Building a Multibillion Dollar Empire | Emma Grede of Good American, Safely, and SKIMS

so much of it starts with like addressing things that bother you that you find you know you've got to create a solution for because you know at the end of the day you've got to be passionate enough and sometimes crazy enough to go round and round and round to actually solve a problem hey founder fam welcome back to another episode today's guest is a founding partner of skims ceo and co-founder of good american and now the co-founder of safely some of her business partners include kim kardashian khloe kardashian and kris jenner and her name is emma greed and she's here to share with you her incredible story we're going to talk about talent back businesses and how she's building household name brands please welcome emma green this is an incredible conversation i hope you guys enjoy it emma thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today the first question that i ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today goodness me what what a start it's a long story i'm like where should i even begin so you know it's interesting because i actually started my career working in fashion i was a show producer and then i kind of graduated into this kind of odd uh job of procuring sponsors for fashion designers and that i turned into an agency which was my first ever business that i started when i was about 24 or 25. um i did that for 10 years and that was you know an agency that was rooted in entertainment based marketing and then you know partnerships and collaborations and then much later kind of influencer-based marketing and then i was lucky enough to um to sell that company it was acquired by ipg media and you know at the end of that company i'd started to put together a lot of um talent-based equity participation deals and you know i kind of thought oh i should do one of those for myself and that's where i found myself you know starting my first you know apparel-based business which i did with um khloe kardashian um and then um and then i launched schemes with kim kardashian and so you know i also have another company safely with chris and so i kind of found myself you know really taking the last you know 15 years of my experience in really fundamentally understanding talent-based marketing and turning those into brands all by themselves um and so yeah that's that's how i found myself here yeah wow fascinating and look we want to talk more about that but i want to go back in time a little bit like early days emma london what did the vision board look like um like you know what what did the future look like for you did you yeah did you dream all this up yeah you know what i think i honestly did i was a very very focused kid like i always knew i wanted to work in and around fashion and i think i spent the early part of my career really trying to get closer and closer to creative people because that's where i felt i thrived i i'm not you know a kind of true creative person in myself but i really understand creativity and i thought that my strength was when i could bring my you know business acumen and work with a creative person to kind of you know empower their vision and so that's where it all it all really started i am i definitely you know was somebody that had kind of said you know not that i want to be an entrepreneur really have my own business but i want to work around creative people and i love the world of fashion but i really loved it as a means of escapism from where i come from you know i grew up in east london which is you know not that nice or it wasn't when i was little um and i think that fashion for me was such an alluring industry because it felt really far from what i knew it felt glamorous and i just love the clothes and the idea of being in paris and i definitely like envisaged myself being part of that world like being at the shows and you know wearing the most beautiful clothes and being able to afford anything that i want and and i was pretty pretty good at knowing what i didn't do well you know i never tried to be a fashion designer because i thought i'm probably not going to be very good at being a fashion designer um and so i've i've been pretty focused on finding where my unique talents are i'm really honing in on those you know going back as well your entertainment marketing days you know you found yourself as the ceo of itb worldwide can you kind of tell us how did you get there and what did you learn from that experience well you know the good thing is i started that company so it was easy to be the ceo because in the beginning i was the ceo of not very much um and that agency grew to be really big you know we had offices in three countries in london new york and l.a um it was acquired by the best-in-class agency in that space and so it was a really kind of proud moment for me but it wasn't always like that when i started the business you know i you know took the new business meetings i wrote the pitches i delivered the work i then sent out the invoice at 10 o'clock at night you know it was really me doing everything but again i was pretty good i found myself with a really good knack for hiring people and so i was able to kind of park my ego hire people and pay them more than i was even paying myself in the beginning um and i'm i've always been quite good at attracting talent you know i could paint the vision show you the strategy tell you where i thought the company was going and as a result of that bring on the best possible talent and i always knew i knew very early on that that was the key to the agency being successful right that you are only ever going to be as good as the last piece of work you did and you needed incredible talent that knew more than i did that had more experience than i did to bring that to life and so um i think that i i knew very early on the power of good people and hiring really really well so can we explore that a little more because yeah businesses are built by people people don't talk about this enough uh like what what key tips do you have around hiring well any advice for you know our audience yeah you know i do i have a lot of advice i think the first thing is you know and there's so much talk about this in business at large but you know without knowing as a black female ceo i always hired for diversity and not because that was something that you know was part of a charter because there was no charter when i first started it was just what i felt comfortable with and what i knew to be true that if there were a group of people around the table that all had different opinions we'd do the best work for our clients and that just worked and so i don't think of um you know i i never kind of took a beat and wrote it down anywhere but in hindsight what i created was an agency that could service our clients the best because we had all of these different opinions and somebody looking out from a different perspective when we were doing incredible campaigns you'd have somebody say do you know what guys have you thought about this and how that could be interpreted or how it would feel to this specific segment of customers um and that was something that i knew was a superpower early on because we were always avoiding mistakes for our clients right you'd have like you know a dude with a remit and it was always you know like some guy in a company and he'd be like this is what we should do and we would be like well actually there might be a better way to do that and so um that that is a huge tip that i think that you know we all know that as our organizations and corporate america at large has a responsibility um in and around you know creating a more equitable work environment and and i do think it's important that organizations have you know a d e and i charter and that we think about measuring how we're getting better but at the end of the day it's really really simple just hire more black and brown people in your organization like start there right it's super super simple and i think if we could basically just like boil that down and how do i do that in my organization i make sure that for every single position we have available you have to come to me or to your manager with a diverse range of candidates it's just that simple so there's no conversation about am i hiring for a diversity or am i hiring the best person it's like you're doing both that's just it you know and i think if you put those things in uh you know right at the forefront of your organization you're going to be really ahead of the pack yeah i see and when it comes to kind of uh traits for identifying talent do you have anything there because you also have a skill around like a superpower around identifying incredible talent to work with as well like internal and external so do you how did you harness that like and did you develop that superpower well you know i think the first thing is having an organization that people want to work in right i think that the best talent have choices and so your organization really has to be the best choice for them and so you know if you have a company that's got uh you know that is rooted in purpose and has a very specific mission you are ultimately going to attract the right people for that organization and you know when you create the conditions for people to be really successful there you know like i'm really honest i think like everybody wants to make money everybody wants to get ahead everybody wants to you know have an impact and so i make it very clear and i create the conditions for that to be a reality for anyone who comes into our organization and regardless of level you know it's again if i think if you are good at you know building companies and setting strategy and creating a vision you kind of have to boil that down for your hr strategy because people in and themselves are like middle mini businesses right they come into your organization and they want to see that for themselves where am i going what's the path for me what does it look like if i'm here for three years and so i try to just you know create an environment where that's really clear for people but also you know you you just attract the right people when you're doing like cool stuff that people want to be a part of yeah interesting that's really cool so um love to switch gears and talk about kind of your roster of business partners like it's it's really impressive you know you've got uh safely with with chris you've got good american with uh chloe you've got are you a founding partner of the schemes like uh you know how did that relationship with the the kardashians gender family develop you know it came from the old days of the entertainment marketing world because such a huge part of my job was always you know coming to hollywood because i was based in london at that time and meeting agents managers publicists business managers and developing relationships with them and so at that time when you go back to like 2012 2013 chris jenner was a manager you know she's a manager of this you know incredible family but really back then it was kim and um and she was another manager that i would have lunch with and me and you know chris is an incredible manager she would always again like paint the picture of like where are they going what are they doing what are the dreams what are the aspirations and so i had a really clear idea coming out of itb and having worked on so many you know and talent equity participation agreements i was like oh i know that this is something that will be interesting to christina because she had graduated her family past that point of like just doing endorsements and so when i had the idea around good american i was like khloe kardashian is just going to get this she's going to understand and i know that she's looking for something where she can be more involved than just kind of coming in and shooting for a day and so i pitched it to chris first um as like you know a manager contact i was like hey i've got something for one of your clients your client is your daughter but you know and she was like cool then um you know you should she said when you're next in la you should pitch it directly to chloe and i was like well funny you should say that i'm coming next week i wasn't of course and i flew specifically for the meeting but you know it was uh it was those early those early hustle days and you know i think so much of business even now right it's about building relationships and having and listening you know really understanding like what there is a need for what people want to do and i was you know lucky that i could make the stars align um there with good american because i knew i had an incredible uh product and you had an incredible idea and that there was a real addressable market and it just so happened that when i pitched the idea to chloe she was the girl she was the customer she was the woman that i was trying to reach out to and she had been in this position for a long time you know being around her sisters going onto sets to shoot various different things and there being rails of clothes for the girls because they were like more regular size if you like and um and not so much for her and so she immediately understood the problem and sympathized with the customer and that was really the the genesis of good american came from you know me having an idea and a soul for a product that would work for a curvier body shape and chloe fundamentally understanding the problem and being that customer when you put those two things together it kind of made for this like magical you know magical launch really yeah incredible and you know because you you know the family so well you kind of have a little bit of an inside look into things like what do you think is the key to uh i guess it's an incredible empire like what's the key to their staying power from your perspective i think it's really honesty and relatability right we've seen that family go through ups and downs and the good and the bad and um they are who they are throughout it and so i think that we all can see some part of ourselves in the trials and tribulations that have played out so famously on that show um but i do think at the end of it it comes down to the fact that when you watch it you know you they're the same people right they're the same people they were in the beginning and um they've been very very true and open and honest with their audience and i think that you know in in these times when things are so polished and so heavily marketed and even when brands talk about authenticity all the time you know it isn't always coming from that place that actually the kardashians remain just a breath of fresh air because they are just what they are and they're unapologetic about it i think the customer just sees that and smells it and they've been able to build really significant businesses in their likeness but you know that makes sense you know they use those products okay so let's talk about good american i'd love to explore that a little more like what did the early days ideation process look like um were you did you have the product prototype everything there before you pitched chloe or yeah what did the early days look like you know it's so funny so for the first like 10 years of my career i've been part of the fashion industry and i definitely think that all of that work kind of culminated in me having a feeling about how black and brown women how plus-sized women were depicted in fashion and i'd often be asked by a client you know can you can you you know cast a diverse group of women you know someone that worked for the asia market someone that worked for the south american market and i'd be like but this is nothing to do with with what the company are actually doing this is just like a marketing ploy to make people feel like something is you know in this company that really isn't there and i just thought it'd be a good idea to actually like create a company that was really like that where the people that are inside it were really diverse where you were doing something that actually catered for a different body type and you know i'm somebody you know who gets does a lot of research looks at a lot of data and when i did i was like wow there are some really big stats that led me to think that this was going to be an incredible opportunity and when you look i think it's 68 of women in this country are what would be considered plus size but there are so few brands that cater to them and then you know coming from the fashion industry which is an industry that is all about the way that it looks i knew that doing something that would be more inclusive was the right way to go because i didn't want any of the stigma that comes with just being for one group of people i was like why don't we just make fashion and make it in all the sizes and when i started doing that there was just such a lot of pushback you know you'd speak to a manufacturer they said it wasn't possible you'd speak to a designer they only could do you know missy sizes they didn't know how to work in plus and so it was interesting because rather than that putting me off i was like oh i'm just going to figure this out like there has to be a way that you can make this work and the more i went around and the more conversations i had the more um [Music] i guess like the more i was like this is going to be really difficult this is really not going to be easy um and eventually i got a prototype of like one pair of skinny jeans that was cut all the curve in you know the pattern had all the curve in the hip and i just started asking people to try it on and i knew right away that it was just going to work better for their bodies because the feedback i was getting was so immediate you know so many people oh can i keep this pair of jeans when are you launching them this is amazing this is i've never felt like this i haven't wore jeans for 20 years you know like those kind of things and so i had that kind of early affirmation and then my background of working with talent for so long kind of led me to this place of you know i knew that having a partner that was you know um extremely well known would be an amazing accelerator for the brand and so i knew that i needed millions and millions of women to know that this branded launch called good american and this is what they do but at the end of the day that was never going to be enough you know chloe can drive you to you know first purchase but you come back again and again and again for a product that's you know expensive um and so i was had to be like very very clear that the product was better than anything else out there for a curvy body type and i was absolutely clear that i'd created a product that was better than anything else yeah well thank you for sharing because um yeah i think that's a really great story when it comes to kind of like it's not enough because you know how like people just want to work with influencers and i think that would change the game or they want to work with talent and think it will change the game but the fundamentals you've got to have a great product or service you've got to have a great product and i think that you know customers expect so much now right and actually what what talent are really great for and we've all seen this in the last year with the way that you know facebook has changed and digital marketing is becoming so incredibly expensive you can't pay your way to a customer like it just doesn't it just the fundamentals of business are never going to stack up if you've got to spend so much to acquire a customer and so being able to use talent to go and get the message out there um and accelerate the the message of the brand that's an incredible value add but again people have so much choice now and they want so much from their brands and they also want not just for your product to fit and to be exceptional but they want to make sure that they're aligned with you that they're aligned with your values and how and what you're doing and what you know the rest of the company stands for and so actually i think that those things are becoming and are so much more important than just you know like than just marketing so you've clearly got like a really great eye f and an ear for consumer desire um what tips do you have for early stage founders kind of you know trying to keep their finger on the pulse or coming up with an idea like for a great product yeah i honestly one of the best things that we did was to listen to our customers and there are so many great ways to do that you know we're a brand that's really rooted in social media and so when we ask a question tens of thousands of women will come back and tell us if they want a dress with or without sleeves right it's like it's just the way the brand has always interacted with its customers so we do so many things whether it be on social uh you know post-purchase surveys really big focus groups every time we create a new fit we fit it on every single size and so we bring our customers on our journey now with that you know it's like again you have to accept the good the bad the ugly you're also going to get a lot of um intel i know i'm the first person to know when a retailer doesn't have all the sizes in good american because my customers will be like well i was in such and such in minnesota and they didn't have a size 18 and i'm like thank you for letting us know we'll go and make sure that they have that in future um but you also need to be able to take the the negative feedback and i think the fact that we have taken every piece of you know listening and reacting to our customers and their feedback has been again a superpower for the brand because even when we didn't like what we were hearing we still listened and we took those you know that feedback back into the business to make different decisions and i do think that just having your ear open looking at the reviews being in the weeds talking to customers and and now more than ever when we don't have that in-person relationship with them in the traditional ways of retail when it's direct to consumer you have to figure out what is your way of interacting with your customer base with regularity and then what is the way you take what they said back into the business to make decisions and those two things have been um massively massively important for a good american yeah wow that's gold thank you for sharing so want to switch gears talk about skims um can you tell us kind of what was that journey like what was your involvement what was the process there you know it's such an interesting one because i get asked this all the time and i wish someone would ask him because i almost don't remember i i think that i you know just had a conversation with chris about some a project that chloe that kim wanted to do um and if memory serves me rightly you know i just ended up in a meeting where kim was talking to me about her vision you know she was like this is what i want to do and you know perhaps it was the success of good american that made you know kim and chris want to have the conversation with myself and my husband who's also a founding partner in skims my role in skins is really based around the product you know what we do is make shape wearing underwear in a fully inclusive size range and really importantly in nine different skin shades and so i believe that the last you know five years of building good american and working in this space that's really focused around that fit and fabrication has led me to a place where i happen to be very good at that for skims so my role is really that of chief products officer i oversee the design team and merchandising and planning at schemes and you know i love it because for me you know it's like i'm a product junkie i like to be in the weeds with the product creating new things looking at innovations in fabric and you know it honestly is like a dream job for me yeah that's awesome and can you talk us through kind of the challenges any challenges in the early days and what did that look like yeah you know there are always challenges and you don't get to make your mistakes in pa in private when you're in business with kim kardashian and so you know there were some uh there were some things that we did i guess in the beginning the most famous one is that the company was originally going to be named kimono and again we listened to the audience we heard that that wasn't accepted or respected and we made a quick pivot to rename the company to a way better name actually now in hindsight i'm happy to say but you know i think that if i'm honest you know so much of my job is dealing with problems and with challenges right nobody comes to me and says well we're knocking it out of the park today you know sales are on fire we met our target it's only 10 a.m i mean i do get those taxes but more often than not it's a challenge it's a problem it's you know this year has been the great supply chain issue you know it's like i am very lucky to be in a position with both schemes and good american where um you know the the love of the product and the consumer appetite for the product really outweighs what i'm able to put out in the market and so there are all of those issues of how are you going to get ahead and you know how do you predict businesses that have treble digit growth like year over year that's that's very difficult because you don't know what next year looks like because the only thing i can guarantee is that it will look nothing like this year and so it's hard to predict um i just think that you know my my job is to be able to constantly make decisions and so i'm you know i like to stay really connected to the businesses that i'm involved with because i can only make those decisions if i really understand what's going on and again you know like hire the best possible people to work in every part of the company you talk about decisions um you know they i i once spoke to a really successful founder that said you know you have to get it you have to be right about 70 of the time um so you know you've made some incredible decisions that have got you to where you are now uh do you have like anything that you could share around like a decision-making framework how you go through this process of making the moves you've made to get where you are today it's interesting right because i do have this philosophy i think i'm pretty sure it was my husband who said it to me first like make a decision and move on i'm someone that can you know definitely over procrastinate um and i think that when you're a ceo and you're making so many decisions a day you're gonna you know you're gonna make good ones you're gonna make bad ones you have to make them a move on right because to to over procrastinate is to just freeze and and die and miss opportunities um i am definitely i think at the heart if you if you have two different types of ceos that are like a gut driven you know type person or a data driven you know information gathering person i would say i'm i'm on the gut side of things that's just how i've always operated um and i have a lot of experience that's kind of like me to to be that way because ultimately you know i can live with a decision that i made from the gut that goes wrong better than one where i looked at all the data and processed it and still it up so i think that um i think that my decision making process is evolving all the time and i definitely believe that having and surrounding yourself with other brilliant people and creating the conditions for everybody to contribute all the time right it's no good if you're kind of like an isolated ceo that makes decisions kind of in a in a vacuum i don't do that i'm a person that brings people around the table and will talk something out and you know listen to the benefit of like everybody else's experience and i do that quite often i'm also someone that calls like i will call people i have a bunch of people that i speak to uh and not just like you know like competitors uh other ceos that i'll be like hey are you seeing this like is this happening to you too or am i in a isolated incident right now you know and i i do that all the time nine times out of ten people are really generous with their information and happy you phoned up you know it's like i i've done that so many times and it's uh you know surprised me yeah that's cool so let's talk about safely um how did that start you know that was honestly a reaction to what was happening in the world because i'm a mum of four children now um and i recently had kind of read my house of all plastic like just before the onset of kovid i was like there's no plastic in this house we're going completely as reusable sustainable and you know toxic free as we can in this house and it was quite an undertaking you know you have to you have to do a lot of research i work with this consultant i really really thought about it because when you've got small kids you know you want the best for them and then then covered came and i was like pass me the lifestyle give me give me everything back that i got rid of um and then you know maybe three or four months in i was like there has to be like a better alternative it can't be that or that i started looking around and i started doing a lot of research into like plant-based cleaning and it just so happened that i knew somebody um that had been a you know a very well-known laundry detergent company and we started speaking and i was like what are the innovations in this space and where is the market going and you know are more people open to like a better version of what they are currently using and i think it's just one of those decisions that i don't even know if i thought about before you know i buy the same things as maybe my mom bought i don't know you know it's like i buy the things that just like jump off the aisles or whatever's on like amazon on repeat you know it's just like not a choice for me and so i just thought like more people if they're given the choice for something that is plant-based and without toxins and is better for their whole family like would you be willing to trade up and i think that's like any decision in product you know it's like are you willing like do most people are like want something better if they know something's better and so i just thought it'd be interesting to do something that was outside of my own comfort zone like being around fashion um and you know but apply the same thought process to it right i was like why can't marketing for cleaning products be really beautiful why can't we make gorgeous packaging in lovely colors and keep it simple and just tell people like what the deal is and you know it turned out that you could you could make really gorgeous smelling plant-based products that don't have any crap in them and you could get them into some of like the you know the biggest retailers in the country so that's that was the story of safely and it's been fantastic yeah well there you go that's really cool and for anybody watching this that is looking to differentiate into a crowded space like you have what what's the best piece of advice you would give them i think the best piece of advice is really like know what you're doing it for you know i had a very specific thing in mind which was really about my kids and then being in that moment of you know it's hard to think about now but if you go back what to april you know not last year the year before we were all in a complete panic you know i was leaving my groceries outside for half an hour and then spraying everything down and you know i was like this can't be good for me and i often think that things that i've done really well it's like a personal problem that i'm addressing and going well if i feel like this there must be so many others if i don't want to alter my jeans after i spent 150 bucks on them there must be other girls that have a curvy body that are like don't want to do that either there must be a better way of you know looking at skin colors in underwear and so i do think it's so much of it starts with like addressing things that bother you that you find you know you've got to create a solution for because you know at the end of the day you've got to be passionate enough and sometimes crazy enough to go round and round and round to actually solve a problem so it helps if it comes from something that you feel really you know linked to i'm not sure that i can just start i don't know phones that don't ring during meetings because i don't really care that much you know i'm just like pick it up put it down it's like you know it has to kind of come from somewhere um and you know i i think that we're in a kind of time right now especially post covid where people want to do you know we want our jobs and how we spend our time to not just like align with our values and feel purposeful but we want to feel like really proud of what we're doing and we want to feel that we're using our time well because we've all just had this huge reminder that time is really precious right that's like all we have and so i think if you're able to put those things together and that you feel really great every day about how you're using your time you're going to be a successful founder you may not make a gazillion dollars but you're going to get up every morning and your life will be full of purpose and you're going to do something you really enjoy and hopefully it makes somebody else you know either a difference to their life or something enjoyable for other people and that for me has to be the starting point of anything if it brings you money and wealth and opportunity and you know all of that is really great too but at the end of the day we've all got to get out and get through the day and i think that has to be what work is for yeah i agree 110 so um let's talk about shark tank uh how did you end up there uh how did all that come about what a good question um you know it's really interesting because first of all you know i was at dinner the other night and somebody said what's your peek what's your pit what's the most unexpected thing that happened to you this year i mean shark tank has to be the most unexpected and really because i never saw myself as like a tv person like a girl that would go on tv you know that that's why i have the most brilliant business partners in the world because they do that stuff and i can be you know like in the office um but i had i i think a huge realization when i come i think when i moved to america right and i started thinking so much more about how much you know racial disparity that there is in this country and what kind of um like what what the the role was for corporate america in that and i think about that in my own business every single day um but i also kind of look and i know the statistics right it was only five years ago that i was trying to raise money for good american and i know how hard it is for black and brown women especially to be part of the funding conversation and even to be in those rooms where they could be considered and i thought it was important to be a black woman that is you know uh a self-made woman that could be on that show investing in other women and that for me was the reason i was like i have to do this because it's like a full circle moment and i think it's really important for other people to watch that and be like hey if you make some money it's really really a good idea to try and give that back and figure out ways that you can kind of you know help other people because there are so many good ideas that because they aren't in the right context in the right rooms just never see the light of day it's not that the best ideas are always the ones that get funded and so shark tank was just a moment to go you know what can i get like a bunch of black and brown women on this show showing that they can be incredible entrepreneurs that they've got fantastic ideas and you can fund them and they can be successful um and the answer was yes you can so that's why i did it and i think it was a really um it was just a you know a really fundamental moment in my life and something that i feel extremely proud of to be you know extremely proud to be part of because i kind of had a thought going into it of what i was going to do and i was able to do exactly that oh that's incredible and i'm curious like what advice would you give to any founders that are early stage looking to pitch on the show or looking to raise capital in general from investors you know i think that oftentimes people go too early you know it's like at the end of the day most investors want to see an ability for you to have bootstrap something and be able to be you know in a situation that is not necessarily just profitable but positive right that there is a business case that there is a path to profitability that there is you know something there and i think if you can't you know ideas that need there's so few ideas that need huge injections of cash right from the outset now of course there are a million exceptions to that and we've seen them but for people that are coming on shark tank where the investments are relatively you know they're typically under a million dollars you really should be able to show some kind of business case and so for me it's really about not going too early what can you do yourself how can you actually bootstrap a business and get it to a place where an investor can see some kind of hope in the future of your business and so um i think that you know it's i've done it myself you know in the past without raising capital and i've started businesses where i've raised capital and at the end of the day they're two really really different paths but i would definitely think that the challenge of bootstrapping and doing something on your own you learn so much more you absolutely approach it and allocate funds and do things in a different way it doesn't matter what anyone says um and so i i definitely think for you know for people that are just starting out like trying to see how far you can get without having to call in any additional funds is a really important thing it's a challenge for yourself and it's only going to mean that you can attract better uh better investors in the long run i think i'm really curious you've seen both sides of the table which do you prefer that's such a good question really depends i mean let's be honest when you're trying to do something on a global scale um where you believe that there is you know a huge opportunity it's fantastic to raise capital um going back five years maybe i'd have thought about that totally differently if if i was in the same position i am now and i could have just you know put my own money into it i wasn't it wasn't a choice that i had back then who knows we'll see in business number five that's the truth of it right awesome look conscious of your time we'll work towards wrapping up a few last questions um before we finish up i wanted to talk about the 15 pledge um so can you explain to this what this is and and why you got involved yeah absolutely so the 15 pledge is a non-profit that was started by an incredible woman called aurora james and aurora um after the tragic murder of george floyd actually started the non-profit by putting out a really simple instagram post where she created a call to action for retailers to re-look at how they're buying products and the simple genesis of the entire organization is that if black people make up 15 of the population of this country then why shouldn't you buy equate to 15 from black owned businesses and really what we're talking about here is you know the the state of economic disparity in this country um and you know i think what's been so incredible is that so many big retailers have jumped on this initiative and again going back to that conversation around diversity why representation matters why diversity in organization matters actually it you know for businesses to understand it makes you more successful when you are able to have a broader addressable market when you are able to you know talk to more people through the brands that you are acquiring you're actually serving the customer better you're able to service more customers and therefore that has you know an effect on your bottom line and so what the 15 pledge does in the most simple way possible is gets organizations to look at the way they are buying and procuring and to say perhaps we should look at putting more of this into black owned businesses and we know that that has an incredible effect because if you are a black owned business and you suddenly get a fantastic you know purchase order from nordstrom you are able to employ more people and we know that black founders will employ black and brown people they will educate their children they will have a positive impact in their community i think what's the most interesting thing is how quickly that organization has been able to be truly impactful we're talking about 10 billion dollars of opportunities through the pledge takers in just a year and so you really are changing the economic makeup of the country at large by being able to do this and the most simple way to see it is to go into any of those retailers you know when you go into sephora you're going to see a much broader range of businesses because they're able to start looking at the brands that they're bringing in through a different lens and sometimes it really is just about um showing you know these brands and these retailers the way you know they have a buying division they have a number of people that procure products on their behalf and perhaps they only have a limited vision of the brands that they know and what they see and what they think they should be buying so i think 15 pledge has been an amazing organization just to help people wake up and understand what's out there and see what they might be leaving on the table and i'm really really proud to be the chairwoman of this organization because they're making real tangible change and i think for so many uh people in business so many organizations so many brands everybody knows they have to do something but not everybody understands what does that mean what should we do and so the 15 pledge gives you just a very very tangible way to shift your business to look at things differently and to start you know broadening the horizons and i think that a lot of organizations again and i talk about this so much you know it's like everybody made charters everybody said you know we know that we need to be better we see and we hear the problems but you have to action all of that you know and there's no point in creating a charter and it gets kind of filed away somewhere and then nobody thinks about it anymore and so the pledge gives an amazing opportunity for businesses to do something that's tangible actionable that's measurable and move forward and it has an amazing effect on the business overall yeah wow well thank you for sharing emma look we could talk to you all day you've got a wealth of knowledge and experience and you've had such an incredible journey and career success a couple last questions we'll move to the hot seat round i love your questions you have a very like relaxing voice that i can listen to so it's like great you're very calm thank you maybe it's yeah maybe it's an australian thing not sure it is i think it is an australian thing that's definitely it there you go um so the first one hotseat round if you could give advice to emma one piece of advice 10 years ago what would it be and why i would have moved on um a little quicker from some of my early jobs i stuck around out of loyalty and didn't always make the best decisions for myself and i usually tell people that work for me all the time i'm like your time here is probably up you should move on you know it's like two free years you know you actually gonna need to go to another company to get the job that you deserve and you need and whatever um and i think that i would definitely advise myself to be perhaps less loyal and a little a little more ruthless awesome last question you've had incredible success with talentback businesses if there was one uh celebrity to partner up with that you could choose who would it be and why this is gonna sound so ridiculous but i didn't have a second choice to chloe she was my first choice and i still sit here and i go god that was such a smart choice i still think that um the kardashian family just have it you know it's like they are honest and they are unbelievably hard working and this is it's just such a boring answer for you but i actually wouldn't there is no one i would rather be in business with and that's the honest it's the honest truth i don't sit here and you know i mean i could just like create a brand for brad pitt but it would be more self-serving than actually like me wanting to create a brand of bad pet but maybe we should say that because it will be a more interesting answer oh it's all good or asking one last question then that's for like 16 year old emma crushing on brad pitt that would be it okay if you could have dinner with one entrepreneur dead or alive who would have been why oh you know what i i probably i thought you were going to ask me one celebrity but maybe it is the same thing actually i might still go back to oprah and i tell you why because i think that one of the things that she's done so beautifully is that fuse this like unbelievable commercial instincts that she has with like the purpose of her life and that this idea of spirituality and the podcast and the book club and bringing the whole world with her and i think there's so few people that have like been able to touch people's life in like such a big way as her you know and so i probably would think about it would probably be oprah yeah i i think so because it's she's just she's unique in that sense of you know being able to you know just be so positive and such a you know a kind of beacon for so many people and make lots of money doing it yeah look oprah's oprah's a really great one um yeah i think she would be it would have to be a woman you know because i think so much about the unique challenges that women have and you know i'm so glad you didn't ask me but everybody always asks me about how do you balance it you know how do you do everything no one asks my husband that you know it's like when i did my shark tank press you know i did it with mark cuban and i was like why does no one ask mark how he balances it all you know it's like such a ridiculous question um and you know i do think that women face a unique challenge in in business right it's like we talk so much about you know equality in the workplace and uh you know at all different levels but especially you know at the higher level and on boards and in the c-suite and there's still um so much other stuff that women have to take the lead on in their life like you know child care like running a household um and there's just not enough emphasis on the reality of women's like total lives and total responsibilities and i think that you know i always take it upon myself to just be really honest about what it takes to do my job and have four children well i have to have a lot of help i don't take my kids to school every single day and i don't make their pack lunches um and you know there's a lot of things that you sacrifice in order to you know to do what i do every day and i never want it to feel like especially for my children that i'm making some big sacrifices because i i'm often putting myself first and i think for women there's a lot of stigma attached to you saying that to saying like my career is really important to me and i'm putting it first right now you know and so and that's never something that men have to think about and so i think that we ought to be speaking so much more about the unique challenges of women who actually are doing it and how you have to be really really honest about what that takes because i think for so long we've been feeding women this kind of bill that's like you can have it all it's like no you can't you absolutely cannot you aren't the mom who's at the pta meetings um while running you know like companies and you know coming home and you know cooking the dinner that's just not a reality and so i think that as women in business we owe it to all the other women that are coming beside us behind us to just be really honest about what it takes because you're going to have to make sacrifices somewhere in your life and i think it's just um high time that we're just you know kind of lifting the lid off of some of that and and being open and honest about what it takes yeah well thank you for your openness honestly really appreciate it no worries my dear awesome well look we will wrap there thank you so much for your time this was an incredible interview and uh congratulations on all your success look forward to seeing what you do next and uh yeah really excited to share this interview with our community i appreciate it thank you so much nathan it's such a pleasure speaking to you hey founder fam did you love this interview well if you did then make sure to subscribe we're dropping new interviews every single week and we can't wait for you to join the journey all right see you soon

Channel: Foundr Stories

Views: 37,794

Keywords: emma grede interview, emma grede shark tank, skims kim kardashian, kardashian business strategy, skims shapewear, khloe kardashian, good american, emma grede, kris jenner safely, building a billion dollar brand, billionaire mindset, entrepreneur ideas, lewis howes, evan carmichael, emma grede good american, foundr interview, foundr stories, kim kardashian

Id: wL0VcUjGEto

Length: 52min 1sec (3121 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022