The Woman That Makes Millionaires: They're Lying About Work Life Balance! I Built SKIMS Without Fashion Knowledge!

24:55But what is the like, because you said I'm dyslexic and I think you left school, you dropped out of school at 15. And then you went to college for a while and you went to six months. So it's not something you learned necessarily in school. So I'm wondering what the characteristic is. That big words, the like, the wind in one sales that brought you here. And what if I remove that thing, you definitely wouldn't be here. And it could only give me one thing. I mean, listen, we didn't call it that then, but it would come down to grit. Right. I think that that is what we would say now, you know, Angela Duckworth, like coined that phrase, I guess, or that term and wrote that fantastic book about grit that all everybody read and was like, oh my god, I just want my kids to have grit.

25:40Like, my kids want for nothing. They're not going to be gritty. Like it's just facts. You know, you know, go up and belay a gritty, you know, but I think that if you, if I think about what it what what it is for me and and still is, I'm just great. I'm very clear about what I want and what I need and I will find a way, whatever it is, you know, I am not any of the things that you would have on my resume, you know, a parallel CEO. Someone who goes out and raises hundreds of millions of dollars, somebody who starts an agency in multiple countries, I have zero qualifications to do any of that stuff.

26:18I will just make it happen because I'm in the moment, I see the opportunity and I am prepared and I'm prepared because it's like I have done all the work to get to the point where that thing that is in front of me, I will make it happen. And I've done enough work to say, okay, I can take this to that next place. And is that grit? An Ember that life blew on because I wonder if I'd gone back and I'd met Ember 18 years old, whether she would have said it like to me like that. No, Ember 18 years old would have been like, it's so interesting. You know, we don't have yearbooks in England, but if we did, I reckon I would have been like the most likely to succeed.

26:58I don't think anyone at school was like, oh, she's a bit of a waste. No, it's like I had that mentality that I was away from the pack that I was going to do something special. But also my mentality was like whatever it takes, you know, if I could, if I think about the most important words for career advancement, like the three most important words have been, I'll do that. That was me. I had my hand up my whole life. I'll do that like every single time. Any time anyone has asked me, whatever it took, wherever I've been in whichever workplace, I was like, I'll do it. I'll do that. And that is what like people started to look at me as someone that would just figure it out.

27:42Right. It's not like I had any particular skill. I just put myself in a situation and in the space of let me have a go every single time. To me, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense because you grew up in a situation as an older sister where you were playing the role of a dad where you did have to put your hand up and say, I'll do that. You did have to make the lunches. And I sometimes think back to my own life and think about how avoid of independence is maybe a scary thing to some parents, but it's also an incredibly useful thing for a kid to learn that I have to get myself from A to B, whether it's from home to school, or from home to dinner, or from home to whatever it might be.

28:25I don't know, I looked at your life and go, you had this massive void of independence. And in there grows skills, belief, and understanding about life that most others don't get. So it's no surprise that such a young age, you thought you could do stuff because so many people, they have an idea. They know where they are now. And they kind of might have an idea of where they want to be, but the gap between it is not something they've ever had to traverse. Like they've never had to walk it. Do you think it's possible for someone to make themself gritty? You know, you've got team members employees.

28:54You can see the variants in gritty and ungritty, resilience and... See a lot of ungrittyness that you got going. Where do you see the ungrittyness? And is it possible to make yourself... Have you ever seen someone go from, what should we call it? What's the opposite of grittyness? Floppy. I don't know. I don't know what the opposite of grittyness is actually. Soft, I guess. Yes, listen, I do. If you want it, like anything else, right? It's all about, do you actually want to be that way and to behave that way? And we were talking about this actually funny enough on the way over because, you know, I just came from my own office two minutes away.

29:32It's Friday. All of the product teams are in. The rest of the office is pretty empty. And, you know, and I think post -COVID, people have really taken the liberty of... As we allow them, right, they can come in four days a week. And it's interesting because we talk so, so much about the flexibility of working from home and what Zoom life has kind of done for business. But we don't talk about any of the rigidity of it and what it takes away from work. And I can tell you and I can guarantee you that had I been a work from home person in my 20s, I would not be where I am now. There is no doubt in my mind.

30:16And I think about some, you know, I met my husband at work. I made some of my best, strongest relationships in my life that are the most important things to me and the foundation of my happiness and my, like, being a solid person at work. That's where those relationships come from. And so I think it's really interesting now that we have this aversion of what I wanted to be away from the office all of the time. And I'm like, oh, that's, like, it's so interesting to me because I'm like such a, I'm like an in -person person. I want to be with people I want to collaborate, I want to do things quickly.

30:51And the culture of work right now makes that so hard. So I think, yes, you can treat, teach someone to have grit. But I can't teach you on a screen, babe. I can't reach you. You won't see how I move. And in that same way that I had this woman that sat behind me and I would take notes of everything she said, that happened in real time. Right. She would walk out of the room and I'd be on my next new business called saying her lines. Like, it was just that quick and that immediate and I would test it out and I'd make it my own. All of that is lost. And so I feel a little bit sad for the way that we're working right now because I don't think that we're having that exchange of, you know, what happens when you're in a really dynamic environment.

31:34And you're able to learn from people around you because we're not as together as we once were. When you're looking around your team and thinking that person's going to be a star in the future, that person's going to be a star in the future. Which I'm always doing. Which I'm always doing. Always doing. Always. Always. Always. Always. What are the factors or the characteristics of those people that you look at in your office and go, that's she's going to be a star, he's going to be a star. What is it about them? What are they doing that others aren't doing? Well, you know, people ask me this all the time.

32:00I think that the sure way to put yourself in a position for more responsibility for a promotion is to be excellent at what you're doing. Right. Like, I, I find it really difficult when people are like, you know, I'd really like to do this thing over there. I'd really like that opportunity. And I'm like, but you're only 70 % good at what you're doing now. Like, I'm looking at the 120 % people. The people that are smashing it in the role that they're at now before they're going to go anywhere else. So that's the first thing to say. But I don't think it's any, I, I again, I have higher, much more for attitude over experience.

32:35Right. I really want the people that come in with like a winning mentality, a figure out mentality. And also what I love is these, these people that have like an understanding across the business. It's like you are an amazing thoroughbred, you know, wholesale salesperson, but you really want to learn e -commerce and you really want to learn about stores. And you really have a good understanding what's happening, planning and merchandising like, you know, in business leadership language, they call them the T -shaped leaders. But it's like, that's what, that's what I care about. People that have an interest in the entirety of our business.

33:08And they can see outside of the lane or the division that they work in. And so that becomes interesting to me, but to me it's so much more mentality, energy, enthusiasm, attitude. I'm also one of the things that I think is massively overlooked, but a key thing now is flexibility. Because I hire a lot of people that are in their 40s and 50s, right, for super senior executive leadership level roles. But if you come to me from a competitor and you believe that the only way to get from here to here is the way you've been doing it for the last 20 years. That's problematic to me. I need you to come both with the experience and a level of flexibility because technology means that the customer and the consumer experience is changing all the time.

33:51So that ability to say, I've got all of this knowledge, but I'm willing and ready to flex is really important. So I need, I need all those things. I need a lot, Stephen. But what are the red flags? Very demanding. Tell me some sentences I could say in an interview with you. There would be immediate red flags. Oh, I've got a good one. So can you talk to me about work life balance in this organization? Sorry, babe. I'm leaving. I'm get out. Here's the thing. Work life balance is your problem. Like that's yours to figure out because the way we run organizations now is that no one misses a dentist appointment or a doctor's appointment or a hair cut or their kids parent teacher conference at our organization.

34:36That's just not how we work anymore, right? Like you come in, you have set hours, but you know, there's flexibility within the working life. It's not like, oh my goodness, such and such is not at their desk. That's just not how we work anymore. So when somebody talks to me about their work life balance in an interview process, I'm like, something is wrong with you. You haven't been able to figure that out. That's not the way you win this interview. I'm not trying to give this away. But because it might fuck me over saying this, but we do a screening survey and one of the questions tests for this.

35:09So I actually know the exact percentage of the general public that when asked this question will pick work life balance is one of the most important things. And it's roughly 33 % 33 % of people on our screening survey will say that work life balance is more important to them than another range of options, including doing perfect work, beating the competition, leading and inspiring others, having a happy team, etc. They'll pick work life balance as being one of their most important things. So it's a lot of people that prioritize this and it's not to say for me, listen, it's not to say for me that it's a bad thing, but it's not what I would pick.

35:46No, baby, it's not what you would pick, because you're ambitious and anything. It's very interesting, right? Because I wonder if you put on that list of options earning 10 % more year on year, getting a meaningful bonus, right? Because here's the thing, these things correlate and that's what people don't understand. In order to run an organization where there is the ability for your people to have a good work life balance, you have to be profitable. The company has to be, you know, in line with if not beating its competition, we have to be able to run an efficient business to give people what they need.

36:25The two things go hand in hand. And so I have this idea that with the people that I work with, we're in a social, like we're in a contract together, right? It's like you're going to work really hard and in return, you should get an amazing place to work, you should get an incredible environment that is feeding you in ways that are not just about your job, right? And so when I look around our office and our organization, we're doing, you know, I just, I left the office yesterday, there was like a fertility seminar going on where there were like hundreds of people in the kitchen of our office all learning about having their ex -frozen and various different, I've four kids, I clearly didn't need to be in the seminar.

37:05I'm like, I'm done. But you know, that that was happening. It's like we do things for our employees that are above and beyond what a workplace back in the day may have considered the norm. So I just feel like you've got it with that, like something has to give. And there are certain things that are the employees responsibility within that. And you're figuring out what works for your life, how you're going to pick up your kids, how you get home, how you get to work, what happens. Like these are all things that you need to figure out within the construct of your life. That isn't the employers job.

37:39That isn't the employers responsibility. I'm going to play devil's advocate. So what people are, I guess when they hit that button and they say, I want work life balance, what they are maybe alluding to is, am I expected to work seven days a week? Because I need that information to be able to figure out, if I'm going to be able to pick up my kids and be able to do my... Totally. ...DJing a week or a week and... Yeah. So what is the expectation in your business? I don't think the expectation is that anyone is going to have to work seven days a week in order to have an average job. Like they're not going to have to do that.

38:17If you have ambition, if you want to do the most, if you want to grow, if you want to be one of those people that's like, you know, at the top of the organisation, the chances are you might have to work a little bit more. That's the truth. I wonder what are we talking about here? We're going to lie to everyone. Do you work five days a week, Steven? No, I beg. You're working on a Saturday and a Sunday. And if I text you wherever you are in the world, you come back to me within about an hour. I'm assuming that that's not just what you do for me, that that's just how you roll. And that's how I roll.

38:50And that's how most successful people roll. And, you know, it's like there is something to speed and agility. And I don't listen. I think I have a tremendous work life balance. I am in Malibu most weekends. I'm on the beach. But I think that we have to have a level of honesty about what it takes to be really successful. And I think that everybody is tired of hustle culture. People are tired of burnout and figuring out how you can do what you need to do and be really successful at the same time. It's like what I consider personal responsibility. But at the same time, if we tell everybody that to be really successful, you can do that in a way that is, you know, without being a hundred and fifty percent without waking up most days and doing some type of work without thinking about work a lot.

39:37It's just not, it's not honest and it's not, it wouldn't connect with what I see and what my experience are of most people that are truly successful. Why does some people hate what you just said? I think because it hits them in a place of like, I just don't want to do that. I want all the benefits, but I don't want to do the bit in the middle. And I get that. It's not for everyone. They don't do it. But is it possible to have the success to be number one, to be on the magazines, to be Emma? And is there like not a way where I can have my evenings and weekends, but still get like, I have some evenings and weekends.

40:17But like, I want all of my evenings and weekends. No, you're not. No, no. If it's possible, tell me who she is. And I'll tell you, I'll show you a liar. You know, I don't think so. And honestly, Steven, what are we talking about? Because we, I think that most people, most people want a, you know, they don't want everything. Right? It's like most people don't and not sitting here being like, I need to be in all the magazines. I want this. I want that. It's like most people want to have security of a well -paying job. They want to, you know, be able to afford their rent or their mortgage and have a nice car and live well and go on a few holidays.

41:02And that's like a good life. Should you be able to do that? Absolutely. Should you be able to do that without working even in some weekends and putting in all of the hours in? Yeah, I really think that you should. But if you are leading an extraordinary life to think that extraordinary effort wouldn't be coupled to that somehow is crazy. It's interesting post -pandemic how it feels like leaders got gaslit a little bit, founders got gaslit by platforms, you know, like if you go on LinkedIn, you've got all these people telling you how to run a business and that what you're doing wrong in work life balance and you've got be more like this and you've got be this kind of leader and you have to be this empathy and do this and that and the other.

41:49And if you're a young founder growing up in this world where this everyone is telling founders what to do, it can feel incredibly confusing. And I think in particular post -pandemic, well, like how we work was like shuffled up and it's now like taking mix. Before the pandemic it was like we all got it. We come to the office five days a week, we work, you know. It's a difficult time to be a founder because you've almost got to step out if you're not a mean. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you have to. And listen, I don't think that that is as hard as people are making it. You have to understand that you know, you can't be a leader and a people pleaser at the same time.

42:28And if you're walking around trying to make everybody happy, guess what you won't do? You won't have a great business. You have to have a focus on what it is that you're trying to do and you have to be relentless in the pursuit of doing those things. And you need the people that are going to, you know, I am, I'm so much about the people that help you. You know, I hate that idea of like being, you know, like a set, you know, I get called like a self -made whatever. And I'm like, I'm really not self -made if you understood how many people that were around me that just like getting me here today to remain like a village sitting outside.

43:05But nothing happens on your own and it takes so many people and so much so much skill and so much that I don't have. And so when you start a company, this idea that you should make all of the, if you're thinking about making all of these concessions before you're thinking about what the goal is, what the, the, the, you know, I call it on and everybody. And it's like enterprise mentality. It's like you have to put the business first, the needs of the business. And sometimes that is about thinking about your people and being a certain type of leader. Sometimes it's not. So you've got to balance those things, right?

43:41We're trying to, the point of a business is to make profit. It's to create like a company to serve, you know, your customers, all of those things. It really isn't about what I think so many people are trying to make it about. Now your leadership style is, you know, it's going to be such a huge part of what makes that business successful. But it isn't, it isn't everything. And so I think that we've just got to try and separate these things like a little bit. That can't be the first thing that you're thinking of like how, you know, like how you're doing all of that stuff. The first thing you think about is like, how is the business going to grow?

44:18How are we going to thrive? What are we, what are you actually here to do? I think founders are scared as well because we live in this age of social media where, you know, especially if you have a profile, if you do something wrong, there's this really interesting incentive that the employee has where they can, they can pop back. And so if you fire me from your company, Emma, and you know, I didn't feel so good when I was there, I now have you by the balls a little bit, if you don't say it. Yeah, totally because I can post on my TikTok and say, you know, Emma's not who you think she is. Yeah, that's just part of being in business though, right?

44:52Yeah, but then because you're living under that threat from some kind of activist employee, how do you stop that from changing the way that you live with that enterprise mentality and do what's right for the business? I don't think you do. I've had so many founders say this to me in my portfolio, they've saying like, oh man, I'm like scared of being cancelled. Well, don't do anything to be cancelled. I mean, look, I think it's a fine line, right? If you're a leader, you're never going to please everybody. And I think that this is where leadership style and who you are as a person really comes out.

45:25I don't think anybody, I'm somebody that leads with no ambiguity. Nobody's like, I wonder what Emma's thinking. It's like, I'm very clear in what I'm thinking. I'm very clear in what the goals are and the reason that we've been able to do what we've been able to do is because of those things. I have a very straightforward management style and I bring everybody along with me. Now listen, there's always going to be someone or a fraction of people that will feel disgruntled. I've gone through various things in different companies where you've had to downsize or let people go and things that are really unfortunate.

46:03And that's just part of the course of business. Now, are you doing those things in a way that is congruent with who you are as a leader and really thinking about what that actually, like, you know, it's not. Again, it's like I never have like an individualistic idea about that. It's like, if I have to look at a company and downsize, I'm not thinking about the 50 people that I have to let go. I'm thinking about the 400 jobs that need to be saved. And sadly, sometimes there is a little collateral damage. That's just part of being in business. I certainly am not sitting here sweating what somebody might do on TikTok because I know who I am and I feel good about the decisions that I make.

46:46Because of the where they come from. They come from me. They come from my heart. And I know that I'm a good person. So I would never sit here and be like, oh, no, someone's going to like shame me. What was the most important lesson you had to learn about leadership as a up and coming talented black woman in business? I don't think it's any different than honest. If I'm really honest, I don't think it's any different from any other woman. But I do think it's different for women. More generally. I think the probably the most important lesson was how distinctive and important my point of view is.

47:26And why that gives me an edge, right? But I also understand that this kind of empathy coin has two sides to it. What makes women phenomenally good leaders and makes them fantastic at mentoring staff and looking after the needs of the team is sure. Or under belly when it comes to perhaps, you know, downsizing their team or, you know, firing the wrong person or if people are not getting pay rises like how they might feel about that. So I definitely had to learn that there's two sides to what makes me great and to keep both of those sides in check. So it's balancing the empathy part of you with the needing to make difficult decisions.

48:15Because it doesn't feel like care to fire someone. It's like because no, it goes against the grain of caring for it goes against the grain of being like a maternal individual who is looking after people, right? Because that's the opposite of that. You're leaving someone to their own devices. And so that that's been difficult for me for sure. Do you remember the first time you had to contend with that? That's not difficult to me and how it felt. Yeah, I do. I think it would have been like way back when in London, in ITV, the first time I had to do like a meaningful downsizing of the agency. And I had to fire like, you know, it's a small agency.

48:58I had like 60 people and I fired 15 people in one day. And we're in a tiny office, grassy street in, you know, just off a Tottenham court road. Everyone sits together. So there was no like giant boardroom that you could go into and then go out the back door. And we're back upstairs and told everyone, you know, it was like awful. It was absolutely awful. I laugh about it out of just like horror of how it felt at the time because it really, to me, it felt like the end of the world, the end of my life. And I felt so responsible because oftentimes, you know, like so much of being in a competitive dynamic environment, you're pulling people out of our agencies and other jobs and you're bringing them in.

49:39And you know, you're like, that's the best person for this. And then all of a sudden you're like, I'm so sorry. But like, it's over. And that for me was sold destroying the first time I had to do it. But in hindsight, how do you look at that decision now with your wisdom? Well, look, again, I go back and say I created a better company because of it. I created more discipline in the business because I was able to see the mistakes that I'd done that weren't just about over staffing, but it was just about running a less healthy engine. I do think it made me a better leader in the sense of I had held so much of the anxiety of what was happening in that company, it not going well to myself.

50:23I didn't really shared with the full senior management team like quite how bad things were because I felt I'm the CEO, that's all my problem. They should be able to just come in and out. And with that, there was a lack of accountability from everybody else. And so I think I've really understood now that, you know, it's like, I'm here at the top of the organization. And, you know, it's almost like I'm the I'm the manager, right? I sit on the sidelines and either bunch of people, I shouldn't be running on the pitch to score the cards. I need to stay on those sidelines and I need to direct everybody to do the best job possible.

50:55And now I think so much more about bringing everybody on the journey. And when you're having difficult times, which we do all the time in all of our businesses, despite whatever it might look like to people, you know, you need to bring people on the journey and get them involved in what those souls are. Because if you get to that place where you have to downsize or you have to change the way that you're doing business and you have to make meaningful changes, they're there with you. They've been part of the solution. They've been part of those solutions not working out and they're going to be part of making them right for the rest of the business.

51:26I think there's a lot of business owners that can relate to holding on to all of that pressure themselves, cash flow issues, the uncertainty around the business. And you know, they internalize it, they take it home with them. It's with them seven days a week. How did it feel for you when you were going through those challenges with your your first company. And I asked that because I want the person going through that. I was going through it to feel seen, but also to have a bit of a blueprint, a roadmap of what to do about that. The truth is, it feels like the end of the world, right? Like that, that's how it feels when you start something from the ground up and it's yours.

52:06There's such a sense of responsibility. And you know, I think that what happens in business is always like a confluence of factors, right? Like you try to work out like what has made this thing happen? And it's like, you know, sometimes like death by a thousand cuts. There's no like one thing that you can point to and say, that was it. That's what made this like down trending moment happen. It's like, it's a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of this and a bit of that. But often what it comes from is, you know, you get so into what you're doing that it's very, very hard to rise back up. And I think what I've taught myself, like this muscle that I've taught myself is every kind of quarter, at least every six months, I try to flow up and see like what is happening.

52:46Not what I'm telling myself, not what are we doing? Like what's happening? What's happening with the competition? What's happening in the market? And back then I just didn't have the ability to do that. I was so heads down, so in the work, so you know, like just deep in like my clients and doing the best job that I could. I had no ability to zoom out and I do, again, I'm not just blaming myself, but it really was about that inability to see clearly. And so I think there anybody that's kind of been through a moment like that, it's either surrounding yourself with people that are able to help you have a little bit more perspective or trying to make that a habit that you do that in your business.

53:29Bill Gates talks about having reading week or like you know, an away week, he takes himself off and he does it twice a year and he goes and he just like sits somewhere beautiful, it looks like it was like by the water or something. He goes into a little cabin and he just reads, but he thinks about like what is happening in his business, what is happening in the world. And I certainly would never want the comparison to Bill Gates, but I think just having the ability to zoom out a little bit is something that all founders should really, really think about. And it's given me unbelievable perspective that I've made that a practice now.

54:03That's so, so true. I was talking the other day, I think it was actually when I did that solo episode on the die of a seer about this idea of like clouds and trenches. I love the solo episodes. Oh, did you listen to it? I'll thank you. Yeah, I love them. I think they're so good. One of the ideas that emerged from that process was as I was writing the solo episode, I thought about the day that I went fishing. Like I don't fish, obviously, you know, you know, but I went fishing because whatever I just found myself there. And I'm on this boat in the middle of the lake. And the art of fishing is you sit there and you fucking nothing.

54:31You do nothing. And you're on the lake and it's like pissing it down some, I'm sat there in my Mac and it's just like leathering on me. And this boat, this is not glamorous. This is a two meter wooden boat. Oh, babe, we all had an idea of like a yacht. No, no, no, no. It was like in a castle somewhere. And it was the most important like seven hours of my life at that exact moment because I'd been in the trenches for so many weeks in a row that sitting out on that boat for seven hours, just waiting for this nibble that never came because I'm sure that fishing turns out we're so powerful. Like this is this is the distinction between being able to stand back from the photos so you can see the picture.

55:06And it founders like especially when you've got cash flow issues and clients giving you shit and team member issues, you're like this. And I think that the problem is as far as we can feel guilt, that we kind of talked about the same. Remendous guilt. I've like not being in there and not being in the trenches, but because we don't realize we're serving our company by creating a little bit of space. So is it a practice for you? It is. And honestly, I've really made it a practice. And I say that it's about like, first of all, I have to get out of the office. That's the most important thing. And it's really about me creating the conditions for me to be really thoughtful.

55:41So it's like I prepare to like be with myself. Like so I'm really taking a snapshot of like what's happening with my competition. What are people doing? I'm on the sites of my competition. I'm like, what is the customer seeing? I go like in store. I really try to understand what is everybody else like what a customer's truly experiencing from this brand. And then it's really about looking objectively at what we're putting out there. And I really do that. And I've got a, I think I have a really, really good sense of not, I don't know how to say it without swearing. I can swear. I just don't believe my own bullshit.

56:21I've still got the ability and it's so interesting because I think that when you join a new company, you know, I always say to people that come, you know, you've got fresh eyes for, I don't know. A couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months at best until you start telling yourself the same stories that we tell ourselves internally. And I am very good at having those fresh eyes. And so when I have new people in the business, I will go to those people and be like, what are you seeing? Where were you before? What have you like versus what we're telling you? Like what are you seeing in this company?

56:53And so I make a point to like get around to any new starters. And that's just like part of the process. Competition, new starters, having the zoom out. What am I actually like serving and delivering to customers? And I kind of take all of that and come up with like just a one -pager. Like for me, it's always very simplistic, you know, it's like three things. I'm like, this, this, this. Go and work on those things. And it will often be in line with the priorities that I have, like the broader priorities of the business. But sometimes it's just like a random thing that I'm like, I didn't see that happening.

57:23I didn't see how shit would become of that. You know, and so it's like I tried to, I tried to have that level of objectiveness all the time. Are you paranoid? Definitely. 100%. Yes. Well, I was on rightly paranoid. Like I've worked with some of the most copied, duped brands in the whole world. I mean, it's like, I'm not actually paranoid. I'm just like, everybody's copying me. And how do you think about people copying you? Because anyone that's successful, all of my friends that I've done anything well, they're just everyone just copied. I'm totally unbawared with it. We've moved already. I'm like, by the time they've copied me, I'm, you know, I'm a year and a half in the future.

57:58I'm like, go for it. It's over. There's no other way to behave. You know, it's like, if you sit around and you're so concerned at that, you know, don't get me wrong. If it's like, copy, right. That's different. You'll hear from my people. But it's like this, that, that is just part of being like, I work in fashion. It's very cyclical. Where are ideas owned anyway? Who knows? But does it piss you off? If I, yes, absolutely. I've been known to walk up to a founder in the gym and disturb him during his workout. In the early days of Good American, I was like, excuse me, sir. I won't say who. I was like, you are, we used to have this one company that would buy whatever we dropped at Good American.

58:38And they would photograph it and put it on their website. The next like three days after and take pre -orders on it. And I was like, I know you're, I can see the rip hand. Like, I know that's my gene. That's literally my gene. You haven't like tried to make it. You've just taken our thing and you're taking orders on it. You drive me crazy. So when I saw him, I went and told him about himself. He didn't care. He's still carried on doing it. There are 12, 12 times the size of our business. So, you know, it worked for him. They're what? They're big. They're a big one. Don't say anything more Stephen.

59:09People will work out. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to say anything else. I've been asking anything else about it. But tell me more. There's a lot of companies out there that do a good job copying everybody else, right? But that means you can become successful just by ripping someone off. I'm sure people have. You know, I don't know how funny it is to run a company like that, but. Are they fast fashion? They might be. I know who it is. I figured it out. You got your first, I guess your first foray into the world of fashion was that internship you had at 19 years old. You became a show producer after that in productions, you worked at a marketing agency.

59:45Between sort of 23, 25 years old, called Saturday Group, which is now known as Wednesday agency. Co -founded by your now husband, Yens. Yes, indeed. Which is where you met him? Yes. Now, I'm, you know, I'm in business with Yens. So, we started our relationship as I was an employee. And then he was my investor. So he and his business partner invested alongside somebody else that I bought in in my first company. Then I married him. Then we had four kids together. And it has been an unbelievable relationship. And one of the kind of most important things in my life and still remains one of the most important things in my life.

1:00:26But it hasn't always been easy because he is obviously, you know, doing, he's seeing and he's very ambitious and he has his own things going on. And when you bring kids into the equation, everything changes again, right? That it shifts a little bit. I think what is important is to have somebody who just sees all of your talent and sometimes sees it before you do yourself. And I think that Yens has been like unbelievably encouraging of me at every turn. Every time I've had any doubt, every time I've been like, God, that feels like a little bit outside of my comfort zone. And he's been like, but you did this, but you did that.

1:01:09You know, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I did deny. Everybody has that. And you'll know people, right? And who are really ambitious themselves and maybe their partner is envious, resentful, maybe low key subtly plays them, like plays them down or diminishes their ability to them. What would you say to someone who right now is listening to this and has a partner who they feel doesn't want them to climb to the top of the mountain and isn't willing to help carry them up there. And actually sees their work as a competition. What would you say to that person? Because I know we probably got a couple of million this thing.

1:01:50I say this all the time. Everything starts with yourself. And you have to be willing to put what it is that you care about, what it is that you want more than anything first. You have to be able to do that first. And if you have somebody who isn't necessarily like a cheerleader, which not everybody can be for everyone else, that's one thing. But if you've got someone that sucks your energy and your ability to believe in yourself, that's a problem. So I don't think that everybody needs that I cheerleader husband. But you need somebody that at least supports your belief in yourself so that you can go off and do what you need to do.

1:02:39How do you and Jens keep the relationship spicy when you're both working very, very hard? I asked this for myself, my partner is on the other side of the world in Bali doing her business. And I'm out here in LA doing my thing. So I'm wondering how you stay as these independent beasts that are building your own things. But then you nurture the third person or the third thing, which is your life together. Do you schedule date night? What is the journey you've been on to figure out the solution here? Because you must have had to do some trial and error. Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, I think that I'm very, very lucky with Jens.

1:03:22We are really into each other. We're really interested in each other. And that's the starting point for any great relationship. I am interested in his point of view about something. When I see something, read something, get something on social. Like the first person I think was, oh my god, I need to see what Jens thinks about this. And so that is just the default nature of our relationship. Yes, we schedule date nights and 16 years in, that takes a lot of different shapes and forms. We'll go to a Lakers game together. Jens loves the basketball. And I was like, you know what? He loves the basketball.

1:04:01All the good restaurants are downtown. I'll make sure that we go to some new crazy restaurant that I want to go to. Head of the game and then we go to the game. And it's like the perfect date night. We both get what we want. And so how often is date night? Oh, well, we do a date night every single week without fail. Yeah, yeah. And it's really funny because our teams, we have like team greed meetings. We all get together like once a month and it's everyone. And the first thing everyone puts down is date night. They program it in like wherever we are. And it just become, and it's so interesting that I always think it's so funny that we do it.

1:04:36And I think that they, they safeguard it in such a way, because I feel like they all feel like this is, this is become like a really important thing. But I don't know that there's any big secret. The secret is just being interested in each other. The secret is just growing together. And I think that we are so fortunate that we've been able to work with one another. But it comes from like this place of like interest and respect. And I'm interested in the person that he was. It's 16 or 17 years ago. I wish I knew, but I'm interested in the person that he's becoming. And I think he's interested in the person I'm becoming.

1:05:14Quick one. I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously, which is cybersecurity. Whether you're a first time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional who's been through it all, staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated I have to say. And that is where Vanta comes in, who is a sponsor of this podcast. Vanta takes the pain out of security compliance, automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is secure across over 35 frameworks like SOC2 ISO 27001. Centralize your workflows, answer security questions up to five times faster and protect your business without losing focus on growth.

1:05:51And this is really a critical part of this. A new IDC white paper found that companies using Vanta save over 535 ,000 dollars a year. And it pays for itself in just three months. For a limited time, my community gets a thousand dollars off Vanta .com slash Stephen. That's V -A -N -T -A .com slash Stephen for $1 ,000 off. So 25 years old, you start ITB, worldwide and you run that business. 25 years are 24 maybe, yep, something like that. For a decade, personally. Yeah, a decade. A decade of your life up until 35 -ish and you meet Chris. Yes. Jenna, in this process of these 10 years, when did you meet Chris, Jenna?

1:06:36I met her for the first time on a job that I'd done for one of the girls. I was actually, and I'm sure they must be pretty furious now, actually. I was actually introduced through an agent at WMA. They just gave me a number directly, so I just called her. Why would they be furious now? Well, you know, probably. Maybe they should have ushered that introduction slightly more. Hey, hey, yeah, I just called her. At that time, you know, at that time, Chris was on the Chris of now. She was still extremely famous. I remember when we went for lunch, there was like a little crowd forming outside. It was very different from how it is today.

1:07:16And what was she like when you met her? Amazing. You know, but also like not in that way that when you go and meet someone for me, it was just like meeting any other manager, agent, publicist. And of course, it was Chris and she was on the show. And so I had an understanding of who she was. But also, I was trying to get something done. You know, I would have been doing some type of endorsement and trying to, you know, get some information about whatever it was that, you know, I was working on at the time. So it was just like a means to an end. Wherever I would go at that point in my life, you know, I was meeting with managers, agents, publicists, all the time.

1:07:53And that was part of my job and part of what I did on behalf of brands. What was that journey from meeting Chris that first time to getting into business with Chris and pitching her out to be a business partner? And then what happens to ITB, the agency you were running in the background? So it was a really interesting time for me actually because there was this big shift. And what I'd done in the agency was built this, you know, entertainment marketing agency. And we really kind of sat at the intersection of where like brands and entertainment get together. So film product placement, endorsement deals, influencer packages.

1:08:26Like, and it was like the very early days of influencers. Most of the, like we were calling them bloggers at that time, right? So the agency was growing and I'd opened an office in New York that was really doing like the majority of the business. And it was fantastic. So the business become very kind of US facing from a client base point of view. And then this idea of like talent based equity deals kind of like raised its head. And I've read something that Ashton Kutcher taken, I don't know, equity in some Silicon Valley startup. And I started to get calls. And you know, people would always phone me when they wanted to put an a list talent in a fragrance ad, for example.

1:09:03But people started calling me and saying, hey, we've got this startup. We'd be willing to give X, Y and C 10 % of this thing for, you know, for an endorsement. And I was like, well, that's interesting. How did I commission that? Right? Because usually I would be getting paid a percentage of whatever cash was taking, was crossing hands. So for me, it was this new interesting part of the business that I had to figure out how to monetize. So first forward, I did a couple of deals. And instead of, you know, taking a piece of equity, like, you know, because at the end of the day my agency wasn't in that way shape or form, it wasn't figured out that we could like bring equity into the business.

1:09:44Like, where does that go? That wouldn't go over to me. That we'll go to the shareholder base. It would then be nothing to anybody. So I was like, do you know what? A flat fee. And so I did a bunch of deals with a bunch of talents. And I'd say, you're going to pay me a couple hundred thousand dollars. I'm going to work out for X to take 10 % of your company. And I did three that were very, very successful. Then what happened is I kind of sat back and I was like, wow, it's so interesting. And I remember this company reporting some, just reporting some numbers. And I was like, I cannot believe that they've gone from there to there.

1:10:17And in my head, I made a direct correlation between the talent that had been brought into that company. It was for our Williams at the time. And I was like, wow, because for all did this thing, the value of the company jumps like this, I got my little couple of hundred grand and wasn't incentivized. And, you know, by any of the value that was created. And therefore, you know, I was like, God, I'm really losing here. Maybe I should do one of these for myself. Maybe I should create a company and bring a talent into that company and give them a piece of equity in order to accelerate the business.

1:10:49That was the start of Good American. That was the initial thought because I wasn't getting paid what I needed to from my clients. So I was like, well, who's going to, who's going to pay me correctly? No one. So I'll create it myself. At that time, Yenzenerik had started frame, which is an incredibly successful denim company. And so I had kind of thought in my head that between, you know, I had clients like G -Star and Calvin Klein. And I'd worked with Topshop for a long time, very denim heavy. Yenzenerik had frame and so I was like, I know something about denim. Like, that's a category I can do.

1:11:22No, I knew was denim marketing. I had no idea about how to make a product. And then, fast forward, I sit down, I sit at the dinner, and next to some guy who had invested heavily in a big plus size retailer in America. And he said to me, Emma, this space is exploding. And he's telling me all about it. And I looked on my phone, I looked at the retailer, and I was like, that's gross. Nobody wants to dress in those clothes. That product is horrible. And then everything just came together. I was like, oh my goodness, I'm going to create a denim company. I'm going to make all of the sizes all the time.

1:12:01And I'm going to make everyone look hot, faster end of. That was it. I was like, ding, ding, ding. And it just came together. And I was like, oh, and you know what I know how to do? And I know how to book talent and bring them into the brand and converge all of those things. And it's going to be explosive. And so the idea was kind of set in my head. And at that point, I'd had the conversation with Chris, who had said, you know, we're looking for these type of partnerships now. And so I just went back there. And I was like, I have an idea. And I'd really love it if I could pitch your daughter the rest is history.

1:12:34You pitched her? I pitched her. You pitched Chloe? What did Chloe say? I don't remember the exact words. And you know, I never liked to. It's so interesting. We have a great working relationship, the family and I, because I don't speak on their behalf, you know. And I'm very careful not to speak on their behalf. And it feels really unfair because what they are so unbelievably famous, that anything that you say becomes news. So I prefer never to talk about what she said. And what I remember is the end result is that she said, yes. And, you know, we're in business together eight years later. What was the process of making good America a good company in terms of, you have that initial hypothesis when you sat at that dinner, you think, okay, this is what it's going to be.

1:13:21It tends to be the case that almost everyone's initial hypothesis is like a little bit wrong. Yeah. At least in part. No, it's so interesting, actually, that's the, that's a thing that we got right. I think that what we understood intrinsically is that there was this huge subset of customers that were left out of the fashion conversation. If you were above a size 12, that there was almost nothing cute in the market for you. And what we didn't do was create any separation. We were just like, we're going to make 19 sizes of clothes. And what happens traditionally in most retailers is that you've got one set of sizes.

1:13:54And then you go up to floor five and there's this like horrible little subsection. And you've got a bit of, you know, the assortment for petite. And a bit of the assortment for plus size women. And it's completely not reflective of what's downstairs for everybody else. And so we were like, do you know what? We're just going to connect all of those things. We're just going to make one product. We'll make it in 19 sizes. And whatever we do, we'll let the customers choose. So if we're making a dress with a giant slit up the side of it, we're not going to moderate it because we think that a girl at a certain size doesn't want the slit as high because you know what?

1:14:24We bet she does. If we make a teeny tiny fluorescent pink bikini, we're going to make it in every size. And we'll let the decision be down to the woman. And it turns out we were 100 % right with our instinct because these girls weren't buying because they didn't want to buy it. They weren't buying because it wasn't available anywhere. And so our instinct to just like make the staff and put it out there and see who comes was the right thing to do. What part of the strategy and the games you played in 2000 and... 18. 18. 18. Could not be replicated now. Thought it was so important back then because the game has changed.

1:15:05So many, the game has so changed. You know, the arbitrage that existed in social media then, how you could pay to acquire a customer is almost entirely gone. And so when I think about how we could work with Facebook and how we could work with Instagram, how powerful those followings were back then, you can't compare it to now. And so you could acquire a customer very cheaply. You could, you know, I think that the algorithms worked completely differently therefore the cohorts in your business behave completely differently. And if I think about it, we had a three year golden period of runway. The good thing is I think we knew.

1:15:46And I always talk about the beauty of my board members at that time, going back to people like Andrew Rosen and John Howard, who were the total opposite to everybody else on my board that was like, Emma, you need to just double down, acquire as many customers as possible. Don't worry about profitability. Just spend, spend, spend. And they were like, absolutely, do not do that. You need a profitable business that works when this is over. And so I just was like, I'm going to do what these guys are telling me. They have a lot of experience. They have a lot of successful businesses. They've been doing it for a lot longer.

1:16:23And so I think that while we, you know, created a foundation for the business that was really important that was rooted in being digitally native, we never, we never rested on that being the only way that we could meet customers. We were immediately saying, we've got to open our own stores. We've got to create a whole South footprint. And when the tide turned, which inevitably did, and that really happened, you know, COVID kind of gave you an acceleration, but then the fall off was pretty quick. We had this buffer of an incredible business that allowed us to stay the course. So if one is, you know, 2025, and they're trying to deploy strategy to build any kind of brand, and they're thinking about the channels.

1:17:02If we think about B2C companies, so things like Good American, or it could be, I don't know, an energy drink or whatever, what kind of strategy are you thinking about now to acquire customers as being some of the most interesting, but maybe unobvious? Yeah, I've really blown away by what happens when you meet customers in real life. You know, and I think that some of the more experiential things that we've done that stay with people, you know, post -COVID, people want to be together and they want to be in person and they want experience, and they want memories and they want things that last, and they want physicality and what's tangible.

1:17:41And so whatever you can do that brings those type of experiences, like in real life experience, is always going to be out anything that is, like, more digitally native. And so a good example of that is we just opened a store on Sunset for Schims, and we connected the store opening with this incredible diner, next door, that's like a 24 -hour kind of like Hollywood staple diner. There were cues around the block, every single slot for the entirety of the service, and it's 24 hours, was booked within five minutes. And this is to get pancakes and, you know, chicken tenders and like a root beer flow.

1:18:20And what was so interesting to me is I took my kids, and it was so cute, you know, it's like a 50s diner with a jukebox, and we skimsified the whole thing. It looked amazing. My three -year -old, two days later, said, I want to go back to the cafe, and I was like, you're English, that's so cool. You want to go to the diner. She's like, yeah, I want to get the thing with the cherry on the top, and I was like, wow, like in a three -year -old's head, that even like, she had an impression of like that being like a special moment and something that stuck in her mind, and I was like, those type of things for me are just way more valuable.

1:18:53Now look, if you're starting a business, it's really hard to do experiential, in real life, things like that, but I think the point is that getting in front of customers, like getting to them, and that physicality of being in front of them, and whether that is, if you're starting a new drink, like being in the supermarket, being in front of like the point of purchase, that is really important to tell your story and have some physicality around what you're doing. Are you saying this idea of community becoming more and more important for building brands? Because a couple of years ago, it was just throw some Facebook ads at them, we'll get some influences to tell them about it.

1:19:28Now we're seeing this transition towards like run clubs and yoga thing with the brand present. Yeah, I definitely think it's community. And when I think about what that means for our businesses, oftentimes it's really about owning that customer experience. For example, Schims has an app, which is like an incredible place for customers to experience the brand. And I think there's like a lot of gain. It's like there's high low ways. There's very, very few brands that can be successful in an app. You've got really have so much brand affinity and so much love to that brand that people will come, get off of whatever they're doing and like click and be in your app.

1:20:10So I think that's certainly not for everybody. I don't think that would work for a lot of the brands that I'm involved in. But the sense of like standing for something, having some kind of purpose, galvanizing people around something that isn't just about your product, is probably the way to go, I think. And you know, good American has been so successful because it always stood for something. At the end of the day, we were selling blue jeans and white t -shirts, but people understand why they come to that brand. They understand that there's a purpose. But you also have to evolve that purpose continuously.

1:20:43And when I think about where we started eight years ago and where we are in the middle somewhere, we became vehicle -certified. And that was another like real push for the company. It was very, very, very heavy lifting. But that was something that for our staff became so important to them. You know, denim is a tough business to be in. It's a very pollutive business. I have a lot of really young people, a lot of young mothers that work at the company. And they wanted to know that they worked in a place that cared about the world that they live in. And so it really was something that was an undertaking by that company to say, we all feel that we could do so much better.

1:21:19And I think that the underlying values of that company are about it being about our customers and the people that work there and whatever is true to them being the most important thing. And so that has really evolved over time. How old are you here in this photo? I must be 16. No, 15. Oh yeah. If you were to speak to this Emma, and this Emma was keen to start a business, and she came to you and said, what are the like first principles of business? What are the three most important things in being successful in business that you've learned in your decades now of wisdom and experience? What would you take to say to her?

1:22:04Oh, bless her. Well, I'd say I love your curly hair, first of all. It's not bad place to start actually because I would say that it's so important to be true to yourself in whatever you do. And I think that I have an incredible gut instinct. And I have very strong feelings that guide the decisions that I make. And that has really led me so well. So I'd be like, have conviction about what it is that you feel deeply and go with that. But by the same token, I'd say, no, what you don't know. Because there's a lot of places where I'm weak. And one of my greatest strengths and a superpower of mine has been no, what you don't know and hire people into the kind of gaps and the holes that you have in your own knowledge.

1:22:57That's been really important for me. And I feel like I'm so privileged that I've worked with people in one company and bring them into another company in another. And I start almost a lot of things with like a similar group of people. And I love that because they fill in for where I'm not so good. And that's been really key. And then despite everything you've been told, you're going to have to take some risks. And I think that everything that this kid knew was like, don't be risky. Don't take any risks. Like figure everything out and be really safe. And what I've learned is that nothing is going to come easy.

1:23:41And I think that when I moved here, I moved to America with a two -year -old and a newborn baby. And I had no friends here, not like real friends. And it was a really scary move because you move away from, you know, you forget when you move country, you move from all senses of what is familiar to you. And that's very, it's very difficult in any stage of your life. But there's a special vulnerability that comes along with having a new baby and having a new venture that you don't really understand how to run at the time. And so I would say like learning to take risks as probably being the best thing that I've done.

1:24:21How do you feel about her? Oh, you know, I think she's so cute and so lovely. You know, I don't like, I feel like that's, you know, I still look exactly the same, don't I? You know, I feel like this person was like dying to, dying to just do something differently and dying to escape her circumstances. But also, you know, this person loved these three people so much. Charlotte, Rachel and Katie, they are like my world, my sisters who are on a group chat and we chat all the time. And like my reason for being successful was so much about them. It's so much about this idea of being able to share and look after them and take all the things that we had in our childhood and move it into a new space.

1:25:21And I'm really proud of myself that I've been able to do that. And I feel like I'm dying to escape that situation. Yeah, because I feel like for me, you know, I didn't feel that safe when I was younger. You know, I really didn't. I really didn't. And I felt like I should probably have a future where my kids feel I want to be thoughtful about the words because, you know, my mom is still alive. And she did the very best she could with what she had, which is all any parent can do. But I feel that for me and my sisters, there was just so much uncertainty and so many things that I wanted to make sure that for my kids there was just this solid foundation.

1:26:24And I'm so happy I've been able to do that. Some of the skills that I think you have that are unappreciated. One of them is the ability to articulate an idea. And some people call this like sales. How critical do you think it is for women, for men, for everybody to cultivate that particular skill? And how did you cultivate it? Oh, I think it's one of the most important things. You know, when I think about who I am investing in when I think about what businesses to support, I don't care if a founder has a lot of missing pieces. But if you can't sell, you ain't getting my money. Make no way. Make it just no way.

1:27:08Now, you can't outsource that stuff. You either have an ability to convince somebody of what you're doing and sell your idea uniquely or you don't. And I've never invested in any founders that didn't have that as a skill. They couldn't bring me on a journey and tell me their story and convince me that this was something that the world needed. How do you sell? So if you were selling something to me, what are they called? What would you be thinking about as you're preparing that pitch and putting it together? Oh, you'll see you're so much more thoughtful than I am. I would just... I would be so...

1:27:41You know, my whole thing is, I have to be passionate about the thing that I'm doing. I have to see the need, I have to figure out what I'm are solving for, and then I go in on that. I'm painting the picture of where the problem sits, and then I'm showing you how I've uniquely come up with the solution, and then I'm old school. It's like I create a value proposition. I'm all about the perfect place for pricing, and then it's like I'm going to get it to you in a unique way. I don't think it's so complicated. I'm like a born salesperson, that's just who I am. When you reference this, you touch the chest a lot.

1:28:21Of, do I? No, no, no, it's interesting to me. That's what I'm saying. So intuition, feeling... Yeah. And I do get that from you that I think you've cultivated the trust with your intuition, which obviously took some time because I remember the comment Yens made to you, so you're acting like an employee, you need to like, almost like trust yourself a bit more so you can call the shots. Is that something we cultivate? And how do we know whether to trust our intuition? Because so many people, like their intuition is trying to say something to them, and maybe they like gaslight themselves and tell themselves what other people tell them to sort of dim down that internal voice.

1:28:56But how have you learnt to get that conviction to act upon feeling? How have I learnt to act upon feeling? Well, I guess there's an element of doing it and turning out to be right. But I think that you've got to know the difference between having intuition and a gut feeling and then just sort of general excitement and being able to separate those things. Because I get really excited about things, right? And I'll be like, oh my god, that's amazing. And it's so interesting because when you sit on a show like, you know, Dragon's Den or Shark Tag, like you really need to learn like very quickly to separate those feelings.

1:29:37So that helped me a little bit. But I think that that is the, like, is it coming from a place that kind of hits you in your heart spot? Are you just feeling like some sense of excitement? And that is two very different things for me. Like, are you are you moving me emotionally? Or am I just like, oh, that feels like money over there. It's like, it's going to chop up into some nice dividends at some point. That's not how I make decisions. Like, I never, I never go that way with that sort of general excitement of something that's going to be like more financially exciting for me. They never work out.

1:30:14Have you thought much about, as you look back to your career, and now you have the clarity of hindsight, how important the size of one's dreams are? Because I imagine that if you spoke to that Emma, now you'd be like, listen, go fuck now. Like, dream fucking bigger. Like, it's going to, you know, and I was, I think it was what I had about how we work to investment in the back of a car from mash, I was his name, son, something from Softbank, the big, like billionaire investor. And he gave the, we work founder a billion dollar check and said, you know the only problem with you is you don't dream big enough.

1:30:49He just given him a billion dollars and he was criticizing him for not asking for more. And as I reflect back through my career, I go, Jesus Christ, so many moments, I like, undersold myself because I just couldn't see it. I didn't have the friends. You know what happened in the end of that story, right, Steven? Yeah. But still, let's listen, this guy walked away with a billion dollars. Listen, he did, he did all right. He did all right. But, you know, I'm not investing in his next thing, are you? He's just raised 250 million dollars. I'm sorry, I can't believe people are just walking back into that.

1:31:17But there you go. The thing that I put in my mind was actually that, you know, that whole adage of like aim for cloud, like aim for the stars, and you land on the clouds, whatever. Yeah. I was like, there's truth to this idea of just like aiming higher. Yeah, I think that is some truth to it. I mean, look, I, I don't know that I even had an idea of how high, high was, you know, and I think that it's perspective and your environment that gives you an idea of like, what is high? You know, I often talk about this idea, you can't be what you don't see. And for me, I don't think that I had a lot of role models and being in England at that time, it just wasn't like, who was there?

1:31:58Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't remember anybody being particularly like, you know, I kind of honed in on Oprah because she was on the TV when I would come home from school, and I was like, that is aspirational. There's a black woman who reads all these books that has these crazy ideas around gratitude and at the time she, you know, she was talking a lot about manifesting and it wasn't mindfulness meditation, right? But that then kind of moved in to mindfulness. But the exposure to those ideas to me at that time, it felt fresh and new. And I was like, I am going to watch Oprah, and I'm going to be like, Oprah, in my way of thinking, not that I wanted to be on TV, but it's like, that's the type of level of thought I wanted.

1:32:39I don't want to be thoughtful and articulate and move like Oprah, because I thought she moved good. So when it comes to like, your dreams and your ambitions, for me, I think that they may be, aside from the visualisation, side of things where I'd like drew this beautiful home, for me, they've always been a little bit more bite -sized. It's been like, let's get out of this place, get out of Plasto. Then let's get a job and surround yourself with the right people. And then like, and you know, it's all been very kind of like much more incremental. And I always think about this idea of how I've leveraged everything that I've had into the next thing.

1:33:16And I'm pretty good at doing that. I have grand plans that I started writing when I was 30, but they're much more theoretical about how I want to feel, and how I want to be spending my time as opposed to like, what will I be doing at that moment? One of the things you said over and over again as well, when talking about building businesses, hiring, and how important that is to you. It's taken me a long time, longer than I would have liked, to realise the importance of hiring. In my first business, I think it was an afterthought. I thought most important things are, if I work seven days a week, and I don't leave this office, and I have good ideas, we'll be good.

1:33:51Not so much. Not scalable. Yeah, and you learn the hard way. You learn the hard way because you start hiring your friends, and you go fives, et cetera. So, the hiring advice that you needed at the start of your career, that would have helped you to make less mistakes. What is that advice? The hiring advice was learnt to fire. Oh, really? Well, that's what, you know, because I think that what happens in businesses is the people that get you to 10 million and not the people that get you to 100 million. People get you to 100 million and not the people that get you to 500 and then to a billion. And so, what happens is as a founder, you get so, you know, you know what it's like.

1:34:25Like, that's start -up vibe, those early people that work, that they do, and the times you have together, that all becomes like so much part of your success story, right? And if you hold on to that for too long, you kind of miss what is next, and you miss that ability to be able to pivot and to level up. And so, I think that the mistakes that I made early on were not moving people out of the business quickly enough. Because I just didn't want to fire them. Because I was so locked because I have loyalty, and I'm like such a nice girl, and I was like, you just needed to go, and I didn't want to say that.

1:35:01And what was the harm that they did by staying, or by you? Oh, well, it restricted my growth. It restricted my ability to be able to move up and level up and have better clients. And, you know, you don't know what you don't know until it's like right in front of you. And so, I needed to keep, as the business grew, you need to keep constantly up leveling your people. And so, that's what I missed. So, if I could bring that old memory and that didn't want to fire, and I sat out here, what would you say to her? Because I asked this because I know, because kids come up to all the time saying this, that there are so many people who can't relate.

1:35:38Who can relate? Oh, I can nose out. You know, people pleasing. We're a family. Yeah, no, we're not a family. We're not a family. And that's the first thing. It's like, I mean, everybody really needs to understand why they are there. And this is about leadership style, right? Like, are you clear in what you're all there to do? Because it's like, I am not building a family. I am here to run an organization. That organization is here to create a profit. And we all have to be very, very clear about our goals and how we're getting there. And I think that in the past, what happens? And especially when you have successful companies, success masks a lot of problems in a business, right?

1:36:18Like, and when you get successful, you've got to allow yourself and your team to be equally critical, even when everything's going well. And even if the bottom line's well, there'll still be dysfunction within that organization. And you can't let the success marks what that dysfunction is. You've got to get into it. And actually, it's even more important when you are successful that you deal with those things. Because otherwise, the problems get bigger and bigger. As the company gets bigger and bigger and you end up with a problem that you could have stamped out much earlier on, that you then didn't.

1:36:47So it's just a really key thing. And it's a muscle. It's like anything. You get better at this, like, all the time. Now, I've become better and better at spotting who are the right people. And inevitably, actually, I spend more and more of my time bringing the right people into the company. I reckon we were talking about this the other day. I think it's like 20, maybe even 25 % of my time is spent on talent and cultivating, like, the right people to come into the company. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of time. But that's the difference between good and great. 100 % agree. Who you bring in, you know, when we talk about culture in a company, culture is like who you hire, who you fire, and who gets promoted.

1:37:30Now, that is my job. That's my decisions to make within the organization. So I really think about how much more thoughtful can I be about those decisions? And the majority of that is put in like who I hire. So on that point then, how does one get truly exceptional people to come and join them? And I say this because, you know, in the last five years, I've become increasingly obsessed with hiring. It's like, my team will tell you, I feel like I'm the head of recruitment. Yeah. I built the process, sign off everybody that joins every company, obsessing about it, building tools myself in my bedroom to make art, like the screening process that I talked about built it myself.

1:38:08It's my absolute obsession because I now have the clarity of hindsight. Yes. Or I go, oh my God, my net worth and my outcomes can be correlated to like 10 exceptional people that I brought into my ecosystem 10 years ago. And the downstream impact of them hiring more exceptional people, et cetera. So this, so, but me and you're in a different place now. And if you go back to when you first started your agency all those years ago, you didn't have the same leverage. Oh, no way. So if you're a startup founder now, and they agree with this principle that hiring is so critical, A play is really matter.

1:38:39How do they go about, like how would you go about now getting exceptional people to come and join Emma's company? Yeah. Well, Steven, that's the reason that you've got to be a great salesperson. Otherwise, I'm not going to invest in you. But it comes back down to that right. Because in the beginning, you've got to sell a dream, a vision. You might be willing to give someone some equity, but chances are that equity is worth zilch in the beginning. So you've got to be that person that can say, here's where we're going. We're going to paint a vision. But you've got to have the strategic chops to say, you know, anybody good is going to understand that a founder alone goes nowhere.

1:39:16Right. So it's like, what am I coming into? Like, if it's the founder and it's like very little, then what's the vision that I'm buying into and what's the strategy to get there? So it comes back down to this like idea of like, can you sell a vision? Can you sell the strategy these people are going to come into and actually work towards? And I think that that is probably like the thing that I'm good at after I've had a pretty clear idea about what I'm doing. And I can do that because I don't do very much. Everybody always says to me, how do you do so much? It's like, I don't do very much. What I do is obsessed over the customer.

1:39:49I obsess over a set of products. And then I get them to them really quickly. That's it. Like, that's all I do. And so it's not really that much that I do. And I think that it's like so, so, so important for you to be able to do very, very, very few things really, really well. I think that really goes against what a lot of start I've found is think they have to be doing because they think they have to be good at everything. No, no. I think I honestly think it's the opposite. And I think that if you start to tell yourself that it's a slippery slope because no one is good at everything. Right? You've got to find people that have expertise that can do things that you can't do.

1:40:26And that can be really difficult in the beginning. But again, it's like, you have to have, it's like so much of it is about curiosity asking as many questions as you can. So you can start to figure out who is going to be the best person to solve that problem. In the beginning, like, I just feel like I had no idea how so many parts of my business worked. But it's like, I would make sure that I would be the person to ask enough questions to get to the point where I could hire somebody that would be competent to do that role. So it's like you train yourself and you train these muscles that get you better at hiring.

1:41:01And you're going to make some mistakes. Like I never feel like we spend enough time talking about failure, about the mistakes. I've made so many mistakes. I moved a whole bunch of people here to LA and shut the office down 18 months later. Because I thought I had something that I just didn't have. I thought that the reputation I'd built in London would translate to LA. What I didn't understand is LA is a community. And I wasn't part of it. You know, it was like a closed door. I got here and I was like, well, like, just frozen, frozen out completely like. Like that. They not like us. So you know, it really was.

1:41:44And so I think that, you know, learning, like not just understanding. Okay, I had this thing. It went wrong. But it's like really going deep and being like, where and how did I fail? And how do I consistently get better at that? And staffing is one of those things that you just get better and better and better at it. The more you do it. I'm really obsessed about this idea of like truly exceptional people. And, yeah, like truly exceptional people. I was listening to something Steve Jobs was saying a couple of weeks ago. I'll throw it up on the screen for anybody. I've built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B &C players.

1:42:24But really going for the A players. And I found something. I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find, you know, five of these A players, they really like working with each other because they've never had a chance to do that before. And they don't want to work with B &C players. And so it becomes self -policing. And they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players and it propagates. Have you found that to be the case? And also, I want to address another point here which is the insecurity of an early stage founder who looks up and sees someone that's really experienced.

1:43:01And then they have that sort of self -doubt and go, how the fuck am I going to manage them? You know what? At the risk of disagreeing with anybody so prolific and amazing. I think as someone who has been able to move people between organizations or between companies, sometimes they can be the company that can make people great. You can have a truly exceptional person in a kind of dysfunctional company. And then they don't do as well. You can bring in somebody not quite exceptional into an exceptional culture and company and the organization makes them great. Makes them look great or makes them great.

1:43:46Because what people tend to do is level up. You end up the average of the people that you surround yourself most. And I have in some cases bought people in, you know, I'd be like a B - and they've turned into an A player. And I, the more I think about this Steven, the more I think that's happened on a number of occasions. And when the organization is exceptional and when the people there are doing exceptional work, they can actually level up the people. Now, there have to be somebody that wants to level up for sure. But I've definitely seen it work that way. One of the things that I think a lot about is kind of does tells into this a little bit because I was referencing how we can sometimes be our own worst enemies and doubt ourselves away from like finding the truly exceptional person.

1:44:27So we end up hiring our friends is the idea of. I love this idea that you've hired friends. Who are these friends that you hired? Did you hire a bunch of friends? It's a terrible bloody idea. It's me who works with my husband. I was 18 and I, they weren't actually friends, but they weren't qualified. I just met them at like, I met one guy at a Prada store and I was like, you can be a good friend manager. And then I met some guy at like a rap battle and I was like, you should be my marketing director. This is great, Pope, between Prada and the rap battle, I get it. I can see how these things are happening.

1:44:56No rigour in deciding who... No, but that's what it comes down to, like rigour, right? It's like you, again, you've developed systems and processes that have helped you get to where you are. And it's like, now I have a giant organization and a head of people that spend their life, like not just again, bringing people into these places. I don't know where they are, but I think that's the organization. But they're making them great once they get there. I had no such thing. I don't think I knew where they HR office was when I was in employment. Who are they? Where are they? I don't know, Galko Joe that sits in accounts.

1:45:27I don't know where she was. But I say that because we're in a different time now where there is such an ability for us to be more thoughtful about who we're bringing in. And so I think anyone who's really smart and any founder that's really smart is going to use all the tools. All you need to do is know that it's a really important thing that you will do. Who those first three, five, ten people that you bring into your organization will be the difference between good and great. And so being slow and thoughtful and purposeful and using everything you will disposal to make those decisions is probably the best time that a founder can spend outside of developing products.

1:46:08Or whatever the end product is. How do you think about prejudice, Emma? What I really mean here is being counted out before you walk in the room. So people here that you're, it might be a woman or something else. And you feel that they're not taking you seriously. Has that happened in your career as a black person, as a woman, as anything that puts you in the minority as it relates to the accomplishments you've made? I actually know I'm going to give you a bit more context as well. Yeah, go on. Right. It's because one of my fears is with some people they count themselves out before they walk in the room because prejudice is real.

1:46:47So they limit themselves. And there's a really great study they did many, many years ago where they got a group of black people. I believe it was on a vocabulary test just to talk about their race before they did the vocabulary test. And if they got them to talk about their race before their performance dropped. If they didn't get the group to talk about their race before in a different study, performance was the same. They did the same with women. They got them to identify their gender before doing a math test. And because there's a stereotype around math, or at least there was at the time in women, women on that test would perform worse.

1:47:20If they talked about their gender right before they did the test. But importantly, if they didn't, the results were the same as everybody else. So as a stereotype threat is a real thing. And the unpopular conversation is there could be ways that were holding ourselves back before we even walk into the room. Because of that stereotype threat. It could be age. It could be race. It could be gender. It could be anything else. It could be a disability. And I just wonder how you think about like, you know, that. I mean, look, it's undoubtable that that is real for so many people in their lives and the way they think about themselves.

1:47:57I think that any thoughtful organization has, and certainly in more recent times, if we think about what's happened in the last five years, anybody that didn't look at their company hiring process and beyond the hiring process, look around their business. And see, is it a true reflection of our customer base, of society, of what we're trying to achieve and who we want to be, you know, making decisions. We're talking about foolish companies here. I feel like anybody and everybody did that. Look, the great thing about prejudice is you very rarely know if it actually happened to you. Nobody likes to point out that, listen, you didn't get this thing because actually I'm prejudiced against you.

1:48:43I'm sure it has happened. It's never something that for me, knowing how I'm hardwired, I would have let get to me in any way, shape or form. You know, I'd get in a room and would never feel any such like held back by my education held back by my accent or anything like that or being a black woman. In fact, to the contrary to me, I always felt like it was a bit of an advantage. There was only one of me. I used to walk into these offices and work experience and everybody would always single me out because I was the only one that kind of looks like she might have a different opinion. Everyone came from the same kind of private school stock and there I was with the accent, with the big curly hair, black girls sitting in the corner and inevitably they'd be like, what do you think?

1:49:32So, you know, it just played out differently from me and therefore my experience is kind of a reflection of that. That's what I wanted to know. I wanted to understand that because it's something that I really want people to realize, which is like prejudice, yes, it's real, as you said, but it doesn't have to be your problem. It can remain theirs. And I really worry that people will internalize other people's prejudice and then limit themselves. Yeah, and I think this has a very different, listen, you and I speak as two British people, right? I've lived here now for eight years. It ain't the same here in America.

1:50:11How do you mean? Well, the way people relate to races is extremely different here. And if I'd have been born in America, maybe I'd have had a different feeling about how the color of my skin impacted my life on a daily basis because it's very, very, very different here and very much more prolific and a point of every day.

1:50:37Not just conversation, but everyday prejudice comes up and manifests itself in a very, very different way here, with negative connotations. And so I thank God that I was raised in London and I had a very, very different way of associating it like how I felt about myself. I had a very, very different way of the way in which I was raised and how I experienced like race as a kid. How you felt about yourself seems to be more internal than external in that regard. And that brings me to my next question, which is just about how do we not give so many fucks? Because it's hard to live and it's hard to strive and it's hard to take risk if we're imprisoned by the amount of fucks that we give.

1:51:25Yeah, this is, I feel like this is like my speciality, you know, it's really interesting because so much of that is just like, in us, right? It's like hardwired who we are and how many fucks we give. And I just so happen to be the type of person that has such sort of self assurance and such conviction that I don't care or I just have, I have such high, it's not that I don't care. I just have such a high value on how much I care about what I think that maybe what other people think just kind of like pales into insignificance for me. That's, that's the honest truth. And so I just have very, very high self -worth.

1:52:11I've heard you talk before about how as well we kind of misunderstand how much people actually give a fuck about us. I think about that all the time because it's just one of those things that we just imagine that people spend a lot of time crafting texts to us that you would like sit and be like, what did they mean by that? You know, like, I don't, you just, you know, you just sent, do you know what I mean? I didn't even think about the words and the now, you know, whether I was using caps or the wrong emojis or like whatever it is. And I do think that there is this thing that we imagine because we're at the center of our universe, that we're at the center of everybody else's.

1:52:44And it's just not the truth. Nobody's watching you. Like, I think about it all the time. Nobody wakes up and thinks about me as much as I do. So I feel like I can't feel like that. So we just got to relax. Well, maybe it feels like it for you, but I just don't think that anybody's that interested. It doesn't feel like it for me, but when you're in the, I think humans like from an evolutionary perspective, we're like our brain is built to deal with like 20 tribes people. Yeah. Yeah. So we interpret, we have a probably hard way to our fault of being interpreting everything is coming from a member of the tribe.

1:53:19Yeah. Whereas in reality, it could be like Dave and Swindon with like an egg emoji who's telling you that those genes, yeah, yeah, totally listen and Dave at Swindon is like allowed to have his egg emoji. I just don't think he's egg emoji needs to like ruin my day. I'm like, poor fucker. Like what's he doing? How embarrassing? One of the next seasons of life I find myself moving towards quickly is parenthood. When did you start trying and what was your fertility journey like? I love that you are. And I was very surprised that you are. And I had the most easy, unbelievable, brilliant fertility journey with my first two.

1:54:05And then probably the saddest, most disappointing hardest time in my life with the second two. And so it really was a tale of two halves because I have an 11 and an eight year old. And you know, without too much information, I like literally, you know, came off the pill on puff of pregnant. Oh, I was amazing 31. I had gray one. Yeah, so 30, 30 years old, you know, was had had got married, actually had zero ambition to ever have kids ever. And then it was like one of those fairy tale things where I literally walked down the aisle. I was like, oh my god, I just can't wait to have a baby. It's going on here.

1:54:43No, I don't know who that girl was. And so I got pregnant very easy with my first child. A couple of years later, I had my second child, you know, life happens, moved to the US. Oh, everything's like, you know, going fantastic. I decide baby number three, come off the pill again. And I'm like, wait in, to do, to do, to do, wait in again. And it doesn't happen. And so I'm like, honey, you need to go and get yourself checked. Okay. You know, so we do the things that you do when you don't get pregnant so easily. And there was just no explanation for my infertility. And so I went through a few rounds of IVF.

1:55:24And for me, you know, what age is this? So I am at this point. How do I know 42? The kids are three, so 38. I'm 38. So I'm, you know, I'm not like quite yet a geriatric pregnancy as they like to call it in this country when a woman over the age of, you know, 40 has a baby. But I'm, I'm skimming, right? I'm on the edge of where fertility starts to become, you know, more of an issue. And anyway, for me, it was devastating because I really, really had something. And I'm sure so many women will tell you this once you've made up your mind that you're having another baby. That was it for me. Then it was just like, well, how is this going to happen?

1:56:08And I was so lucky in some ways that I was here in, you know, I lived in Beverly Hills at the time. Access to the best doctors was like so, so easy. And so I went on what would become a journey through IVF. And it was one of the hardest, most soul destroying times of my life. I couldn't think about anything else, you know, you could be like, Emma, what do you want for dinner tonight? I'd be like, oh, baby. I just, I just was single track, like the all I could think about was, I need this, I need to be pregnant. Why so destroying? You know, it was so destroying because I went through multiple rounds of IVF and every single time for me, actually, it did work out.

1:56:52But then I lost a baby three times. And it was really, it was just awful, you know, and for me, it happened at nine weeks, 11 weeks and 16 weeks. And so, you know, at that point, 16 weeks, you're about to tell people you are, you know, you think you're past the sort of danger zone, so to speak. Something in my heart told me that it wasn't going to work out for me. Like I actually think I knew deep down, but you're doing all the things, you know, I'm having an acupuncture and the doctors all feel great about it. And of course, you know, you have IVF and then it's successful. You're like, great.

1:57:25Now I'm pregnant. I'm having a baby. And so that that loss was just, I mean, it was so hard to deal with. And again, you know, it was a very isolating time because it was like like COVID. I was on my like driving, you know, you know, in gloves and has not so, you know, it's like the time when we really didn't know. And, you know, and the roads were empty. And it was tough, you know, the police would pull you over and I'd be like, I'm going to the IVF clinic, which was like one of the few things that you were allowed to be on the road and driving around for. So it was just very, very difficult.

1:58:00But, you know, I had a happy ending. And so for me, my journey ended in something that I never thought would be a way that I would go, but I ended up deciding that I would have a surrogate. And I met an incredible woman. And she carried my twins, which was the like single biggest thing that anyone can ever do. You're like, what? Like this is so crazy. And it was amazing. I had like such a profound, incredible pregnancy with this amazing, wonderful woman who beyond what our contractual commitment was, you know, because you hear horror stories. Like she asked me for nothing. It was a beautiful, amazing partnership.

1:58:48And my twins were born via surrogacy. And that was that. Complicated emotions. No. And, you know, I have to tell you, Stephen, I'd loved it. And maybe I approached it more like a bit of a, like I was very transactional about it. Not the surrogacy. No. In the moment before. Beyond, beyond, beyond complicated emotions, because you are, you know, I've had pregnancy loss before, before I decided to have children. You know, I've had a complicated, as so many women have a complicated fertility journey. It was emotions that were, I would say too hard to bear. And for somebody who's used to being able to get her way and work towards things being as they should be.

1:59:31And to me, it's like the amount of effort I put in directly correlates to the result. And there was no such thing in this. You could have all the shops and all the acupuncture and do everything that you're supposed to do. Not work out too much. Don't go in a sauna. You know, like be an angel eat all of the right things. And still I couldn't, you know, hold on to the pregnancy. So to me, it was just something that I couldn't, I couldn't bear. In that moment, are there any dislike, are there decisions that you wish you'd made? Or is there something you'd wish you'd known? Because we don't talk about this enough.

2:00:04So people end up going through this themselves. You know what? I'll tell you, I wish I'd have spoken about it more with all of my friends that had gone through it. And I will tell you this story. I was a couple of summers ago. You know, I'm often the person people confide in. And I happen to be, I won't say where I was in this place, I'm very confined, like on a boat. And all of the women were in some type of fertility thing. Like they had different things going on. And I looked around and I knew I was the only one of all five of us that knew everybody's thing. And I was like, we could be having such a good conversation now.

2:00:44Right? Like it would be so rich and so useful. Because again, like there was somebody that had like had kids by IVF. There was someone who would just come from somewhere. There was somebody that was in the middle of like diagnosing endometriosis. And there was somebody who was pregnant, but not telling everyone she was pregnant because it was IVF and she doubted the problem. But anyway, like everybody had their own unique circumstances. And I was like, in a group of women where we discuss, I might even say, well, we discussed the we just got every single thing. That that is like the last taboo.

2:01:14It says something about your womanhood, that it would be such a deeply held secret. And something that you just can't discuss is such a shame. And I'm not saying that that's what it is for all women and all groups of friends. But it's definitely, it's definitely something that people really, really struggle with talking about. And certainly for me, going down the surrogacy route, I really felt an element of, I wouldn't say shame, but it was like, why could I was willing to do this myself? Like, why couldn't I? You know, I should have just been able to do it. I was ready, you know, at 38, so I have to like go back on the workouts and you know, like, you know, figure myself out again.

2:01:57And so I felt like I'd been robbed of an opportunity to do something. And then, you know, coming out of it, I was like, wow, that was such a profound experience that I would never have had had all of these things not happen. And so in a weird way, I was just kind of grateful for the opportunity to have been, you know, to have been able to see how selfless like another human being could be. Were you aware of the biological clock in the way that people are now aware of it back then? Yeah, I was, although I have to tell you that there's nothing, you know, for most women, we spend all of our time thinking about how to not get pregnant.

2:02:36You know, I just want to like not get pregnant forever until it's your moment that you want to get pregnant. And then there's this second moment where it's like, it's no longer your choice. And the windows really, really narrow. And so I, I, you know, again, I have hundreds of women in my office. And I mentioned to you at the start of this conversation, you know, there was some fertility seminar yesterday. I think that there's still so many myths around it, you know, there is no good time. You can freeze eggs, but it's not like freezing embryos. It's very different. Right. And so the idea that the decision is all ours is just not realistic.

2:03:14And that there is, there is a window and it is narrow. And it is something that you have to think about. And I think there are a lot of women that know that they don't want children. That's fine. But if you do, it's really something that you want to be more plentiful of because it's bloody difficult. And it's not how you think. Thank you. Thank you for talking about that. Because as you say, there's not enough people that talk about it. And actually, had I not had the access to information on doing this podcast and meeting these women who have been very open about it, I would have had no idea.

2:03:47And I would have probably found myself in a bit of a struggle because me and my partner weren't thinking about that. We're thinking about getting the back. We're thinking about building our businesses. Of course you are. And we're 32 now. Yeah. So when I hear people like you say, listen, if this is something you want, then plan, make a plan. And I don't think many people listening actually have a plan for children that they're going to they see it as the thing they'll get round to when they're ready. But this clock, man, it's like, it's the clock is digging like that. I've got an idea. I think you should start a podcast.

2:04:19Stephen, whatever you say, I will do. It's a great idea. Let's go. What should it be called? I think you should call it a spider. That is great. You should launch it in May. Stephen, you're so incredibly smart and thoughtful. And I feel like if my podcast could be born here and be just half the podcast that you have. I think you can do it. I think you can, I think you can level up. This is what you said. You said people come and see something and they level up. So why podcasting? So your podcast launches in May, it's going to just fire. Yeah. What are the, what are you trying to achieve? What's the mission there?

2:04:58Yeah. You know, I'm so glad that you asked a question like that because for me, it is a little bit of a mission. And I think that the more success I've had, and I'm sure this is very similar to you. And you've mentioned it on a few occasions. And actually, I remember being out with you in Manchester. Do you remember when we had to walk from the studio to the bar or anything. And you know, it's like inundated with people and questions and people just wanted like just get like this one thing that they're trying to figure out across the line and say like Stephen, like how does how do I do this? And so that happens to me all the time, wherever I go.

2:05:33And I've made it a habit of mine in the morning on the way to the work to just like jump on the phone to someone for half an hour. I do it almost every day, four days out of five. And I'll speak to some founder and give them like 30 minutes of whatever it is that I can. And so the podcast was honestly from the beginning about figuring out like how can I scale mentorship? How can you get to this place where all of these people that want to ask me questions can actually get some answers from me. And you know, the podcasting was not the first thing that came to my head, but the more I looked into it because I am a huge podcast listener.

2:06:10I listen to so many podcasts, but it's kind of interesting that for such a kind of broad space, there is kind of such a narrow point of view in so many ways. It's so many men hosting podcasts. And when we start to think about business, it becomes even more male dominated. And so in my head, I was like, well, I just have a very different point of view. I have very different experience. I have a very different, you know, access. And what's been so interesting is all the people I called out to do a podcast, they've never done a podcast before. Really? Yeah. Everyone that I was like, hey, would you come on?

2:06:45They were like, I've never done this. And I was like, well, that's interesting. And immediately even just from that kind of casting point of view, I was like, oh, maybe I have a distinct point of view that could be interesting here, but all I want to do is very, very simply is take what I've learned and take the people that I know and have it be impactful because I feel like everyone aspires to something everybody wants to build the life of their dreams. And so I was really thinking about this as something that maybe if I could facilitate conversations and tell people more about the journey that I've been on and be really thoughtful about what it takes, right?

2:07:25Because I just feel like again in like the female like media landscape, there's so much toxic positivity. And I'm like, baby, you're not going to be able to manifest your way there. Like, I'll tell you the truth if you want to listen. And if you're willing to put the work in like all of these things could be, you know, applicable and you know, you could have access. And so that's what I want to do. I want to just like do things how I do them be honest with people, bringing people that I know and be honest about my journey. And I'm excited to do it. Like it's been, I've done a couple of episodes and I'm like, just having a chat.

2:08:01I think all the things you've done in your life, I think the more and more that you find yourself in the public eye. And the more of the work that you do on your podcast aspire. I think that is ultimately going to be the greatest part of your legacy. And I say that because there is nobody else able and capable of occupying that space that I can see. There is no one who comes from where you come from who has been on the journey that you've been on both in the UK and in the US. That's climbed both mountains. That is relatable, even though that there's so high up the mountain. That is had to contend with some of the things you contended with which many women and men contend with, which is like parent turned and family.

2:08:57That is articulate. That is seasoned across a variety of different environments and spaces. That is also a black woman. There is nobody. And if you reflect on you as that young girl looking up at Oprah or me looking up at Jamal Edwards, it was so important. It was the kernel of belief that stays in your mind that says, if they can, there's no reason I can't. I've said this to my team before a ton of times over the last couple of months about you. I'm like, there's no other Emma. So she almost has a responsibility to that gap because you've done incredible things in your life. You've done so much philanthropic work, which I'll put all in the description below to help so many people.

2:09:45It's not lost on me that the older I've gotten, just seeing someone that makes you realize that brings down those limiting beliefs that you have or that society has passed to you could go on to create 100 ,000 Emma's. It's hard to think of a more astonishing, important legacy than that, like the 10 million Emma's that you will create. I'm so glad you're doing this because I've said to my team a ton of times, there's not another Emma. There's not someone else that could occupy that position. So it's so important that you're successful in it and it's so important that you continue to do it. So thank you for that.

2:10:21Emma's so much. It's so true though, I said all the time behind you back on, there's not another one. There's only Emma. So she has to not have to because it's not an obligation, but it's a responsibility. It's a responsibility. I see it responsibility. It's one that I'm taking really seriously because I feel like there is. There is an amazing opportunity there and if you take anything. Seriously, and you apply yourself and you think about like who are you here to serve, you know, and I think about that every day. I told you it's like I'm obsessed with customers. I'll be obsessed with listeners.

2:10:54And at the end of the day, I just want to do something where it's like it's just about doing a good job. Right now I'm obsessed with like what is the content that you put out? How do you have a conversation that's not currently being had? And I feel like there are such incredible people like yourself that are having beautiful conversations that are actually moving us forward in ways. You know, it's like I you know, I text you when you have an amazing episode. I'm like, I love that episode. And I'm so proud that you know, you could be in like black guy from England who's doing these things who's at the top of the charts.

2:11:32And I look at that and I think that's so important. And so for me, it's like it's interesting to think about how this could be important for a certain group of people right now. It's going to be important beyond what you'll ever see realize or understand or be able to measure. And we've, you know, you know that if that's 15 year old Emma there had seen this Emma, what that would have meant to her. Yeah, you know what that would have meant quite a lot. Exactly. We have a closing tradition here Emma where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

2:12:04And the question that's been left is what about you is better or has vastly improved? Because of the person who loves you the most. Who loves you the most? Well, Yens loves me the most, doesn't he? More than more than my mom. More than my lovely mom. You know, I would say whether it was my mom or it was Yens, you know, when you are, when you're so loved, you know, and I feel like someone who is so loved, you know, my sisters love me, my kids love me, my mom really loves me. Yens loves me. You have like such capacity, right? And that's what I always feel. You know, when, when I think about what it is that kind of like keeps me going and gets me up, I have such a huge capacity for more.

2:13:05I have such a huge capacity to give, to put the work in, to receive, to make things better. And I honestly think that that is what's happened to me, that I've like my ability has just grown so much and continues and my capacity just keeps growing. And it's a really interesting thing as you get older to see that like happen within you, you know, because we always talk about having insane energy in our 20s. And then, you know, it's like, I'm 42 now. And I think I have more capacity for learning, for giving, for being, you know, open to new things that I've ever had in my life. And I think that that is because I'm really loved.

2:13:52And it's so interesting. I don't think it's about what I've achieved. I don't think it's about anything else. I think that I know I feel so safe and so secure and so seen that I can do anything because even the biggest mistakes like these people would, they always love me like it's totally fine. Whatever I do. So it's like, I would say that. That's a beautiful thing. And thank you so much. Thank you darling. I'm a huge fan of you from everywhere and you're like a big sister to me. And I really appreciate our relationship and long make continuous. I hope so. I'm so I'm so proud of you. I really am.

2:14:28I look at everything you're doing. And I'm so happy that you're here in America about to take it over. Come on, babe. Thank you so much. Yeah. I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button.

2:15:05The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, whatever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time.

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