Do you have "Emma Grede Disease"? Unpacking founder culture's biggest myth.

0:01Hi and welcome to the Curve podcast. Today, what are we speaking about Emma?

0:04Soph: Today we're talking about what social media has branded the Emma Grede disease and deep diving into ambition, business development and building a career in today's creator economy. I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-television and radio producer who was very sick and tired of not understanding how to build my wealth, understand the economy, so we started this podcast. And my name is Emma Louise Boynton, a writer, newly published author and broadcaster focused on engendering the sort of conversations we're typically taught not to have around sex, power, and money. But before we get into today's episode, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor.

0:39Building a track record as a KiwiSaver provider takes time. And the real test is whether they can keep delivering returns year after year after year. Find out more about Generate's track record and see their disclosures in the podcast show notes. And remember that track record does not guarantee future returns.

0:57Soph: can you ask me if I'm in the red or green please sure yeah are we recording so we're recording I was going to text you I was just to say please make sure you ask me I was thinking overnight I'm just going to spare her this and not ask are you in the red or green this week Emma well so I'm in the green I've just signed some big brand deals and got paid for something I felt so Don't you think The feeling Of doing something like that Whether it's a financial order Whether it's looking At what you've spent The feeling is unparalleled You feel It's like cleaning your room It's like when I have a clean house And I'm just so smug And I feel like I can do Whatever I want Because I've done the thing That I've been avoiding Anyway so Are you in the red Or are you in the green It was your birthday Oh my god It was my birthday guys I'm desperate to talk about How good my birthday was I had such a good birthday.

1:57I would say highlights of the day. Yeah. Went for a lovely brunch. Stunning. And was booked in for a massage by my darling boyfriend. Bless his heart. I had a gorgeous picnic in the park with some friends. And then went and heard Lorde play live at All Poises with five friends. And it was so fun. Oh, my God. I love that. It was honestly, it was really, it was such a long day with so many different things. And it was just so great.

2:19Soph: If my boyfriend here on is listening, it's a really nice birthday gift to get a massage and have breakfast at home. So just if he listens to this, for my birthday next year, I would like all of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just think there's something about a birthday and people just make it. Yeah, like even when I was in the massage, so I was going to this picnic afterwards. You know how admin it is to go to the supermarket and buy food for 10 people? I was like, oh, how annoying. Got out of the massage and he'd gone and bought all the food for the picnic. I was just like, you are honestly a dream.

2:51You're such a dream. It was the best. and also I got a really cute present. Don't I look so organized and businesswoman with my new watch on? It is very professional. It's giving business, bitch. It feels like an engagement ring. I keep being like, I'll just shift the time. I'll just get my left hand out. There we go. I'm going to just, I love it. I'm so successful. It's really good. Thank you.

3:14Soph: It's very, very, it's a very grown up present. It does sort of feed into today's topic, I will say. Yeah, I was going to say, this is about like partnership and like, you know, who you choose to be with. There's as much a business decision as it is a romantic personal decision. As Emma Greed discusses in length in her book, Start With Yourself, which we have both imbibed over the weekend. There's so many places that I want to go with this book. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. Today's conversation, so Emma and I have been discussing how interesting it is that there are so many people kind of popping up thinking about starting businesses.

3:49there's a real trend around how cool it is to be an entrepreneur like there's been a real shift in I would say public perspective on the idea of what people want to do as a career I've noticed it myself even in the last two years the idea of saying like oh I'm a founder or I started a business holds this real cultural cool factor that it didn't used to so yeah so on that point I think

4:13Soph: is a really interesting one so i actually have to say a few years ago when i was 26 27 i put on my like vision board i want to be a founder now i didn't know what kind of founder i didn't know what it entailed i didn't know how to start a business i'd never been exposed to business but i was like i wanted to be a founder i was like so interesting because i never thought that at a young age where did that come from i have no idea i think i used to go i mean i still go to lots of events but i used to go to i used to like volunteer at so many events and go to like every feminist business everything that London every conference and live event that London had you bet I was even there but I was a volunteer he was in the front row 10d taking notes I was actually so bless her I was like so nerdy and keen and I think I just started going to lots more events where I would hear from um women founders who I found so inspiring I loved this idea of just being in control of your own career I'd always been freelance in journalism but I wanted to own something and create something myself I just didn't know what founder actually entailed so it was very much again I guess at a kind of younger age I was attracted to the visage of founder without really understanding what it actually meant so it kind of feeds in I guess my own attraction to the like entrepreneurial approach to one's career probably does speak to a lot of things we're going to talk about today but one thing I wanted to just highlight is I keep seeing on social media this term emigre disease you know how Instagram is like a little bit behind TikTok and I'm not on TikTok.

5:40Soph: So I think it like emerged on TikTok first and then I obviously get the direct statement. I got this woman. So founder Jacqueline Johnson, she created this video reflecting on this term and she explained basically that we're constantly seeing success being portrayed by women on podcasts with their private jets, their expensive clothes, who've built their businesses after years, after decades of hustle and are now in this age of kind of building their public profile. They've got podcasts. They're doing big talks. They've all been on Diary of a CEO. They've all been on Diary of a CEO. That feels like that's the kind of like the beginning.

6:13Soph: They begin to get their momentum. They go on Diary of a CEO and then they're like, right. I only heard it in the great after her interview with Stephen Bartlett, which is most like, I know Vic had obviously, she'd followed her for a long time and lots of other people were like weird that you hadn't heard of her. But for me, a lot of these people were introduced by Stephen Bartlett, which is embarrassing. Stephen Bartlett propels them onto this media stage. But so this woman, Jacqueline Johnson, she was basically explaining how we're kind of getting so used to seeing these women on our feeds daily and seeing their kind of very kind of gilded life that they granted have built themselves.

6:46Soph: But we're seeing them kind of at the not the end point of business, but at the point of like peak success where they've done the hard behind the scenes hustle over years. But what that is doing is almost kind of indoctrinating us into thinking that success equates to the private jet, the tons of money, the big house. but we're kind of missing that piece of the hard work and the business building that it took to actually get these things and because there is so much of this kind of content it's encouraging people to focus on the aesthetic of success rather than actually building the business it takes to acquire it maybe we can play a quick clip of the videos let's talk about emma green disease the idea is that all of these female founders want to be like emma green as an archetype of what they need to be in order to be successful.

7:31Soph: I'll grow on TikTok, break this down by the psychology behind it. And it's called availability heuristic. Here's what it means. The mind goes to what is familiar. And if we are constantly seeing success being portrayed by women with podcasts, women on private jets, women shopping at Air Maid, women in expensive clothes, our brain associates that shortcut type of content with being successful. It's essentially a mental shortcut. And because there's such high volume of that type of content in this sphere, we immediately think that is the only thing that's going to make us successful or mean that we're successful.

8:08Soph: I'm a female founder with a podcast and a private jet. Just kidding. I don't have a private jet. So I get it. And I've gone down this path too. But then I started to realize the women that I actually admire and whose success I really look to are barely on social media. Talking about Emily Weiss, Catherine Power, Jen Rubio. These are women who have built incredible companies, have multi-million slash billion dollar wealth, and we never see or hear about them. And if we do, it's about their foundations and the work they're doing or their business news. Recently, Anne Malam, who founded SolidCore, sold it for multi-million dollars, is obviously very well posted that true success is actually being off social media.

8:50Soph: The end of the day, that is like the goal we should all be striving for is spending less time online and more time offline with people we love, doing things we like, and enjoying this time on earth. I am obviously ruining on every single female founder, whether you're on a private jet or you're not, right? But the reality is, is I do think we need to have a reframe of what success actually looks like. Success could be having a healthy business where you don't overwork yourself, you don't trust out you have time to focus on your health your friend god forbid hobbies but we'll never associate that look or feel of success because we don't see it every single day being fed to us private jets fancy outfits all these things aside let's start to rewire our own brains of what success can look like we can free ourselves from this thought that we are only successful if dot dot dot what is your initial thought on that video oh there's so many things i think about that I do think there is a degree of truth to that.

9:47Soph: I think that we are so overexposed to the highlight reel of people's lives because of social media that it creates, I think sometimes it can create a misalignment with regards to our goal, what we think we want. We want to aspire, you know, to have the shiny podcast, to have the public profile. But so I do think it's really easy to be seduced by the idea of success that we constantly are exposed to online. obviously everything online is in little snippets we're getting little highlight reels that being said I also think there is a lot of amazing content like I think people like Cody Sanchez who I love and sort of hate she makes people quite anxious but I love Cody Sanchez Emma Greed offer like really good business advice as well I mean I say Grace Beverly is kind of the UK's I put into that kind of camp although she makes me less anxious but I think they offer really good business advice and also do make business feel accessible whilst I do think these women like occupying a more public role in our like social media lives is not a bad thing I can totally see how more and more people are being seduced by this idea that success equates to the material the aesthetic of success without actually thinking about what it takes to get there what do you think I think business success is very different depending on what you want and what you're trying to achieve and what I love about Emma Greed's book and the way that she talks about business is that if you want an extraordinary life or an extraordinarily successful career, you have to put an extraordinary amount of effort into getting there.

11:16And I really think that we all need to be more aware of the different types of businesses and career success that there are and actively choose what you're going after. Because not a lot of people want to be as wealthy or successful as emigre because they don't want to put in the amount of work to get there also

11:36Soph: sacrifices that it takes i mean she talked about time with your family time with your friends time just chilling out like you know it takes over her whole life there's no such thing as balance she's really open about that um but i think that what we are missing in this conversation is that there's various different types of businesses that are successful you can have a lifestyle business that pays you enough to take out say 60 000 pounds a year and that's great and that works for you and And you're happy with that if you take investors on and you grow a business that is needing to return 10x. It's a very different proposition and it means that the effort you put in is very different.

12:13But I think that what perhaps is being missed in a video like that is, or maybe the message that's being missed between what people see as a successful founder is, yeah, the story of what you need to get to being someone that has a private jet is spoken about. very candidly in Emma Greed's book and what Grace Beverly talks about with her content, Cody Sanchez, they are open about the hustle and the drive that is required to be that successful. They're relentless in telling us how much it takes. But I think it's important because I think that if you just see snippets like what we see online, people assume you start a business and that is where you get to.

12:53And it's going to events,

12:54Soph: it's looking nice. Can I ask you a question about this? Because this is something that I've actually been curious to know your answer to all weekend as we've been thinking about this. In that video, she mentioned something that a friend and I were talking about the other day with regards to success. We oftentimes, because of social media, we equate success with visibility. And you see people like, you know, Emma Greed, Cody Sanchez, who having built business success are now seeking to build a kind of very media forward type of success. They are building podcasts, they are becoming more visible.

13:23Soph: So they are on their platform of success that's already been built, they are now seeking more visibility. So Emma Green talks a lot in her book about wanting to write this book and have her podcast as a way of mentoring lots and lots of women around the world. So visibility has become a kind of key currency to her now. Now I had a conversation with a friend of the day who is a serial entrepreneur, super successful, really amazing. And she was saying she cannot understand that mentality. She was just like, success is being able to not go into hiding, but to be able to be behind the scenes, to no longer have to like pimp yourself out online, to not have to have a podcast, to not be super front facing.

13:59Soph: For her, success is being able to just go behind the scenes and just run her companies without having to be the face of everything. What does success look like for you? Like, is visibility something that's important to you? Or does success long term actually, for you, mean getting to be more behind the scenes with huge amounts of money and business success without having to be front facing? I've chosen to go into a media space. So I have to be on mic in front of the camera. And I'm a Leo. I love it. I love the attention. I love talking. I love being able to share and present. And for me, this has always been a dream because I've worked as a producer for a long time behind the mic and I never had the confidence to be on the microphone.

14:43And when we first started the curve, I was searching for months to try and find someone else to be on the microphone with Vic because I just didn't see myself as someone that had anything to offer value-wise on screen. I was a producer. I wanted to amplify creators or semi-celebrities and I didn't see myself as someone that would really be valuable in that setting. So I was interviewing a whole lot of people who already had profiles to be almost like the me and the dynamic between Vic and I. And I think the best business decision I ever made was knowing that actually, even though I don't have a platform and I'm not a celebrity, I can ask questions and I'm curious and Vic and I are friends.

15:27So being able to have that dynamic was actually the best thing ever for the curve. And also because you're talking about money, I think when you put your face to something, it helps people feel seen and that they can trust what you're talking about because it's not behind closed doors. But second to that, do I think success is being able to sit on a beach with the people that I love and not having to post on Instagram to share the highlight reel 100 % but I'm trying really hard to do a combination of both I'm leaning into putting my face and content out there for the benefit of the business and for the benefit of the curve and being able to talk about our mission in a way that is connecting yeah but do I sit there and spend hours upon end filming my life to try and look like I'm living a certain way on my personal socials no so for me I really see them as separate I see building a public profile as work yeah and I I'm probably going to create a personal profile on Instagram for 30 people for my close friends and family that I can just like post random shit about my life without needing to curate it at the same time I'm never going to pretend that it's all shiny in my public business persona because building a business has been single-handedly the hardest that I've ever done in my whole life.

16:41And it has taken so much sacrifice and so much from me. And I think that, but that's something I'm willing to sacrifice because I want to create something bigger than myself.

16:52Soph: It's important to go into this because I think sometimes we equate, because of how much we have as a society valued visibility as a metric of success, increasingly with social media, I think we're often led to believe that greater visibility equates to greater success and greater success is equatable to more money. and so now if I have online economy becoming so central I feel like it's really easy to look at people having a big profile and be like oh you must be making loads of money and often that's like not the case you have a massive audience you don't know how to monetize it that being said the creator economy which is something we kind of ended up touching on pretty much every episode we've recorded which I think just goes to show the prominence that this new part of our working world is taking and how it cross-sects with everything but the create economy as we know is growing exponentially.

17:37Soph: But it's also being seen as more legit, as a like more legitimate area of business. And that is really evidenced, I think, so clearly by the fact that Time 100, which publishes a, you know, so Time magazine, which publishes Time 100 annually, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world based on global impact and cultural footprint, have just this year for the second time published their list of Time 100 creators. The editor Sam Jacobs wrote an article to kind of like explain their reasoning and I think this says a lot about the shift in focus but also like the shift in kind of valuing this area of business but also the tension that still exists between the creator economy and journalism.

18:24Soph: So he writes independent

18:44Soph: I thought that was so revealing, don't you? That yes, we acknowledge these people are super influential and we'd be missing a beat if we didn't highlight them. But also like, there's this tension because actually the creators are the ones that kind of these journalistic platforms are sort of in competition with because in an attention economy we're all rallying people's attention particularly people in media and I think he's acknowledging he's like these are our these are our competitors now so you touched on something before which I want to actually pick up on again and that is this idea that people are starting to take creators more seriously and so to lead on from what you just said I think it's really worth saying you know for a long time influencers were kind of looked down on like oh embarrassing you're an influencer you know it was this like kind of where the people were a bit icked out by and it started with people just taking beautiful aesthetic images what it has evolved into is not only almost individual media platforms that have as you say like really quite engaged audiences that value what these individuals or you know small media companies have to say.

19:51But also they are now the almost like sole marketing vehicle to sell products. They are the distribution and therefore they're becoming some of the biggest business owners. And I think that what's happening is with the attention economy, but also this like bizarre space where you're seeing all these celebrities become investors and owners of businesses, I just think that we're starting to realize the power and the value of creating content that engages and connects with people and valuing it as a really important part of business and of being able to be successful. You know, you look at these entrepreneurs that are then looking to find almost co-founders that have audiences or take investment from, say, like, you know, Alex Earle or Alex Cooper or these people that can help with distribution, it's almost like the big line that used to be marketing is now actually going to creators, but in the form often of equity in exchange for exposure.

20:56And interestingly, when you look at these top creators that are being highlighted, their audiences are enormous, but actually their revenue streams are not just coming through their audience by like being paid to post about something. and I wanted to just look at some top three creators within this. So Alex Earl. So these are all featured on the list. These are all featured on the list. This isn't necessarily like the top three, but just as an example. So we spoke about Alex Earl. We've spoken about her quite a bit in the last few weeks actually. Her biggest platform is TikTok. She has 8.5 million followers.

21:29And that is huge. Enormous. Enormous. And she starts out posting like get ready with me videos. And this is the thing. That's what I mean. she's evolved from being this person that people kind of look at like to a thriving business woman

21:42Soph: can i just say one thing here so i think it's important to to know as we go into these people i think what creators have mastered and what media has been slow to catch up with and now there's this real point of tension that we're seeing is someone like alex earl began doing get ready with me videos she has got to know her audience and she's met them where they're at so she did videos again and again and again and again then she did skincare well she really like she was seemingly quite determined to become a TikTok star and put in the hours getting to know her audience and responding to what did well.

22:12Soph: As a result, she has built, I mean, these people built up this almost like symbiotic relationship to their audience. Whereas old school media platforms have tended to operate from a more top down approach. So this is what we should be talking about. This is what is important culturally. We're going to tell you our audience. So there was this kind of like, we are the custodians of information and knowledge, which we are going to pass down to you our audience social media has totally disrupted that dynamic and actually the most successful creators the ones who are meeting their audience where they're at giving them what they want and then growing with their audience no media platform is doing that in the way that individual creators are able to i think that's just an important thing to like keep in our minds as we think about the people who've managed to be most successful within this space okay alexelle so she so according to Forbes, her overall yearly earnings are$12 million.

23:01So she's earning$12 million a year, just in case you don't miss that. From what? From all sorts of different things. So the different ways that she's making revenue and that sort of$12 million is being made up by this VC firm that we've spoken about. So she has different stakes in different businesses. So Poppy, which we've spoken about, sold to PepsiCo last year for nearly$2 billion. Oh, can we do that? I know. she's also got an energy drink brand called Georgie and also canned cocktail sip mug so she's got like parts of those businesses so when they do well she pockets money she's got a skincare brand and kind of what you're talking about like she spoke about her skin for so long she then knew her audience really struggled with it she created her own brand Real Active she made one million in sales in the first five minutes of launching sorry the first five minutes of launching so so if you look at this like she's not just being paid money to post about something else like here's this lovely lamp everyone go buy it she sees a product that she really likes and she'll invest in it and it's a it's a symbiotic relationship she's giving access to her audience and her audience trusts her to only introduce products that she really believes in and likes so that's just an example so her audience is 8.5 million followers but she's making that's 12 is that cross or just tiktok TikTok.

24:17Okay. There's a couple of creators that I'm actually just going to highlight one in particular because it's a really good example. I actually didn't know who this person is. Do you know who Drewski is? No. Yeah, no, neither. So a sketch comedian, he has 13 million followers on Instagram, but he's actually earning twice as much as Alex Earl. So according to Forbes, his yearly take home is 20 million. His revenue streams outside of social media. he's got a media company but he also presents on like national television appears on tv commercials so he is making an absolute killing but he has less overall audience i think what's really interesting when you look at this the size of the audience and actually also if you look at just generally the trend of how much people are making based on their audiences i'm just going to show you this graph because it's super interesting we'll put on the screen so the end on that's not

25:06Soph: watching can you see that yeah that's interesting so this graph shows that brand deals have gone down in terms of where creators are getting their revenue from. Brand deals have gone down pretty significantly in the past two, so between 2023 and 2025, brand deals have gone down whilst ad revenue has gone up. Brand deals are still the highest paid part of a creator's income, but it's now being topped up more significantly by cell phone business kind of opportunities they're creating and ad revenue. This just shows to me the idea that audience and distribution is the most valuable thing in business.

25:41And these people that have created seriously loyal audiences are going to be the ones that are the biggest business owners in the next five, 10 years.

25:50Soph: So there is a really interesting move in UK politics at the moment, which is going to potentially threaten this for creators. Holy shit, I've seen this. So this was, I found so surprising to see, but I think really highlights again, this tension between traditional media and then this new creator economy. So recently, the UK government ministers are considering plans to give established broadcasters and media companies greater prominence on digital platforms like YouTube and TikTok, with ministers warning that online misinformation risks becoming existential for our democracy. So basically, these are proposals.

26:26Soph: The proposals that have been outlined would basically mean that social media platforms would be compelled to algorithmically prioritise content from the likes of BBC, ITV and Channel 4, so like public service broadcasters, over and above creators. now I find this fascinating because this is obviously a direct response to the prominence that the creators you've just highlighted there and that we're you know that time 100 has been loading in their list it is a direct response to the success with which they have captured their audience's attention and traditional and simultaneously with traditional broadcasters kind of failing to keep up with moving with and kind of understanding their audience now I do think the misinformation piece is important because there is a lot of crap information online and It's not regulated.

27:11Soph: But I'm sort of like, you can't just... It's cheating. I feel like it's totally cheating. Yeah, also like the legacy media platforms, like you should have been investing in social media like a long time ago, but there's an arrogance, I think. There's a complacency and an arrogance of like, we know what you want and we're going to tell you what's good for you. That being said, I do also, then I kind of got confused thinking about this. I was like, oh, but then also the tech platforms have, you know, are incentivized to keep our attention captured. and thus the algorithm does prioritize shocking, extreme, divisive content over and above everything else, which is for the bottom line of the tech company.

27:46Soph: So that's also not, that's not really about fairness to creative. That is a specific incentive structure that's built into the way the algorithm is programmed to keep us all watching. So I think there's a lot of bad incentives going on here basically. But I found that just quite an interesting kind of rebuttal to the growth of the creator economy. What did you make of that? I feel like they can try and put regulation in place. I feel like this is like power to the people. You know, there is so much power in user behavior. I just don't think that you can force people into changing where and who they, like people have created these unbelievably diehard relationships with these creators.

28:27They buy from them. They trust them. They love them.

28:31Soph: you can't reverse that by you can't reverse it but you could maybe make it so that the next generation are not uh it's not as easy for a creator to build an audience because lexi media platforms are prioritized by the algorithm and if people are trying to reduce their social media content usage anyway they may be scrolling for less amount of time so what they see in the first like five minutes per scroll is going to have more of an impact in terms of what and who they follow I just have this feeling, and maybe this is a weird take, I feel like audiences and creators will figure out how to hack the system.

29:06You can try and control people as much as you like, and you can try and put regulation in place. But I really think we've already made the shift from trusting one or two media sources to then creating these quite intense relationships with creators. I just don't think you can backtrack on that.

29:27Hi, sorry to interrupt this incredible podcast that you're listening to, but just wanted to ask anyone that's listening that's listened to this podcast for a while, to be honest, even if you're new, we would really love your feedback on the structure of these episodes. they're a bit different to what we've done before deep dives on like cultural things and going really deep on one topic it's something that we're really enjoying doing but we really want to make sure that all of the content that we put out on this podcast is actually serving you and that you're enjoying it and that you feel like you're learning something so if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind filling out a quick quiz for us there's like five very quick questions it would be amazing to hear what you're enjoying what you'd like to see more of and just any honest feedback It's all anonymous and it would really help us make sure this podcast is always as good as it possibly can be.

30:16Okay, back to the episode.

30:18Soph: I think we should move on now, Soph, to discussing a question that really sits at the heart of this. And it's something that I think we've spoken about personally and I think about a lot. And that is, do you need to have a personal brand to have a successful business? So we're looking at all these creators who've essentially built a successful personal brand and then leverage that successful personal brand to make successful businesses. So we've kind of seen this model exemplified by the likes of Alex Earl. And it sort of makes me think the best, most strategic route to building successful business in today's world is to build your personal brand first and then leverage that with the knowledge that you have of your audience.

30:57Do you think that is true? I have so many things to say about this. So I never, ever, ever considered myself a business owner. I have fallen into business as a byproduct of building an audience and using my skills to create an audience of people who can kind of learn alongside me by speaking to people like you and Vic and other experts to democratize finance and investing, right? Like that was the mission. The byproduct has been a business. I now have this confidence, whether it's in media or another business, the skills that I've learned, I could start another business if I want to. and I think although there are so many different types of businesses and you absolutely don't need a platform to start a business there's some businesses that require distribution and it's so clever to build a personal brand or an audience to be able to sell something there are millions of different types of businesses like selling electricity you do not need an audience there's businesses that are more leaning towards an audience being such a valuable asset to be able a springboard, whether, you know, like for example, with Alex Hill and her skincare brand, that's genius.

32:07However, what I think has been amazing about this idea of audience equals value, which then equals a springboard to either start a business or invest in another business or get equity to sell someone else's product to your audience, is that if you zoom out and look at the amount of creators there are globally, majority of influencers back in the day, and also people who really lean into content, a lot of them are women. And I feel like this kind of move towards entrepreneurs being the new business owners and being some of the most successful business owners in the next 5, 10 years means that there's a lot more women who all of a sudden are waking up to the idea that they could be business owners and that they could make money through business.

32:51And I think that that's brilliant because that's been my experience. I would never, I would never have honestly ever thought about or let myself daydream about an idea or a product to build or anything because it felt so out of reach. And for so long, business has been really a space for men. You look at the amount of women and the, I think there's like more men still called Mark or Peter in listed companies than there are women. You know, it's crazy the difference in men versus women as founders and CEOs. I think this shift is a really brilliant way to change people's mindset towards, oh, I could start a business.

33:34And while there is something problematic about the idea that people see founders in this glamorous light because all they're seeing is snippets online about like, I'm a founder, I've got a private jet. Like that's not the reality of starting a business. No. But I kind of also am – I think naivety is amazing when it comes setting to business. I think it's essential.

33:54Soph: I mean, Emma Greaves does that in her book. There's stuff that she like, if I'd known what this would have entailed, I probably wouldn't have done it. So with that in mind, do I think it's a bad thing that people are seeing this life and aspiring to that? I mean, there is a 2026 Oxford study that surveyed 672 secondary school students who aged 16 to 19 from schools and colleges all over the UK and Wales about the careers that they were wanting to pursue and where they wanted to go with work. And entrepreneurship has emerged as the most popular career. Oh, wow. Students who placed greater importance on earning and having a good salary were more likely to aspire to start a business than those who didn't care about it.

34:31but in terms of like a level results data it's showing that in the uk there's a 5.5 percent rise in kids taking a level economics like business studies now is more popular than history and i feel like this overarching shift towards people wanting to start businesses is probably largely to what they see online and this sort of like glamorization of the founder i kind of don't care

34:56Soph: i think it's a good thing also like the reality of the working world it's again we've discussed on the podcast before like the traditional way of building a career is also dying yeah like your earning potential is limited the you know we're just seeing companies and jobs be eliminated left right and center ai is having a massive impact on that and i think being able to build an entrepreneurial mindset with regards to kind of whatever you do okay granted there's going to be fields like whether it's like doctor ship or whatever where you yes there are more kind of traditional routes to a specific career pathway and i think great that's go with that but i think a lot of jobs now I think a lot of careers require a more entrepreneurial mindset whether you go into journalism whether you go into you know obviously I always think primarily through media because that's my experience but I think you benefit from having an entrepreneurial mindset because the reality of you getting a job in a company that you stay with the rest of your life is like that's just not used to be what our parents did our parents exactly they kind of stuck with one company so you never had to constantly do this like reinvention that we are today sort of forced to do because if you're constantly having to like move company but also like slightly kind of reinvent yourself for a kind of fast changing world of work you better be good at personal branding because you're constantly needing to update that personal brand and that's why I sort of think personal brand in itself is actually such a if you can do it it's such an asset for us to be able to it's the thing that we get to hold on to before you really define I think of our parent generation you were really defined by the company you worked for that was like the the title of the company you worked for was like the kind of value add to your name it was like what gave your name credibility whereas i think that's sort of flipped on its head now in that like you have to build interesting point it's like i worked for jp morgan that was the thing rather than i am sophie hall right yeah whereas now you build i hope you know you build if you're strategic and i think we should be very strategic in this and smart about how we build ourselves but you build value and equity in your name and you get to keep that you get to carry that throughout your whole life and that I think is fantastic that's such an opportunity and that's why I think it's one that it can feel like a lot of work and I do think it's added like a whole extra job to all of us to have to maintain and build the personal brand but I also think it's something that you are always getting to um to build into and to grow that then stays with you for the duration of your whole life one of the things I'd like to touch on after the break is and it's one of these things that Emma Greed speaks about in her book, she talks about your 20s as being the time where you should be building your skills, your reputation, and yourself as an asset to be able to make more money in your 30s.

37:31And I think that while it's amazing that you have all of these people starting to think about business and starting their business, there is also something that we've talked about personally, and that is how much you can learn in your 20s to grow yourself as an asset and about someone who can make money to then create wealth in your 30s, 40s, 50s. And I really think it's such a valuable way to look at it where you've said to me, I wish I'd stayed employed for longer because I would have learned more skills that then helped me to create more successful businesses. And I think that it's worth touching on that as well as the reality of how many businesses are actually successful because people are sort of feeling like it's a lot more accessible and easy.

38:13and actually the stats around businesses that actually make money are kind of scary. So after the break, let's talk about that. But first, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor. You know, finding a KiwiSaver provider that has a great year is one thing, but finding one that performs consistently well over time, that's what really matters. It's easy to get distracted by short-term results, but KiwiSaver, remember, is a long-term investment. That's why looking at long-term track records is so important. Generate's KiwiSaver focused growth fund has ranked in the top three aggressive KiwiSaver funds for 10-year returns every quarter that it's been eligible.

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39:09so we've spoken about this in a personal setting before where you've said i wished that i'd stayed employed for a bit longer can we talk about that because i think what we're trying to do here is simultaneously encourage people to be bold and brave and start businesses and take risks while also thinking about themselves as an asset and how much value that they can learn and build and I think it almost sounds like we're saying two separate things at one time so I'd love to hear you speak about why for you in hindsight you probably would have stayed employed a little bit

39:42Soph: longer if you could have yeah so it's a really interesting point of tension isn't it because I think so I started I worked I was always in freelance and I had a real commitment phobia with work because I could not decide who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with my career looking back if I could go and give that younger version of me advice it'd be like you do not need to know this idea of finding your purpose and your passion in your 20s is like frankly it's bullshit and I think better to spend that time acquiring as many skills much to earlier point and what Emma Green says in the book acquire valuable skills and then you can leverage those skills to build your own things to be an asset to a business whatever it may be but I got so fixated which I kind of think was like a bit of like sign the times we were obsessed at that point it was kind of the first iteration of the girl boss era so I'm 34 now so when I was came back from America, I've been working for Tina Brown, her journalist platform in New York, came back to London about 26.

40:33Soph: And that's when I set up my first or co-founded my first media platform here. And I think with a benefit of hindsight, I would have said it would have been valuable to get a full time job, aka not just freelance, get a full time job at somewhere like Vice, somewhere that was kind of doing pretty cool cutting edge journalism at the time to skill up to just get to learn on someone else's dime because I was forever kind of having to hustle and pitch and I didn't just get to like be safe in a place and have my nervous system relax and just get to learn I was always having to like apply for new jobs say yes like also I said yes to everything because I was a freelancer so when I was working at Sky News I would work like two three weeks just like non-stop because I never wanted to say no to work but I think going back I would say go and get some really good hard skills in the context of employment with with the idea that you're going to create your own thing after with the idea of okay what what trends am I seeing learn from the best what skills am I acquiring etc so I had a similar experience where I worked for media in my 20s and I until when until what age 28 okay so you were in that yeah so you were about two so I actually when I was reading Emma Greed's book and she's talking about in your 20s invest in yourself as an asset she's saying don't stress too much about saving don't stress like obviously learn about investing and learn about how to be good with your money but ultimately try Try and work with people who inspire you, teach you something.

41:53And to your point, try and build yourself up as this asset that you can make money from in your 30s. And I thought, genius. Because actually I did that. I worked for and within other shows until I was 28. And then I did my own thing after that. I really had about 10 years because I actually left university halfway through for a job and then finished my thesis while working. full time. So I actually worked for sort of three or four, five even shows in that time, and then went and worked for Sony Music in Australia and did the sort of commercial side of things. So by the time I then got to a point of starting my own thing, I could sell, I knew how to sell and commercialize content.

42:38I knew how to create content. All the skills that I now use within the business are things that I've done in paid jobs that I had. And I really think that that was such a win.

42:50Soph: Being as exposed as possible to as many people as possible is such an asset, particularly in your 20s. I think I wish I stayed in employment a bit longer. But what I am so grateful I did always was meet everyone and anyone. Any job I've ever got has been through someone I've met because I wanted a literary festival, wanted a film festival, wanted a political festival, went to this, just wanted to meet everyone, was so hungry to be in the world and be a part of every conversation. And I feel like that was so correlated with things going really well in my career. And it's actually in pockets of time where I kind of became more occlusive, was like got my head down and went obsessive over like, I know, research on something that I feel like I actually, that's when things slowed down a bit.

43:29Soph: But can I just say one thing I do want to highlight? Because I think that Emigree's book, I finished it feeling my appetite for business had grown tenfold. Me. From an already high standpoint. point but one thing I really that struck me that I really resonated with and actually made me think of my own book not to do a sorry to totally do a plug on my own book I'm like sorry business at the essence of both our books is one core message and that is that you can rewrite the story of your life at any age and I think it's a really important point to remember Emgrid talks a lot about storytelling the stories we tell ourselves typically about our relationship to money I talk of a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about our relationship to intimacy, to our bodies, to pleasure.

44:18Soph: But really at the heart of my book, I'm talking about how with regards to whatever area of your life you're looking at, you can rewrite the story that is shaping how you connect to that part of your life. And when we feel able to take control over our own narrative, that changes everything because we inherit so many stories from society, from our family, from our friends, from their externally imposed stories, but they shape how we see ourselves. They shape how we see the world around us. And hence they shape what we think we are capable of doing and how we can pull ourselves day to day. But when you can then look at those stories and say, okay, I like this story.

44:54Soph: This works for me. You know, this story doesn't work for me. This negative story around money, this negative story around intimacy, this negative story around business, whatever story you want to highlight, when you can identify the stories that don't work for you, that are causing you to have kind of limiting beliefs about what you're capable of, which are causing you to hold back, to kind of make yourself smaller, to speak up less. When you can identify those bad stories, you can then begin to erase them and write better ones. And that for me is the most powerful point of liberation that any of us can have in our lives.

45:23Soph: Because I definitely felt at certain points in Emma's book, like, oh, you know, did I maximize my 20s? And in some ways I'd say yes. And in some ways I think there's things I would have done differently. There's things I would have done more of, there's things I would have done less of. But that doesn't mean like the story is written. because you're always learning and growing. You're always getting to like create new parts of this kind of ever-folding book that we all get to write about our lives. So I just wanted to really remind anyone listening to that who thinks, oh God, like I might feel like I'm behind or I haven't done this or that yet.

45:50Soph: It's never too late. As a Chinese proverb says, the best time to plant a tree is yesterday, but the second best time is today. So it gets planting. That's also so what we talk about when it comes to money and investing because you can just feel like, oh, I've left it too late. Oh God, I'm like, you know, I'm this age or whatever. But actually also what she shares in her book because creating wealth takes a really long time. Don't look at these things that you're seeing online about successful businesses and think that they turned up today. There is so much grind behind all of those people before they get to the point where they're posting anything online about how successful their business is.

46:23But also, I think ultimately it's like, you also don't have to start your own business. What she also talks about is you can have a really lovely life and be employed and earn really good money and not have to work more than nine to five. You can work within the confines of a working day of having great maternity and paternity leave. You can, like, if that works for you and that is success, amazing. Like, she's not saying everyone should own their own business and everyone should go and do this. She's just saying that if you want to start a business and you want to be successful, you're going to be putting in way more than a nine to five.

47:00It's amazing that more people want to start businesses and that they see themselves as business owners. It's also, I mean, 61 % of businesses that started in 2019 are not operating, you know, five years later. The stats around successful businesses that can grow and scale and be profitable is actually rare. It's not actually easy to create a business that is creating even a million in revenue.

47:25Soph: But I think actually that raises a really interesting point because just in the way that we need to reframe how we think about success, we need to reframe how we think about failure. And there was a really interesting piece I came across recently that was published in The Cut by New York Magazine that really encapsulated, I think, what is our slightly problematic relationship to failure at a kind of public level. So this piece was written by writer Catherine Jezza Morton. So she's a columnist for The Cut. And she has been researching a book about the effects of social media on all aspects of our lives.

47:57Soph: And during her interviews, she's noticed what she refers to as a broad consensus on the most basic rule of engagement. You cannot admit to struggle, at least not while you're struggling. Social media's most embedded de facto rule, she writes, is that you can't ever feel like you're out of options. You can't be out of money or on the wrong side of a decision you now regret making. This rule makes it very difficult to then describe painful changes and transformations in our lives without simultaneously insisting on our own resilience so peace basically argues that the last taboo we face at a kind of public discourse level is around failure and being able to fail publicly in the moment um she goes on to then explore how social media can combine the changing nature of work which means it's increasingly unlikely anyone will stay in that kind of same job we're always having to be working on our personal brand as we talked about um earlier And that means we're always having to kind of display our value to the world and have to almost maintain this perception of success and value in order to maintain our hireability, in order to maintain desirability.

49:06Soph: Whether you want to build your own business, raise money, work for another company. The idea that we're going to have to change companies, careers, make lots of pivots throughout our life is kind of the reality for most of us now. and because of that it means the personal brand is ever more important because of that she argues that means we're having to portray success at all times we're having to really ensure that everyone around us thinks that things are going well and it really made me think actually we we do hear about failure and I think you know from business people and podcasts but it's only in retrospect typically from a position of this failed and I learned x y and z and now I'm winning again.

49:47Soph: And that I think is, and I understand that, like, I don't think I would be able to talk from the place of in the process of failure and that pain that entails. But it does mean that I think, you know, failure is failure is such an inherent part of taking any risk, which, you know, business requires taking risk. I think we have to get more comfortable with things not always being a smooth sailing ride and actually being able to be more open in those conversations about for you yeah what do you think i agree what i would say is the times that i've been in the absolute depths of holy shit how am i gonna figure this out whether that's in business or in the wake of an awful breakup you know in those moments i don't have a lot of wisdom i'm still figuring out what the i'm gonna do you know you don't need wisdom always maybe it's about saying the story being like this is really hard and i agree i'm not saying that you should be hiding the shadow parts of your life.

50:43I'm just saying, is it helpful to figure that out publicly? Are you offering any kind of help or like, true, you know, like if I think about the times within the curve when we've had really wobbly moments, which we fully have sharing that publicly would not be helping anyone because it's not, I'm not telling you, Oh, what I learned from that situation and how I got through that was this. I'm just complaining about it being shit in the same way if I think about like my last breakup and I mean I was I've spoken about this quite a few times bawling my eyes out walking through New York City just like absolutely miserable I didn't really have anything of value that talking publicly about what was happening that would not have helped anybody and it honestly would have just been like can everyone just listen to me vent whereas in hindsight I can see what I learned and I think maybe if we zoom out to the idea of failure in general.

51:37The businesses we look at now as like the picture perfect success, you know, whether it's like Amazon or Apple or like all these founders that have created trillion dollar companies, they've had a shitload of unsuccessful failed businesses. But I do think that the way that we particularly as women look at a failure is that we get so scared of how that's going to be interpreted publicly if we are failing publicly.

52:01Soph: Well, I also think we give men so much leeway to fail in business and then to resurrect. So WeWork founder Adam Neumann is such a good example of this. He received a massive payout from WeWork after mismanaging the company toward a collapsed IPO and a 47 billion valuation freefall, then subsequently raised 350 million dollars from the same Andreessen Horowitz, from the same investor he'd had before, for his new residential real estate startup called Flow. Now listen, he showed himself he's a very good entrepreneur and that he had he was well he had a bold vision you know we work is also still around he really kind of um reimagined what the workplace could look like but we as a society I think we let men fail at epic proportions but we punish women for failing publicly at even a much kind of lesser degree and I think that's something that we have to as society get better at even obviously we've been talked we've talked a lot about Emma Greed on today's podcast even with Emma Greed when I was doing some after I finished the book and was just kind of doing some research about her and there's so many articles online about her um supposed friction or fallout with Khloe Kardashian so much speculation in the papers around the kind of this so-called rift their ongoing feud and I just thought we would never analyze two men in business in the same way that we're fixated on the relationship between Khloe Kardashian and Emma Greed.

53:29Soph: Like Emma Greed talks a lot about this in her book about at the end of the day, business relationships are business. You are going into business together to make money. You don't need to have a personal relationship. Whether they're in a feud or not is irrelevant to the ongoing nature of their business. And I just think that to me, all these have salacious articles in tabloids speculating as to whether they've had this big personal fallout, to me felt such a divergence from the point of the fact they've together built a successful business that's still making a ton of money who cares if they're friends or not but again i think we expect women to be to bring a much more personal um piece to the business uh game than we do of men and i think when because we expect that women also we expect women to be the face of their companies i think in a higher degree than men then it becomes a more personal endeavor and so women get taken down at a personal level in a way that I don't think men are.

54:23But also, let's be real, business relationships, being in business with someone is unbelievably challenging. It's like 10 times, I mean, I've not been married, so maybe this is controversial, but I would say it is like a marriage and in the sense that probably but also without the sex and love. Without the points of intimacy. Kind of. You're dealing with these really hard things. You're having to make super difficult decisions and speak very candidly and brutally with each other about the thing. I mean, like for anyone that hasn't been in a business dynamic, I just don't think that you have any right to comment on it.

54:58And actually, at the end of the day, if you're putting the business first, who gives a fuck about that? Like, sorry, we actually spoke, we swore way too much in our last episode. So let's rein that one in. But I think ultimately to wrap this conversation up, everyone should read Emagreed's book. I think that the questions that you should ask yourself when it comes to your career and money and how much you want and what success looks like is like educate yourself on the different types of success financially and business that there are and then match your own risk appetite and where you're trying to go with the decisions that you're making about whether you're employed whether you freelance whether you start a company whether you have investors or you self-fund like there is option here and everything is success if it's in alignment with what you want for your life totally and I think that yeah just god it's if we could just be a little bit less judgmental on what failure looks like, then I think a lot of us would be a lot more brave with what those decisions are.

55:54Totally.

55:54Soph: And I think my big takeaway, I have to say, Sophie, is going into business with someone is like having a marriage without sex. I think that's going to be my big takeaway. Going into business is like entering a marriage, but without the intimacy that can soften these sharp corners. You don't get to have makeup sex. You don't get to have makeup sex. Bug judge. Exactly. But actually, that is just showcase. It is one of the hardest relationships you will ever have to cultivate. So be so mindful and strategic about who you get into bed with from a business perspective and from a romantic perspective.

56:27Soph: That is my big takeaway. Stunning wrap up. Stunning wrap up. For anyone that has any thoughts or feedback on this episode, we would love to hear from you. You can either comment where you're listening. You can send us a DM or a voice note on the Curve hotline. But thank you so much for listening and we will see you next Wednesday for our Culture Debt Dive. Amazing. Thank you so much for listening to The Curve Weekly. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so you're always up to date with the latest finance and investing news. And feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback.

56:56We've got new Curve Weekly episodes for you to listen to every Monday. But until then, listen to Erasing the Curve. These are our in-depth podcast episodes where we chat about all things money. We're also around all week on socials if you're hungry for more Curve content

57:08Soph: and all the links are in this podcast show notes. We hope you have a great week and we'll catch you for the next episode of the Curve Weekly on Monday.

57:22Okay, quickly, the Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors. Our platform exists for educational purposes only,

57:30Soph: and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. And always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision. We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final call is always yours. And thanks for being here. You got this. Yeah, we know you got this.