“Hello, Darling!!!”
Emma Grede sings as she glides into the room, and though it’s the first time I’m hearing her voice in person, it lands as familiar as a friend’s. For the past year, her podcast Aspire has turned out interview after interview that Ambitious Material Girls everywhere have hung on to, me at the front of that line. She’s let us witness the glamour and the grit of the spectacular life she’s built, honest about all of it, even when the truth came with criticism.
Emma has been one of my north stars for years, living proof that a girl with big dreams and no safety net can build an empire and still sound exactly like herself.
For those of us who climbed out of poverty into heights our families have never seen, that proof runs even deeper. Every step up arrives with its own cocktail of pride, guilt, wonder, and loneliness. Nobody quite gets it, and I wouldn’t want you to have to. It’s also exactly why I feel so connected to her.
In this conversation and in person, she beams with generosity, clearly there to over-give to the women she came to serve. Women like Emma, whose standards for themselves and for everyone around them set a bar that dares the rest of us to rise, are the ones who change this world. Her skin is also insane and she is even more beautiful in person, so don’t worry, I asked for every single product rec at the end.
P.S. Give it up for SLUTTY FOUNDER who redesigned TSFT for us under the wire — say hello to our amazing new branding <3 I LOVE U TO THE MOON N BACK ESSENCE!
Here’s my conversation with Patron Saint of Ambitious Material Girls: Emma Grede.
Let’s check the resumé:
Cofounded Good American with Khloé Kardashian in 2016, a size-inclusive denim brand that did a reported $1 million in sales on its first day. She’s the CEO, and she owns 23% of it.
Cofounded SKIMS, where she’s founding partner and chief product officer. The company was valued at $5 billion in a Goldman Sachs-led round late last year.
Built and sold a company before any of that. ITB Worldwide, the brand partnership agency she started in London at twenty-six and sold in 2018. Safely and Off Season came later, because why stop.
Made history on Shark Tank as the first Black woman to sit in a Shark’s chair, and has since been named one of Forbes’s America’s Richest Self-Made Women.
Wrote Start With Yourself, hosts Aspire, chairs the 15 Percent Pledge, and runs all of it from Los Angeles with her husband, Jens, and their four children.
The Anger We Swallow
AB: You write candidly about anger in your book, mostly the louder version. I’ve tended toward the opposite: fear of the “angry Black girl” archetype taught me to repress mine. Has there been a quieter moment when swallowed anger cost you something?
EG: For me, the quieter version of anger was actually the more damaging one. I carried unresolved anger from childhood for years, convincing myself that staying silent was the same thing as moving on. It wasn’t.
What I eventually learned is that healing isn’t about pretending you’re not angry. It’s about acknowledging it, processing it, and then deciding what you want to do with it. Once I stopped carrying old anger around, I had a lot more energy for the life I wanted to build.
AB: Was there a moment you stopped building your life as a reaction to your past, running from pain and poverty, and started architecting your future on purpose?
EG: I had to learn early to stop blaming my circumstances, and where I was from, for the lack of opportunity around me. I was surrounded by all these guys who had talent and got out: footballers, MCs, rappers. I didn’t have that type of obvious talent, but I did know how to work hard and say yes to anything that presented itself.
I don’t know that I could boil it down to a specific moment in time, but I had a close friend who went to jail for a very long time. He believed in me so much, it gave me a sense that I owed it to him to do something with the trust and belief he had in me, seeing as his opportunities were no longer his own.
AB: I’d love specifics from the anger management course. What did they teach you that you still use every day?
EG: I went into anger management assuming the goal was to stop feeling angry, but that wasn’t it at all. The focus was on learning how to respond to anger instead of being controlled by it.
The practices I still use are surprisingly simple: pause, breathe, come back into my body, and give myself enough space to respond intentionally instead of reacting automatically.
The other big thing I learned is that not every moment requires an in-the-moment response. Where I grew up, not having an immediate rebuttal at the ready felt like backing down. With age, I learned that time is a tool. How I feel about something in that exact moment usually changes with time, so I owe myself that time.
Deciding What Deserves an Answer
AB: You recently responded to people crediting your success to your husband, and I admired that you defended the life you built. Privilege can be real, and there’s a difference between acknowledging it and letting someone rewrite your story. What made that moment worth answering, and how did you turn the anger into something useful?
EG: It’s vital to acknowledge privilege and the people who’ve helped me along the way. Nobody builds anything alone. Acknowledging support shouldn’t require erasing my own agency.
Too often, women are taught to attribute their success to everyone except themselves. I’m proud of what I’ve built, and I think more women should feel comfortable saying that. We spend too much time diminishing our own contributions before anyone else gets the chance.
My success being attributed to who I married wasn’t something that just irritated me. It’s wholly incorrect. I owe it to myself, and to any other woman who attracts a man who happens to do well, not to allow that narrative to circulate unanswered.
AB: As you’ve become more successful, how have you kept relationships with people whose ambition or lifestyle looks very different from yours? Have you had to redefine them?
EG: Success changes your relationships because it changes you, and I don’t think we should pretend otherwise. I’ve learned that not everyone is meant to come with you into every chapter of your life, and that’s okay.
The friendships I’ve held onto are built on trust, honesty, and genuine love, not whether we’re on the same career path. I don’t need everyone to understand my ambition, but I do need the people closest to me to respect it.
Family is the exception. No matter what my career demands, they’ve always come first. Work changes, success comes and goes, but those relationships don’t.
Agency, Applied
AB: You’ve managed and mentored thousands of people. What separates the ones who execute well from the ones who consistently rise into leadership?
The people who become leaders stop waiting to be told what to do. They don’t just execute the plan; they challenge it, improve it, and take responsibility for the outcome.
Too many people, especially women, have been conditioned to believe that if they work hard enough, someone will eventually notice. That’s an employee mindset. Leadership begins the moment you decide you’re responsible, before anyone gives you the title.
EG: On the founder side, what’s the first sign someone is still operating with an employee mindset, the one that makes you pass on working with them?
The biggest tell is that they’re still looking for permission. They’re waiting for the perfect investor, the perfect introduction, the perfect timing, or someone else to validate that their idea is good enough.
Building a business requires agency. There is no passive way to succeed. You have to make decisions before you have all the answers and trust yourself to figure out the rest.
AB: Once someone realizes she’s still thinking like an employee, how does she retrain herself to think bigger? What habits helped you expand your own ambition?
EG: Start by writing your own vision instead of borrowing someone else’s definition of success.
Every year, I map out where I’m going, and then I work backwards into the habits, relationships, and decisions that will get me there.
I also challenge every “Old Thought” that tells me to wait, play small, or soften my ambition. Most of the limitations women experience aren’t capability problems. They’re conditioning.
AB: Imagine someone is bootstrapping her first company today. What’s your order of operations for creating leverage? Who do you hire first, and what do founders wait too long to delegate?
EG: Your first hire should buy back your time so you can spend more of it creating value. Founders wait far too long to delegate administration and operations because they confuse being busy with being productive.
Your job isn’t to do everything. It’s to spend your energy on the work that only you can do: selling, building relationships, making decisions, and creating the vision for where the business is going next.
AB: Building a business is one thing. Building a life that can sustain it is another. Outside of work, what was the first thing you outsourced, and what gives you the biggest return?
EG: I realized very early that time was my most valuable asset. One of the first things I wanted was a housekeeper every two weeks, not because I wanted luxury, but because I wanted leverage.
Women have been taught to prove their worth by doing everything themselves, but exhaustion isn’t a badge of honor.
Every hour I can buy back is an hour I can spend building my business, being present with my family, or simply thinking.
The biggest return doesn’t come from outsourcing one task. It comes from protecting your energy for the work that only you can do. That’s one of the highest-return investments I’ve ever made.
The Last Word
AB: At what point did you realize your own perspective had become an asset worth building alongside your companies?
EG: I never set out to build a personal brand. I set out to build businesses. Over time, I realized people weren’t just interested in what I’d built; they wanted to understand how I think.
That shifted my focus from building companies alone to sharing the mindset behind them, and it was one of the main drivers for writing Start With Yourself and for my podcast, Aspire with Emma Grede.
AB: You’ve built businesses, invested in founders, and become one of the most respected operators in the world. What chapter are you building toward now?
EG: My mission is to inspire and model what the world can look like if women begin to trust themselves with money and power, and make zero apologies about accessing both.
I started Aspire to make sure we see and hear from more models of possibility (incredible women actually doing shit), and to put a spotlight on where we’re limiting our thinking, and therefore our potential. I only really care that I do what I set out to do.
AB: We ask every guest to finish this sentence: “You are too smart for...”
EG: ...absorbing other people’s thoughts.
Tools of the Trade: Emma’s systems
The annual vision map. Every year she writes down where she’s going, then works backwards into the habits, relationships, and decisions that will get her there.
The Old Thoughts audit. Any thought telling her to wait, play small, or soften her ambition gets challenged.
The pause. Pause, breathe, come back into the body, then respond on purpose.
Time as a tool. Not every moment requires an in-the-moment response. The feeling in the moment usually changes.
The first-hire rule. Hire to buy back your own time, starting with administration and operations.
The biweekly housekeeper. Her first outsourced task, and one of her highest-return investments.
Alexis’ Annotations
What I underlined, and how I’m putting it to work.
1. Swallowed anger still costs you. I’m treating my frustration as information now, writing down what set it off and what it’s asking me to build before I decide what to do with it.
2. Time is a tool. When something stings, I’m giving myself a full day before I respond, since I owe myself that time.
3. Sort the irritating from the wholly incorrect. Before I answer anything this season, I’m asking whether it’s merely annoying or actually untrue, and only responding to the second.
4. Belief is a debt worth honoring. I’m keeping a list of everyone who bet on me before I had proof, starting with my grandmother, and rereading it on the hard days.
5. Stop waiting for permission. I’m mapping my next three years on paper this month and working backwards into the decisions I’ve been waiting for someone else to approve.
6. Leverage starts small. I’m handing off one more task this quarter so my hours go to the work only I can do.
7. Ask for respect, even where you can’t get understanding. I’m asking the people closest to me to respect my ambition, and making peace with the ones who may never fully understand it.
Tell me in the comments: which annotation hit hardest, and what story about you has been circulating unanswered?
If this issue meant something to you, subscribe so the next Annotated lands in your inbox, and forward it to the woman in your life who’s building something bigger than anyone around her can see yet.
Alexis xx
One more thing before you go. Emma spent years letting her work speak while other people wrote the story around it, and most of us are doing some version of that right now. CREDIBLE is my free workshop on building the kind of visibility that makes your expertise undeniable. October 4 at 11am ET. Register here.
5 star read✨
Great read Alexis!🤍