Emma Grede, entrepreneur: Success needs trade-offs

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0:29Amol Rajan:CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn. The network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash broadcast. That's linkedin.com slash broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching?

1:18Amol Rajan:Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. That's schwab.com slash Washington Wise. Hello, I'm BBC presenter Amol Rajan and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey.

2:02Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not.

2:07Amol Rajan:We're more popular than populism. For this interview, I met entrepreneur Emma Greed, co-founder of the brand Skims, created with her husband Jens and Kim Kardashian, and the CEO and co-founder of fashion label Good American. She also serves on the board of the Obama Foundation. You're going to hear about a career that stretches from ordinary beginnings in East London to the forefront of global consumer brands and social influence in LA. She talks about the trade-offs we have to make to get to where we want to be in life. And she says that to be successful, you have to start with yourself and travel to where the action is.

2:46Amol Rajan:We also discuss how she wants to break down old ideas of working women and motherhood. all women that I know working women that work either in or out of the home are completely exhausted and I don't think that motherhood got harder I think the expectations around motherhood got really hard and all I'm saying is what works for me is not walking around with this ball of guilt and if you have guilt which most mums will you've got to make sure that you're measuring that guilt against your own expectations not something that you're getting from the outside Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Emma Greed.

3:27I honestly believe that there are like a set of rules and like this idea of like how women specifically are socially conditioned that in fact do the opposite of what we need to be doing right now. They actually create behaviors that make us avoid what it takes to create wealth in our lives and create success and become who we want to be. And so when I talk about trade-offs, it is to really understand what it takes for you to be successful. And everyone that I know, including myself, is doing whatever they're doing, but they're giving up a bunch of other stuff that they would really like to do.

4:07And I think where we are in the media and in the culture at large right now, there's this idea that you kind of like can, you know, sail your way to success or have some overnight success or kind of come upon success relatively easily. And that's just never, ever been.

4:21Amol Rajan:One of my favorite phrases is this idea that it took me two decades to become an overnight success. Exactly. What are the tradeoffs that you have been through, which you're glad to have been through? What have you had to give up to get to where you've got to? Well, so much. I mean, the first thing is I don't live in England anymore. And I think that was a major trade-off for me because I'm such a Londoner. That's so much a part of who I am and how I go about my life and my business. And so leaving was a massive trade-off. And then leaving to go to LA was again a big trade-off because I had no aspiration to live in LA.

4:50How do you approach trade-offs? I really think about what I need to do. Like what are my goals and what are the things that are necessary for me to get towards my goals? And then I give up everything else. I say no to everything else because otherwise you will not get to where you want to go. It's that simple.

5:06Amol Rajan:Focus. We're going to come back to your superpowers. And limited focus, right? It's like really about knowing that you can have everything but not all at once. And so for me, I'm really trying to say I am like life comes in seasons. There are moments for what you want and you can literally set your goals and be really clear about them. But you're not going to get it all at once. Like something has to give. I know about your reputation. And let me just say openly, people that work for you really, really respect you, really, really like you. They rate you. They say you're a kind boss. They do say you've got a pretty crazy appetite for hard work and you have a pretty unusual appetite for focus, which we might come back to.

5:39Amol Rajan:But you have this ability to say this is the thing that matters. And that means I'm going to say nine no's and the one yes. Absolutely. I have high standards. I have high standards for myself and I have high standards for everyone around me. I'm very fair. Moral standards or professional standards? I think all of it. I have high moral standards, high professional standards. I have high energy standards. I'm just high, high, high. That's how I am. But I have them for everyone around me. And I think as a leader, your job is to lead by example. I'm also out the door at 5 p.m. every single day because I am a mum at four.

6:06But that creates the conditions for everyone else to leave at five.

6:10Amol Rajan:What's the old thought about money that we need to put away? Well, here's the thing. I think that we have to be free to speak about money. And that is really important. It's like you can do deeply impactful and important work and care about money too. You can care about money and care about a lot of other things. So all I'm saying is like if you think that earning money and actually being paid what you deserve is important for you, then you have to put money at the center of your plans. You can't hide behind soft ambition or like performative purpose. Do you think it's easier for you to talk about money?

6:43Amol Rajan:Frank, if we're being really honest, because you came from a lack of it. we'll get into this but you know you grew up with a single mum your dad left when you were how old five ish five yeah not great not great when you're one of the oldest not ideal you I think you had two sisters then you went on to have three you know your joke in your family was that your mum was the dad and you were the mum yes and we have three kids together yeah and there was and you had to you know you did the ironing and you sorted the kids out and you sort of their pet lunches out and that's made you maybe who you are but do you think it's easier for you to talk about the importance of money because you've been on this social mobility journey whereas perhaps people born into greater wealth feel they have to be a little bit you know awkward and english about it and a little bit reticent because they don't want to be seen to boast no doubt i mean i'm i'm 100 % sure that that is the case but i also think that what is really important specifically when we talk about women is that if we are going to talk about like gender equality as it relates to pay if we're going to talk about closing the racial wealth gap we have to articulate our needs around money if you elegantly avoid the subject of money money will elegantly avoid you and so all i'm saying is that it's really really important that we are doing what we can for ourselves so you have to start with your needs.

8:03You have to start with what it is that you want. And then you have to talk about it. You have to put it out there. You cannot live in your head. You can't keep a business idea in your head. You can't keep the amount of money that you want in your head. You've got to get it out and make sure people understand.

8:16Amol Rajan:So what about if we moved more towards, it'll take a while to get there, but more towards maybe a slightly more Scandinavian culture of being radically transparent about money? Because when I started at the BBC News about nearly a decade ago now, 2016, there was this big move to publish the salaries of the top earners. And initially people were like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that, particularly people whose salaries would be exposed, because it's awkward, isn't it? It's not a comfortable thing to do. But a lot of good came of it, including the revelation that a huge number of women were being paid less for doing the same goddamn work, which, by the way...

8:49Surprise, surprise.

8:50Amol Rajan:By the way, that's illegal, because we've got something called the Equal Pay Act, and that's illegal. And that led to a huge amount of headlines, a scandal, a commotion, But actually, by the way, the BBC is much better on that than a lot of the people criticising the BBC. And the BBC has got a smaller gender pay gap. Gender pay gap being slightly different to equal pay, which is a legal right. But there was this move towards transparency. And a lot of the people who had been against the public disclosure of salaries changed their mind and said, actually, this is quite good because, you know, we've got more equality of expose and bad things.

9:18Amol Rajan:Do you think we should all just talk about how much we earn a lot more kind of openly? I do. And I think it's essential for two reasons. First of all, I live in California right now where there's a requirement. Whatever job you post as a company has to have a salary band attached. They have that level of transparency. And what that's done both internally at your company, but also for candidates is really open it up. People understand. They're like, wait a minute. This job is for me and here's the money that I could potentially be paid for it. And so you don't even have to have that negotiation because you've got the transparency, with actually makes it way easier for everybody involved.

9:54You know what you're dealing with right from the outset. But the other piece of this is really thinking through this idea of why are we hiding? Like what are we actually hiding behind? It's embarrassing being poor.

10:06Amol Rajan:As you know, and I know less so than other people, but I know a little bit about it. I certainly know what it's like to be skint and to grow up in a family where at times money is really tight and the atmosphere of the house is made by the fact that you can't afford something. You can't have that holiday. You can't have this thing. It's embarrassing to be poor. I mean, listen, I remember being very poor. I remember hiding from the milkman, you know, back in the day when the milkman would come once a week and you had to pay a bill. But I think that my mum had really good and transparent money habits.

10:34She never hid anything from us.

10:36Amol Rajan:You hid from the milkman? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Like, literally behind the sofa. We used to call him Milky, but we would literally, she'd be like, get down, Milky's here. And we would hide from the milkman. Well, because you haven't paid for your milk bottle? Yeah, you have to, like, skip a week, you know. You might have to just, like, just wait. What did your mum do? As a living. For a living. So, you know, it's interesting because my mum actually started out in fashion and then she ended up working in finance and banking. And so she worked for Morgan Stanley for many, many, many years. But she had a way of teaching us about money that actually was so valuable for me because she would sit at the dining room table and she would write every single thing down that was outgoing.

11:11So she was like, here I am. That was back in the day, you know, when you'd actually physically write a check. Line by line in a diary. She'd sit there with the Abbey National and she had her little book. So I understood, like, here's what the heating costs and here's what the gas costs. And here's what we owe Milky and here's how much our groceries cost. A bit like looking at P &L now. Literally. But to me, there was a sense of like, OK, like prioritisation. Here's what has to be paid. Here's what's a must have. Here's what's a nice to have. But it wasn't that sense of like, you know, we have plenty.

11:36It's like, here's what we need to do to get through our life. And I still think like that, even to this day, even when that's like not necessary for me.

11:44Amol Rajan:So it's interesting you talk about your mum. Quite a lot of what you do and what you do on your podcast, which features a lot of extraordinarily powerful women. And I should say for those that don't know, you're on the board of the Obama Foundation. You spent a lot of time with Michelle Obama is you're really trying to make women and working women think differently about their careers, the tradeoffs, the reality of things like what we call the motherhood penalty. What are the old thoughts that you would like to disentangle, attack, break down when it comes to a women and be motherhood? Well, you know, the motherhood thing is a really, really big one because I think that all women that I know, working women that work either in or out of the home are completely exhausted.

12:27And I don't think that motherhood got harder. I think the expectations around motherhood got really hard. And all I'm saying is what works for me is not walking around with this ball of guilt. and if you have guilt, which most mums will, you've got to make sure that you're measuring that guilt against your own expectations, not something that you're getting from the outside. So not this idea that you saw somebody doing this like big performanting parenting thing on Instagram and you've decided, oh my goodness, I'm not doing that and I need to live up to that impossible standard but rather that you have a vision for your family and how you guys want to live and then you live up to that.

13:03Amol Rajan:You're not for a minute disputing that there is something called the motherhood penalty, that there are lots and lots of women who do work and who at the absolute moment in their career, maybe they're in their late 20s, early 30s, maybe a bit older, when they want to be soaring and they see blokes, frankly, you know, really soaring, you know, going up three or four levels of the career ladder very, very quickly. They have to take several years out and not just several years out, but they're kind of absolutely knackered and they want men to pull their weight. The motherhood penalty is real and it is the, I mean, the evidence shows it is the main driver still of the gap between men and women at the top of the tree?

13:37100%. In fact, I'm reinforcing that. And I'm also saying that it is something that you have to manage, right? Nobody is coming to help you manage that conundrum. And I think that actually what women have been sold around, you know, waiting to have kids, pushing out having kids for their careers is crippling women. I actually think that, and listen, I'm certainly not advocating for teenage pregnancy, nothing near it but also waiting until you're 38 probably isn't a plan either because at the end of the day there is a biological reality as to when women are naturally going to conceive now i can say this because i've got four kids i had my first two kids naturally i had my second two kids with a lot of help i went through rounds of ibf ended up having my second two by surrogate because i had waited too long so as a boss and a leader and somebody who has sat in my organization said Don't worry, girls, we have a benefit.

14:32You can freeze your eggs. Perhaps that isn't the ideal thing to do. There is a reality to when we should be having and thinking about having children. And that's why I talk about seasons in your life. There will be moments when you have to put the pedal to the metal. In my 20s, all I did was work. I was 150%. Then there was this period early 30s where I kind of had to go, all right, you know what, I'm going to go to work every day, but I've got these little babies. And I talk a lot about accepting help, knowing when to lean in, knowing when to lean out. But it has to be about your decisions, not trying to live up to impossible standards.

15:06Do you ever relax? I do. And it's so funny. I relax really well.

15:10Amol Rajan:You sound quite defensive all of a sudden. No, you know what? I'll tell you. No, I love that you say that because I always think people think I don't relax because people imagine I found like a 25th hour in the day. The reality is I have a lot of help. I do. There's so much that people look at me and they go, God, she must be doing a lot. Let's talk about the things that I don't do, because that is what makes women feel bad. This idea that you think, God, she's out there killing it. And she's got these four kids. I don't cook. I don't clean. I'm not at the school gala. I'm not at the school gate.

15:39There's a bunch of stuff that I don't do. And as opposed to like hiding behind this and trying to put forward an image of like perfection, I'm actually saying, do you know what? I had to trade off. I had to make a decision about what type of parent I wanted to be. And sometimes that was about putting myself first. I am a mother of four who says, actually, guess what? I'm the top of my list. I am right on the top. And people go, good. Goodness me, that's so selfish. And I'm like, actually, that is my choice.

16:08Amol Rajan:You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

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17:05Amol Rajan:I have to say I found Emma Greed one of the more engaging and brilliant and fascinating conversationalists and interviewees that I've met in recent years. She's very clear, she's very opinionated, she's got a remarkable backstory, but she also has genuine, impressive business credentials. And right now, she's having a bit of a moment online. She's done other podcasts. She's done lots of other interviews with really big names, particularly in America. And she knows how to command our attention. OK, let's return to my conversation with Emma Greed. If you want to have the kind of success Emma Greed has had, do you need to go to where the action is?

17:40Amol Rajan:And that means the big city. I think so, yes. And look, that's really difficult to say. And I think that there's a couple of reasons for it, right? I actually remember speaking to a fantastic British entrepreneur who shall remain nameless, who had her company based in Manchester, I think. And I was like, for me and for you to have global success, that is somewhat limiting. Not because there's anything wrong with Manchester, but it's all of the other stuff that's attached to that. Your ability to access talent, your ability to make sure that you catch the fleeting opportunities that in business to be successful, you just have to grab onto.

18:21And so what you're doing is just actually taking away some of the chances to be great. That doesn't mean you can't be successful in those places. But, you know, as an entrepreneur, you've got to take every single chance. And if you're immediately saying, OK, I'm going to be like out of the action, out of the circle of interest, not going to this thing, not invited over here, not attracting this type of talent because I'm putting myself geographically outside of the sphere of opportunity, then it's tough. And I do think that, you know, when I moved to America, it was for a very, very specific reason.