Speaker 1: Wake that answer up in the morning.
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club Morning, Everybody's DJ, Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne
Speaker 2: the Guy.
Speaker 3: We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special.
Speaker 2: Guest in the building. Yes, indeed we have Emma Greedy. Welcome,
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I'm so happy to be here. Good morning, all of you.
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 4: I'm really good, actually very good today.
Speaker 2: Now you are the CEO and co founder of the
Speaker 2: Denim Company, a good American. I am a founding partner
Speaker 2: of Skims, co founder of Safely, and you have a
Speaker 2: new podcast coming out Aspire with Emma gree.
Speaker 4: I do, I do? Indeed?
Speaker 3: Now tell us how this all came about.
Speaker 1: Doing that?
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you very much. Well, honestly, I'm so
Speaker 5: excited about the podcast. That's my newest latest venture. And
Speaker 5: you know, I've spent my entire career building businesses, and
Speaker 5: so the idea around the podcast was really me thinking
Speaker 5: about how I can scale mental ship because wherever I
Speaker 5: go all over.
Speaker 4: This country, if I'm doing a talk or if I'm walking.
Speaker 5: Down the street, people are constantly asking me questions, how
Speaker 5: do I start a business, how do I get a
Speaker 5: pay rise? How do I become the best version of myself,
Speaker 5: how do I negotiate better? And you know, I can
Speaker 5: answer a lot of dms, but there's only so much
Speaker 5: you can do. And so I'm really taking all of
Speaker 5: my knowledge, everything I've done, all of my network and
Speaker 5: trying to bring it to people in a digestible way.
Speaker 5: And I think that when you think about podcasting, it's
Speaker 5: a very very you know, broad medium, but there's a
Speaker 5: very narrow business viewpoint, very very narrow viewpoint, and especially
Speaker 5: when you get to business podcasting, it's all men. And
Speaker 5: so I'm bringing like a perspective of myself, of somebody
Speaker 5: who is self made, someone who's a self starter and
Speaker 5: has you know, come from where I come from with
Speaker 5: very little education, and I want to bring something to
Speaker 5: people that is tangible and that they can essentially take out.
Speaker 5: I want you to have something that's actionable when you
Speaker 5: leave this podcast, that you can take that back into
Speaker 5: where you work or back into your small business and
Speaker 5: do something with it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of where are you from? Where do you come from?
Speaker 4: Where do I come from?
Speaker 5: I come from East London in England, which is a
Speaker 5: bit like you know, I always think about it as
Speaker 5: you know, similar to Brooklyn or something like that it's
Speaker 5: the most impoverished part of London.
Speaker 4: But I would say probably the best part of.
Speaker 6: You said it, like you from Brooklyn, Yeah, East London,
Speaker 6: but you have a network of three hundred and twenty
Speaker 6: something like that and you're from Eastland.
Speaker 4: I think that was last year's figures. But yeah, we'll talk.
Speaker 4: Yeah we're growing out here.
Speaker 1: But you didn't come from an impoverished area.
Speaker 4: I do, and you said yourself, me, yes indeed.
Speaker 1: So how did you get to that point?
Speaker 6: What was the first thing that got you in the
Speaker 6: mix of get on that road and having a network.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've had a job since I was twelve
Speaker 4: years old.
Speaker 5: I delivered the papers, I worked in a Delhi, I
Speaker 5: worked in close shops, I did all the things. But
Speaker 5: you know, my interest was really in fashion. That's where
Speaker 5: my passion was. But I didn't know anyone who, you know,
Speaker 5: had a business when I was old. I didn't even
Speaker 5: know the term entrepreneur. If you were an entrepreneur in
Speaker 5: where I come from, you were probably doing something very wrong.
Speaker 5: So that wasn't really an idea that I had growing up.
Speaker 5: Excuse me going to clear my throat. But so for me,
Speaker 5: I started out like many people. I did a lot
Speaker 5: of work experience. I tried to get into the fashion business.
Speaker 5: I assisted everybody. I worked in a lot of stores,
Speaker 5: and eventually I found myself in a fashion show production
Speaker 5: company and so that was me creating the shows, like
Speaker 5: building the shows, the catwalks, the backdrops, and it was
Speaker 5: a very unfulfilling job, but you met everybody. So I
Speaker 5: did that for about four years, and then I fell
Speaker 5: into this kind of weird space of sponsorships because no
Speaker 5: designers ever have money to do their shows, and so
Speaker 5: they needed brand partnerships. And I just happened to be
Speaker 5: like a hustler, you know, I understand how to put
Speaker 5: people together and make things happen. So I started doing
Speaker 5: these brand partnerships. Became the girl in London. You know,
Speaker 5: if you were running a show or you had a
Speaker 5: party to do, you come to me for the sponsorship.
Speaker 5: I would find you the sponsorship. And after a while,
Speaker 5: I started my own company doing that when I was
Speaker 5: twenty four years old, and it kind of grew from there.
Speaker 5: I did one company, I did another, I sold a
Speaker 5: couple companies. Fast forward to when I'm about thirty two.
Speaker 5: I managed to exit that business, so I spent, you know,
Speaker 5: nearly ten years building that first company, had my first serious,
Speaker 5: meaningful exit, meaning that I made some money for myself
Speaker 5: and so I was financially secure.
Speaker 1: Company with it.
Speaker 5: That was called ITB and so, and it was amazing.
Speaker 5: It was like an entertainment marketing agency. So I worked
Speaker 5: with all the great brands and I would put talent
Speaker 5: in their campaigns and I built a big company. We
Speaker 5: had offices in London, in Paris, in New York, in LA.
Speaker 5: I shut down in LA because I made a lot
Speaker 5: of mistakes, but it gave me the foundational knowledge.
Speaker 4: To really get to where I am now.
Speaker 5: And then, of course, you know, I decided, after all
Speaker 5: that time and you know, creating a lot of value
Speaker 5: for other people and other brands, that I would do
Speaker 5: something for myself.
Speaker 4: And that's when I started Good American.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Good American with Skims is under that and
Speaker 1: what else.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 5: They're totally separate, totally separate companies, separate companies, separate entities,
Speaker 5: separate shareholdings, separate that's the thing.
Speaker 6: And I was reading this and I started, you have, like,
Speaker 6: you know, you have a certain percentage in Skim, Do
Speaker 6: you have a certain percentage.
Speaker 1: In good America, you have a certain percent safely.
Speaker 6: And the reason I thought that was so dope is
Speaker 6: because we live in this era where people feel like
Speaker 6: you have to have one hundred percent of something to
Speaker 6: be an owner, to be a boss. But the reality
Speaker 6: of one hundred percent and nothing is nothing nothing.
Speaker 4: And listen, here's the thing.
Speaker 5: I've done a very very good job because I divest
Speaker 5: my shareholdings. You don't want to hold a lot of
Speaker 5: money of a company. I've taken money off the table.
Speaker 5: I'm not looking to be rich when I'm seventy five
Speaker 5: years old. I want the money now. Yeah, And so
Speaker 5: I think that when you get valuations like a four
Speaker 5: billion dollar valuation, you take some money off the table.
Speaker 5: That's the sensible thing to do to divest your interests.
Speaker 5: And that's what I've done all along. And so I'm
Speaker 5: very happy with the shareholdings I have right now because
Speaker 5: I've cash in the bank and that's what counts.
Speaker 2: How did the Skims company start? You know, people will
Speaker 2: know Skims because it's so huge. It's on the sponsored
Speaker 2: by the NBA.
Speaker 3: So how did that come?
Speaker 4: We sponsored the NBA even the other way around? Even better?
Speaker 3: So how did that company come about.
Speaker 5: So honestly, I think it came about from the relationship
Speaker 5: that I have with the family, and you did, No,
Speaker 5: it wasn't my idea. It was Kim's idea. She wanted
Speaker 5: to create a shapewhere company or an underwear company, and
Speaker 5: you know, I had a business with the family, and
Speaker 5: so we decided to do it together. And the rest,
Speaker 5: they say, is history. It was, you know, the right
Speaker 5: thing at the right time. And you know, I think
Speaker 5: with any company, the stars, the stars have to align.
Speaker 5: We launched that company in a magical, magical time and
Speaker 5: it hit the kind of zeitgeist. It was the right
Speaker 5: company for the culture like at the moment, and so
Speaker 5: I think it was just a series of amazing things
Speaker 5: that happened and put it on the map and here
Speaker 5: we are.
Speaker 7: That's amazing because even Good American is Chloe's, Chloe's company.
Speaker 4: Right, it's a partnership between me and Chloe.
Speaker 1: Yes, work well with the families.
Speaker 7: To say a check, check, check, I love that, And
Speaker 7: there's so many of them, so so many checks.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 6: You have a look at Skims and Good American blowing
Speaker 6: up and think to yourself, damn, you know, we really
Speaker 6: made the Kardashian's culturally relevant again.
Speaker 5: No, I never think I never think about it like that. No,
Speaker 5: they're you know, they're being cultural culturally relevant. I think
Speaker 5: that what I do is what I do, which is
Speaker 5: I'm a very very good product person. I understand how
Speaker 5: to bring product to market. And my background, you know,
Speaker 5: ten years of working forging celebrity partnerships makes me really
Speaker 5: good at understanding how talent are used to accelerate a brand,
Speaker 5: and so what I bring is an intrinsic knowledge of
Speaker 5: that space, right, And it's not so easy because otherwise
Speaker 5: every famous person we know would have a big brand
Speaker 5: that does hundreds of millions of dollars, and they don't.
Speaker 4: So there's more to it, right.
Speaker 5: You really have to be a somebody that understands product,
Speaker 5: that understands the customer, that understands how to.
Speaker 4: Run a business. And that's what I bring to those partnerships.
Speaker 6: And skims is redefined shapewre Like, what was the biggest
Speaker 6: risk you took early on.
Speaker 1: That paid off? You know?
Speaker 5: I think that Kim had a very clear idea of
Speaker 5: what she wanted to do and a very differentiated idea,
Speaker 5: and I think that that's what it's all about in
Speaker 5: business anytime, right, you have to have something that is
Speaker 5: unique and a unique point of difference to whatever's out there.
Speaker 5: And when I think about anything that we've done, whether
Speaker 5: you're talking about size inclusivity, or whether we're talking about
Speaker 5: the range from like a kind of you know, nude
Speaker 5: color range, like, we're always trying to do something that
Speaker 5: doesn't exist in the market. And I think when you're
Speaker 5: solving problems, when you're creating solutions for people, that's when
Speaker 5: you know, you get that kind of breakthrough. That's when
Speaker 5: you get something that customers really go, oh, like, I
Speaker 5: need that.
Speaker 4: I have that problem and you guys are solving for it.
Speaker 2: When do you realize when it's time to sell a company?
Speaker 2: When do you say, Okay, this is when we have
Speaker 2: to exit, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I think that that is different for every company.
Speaker 5: And I've been in agency businesses and I've been in
Speaker 5: brand businesses. I think that what is often true is
Speaker 5: like your first off, your first offer is often your
Speaker 5: best offer, and you shouldn't always think that there's something
Speaker 5: amazing coming around the corner. You have to sell things
Speaker 5: when they're on the up because it peaks right. And
Speaker 5: then you've only got the downside to sell. And so
Speaker 5: when you've got that momentum, when you've got the forward towing,
Speaker 5: when you're in growth mode, as they say, that's when
Speaker 5: you need to think about selling or at least taking
Speaker 5: some money off the table.
Speaker 6: Do people in fashion really care about diversity or is
Speaker 6: it just good pr until like the next next?
Speaker 5: I mean, you could ask yourself, does anyone really care
Speaker 5: about diversity? I don't think it's just about fashion. I
Speaker 5: think there's definitely a certain amount of you know, performative
Speaker 5: action out there right for marketing purposes. And actually Good
Speaker 5: American and the reason I started that company was a
Speaker 5: reaction to that because I worked in the fashion business
Speaker 5: and I saw all these companies doing perform you know,
Speaker 5: like hiring one black girl in the campaign, and yet
Speaker 5: no one in that entire company was black. And I
Speaker 5: saw people like performatively putting a plus sized person in
Speaker 5: a campaign where they didn't even make the clothes for
Speaker 5: that person. The girls like clothes would be cut up
Speaker 5: the back because she couldn't even fit in the jeens.
Speaker 5: And so when we started Good American, the idea about
Speaker 5: it was to say, Okay, let's make a company that
Speaker 5: actually has these values where the office and the people
Speaker 5: that run the business and the people that make the
Speaker 5: decisions and the people in the c suite are actually
Speaker 5: a reflection of the customer base. And I think that's
Speaker 5: what made Good Americans so successful, that it was actually
Speaker 5: walking the walk and not just talk in the talk.
Speaker 5: If you were a Side twenty and you needed a
Speaker 5: pair of jeans, you have a tiny waist and a
Speaker 5: big bar, like you came to Good American and you
Speaker 5: could feel the difference in that product and people knew
Speaker 5: we were for real.
Speaker 1: Will It's like you said that, a tiny ways and
Speaker 1: a big bar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what we were working with.
Speaker 3: Something I was gonna say, Now, you're also on Shark Tank.
Speaker 4: I am, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: What do you look for when somebody is on Shark
Speaker 2: Tank and they're pitching something to you?
Speaker 4: You know, for me, it's always about the founder.
Speaker 5: It's always I you know, even when I think about
Speaker 5: hiring and investing, I'm like attitude over experience, because that's
Speaker 5: my experience about I'm not someone who comes from a
Speaker 5: place where you'd be like, I'm going to bet on her,
Speaker 5: and so I really want that person that is so
Speaker 5: passionate about their ideas, so crazy about it. They know
Speaker 5: everything about the competition, they know everything about what they're doing,
Speaker 5: and they are deep and they are into it. So
Speaker 5: I'm going for someone who like feels it intrinsically.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, so, what was your more
Speaker 2: successful investment on shark TINGK?
Speaker 4: Do you know? Is this incredible?
Speaker 5: It's so funny that you are to because when I
Speaker 5: got onto that show, you know, you do a few investments.
Speaker 5: And I remember saying to Mark one day when I
Speaker 5: haven't made any money out of any of this stuff,
Speaker 5: and he said, you know what, Emma, There'll be one
Speaker 5: and one of them will make you a bunch of money.
Speaker 4: And for me, that was Cake's body.
Speaker 5: These incredible two women that make like a silicone nipple cover.
Speaker 5: And of course the minute I saw them, I was like,
Speaker 5: I know that business. I understand this space, like I
Speaker 5: know I need that in my ket in my wardrobe.
Speaker 5: And they were doing just under a million dollars when
Speaker 5: I met them, and a year later, one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty million dollars Killed Cured and just so you know,
Speaker 5: just a couple of like regular girls that left their
Speaker 5: jobs and decided I'm going to do something for myself.
Speaker 6: You have such a very confident demeanor. What got you
Speaker 6: to that place? Did you always have that level of security?
Speaker 5: You know, I was raised by a single mum on
Speaker 5: one of four girls, and I think that my mom
Speaker 5: did an amazing job of instilling.
Speaker 4: That confidence in us.
Speaker 5: You know, she taught me like, Emmy, you're not better
Speaker 5: than any one else, but nor is anyone better than you.
Speaker 4: And I really grew up believing that.
Speaker 5: I really felt like, if I work hard enough, anything
Speaker 5: is possible. And in East London, I was surrounded by
Speaker 5: people that were really hustlers, but they were trying their hardest.
Speaker 5: They were doing whatever they could to make a buck.
Speaker 5: And that's just in my spirit.
Speaker 4: You know. For me, I'm a tryer.
Speaker 5: I'm going to keep doing, I'm going to keep learning,
Speaker 5: and so much of what this podcast is about, you know,
Speaker 5: I think of myself as a lifelong learner.
Speaker 4: I'm always in learning mode, right. It's like the more
Speaker 4: you learn, the more you earn.
Speaker 5: And I really really feel like if you can help
Speaker 5: people broaden their horizons, if you can bring new ideas
Speaker 5: to people, there's nothing more valuable than that. And so
Speaker 5: I feel like in my life that's just who I
Speaker 5: am me?
Speaker 1: I got four girls? What are you for?
Speaker 4: I'm number one?
Speaker 5: Ye, number one, As I like to say, my sisters
Speaker 5: will be like she hah, number one. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: the eldest of four girls.
Speaker 1: Work what you are?
Speaker 4: No, thank god, they don't work with me.
Speaker 1: Do you know what?
Speaker 5: I'm not about that missing? I already work in my
Speaker 5: that's enough. That that's enough. No. My sisters, two of
Speaker 5: them live in England, one lives in Los Angeles. We're
Speaker 5: very very close, talk every day on the like sister chat.
Speaker 4: No, I don't want to work with them. I don't
Speaker 4: want to work with them.
Speaker 6: How often, because you know, you're in these billion dollar rooms,
Speaker 6: right as a woman of color.
Speaker 4: My dad's black moms, a mixed race, got you.
Speaker 1: How often you still feel underestimated every day?
Speaker 5: I mean because I am underestimated every day, right, I think? Well,
Speaker 5: I mean, listen, now it's a little bit different. Now
Speaker 5: I can walk into any room and people will bet
Speaker 5: on me, and people would want to invest in me.
Speaker 5: But I do think that you still, you know, I
Speaker 5: still think you're proving I'm proving myself every day. I
Speaker 5: never take anything for granted. Right, You're only as good
Speaker 5: as the last thing you did. And I'm constantly pushing
Speaker 5: myself into spaces. It's like I might be sitting here
Speaker 5: with you know, a bunch of great companies behind me,
Speaker 5: but I don't know. I'm not a good podcaster, you know, I'm.
Speaker 4: Just getting started.
Speaker 5: And so I don't take anything for granted. And that's
Speaker 5: why I always think that, you know, you've got to
Speaker 5: be humble. You've got to go into something with the
Speaker 5: spirit of, you know, trying your hardest and trying to
Speaker 5: be good.
Speaker 4: And I never let that leave me.
Speaker 5: I don't walk into anything expecting anything.
Speaker 4: I think you got to work for it every day.
Speaker 3: Is that why you want to do the podcast? Because
Speaker 3: you want to help people?
Speaker 2: Because you've got so many different jobs and you have girls,
Speaker 2: you have kids, you have a husband, you have a
Speaker 2: lot of ish going on.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of ish going on.
Speaker 5: No, you know, it really is because I think at
Speaker 5: a certain point, right you get to a place where
Speaker 5: you are financially comfortable. And also I proved to myself
Speaker 5: all the things I wanted to prove to myself, and
Speaker 5: now I think that the sign, you know, of success
Speaker 5: for me is how many people can come along like
Speaker 5: that are like me, that can come along and you
Speaker 5: can open the door for and that could actually have
Speaker 5: this sense of changing their life and building the life
Speaker 5: of their dreams because of something that I did. And
Speaker 5: I know that, you know, people are looking to me,
Speaker 5: and I feel like it's honestly a responsibility and I
Speaker 5: don't want that to sound you know, trite or like
Speaker 5: something that feels disingenuous. Is I feel very very responsible
Speaker 5: for all the women that get in touch with me
Speaker 5: all the time because there is so much there are
Speaker 5: so many barriers, and there's so much out there that
Speaker 5: tells you that it's an impossibility, that there's not room
Speaker 5: for people, that.
Speaker 4: Your opinion doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: And I really think that leaning into my difference is
Speaker 5: really knowing and understanding where I come from and what
Speaker 5: is different and important about that. That's what's actually given
Speaker 5: me like space in these rooms. That's why people look
Speaker 5: to me and say, what is.
Speaker 4: Your opinion about this?
Speaker 5: Because of where I've come from, And so I actually
Speaker 5: think it's a superpower.
Speaker 2: What would you tell somebody that it's an entrepreneur, maybe
Speaker 2: a woman and trying to get into the space has
Speaker 2: an idea, but it just hasn't taken off as of yet,
Speaker 2: they can't get on shot tank and they just want
Speaker 2: some type of advice to say, how.
Speaker 3: Would you do it, how would you approach it? What
Speaker 3: would you tell that person?
Speaker 5: Well, listen, the first thing is to start, because what
Speaker 5: you'll find is a lot of people talk about a
Speaker 5: lot of stuff and they haven't actually done it. And
Speaker 5: there's this idea that there's some perfect time, perfect set
Speaker 5: of circumstances.
Speaker 4: It's never perfect. And also this idea.
Speaker 5: We're in this culture right now where everyone thinks they
Speaker 5: have to raise a load of money, Like, don't don't
Speaker 5: raise any money, just do something, get out of the gate.
Speaker 5: We live in a world where social media and shopify
Speaker 5: has enabled us to start things very cheaply, and you
Speaker 5: can start small. Not everything needs to be a billion
Speaker 5: dollar business. Maybe you're trying to transform your circumstances and
Speaker 5: leave your corporate job, and actually a little bit of money,
Speaker 5: a little bit of revenue, will be transformative for you.
Speaker 5: So I would say, don't benchmark and measure yourself by
Speaker 5: some standard that actually isn't part of your existence. It's like,
Speaker 5: do something, get out of the gate, start it, and
Speaker 5: then you test and you learn into it. Because nothing
Speaker 5: works immediately. If I think about the business that I
Speaker 5: started with Good American three skws of skinny denim and
Speaker 5: what it is today, the two things don't even look
Speaker 5: the same. They don't look the same. We change the size,
Speaker 5: but we changed everything. The only thing you can't change
Speaker 5: in business is the reason that you started, right It's
Speaker 5: like the very essence of what you do and your
Speaker 5: purpose has to remain the same.
Speaker 4: You iterate everything.
Speaker 5: Else transform on the way up. And so I think
Speaker 5: that that's a really important thing. It's like you just
Speaker 5: have to get out of the gate and start.
Speaker 6: I agree with you, you know, I think comparison to the deferioid, yes,
Speaker 6: it is.
Speaker 1: So people will.
Speaker 6: Start something, but then they'll be looking at you, but
Speaker 6: they don't realize all the time you've already put in
Speaker 6: all the experience you've got that.
Speaker 1: Got you to this point.
Speaker 6: But they feel like if they're not doing what Emma's
Speaker 6: doing right now, they're not successful totally.
Speaker 5: And I think that that is just again, it's so
Speaker 5: much about the culture that we sit in right now.
Speaker 4: It gives you this idea that you know, there's.
Speaker 5: Such a thing as overnight success, and I don't know
Speaker 5: any overnight successes. You know, again, I have been working
Speaker 5: since I was twelve, and all of those experiences, you know,
Speaker 5: are so formative and they're so in me. And it's
Speaker 5: like every single thing that you get leverage right. And
Speaker 5: when I talk about leverage, I don't just mean taking
Speaker 5: something that you've been given.
Speaker 4: It's like, what do you have?
Speaker 5: Well, I have my reputation, right, and that reputation for
Speaker 5: delivering great business when I was in the AI agency
Speaker 5: business allowed me to go and raise money. I didn't
Speaker 5: know what private equity was. I would never have known
Speaker 5: how to go and raise funds. I went to a
Speaker 5: client that I'd consistently delivered good business for in my agency,
Speaker 5: and I said, Hey, do you want to invest three
Speaker 5: million dollars in my business?
Speaker 4: And he was like, no, girl, I'll give you.
Speaker 5: I'll give you less than that, but I'll invest in you.
Speaker 5: And so sorry, I've been doing a lot of talking
Speaker 5: this week. I'm like very hoarse, But you know, I
Speaker 5: think that that is the thing. You know, You've got
Speaker 5: to be creative and you've got to work with what
Speaker 5: you've got. And I think so often we focus on
Speaker 5: what we don't have and where our lack is and
Speaker 5: actually there is just that that is not worth your energy.
Speaker 5: You've got to figure out like where are you, what
Speaker 5: do you have and how do you leverage?
Speaker 1: From that point, he says, you work with your husband.
Speaker 4: How is that?
Speaker 7: Because when it's so personally that's your husband, that's my husband,
Speaker 7: that's what you wake up with?
Speaker 4: What like, how is that? How are you guys able
Speaker 4: to separate? Well, we're not.
Speaker 5: Let me be honest with that, there's very little separation.
Speaker 5: The truth is that my huse spend was actually like
Speaker 5: one of my first investors. So I worked in a
Speaker 5: company where I set up a joint venture with them,
Speaker 5: and eventually years later and down the line, I ended
Speaker 5: up marrying one of those guys.
Speaker 4: It's a great jobs. I have returned that investment.
Speaker 5: But I think the what's important about that is that
Speaker 5: we had a professional relationship before we ever had our
Speaker 5: personal relationship. And my husband's Swedish, and in Swedish culture
Speaker 5: is a very matriarchal culture. They really have so much
Speaker 5: respect for women, but they also really meet women halfway,
Speaker 5: like even to the point like in Sweden, when you
Speaker 5: take maternity leave, it's given to the couple, so if
Speaker 5: the woman wants to you know, you get a year,
Speaker 5: and if the woman wants to take six months and
Speaker 5: the husband takes six months, that's how you do it.
Speaker 5: But it's very usual in society that that happens. But
Speaker 5: what it means is that I've got someone who meets me.
Speaker 5: You know, he respects my ambition, and he respects the
Speaker 5: fact that we have four kids.
Speaker 4: We have four kids together, and we do that together.
Speaker 5: So there's no expectation that I'm going to take some
Speaker 5: leading role, and nor do I quite honestly.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 6: I just forget what I'm gonna ask you. Oh, no,
Speaker 6: where did you learn financial literacy?
Speaker 4: You know, that's a really good question.
Speaker 5: I think when you come from scarcity, you have a
Speaker 5: really good appreciation for money. Because we didn't have any,
Speaker 5: and so I knew the price of everything, right, because
Speaker 5: it's like I knew what we didn't have. And my
Speaker 5: mum would budget, Like she'd sit at the table and
Speaker 5: she'd be like, this is what we are for groceries.
Speaker 4: This is what we've got to keep the lights on.
Speaker 4: So I knew what money was.
Speaker 5: And I used to see her back in those days,
Speaker 5: you know, you'd write checks, and so i'd see her
Speaker 5: do the check book and I'd be on the calculator
Speaker 5: and so money was just like a thing that I
Speaker 5: understood at a very young age. And also it was
Speaker 5: cash then, right, so you'd like count the cash, and
Speaker 5: that gave me a relationship with it. I'm dyslexic, and
Speaker 5: so I had a very hard time when I started
Speaker 5: my business understanding how the money would link together, like
Speaker 5: between the margins and the profit and the E but
Speaker 5: I would be to me, it was like scrambled eggs.
Speaker 5: And then again when I got into e comm, everything
Speaker 5: is acronyms. You know, you're talking about AOV and the
Speaker 5: UPT and the LOV and I would.
Speaker 4: Be like, I don't get this.
Speaker 5: But I think the thing for me is that I'm
Speaker 5: naturally curious, and so I would just ask a lot
Speaker 5: of questions. And I learned by just asking, like just
Speaker 5: that I'm never scared to be the dumbest person in
Speaker 5: the room. I'm like, what does that mean? How does
Speaker 5: that work? How does that go together? And so I
Speaker 5: just like learned on the fly. And I think that
Speaker 5: being naturally cautious about money meant that even when I
Speaker 5: got investors, I spent their money like it was my own,
Speaker 5: meaning that I'm frugal, like I am tight. I'm just
Speaker 5: holding all the money all the time, and I never
Speaker 5: like flashy with the cash. Even now when I am
Speaker 5: a bit flashy with the cash. It's like, I know
Speaker 5: the cost of everything. No one can buy anything in
Speaker 5: my house and me not be like what was that,
Speaker 5: you know, because there's a special price for everything in
Speaker 5: bel Air.
Speaker 4: My toilet breaks.
Speaker 5: They're like, oh, hi, you know, it's the bell Air
Speaker 5: price and I'm like, no, this is what we're paying,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: So I'm like very aware of everything.
Speaker 1: How much power do you have in these partnerships, Well, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I don't really think about it in terms of power.
Speaker 5: We're partners and we do different things, and so I have,
Speaker 5: you know, a good American and I'm the CEO, and
Speaker 5: so I make all the decisions as the CEO would
Speaker 5: in any company. In Skims, it's very very different, and
Speaker 5: Kim plays a very very hands on role. My role
Speaker 5: is across everything product related, so design, merchandising, production planning.
Speaker 5: That's a part of the company I run. And I
Speaker 5: see my role as really like making Kim's vision come true.
Speaker 4: She's like, this is really what I want to see.
Speaker 5: I want to make a nipple bram No, I'm going
Speaker 5: to make the best nipple bra with the best margin,
Speaker 5: and we're going to make hundreds of thousands of them.
Speaker 4: So that is what I do.
Speaker 6: What's harder convincing investors to back inclusive brands are convincing consumers.
Speaker 1: It's not just a gimmick, you know.
Speaker 5: I never think about it as I never think about
Speaker 5: inclusivity as what the brand is about, right because I
Speaker 5: think about at the end of the day, what you're
Speaker 5: selling to customers is like the overarching dream of what
Speaker 5: a brand is, and there's so much more to that.
Speaker 4: Inclusivity is one.
Speaker 5: Piece of what we do, providing a great product at
Speaker 5: a great price and getting it to consumers really quickly,
Speaker 5: Like that's what the brand is, and then there's all
Speaker 5: of these different parts that are additive to it. So
Speaker 5: I think that whenever you're pitching something, first of all,
Speaker 5: you've got to know your audience, but you've got to
Speaker 5: understand what the true mechanics are of anything and what
Speaker 5: the important parts of anything are.
Speaker 4: And inclusivity is one of.
Speaker 5: Many, many things that we do, So I never think
Speaker 5: about it as something that it's like like that is
Speaker 5: the main selling point because nobody's like, at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, no one's buying inclusivity. If you're a
Speaker 5: size sixteen, you're here for the size sixteen. You ain't
Speaker 5: here for the side twenty four and the size eight,
Speaker 5: you know. So that's just what we do, like giving that.
Speaker 5: The right thing to do is and the right business
Speaker 5: decision to make is to serve as many customers as
Speaker 5: you can. If I make nineteen sizes, I'm going to
Speaker 5: do better the business than if I sell six much
Speaker 5: just good business.
Speaker 6: My wife loves Skims, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 6: I remember asking her why and she just like, she
Speaker 6: just likes the way it fits.
Speaker 1: It fits as comfortable, simple as that fits.
Speaker 6: But what would you say to the black women who
Speaker 6: feel like Skims isn't made for them, even if it
Speaker 6: looks like it.
Speaker 4: Is it's made for them. Who are they?
Speaker 5: What are their sizes? We have everything? I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's made for everyone. We have the most unbelievable customer
Speaker 5: base and you don't. You don't have that level of
Speaker 5: sales if it's not for certain people.
Speaker 2: Question which your podcasts you're gonna have guests on a
Speaker 2: podcast and who's coming on a podcast.
Speaker 5: We've got so many amazing guests on the podcast. So
Speaker 5: we launched yesterday with Gwyneth Paltrow and Melody Hobson, and
Speaker 5: Melody is my business idol. So I really wanted to
Speaker 5: make sure that we could come out of the gate
Speaker 5: with someone that I've learned from and also someone that
Speaker 5: I believe is you know, Melody is a one of one.
Speaker 5: She is not just one of the best black business
Speaker 5: women in the country, she's just one of the best.
Speaker 4: Business people in the country.
Speaker 5: Former chair of Starbucks. I mean, she is just so incredible.
Speaker 5: And she spent her.
Speaker 4: Entire career at one place, thirty.
Speaker 5: Years in one company, and I think that there's some
Speaker 5: really amazing learnings for that. She went in as an
Speaker 5: inter born on the South side of Chicago, you know,
Speaker 5: one of five kids, five kids, she's one of five.
Speaker 4: And she is just single mom.
Speaker 5: Again, the most incredible woman went into this company as
Speaker 5: an intern and now she owns a very very meaningful
Speaker 5: part of a fourteen billion dollar, you know, private equity business.
Speaker 5: And so I look at that and like my mind
Speaker 5: is blown. And then again Gwyneth, I thought so interesting
Speaker 5: because for so many women they're starting businesses from something
Speaker 5: that they're passionate about.
Speaker 4: And also they're trying to do a pivot.
Speaker 5: And if you are, you know, working your corporate job
Speaker 5: and you want to just change completely and do something different,
Speaker 5: I thought she would be a really interesting benchmark to
Speaker 5: look at. How do you just completely rip it up
Speaker 5: and say I'm going to start something new. So I
Speaker 5: was really I was really happy to have those first people.
Speaker 5: But I also think that women have a lot to
Speaker 5: learn from men right in business, and so I'm really
Speaker 5: going to be focused on a lot of different men
Speaker 5: coming through.
Speaker 4: And so we have Michael.
Speaker 5: Rubern, I've got Mark Cuban, I have the wonderful You,
Speaker 5: and some find Charlote Maine's coming on and I'll be
Speaker 5: so happy. So I've just got like a bunch of
Speaker 5: really incredible guests, and it's really about people that I know,
Speaker 5: I respect and those that I aspire to.
Speaker 1: He has if you haven't guess because you can talk,
Speaker 1: you're good talking. You're good talking.
Speaker 4: One is hoping. Yeah.
Speaker 6: How do you evaluate celebrity influence versus product quality when
Speaker 6: you're trying to build brand trust?
Speaker 5: How do I evaluate it? I mean, it's an interesting
Speaker 5: question actually to me. I don't even think about listen.
Speaker 5: Influence will only take you so far. Right, you can
Speaker 5: drive a customer to product once, so I will could
Speaker 5: love you, Charlemagne, and you could be trying to sell
Speaker 5: me something, and because of the strength of how much
Speaker 5: I love you, I'll go and buy your product.
Speaker 4: If your product doesn't perform for me, I'm not buying
Speaker 4: it again.
Speaker 5: And the strength of a business is the strength of
Speaker 5: the lifetime value of that customer.
Speaker 4: How many times are.
Speaker 5: They coming back to you over and over again, And
Speaker 5: that's how you build affinity with customers. And so after
Speaker 5: a while, the influence is useless if the product is
Speaker 5: not good.
Speaker 4: So the two only work.
Speaker 5: In terms of the acceleration of the talent can only
Speaker 5: work for the product if the product is good, because
Speaker 5: customers are too smart, Like, no one's going to buy
Speaker 5: things that are not good.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, Well, what's your approach to like global expansion? Like
Speaker 6: the skim's different in Paris than it would be in
Speaker 6: like I think.
Speaker 5: You know, that's one of the things that I learned
Speaker 5: really early in my career when I when I had ITB,
Speaker 5: which was my agency business, I was killing in London
Speaker 5: and then I opened an office in New York and
Speaker 5: it was amazing, and I was like, I'm going to LA,
Speaker 5: the home of celebrities. And I failed miserably. And when
Speaker 5: I tell you, I foiled miserably. I opened a big office,
Speaker 5: like a gorgeous office, and I hired all these people
Speaker 5: and had to shut it down less than a year later,
Speaker 5: about ten months in, when I was devastated because I
Speaker 5: had an ignorance for the localization of anything. And it
Speaker 5: kind of comes back to this idea that success you
Speaker 5: can't transfer success, and you know, more than anywhere.
Speaker 4: I feel like La is one of these places.
Speaker 5: It's built on such a community, right, It's like and
Speaker 5: you are either in that and you understand it or
Speaker 5: you don't. And I bought all of my kind of
Speaker 5: like this ignorance of success into a place where they
Speaker 5: were like no, no, no, honey, not here like this.
Speaker 4: That's not going to wash.
Speaker 5: I've since been successful in LA, but I really understood
Speaker 5: the landscape of the place. And so to answer your question,
Speaker 5: I think that you have to really think about localization
Speaker 5: in certain markets. That there's no such thing as Europe, right.
Speaker 5: Europe is a is a bunch of different territories, and
Speaker 5: what works in Germany does not work in France, which
Speaker 5: is not works in England. It's very different to if
Speaker 5: you you know, the US, which is essentially one market
Speaker 5: with a little.
Speaker 4: Bit of localization.
Speaker 5: So you really have to think globally about if your
Speaker 5: product is going to resonate in that market and how
Speaker 5: and where, and have specificity around how you come into
Speaker 5: that market.
Speaker 7: How long were you in La before you did become
Speaker 7: successful because you you did say like you thought, you know,
Speaker 7: with the ignorance of succession, that she was going to
Speaker 7: go to this La Hollywood place in it pop overnight.
Speaker 7: How long were you?
Speaker 5: It took me about honestly, like I would say three
Speaker 5: four years. And I was lucky because the business was
Speaker 5: successful in other places. But I shut down the office,
Speaker 5: I scaled it down, and then I essentially had to restart.
Speaker 5: And it was really like a bash on my ego,
Speaker 5: you know, because I was flying high with this agency girl.
Speaker 5: I had a bunch of stuff and I was like,
Speaker 5: nothing can touch me. And it was really like eating
Speaker 5: humble pie. And again, all of that is fine so
Speaker 5: long as you take the lessons, you know, And I'm
Speaker 5: not too proud to say I failed and I knew
Speaker 5: it at the time, and I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: why what did I do wrong? And so I just
Speaker 5: scaled it back. I changed a few of the people around.
Speaker 5: And again that's really difficult because for me, I was
Speaker 5: often bringing you know, people that I loved, people that
Speaker 5: were successful with me in a business. And there's nothing
Speaker 5: worse than having to fire people. But you know, it's like,
Speaker 5: you can't be a people pleaser and a leader at
Speaker 5: the same time. You have to make you know, I
Speaker 5: always talk about this idea of killing your darlings. You
Speaker 5: have to like make choices, make tough decisions, and you
Speaker 5: have to have an enterprise mentality. And so for me,
Speaker 5: it's about doing the best thing for the business, and
Speaker 5: at that point, it was about scaling it back and
Speaker 5: starting again and doing something with a lot more understanding
Speaker 5: of where I was and of respect for the place
Speaker 5: that I was in.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you some skims again. I remember
Speaker 1: there's a complete love skims. Were wife looking at Okay?
Speaker 4: But are you wearing skims?
Speaker 8: You know we have men throw away like yes, come on,
Speaker 8: once again, we have some of it dumb discriminating.
Speaker 5: I'll get you some products, okay, Okay, can you get
Speaker 5: into the products place for this afternoon.
Speaker 4: Absolutely I will deliver.
Speaker 6: But I remember them saying Kanye was a ghost creative director.
Speaker 4: O Lord, you're not going to You're not going to
Speaker 4: do that to me today, are you.
Speaker 1: I just remember seeing it.
Speaker 5: When I come here with my energy and my voice
Speaker 5: and all my things, I'm here to talk about me.
Speaker 4: Don't do that to me now.
Speaker 3: Okay, what are you at getting the skims down?
Speaker 6: She handled it the way you should handle it. When
Speaker 6: you don't want to answer a question, just don't answer it.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 1: What do you want your legacy to be? Business?
Speaker 6: Morgal, culture, shifter, investor are just something else entirely.
Speaker 5: You know, I'd really love my legacy to be I
Speaker 5: would love to think about, like here's a girl to
Speaker 5: help ten million women get to where they could be,
Speaker 5: Like I would love that.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like I really think about myself. You know.
Speaker 4: It's like I'm kind of done for me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like I've got to a place where I'm so
Speaker 5: happy and I'm so content, and of course I'm very
Speaker 5: ambitious still for myself. That's not to say like I'm
Speaker 5: in retirement or anything, but I do really like, look
Speaker 5: at my success now and think, my goodness, wouldn't it
Speaker 5: be amazing if like a million other little Emmas appeared,
Speaker 5: you know, a million other girls that like left school
Speaker 5: when they were fifteen really without a lot of hope,
Speaker 5: became super successful because of something I said, I did,
Speaker 5: I enabled, And so that's what I'm thinking about right now,
Speaker 5: and I think it's possible for me to do that.
Speaker 6: The DEI initiatives are being rolled back in government and corporations.
Speaker 6: Have those pressures changed how you approach the AI for your.
Speaker 5: Business Absolutely not, in fact never, And I really lean
Speaker 5: into that because I know that honestly. It's it's the
Speaker 5: diversity in my business is a superpower. It's been a
Speaker 5: superpower for me. And you know, you guys probably know.
Speaker 5: I'm the chairwoman of the fifteen Percent Pledge and we
Speaker 5: work with brands all over this country to essentially advocate
Speaker 5: for them to take fifteen percent of their annual spend
Speaker 5: and give that to black owned businesses. And so we've
Speaker 5: put over fourteen billion dollars of opportunity into the hands
Speaker 5: of black founders and entrepreneurs all over this country. And
Speaker 5: when I look at those this is a business proposition.
Speaker 5: Isn't a nice to have, This isn't a fun to do.
Speaker 5: This isn't a tick on some charter somewhere. This is
Speaker 5: about having more relevance with your customer base. And I
Speaker 5: know that if you walk into Sophora now versus walking into.
Speaker 4: Sepour or five years ago.
Speaker 5: So it's not just better for black women or women
Speaker 5: of color who can find a product. It's better for
Speaker 5: everyone because everyone can go in there and buy those products.
Speaker 5: Black businesses aren't just for black people, nor a Latino businesses,
Speaker 5: Nora any businesses. So I actually think that when we
Speaker 5: talk about some of this stuff, we lose sight of
Speaker 5: what we're actually talking about. We're talking about more choice,
Speaker 5: better for customers, and that's what women looks like.
Speaker 4: So it's like we really shouldn't.
Speaker 5: Like, I think it's so crazy that people would try
Speaker 5: to think about these things. It's like nice to have.
Speaker 5: It's like, do you want to make more money or not?
Speaker 5: I make more sizes and more colors, I have more
Speaker 5: customers that.
Speaker 6: Behave expound on that, like do you ever get out
Speaker 6: of explaining whyde diversity market are we talking?
Speaker 4: It's pretty simple, It's really simple stuff.
Speaker 5: It's like, we're trying to be more dynamic, We're trying
Speaker 5: to be more differentiated, We're trying to bring more people
Speaker 5: through our doors. Who cares who? Here's who they are?
Speaker 5: Right Like, I don't I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Why limit yourself?
Speaker 4: Why limit?
Speaker 1: Why not? Why the customer.
Speaker 4: Will be a hundred percent?
Speaker 3: Or what I knew?
Speaker 5: I made it moment, you know, I honestly think that
Speaker 5: it's so funny because I think, you know, so many
Speaker 5: people and quite rightly so are down on this country
Speaker 5: right now, right we all feel the fatigue. And I
Speaker 5: think that moving to America was a game changer for me.
Speaker 5: And I think that what you have to understand is
Speaker 5: that the American dream is still alive in Kicking. There
Speaker 5: is nowhere on earth that I could have done the
Speaker 5: journey that I've done now. And you know, my husband's
Speaker 5: he has a very very wise father. He died and
Speaker 5: he used to say, you know, ever, America is the
Speaker 5: best of everything and the worst of everything. And it's
Speaker 5: really true to me now that I live here, I
Speaker 5: really see that so clearly.
Speaker 4: But I'm living my American dream, you.
Speaker 5: Know, in this place and the people and the opportunities
Speaker 5: that I've had here have been unbelievable and so I'm
Speaker 5: really I'm really kind of living proof of something that
Speaker 5: is still very very special about this country.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: There you have it.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 3: Enjoy you Now? Where can they listen to the podcast?
Speaker 5: You can listen to it everywhere you get your podcasts,
Speaker 5: Please go you know, Apple, anywhere, YouTube.
Speaker 4: We're going to be everywhere.
Speaker 2: And thank you for joining us so much. You make
Speaker 2: sure you send them some skims extra small.
Speaker 4: I'll send you all.
Speaker 1: Extra small. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm easily
Speaker 1: a large.
Speaker 4: Definitely not get you an ex excel XL. We'll figure that.
Speaker 3: Emma Greedy, it's the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 4: Good morning, Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: Wake that ans up in the morning. Breakfast Club