little piece of it that is there.

54:54But when I was a kid, my mom would always say to me, you know, Emma, you're not better than anyone, but nor is anyone better than you. And I really believed her. I was like, nobody's better than me. And so when I was a kid and, you know, I went to do these like fancy work placements of these like, you know, lady this and lord that, these companies in London, I never thought they were better than me. I thought they had a better education. I thought maybe they had, you know, cuter clothes or a nicer car, but I didn't believe that they were better than me. And that's just my default. And then when you get into the world, because I'm a person that was like in it, you know, I worked all the jobs.

55:30I had a paper route and then I worked in the deli and then in the shops. And I really like did all the jobs. Well, didn't that paper route teach you so much? Oh, my gosh. Oprah, the morning. The morning, the discipline. I never understood the morning. I used to see all these people and I'd be like, what are they doing? Where are they going? To work, Emma. Like they're getting up and they're going to their job on a construction site or in a cafe. and I was like, I just want to be one of those people that gets up every day and has a thing and does it and does it with consistency because that wasn't how I was raised.

56:01I had my mom. She was that brilliant, brilliant role model for that, but it wasn't what was around me. And so I just thought I'm going to choose better, but I never doubted myself. You know, I never had, I'm not a people pleaser. I'm not somebody that is looking for outside validation. You were encoded. You were encoded. I'll take it. You're encoded. I'm hoping so. Yes, absolutely. And the reason why you wanted to write the book, yeah, was what? I wanted to do it because I feel like I am surrounded by people every day. You know, they slide into my DMs or they come and see me at a conference. And women always imagine that I've found like the 25th hour in the day.

56:43And I'm like, no, I have not. And they're not asking like, how did I do it? They're like, how can I do it for myself? Yeah, yeah. And so I wanted to have a level of honesty. There's a lot of business books out there, a lot of great business books, but not really many that I've written by. Women. Women, 15-year-old school leavers with four kids. Yes, yes. And so I was like, there's another way, but it really requires some way of thinking. You know, I wrote the book backwards. I wrote about building a brand and starting a company. And then I was like, why can I do all of that stuff? Oh, because I've learned to control my emotions.

57:20And then I was like, yeah, but what do you have, Emma? It's like, oh, I have vision. Yeah. I had a story for my life. But it also started with that darn paper route. Right? Yeah. Right from the very beginning. From the very beginning. And so when I put the book together in that very dyslexic back to front way. Oh, that's right. We didn't mention your dyslexia. I have severe dyslexia. But, you know, I think it's important to say that just because the experience of writing the book was really, really difficult for me. But I did it because I knew that there would be a lot of people, especially women, that would say, oh, I felt like that.

57:52I've been there before. And I think that there is another way. And you actually consider your dyslexia a superpower. It is a superpower. You know, it really is a superpower because I don't see obstacles. I'm such a straightforward person. And because the problem is probably too hard for me to work out, I have to find a shortcut. And I do that all the time. I do that in business. I go like, there's an easier way. So your dyslexia takes the form of what? You see things backwards? You see things? I see, like, in every, like, I'm like the worst type of dyslexic. I see things inverse, absolutely. I can't read numbers.

58:27I can't, as soon as you put numbers on a spreadsheet, forget about it. Really? Says the CEO. Says the CEO. Yeah. I really, and what's interesting is I can see, once it's explained to me, I can see the patterns in the numbers. So if you, if, you know, and I hire fantastic CEOs to work alongside me, If they tell me what's happening, I can tell you what's going to happen. So I see the patterns in the numbers and how things link together, but I need it explained to me. I can't grasp it from just looking at the numbers. And so then there was that period of time in school where you didn't know it was dyslexia.

58:58There was no word for it. And so you just think that you're not smart as the other kids. I just thought I wasn't smart and I thought this place is not suited to me. I thought I was wasting my time at school. And I knew that when I was in these work placements, I was getting so much because I'm a superstar worker. I would turn up early. I would leave late. I would do whatever it took. And, you know, I'm a people person. I'm an in-person person. So I made myself indispensable. And it was a great time because that was back in the day when you could work for free, you know, and companies took advantage of free workers.

59:29But for me, that was a magical time because I would never have got my foot in the door otherwise. Yeah. Do you believe that every person is, even if they start with themselves, is cut out to become a business person or business woman? Is it for everybody? No. Yeah. I don't believe that. I think that, and I don't think anything should be for everybody because I think the beauty of the world is that we're all different and we all have a different role to play. and I can see people within my organization and what is meant for them. And not everybody needs to be an ambitious little monster. Not everybody needs to want to push things to the edges every day.

1:00:09But if you do, and if you're a woman, I want you next to me. And I want you to read this book because we're in a place and a space in time where there's a desperate need for more people. For women in power. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. To see women in power. We need it so badly. And I wake up thinking about it and I go to sleep thinking about it. And when I meet women who are starting to understand that they can have some power, I want to be the person that says, like, come with me. Come and see how this can be done and be a model for it. And I look at you. And the reason I've been so fascinated with you for the longest time is because you have this unbelievable commercial success.

1:00:52and yet everything that you do is wrapped in integrity. It's not like laid on the top. It's like in the thing, like it's made of integrity. And that is so unusual in this world and that's what I want to do. And so I think that we have to be models for people and I want to be that type of person. I want like a million little Emmas, like girls that came from the hood, that didn't have the education, that figured out their superpowers and that went for it. That's what I would like to do. Wow. Well, you are quite the force. I've never seen anybody like you. I really haven't. And so for a woman who appears to have it all, but not all at once, as you talk about in the book, and I've said so many times, how would you describe, Emma, a well-lived life?

1:01:38What do you think that is? Oh, that's a good question. Because at this time in my life, you know, and I think it would have changed throughout my life, right now it's like really understanding the power that I have. And it's really choosing carefully. Because you can do a lot of things, you know, and I have a lot of options. And everybody's coming at you from every, yeah, this is the time. I've seen it. I've seen the cycles. You're hot for a second until you're not, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think that for me, a well-lived life right now looks like choosing carefully. Like, where am I putting my energy?

1:02:19Who am I spending time with? What choices am I going to make? And how do I make the best of myself? You know, like, that's what I think now. That's a well-lived life. I think you're doing that. And I thank you so much for coming all the way here to be on my porch. Emma's new book is called Start With Yourself. I can't say enough about it. It's a new vision for work and life, but also a manual if you are starting a business and starting to look at how you can better yourself in the business. It's a good reminder that a well-lived life actually starts with you. And my thanks to you, Casey and Taylor, and Dana for Zooming in, and I'll see you all next time.

1:03:01Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.