Hi, I'm so excited to be here tonight at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco with the one and only Emma Agree. Emma, I could just keep saying your name. It's just like, you are, first of all, I want to say, you're one of my dear friends. I adore you, I love you, I think you're incredible.
Thank you darling. The fact that you came out here to do this means the absolute world to me and you heard the excitement and the energy in the room. And honestly, Jake, until about three hours ago, I thought it was 800 people that were here tonight. So I'm in a little bit of shock to be totally honest.
I'm like, what? I love it, it's definitely like thousands and thousands of people. I want to start with something that we've been talking about this evening. And it's interesting because you were actually talking about it in the clip that we had from the show when you were on the podcast.
We find that we spend so much of our times worrying about what people think of us. We are constantly our worst critics in our mind. We're thinking, oh, does this person think on this? I think on that I want you to take us to a time when that was in your head.
And what were the kind of things you worried about that people thought of you? And what did you do about it? Well, you know, I think like so many of us, I spent my entire life worried about that. And I'd be lying if I said they went parts of me that still feel like that now.
But I honestly got to a certain point in my life where I thought, well, if not you, then who, right? And I really feel like so much of my life has been about trying to prove something. And you get to the point where you're like, I don't really have anything to prove anymore. I wake up every single day and make a decision to do my very best.
And who am I doing my best for? Well, for me, right? I have to meet my own expectations. I have to get to the point where I can lay my head back down on that pillow at night and feel really, really good.
And I've just got to the point where I feel like that is real for me. But, you know, in my teens, in my twenties, like you don't feel that way. That's just not your reality. And you spend a lot of time worried about what other people think.
Yeah, and you get stuck. Like we get so stifled by it. We get so restricted by it. Do you remember ever like missing out on opportunity or not doing something because you're so worried?
I mean, I've listed things like that because you imagine that everybody is watching you like you're watching you. And I think that there were times in my life where I didn't speak up. There were times in my life where I didn't put myself forward. There were times in my life where I just not only kept quiet, but I kept out of the conversation, right?
Like not, not even in it, not really even putting myself out there. And so, yeah, I feel like that was my reality for a very, very long time. And I also think that there's part of being certainly a woman, a younger woman in business where there's this idea that everybody knows better than you. And the older you get, the more you realize, no one knows anything.
Everyone of us, we're making it up as we go along. And you know, it's so interesting for me because at this stage of my career, I find myself in the rooms, you know, with the best investors, with people that are doing incredible things, people that are in very, very high level positions running companies or countries even. And you do get to the point where you go, well, you know what? I think, you know, you're not that different from me.
So there is a part of you that goes, you start to feel so much more confident. But, and I talk about this all the time. It isn't without some fear. And I do think that taking risks, and again, it's an inherently female thing sometimes to be risk adverse.
And we're like that for so many reasons. But when the only reason is for self-preservation, you really have to start thinking about what fear is doing negatively to you. And so I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I can park my fear and what else I can use that energy for. Oh, so good, so good, Emma.
I love that. And I want to talk to you about that. Let's dive into that. I was going to say that forever.
I'll dive into it. It seems you took it there. I remember reading a study that showed that when men see a job description, even if they can only do 40% of it, they'll apply. But when women see a job description, even if they can do 80% of it, they won't apply.
And so there's this shift that definitely exists, this confidence, this feeling of trusting yourself, this feeling of, oh, I'm worthy, that comes in, walk me through that experience that you've had since day one of feeling like as a woman, you had to prove more, you had to work harder. What does that actually look like? And what are women out there? I'm sure there's so many people in here who want to be entrepreneurs have started something.
But seeing that, how do you see it, but then live through it and build an empire like you have. Well, let's just be honest about some of that, right? Because it isn't just about women holding themselves back. The barriers are real.
They're really real. And so we should all recognize that. And it's one of the reasons that I've built the companies that I have with women at the helm, with women in positions of power and with women as the decision-makers, because we actually make better decisions about who to bring in the company in the first place. But it's true.
It's true. If you have a female banker, if you have somebody investing in your money that's a woman, like she will do better for you. The facts and the figures are out there. So I want to be honest about these things, not just as what happens in our minds as women, but some of them are the societal barriers that truly, truly exist.
And I know it because I see it every day in my own company and just to your point, you know, I'll have a role that I need a Spanish or a French speaker and a man will come in with very limited abilities and tell me he's like a pro and completely fluent and a woman who maybe just needs to brush up a bit, but she's basically fluent and is like, oh, I'm not so sure. But again, I think that's about what has been allowed for women. And as soon as we start saying things and doing things that are considered braggadocious, getting out of our space, women face an enormous amount of criticism. And I get this all the time.
You know, I was speaking about a subject and my team were like, don't show you the subject. But I, you know, had a little thing a couple of weeks ago. And on the same day, a very, very prominent American businessman was having a very, very similar like Twitter attack, ex-attack, whatever you want to call it. And I got so much backlash and no one said anything to him.
In fact, he got millions and millions of likes. So the standards are just very, very different. But instead of shying away from those conversations, what I do is lean into those conversations because the very idea that you have to be demure, that you have to be likable, that you have to lean into a certain convention of what it means to be a business, a woman in business, if you, if you do that and I display that, I'm actually holding women back. So I've just decided, like, I'm not playing that game anymore.
I'm going to do me, be me, and everyone else is going to have to like it. It's, it's so important. It's, it's so important. And, but what I love about what you've done with that is because there's one thing, like when we see injustice, when we see that kind of treatment in the world, we all notice it and we can talk about it.
But then you've been able to get involved, get stuck in. You haven't let that hamper your growth. And I think that's the mindset that I'm always fascinated by. We all see things happening in the world that we hate that we don't love that don't feel fair.
But then we still got to learn to play that game. We still got to learn to win at that game. And you've done that multiple times. If someone's at the beginning of their journey, there's people in here who have ideas, who have dreams, who have things that they want to start.
And they're concerned about whether it's fair, whether there's a meritocracy, whether it's set up for making them fail or succeed. What's the first thing they have to build in their mind, in their heart, in their resolve, or externally that you'd recommend they start with? You know, the first thing I want to say is that it's really important to start with yourself. We can be so concerned about everything that's happening around us.
And I think what I did pretty well in early in my career was center my decisions around what it is that was important to me. And I never ever sacrificed my ambition. I was pretty out there and open and honest. And so I think if you want something, you have to go after it.
You can't be shy about it. You've got to be very, very honest and open about what it is that you need and what you're looking for all the time. And I do think a lot of us think, you know, we think a lot about what we want, but we don't necessarily make it known. And I speak to people about this all the time, whatever you want and whatever you're thinking about doing in your life.
The most important thing is to focus on what you're doing and what you can do right now. Be excellent in whatever it is that you're doing right now. You know, when I worked in Adele and I made the sandwiches, I spoke to you about it before. I was an amazing sandwich maker.
In the same way that I make amazing jeans now. But whatever it is, I will apply myself in that way. And so I do think there's this idea of what it means to be, like, really, truly excellent at something. And that's how we can propel ourselves into the unimaginable.
That's how we get to do new things. That's how people start to recognize us as individuals with skills outside of where we may be seen right now. So that's what I try to focus on. I focus on myself.
And again, sounds really selfish, but that's what you have to be sometimes. And it's OK for a period in your life as a means to an end to get somewhere. I really appreciate that mindset because I feel like it's a magnetic feeling that someone gives you. And you see someone just be really good.
I remember a few months ago, me and my friends were out for dinner in LA and we're at this restaurant. And the lady who is serving and taking our orders, she was just amazing. Like, she had the recommendations. And this wasn't a fancy place.
This was a casual spot on a Sunday. She knew every special. She knew every little thing. She had great recommendations.
She had great energy. And literally, all three of us were like, so what do you do? What job do you want to do? Like, literally, everyone is there.
Everyone is there. There's one more of that. We all want to attract more of that. Yeah.
And it goes to your exact point that sometimes we think, oh, I hate what I do right now. And I've got to find what I love. But actually, if you can be excellent, even at what you hate, imagine how good you'll be at what you love doing. Oh, 100%.
And I say it all the time because, you know, I think that the three most important words for Korea acceleration is, I'll do that. I spend my whole life with my hand up going, I'll do that. I'll do that. I'll do that.
And it's so important, you know, just again, but it's about putting yourself out there and not imagining that you can't do something or that you won't be chosen for it or that it's not right for you because you're not doing it yet. So sometimes that little bit of vulnerability, like, really helps us. Three, two, one. All right.
I love that. I'll do that. That's a great one. Yeah.
I remember reading a quote from Richard Branson, when I was a kid, and he was like, if you get an opportunity to do something, say yes and then figure out how to do it afterwards. A whole life. And I love it. Yeah.
And you, so I'm doing now, Jack. Literally. And I think people underestimate that sometimes that's the pressure that actually gets you to step up because if you don't have the opportunity, keep waiting for it when I get that chance, when I get that chance. And I love, I'll do that because often we think, oh, that's not my thing.
I won't do that. I'm not sure about that. I won't do that. I mean, you were saving up to buy fashion magazines as a young girl.
That is true. That blows my mind. Did you ever think you'd be in those fashion magazines or creating the fashion that is in those magazines? I did.
I'm going to sound so arrogant. But yes, I did. I really did. I love that.
Well, you know what? We love that. Yeah, we love that energy. It's interesting, right?
Because now we call it manifestation. But I as a kid really visualize the life that I wanted. And I remember, you know, because I grew up in the time where Oprah was on the TV every single day. And, you know, she would talk about the ideas of gratitude.
She would talk about mindfulness. She would talk about manifestation. I tell you what the greatest thing that ever happened to me is that I was raised in a place and with a family where there honestly were no limitations ever upon me. And I truly believed it.
I really honestly believed that I could do anything so long as I was willing to put the work in. And so despite my education, despite where I came from, despite the amount in of excuses that I could have had, I really truly believed if I applied myself, it would work. And as, you know, a mother of four now, I think about that every day because my kids don't have the same hunger as I do. They don't want for the same things that I do, but the same token.
I want them and need them to find their purpose and their passion and what they're going to be good at. And so I think again, it all comes back down to how you see yourself and the stories that you tell yourself and how kind we can be to ourselves because you've got like one big relationship, one big love in your life. And that's you. The person I hear from most is me.
I wake up with me in the morning. I go to bed with me at night. I'm chatting to myself the whole day and I can choose that narrative, right? I can choose to be kind to myself.
I can choose to tell me that I can do it or I can create a really, really negative narrative and really negative patterns. And so I wake up every day and I choose to tell myself that whatever it is, I can probably do it if I apply, if I learn, if I put a hundred percent effort in, if I surround myself with the right people, all of those things. And so I think it's just like constantly practice who you want to be. And I just feel like I'm in like a forever practice of who it is.
I want to be. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, absolutely. Give it up.
It's, it's such good advice and it's so true. And I feel like with you, you always certain from an early age, what you were passionate about fashion became your whole life, like you've been obsessed with it since you're a young kid. And I feel like today, either it's because we're exposed to too many things or there's too many stories of success and all this kind of stuff. I think people are getting people struggling to know what they're passionate about.
And I'm sure you get this question all the time. Emma, how do I find my passion? How do I know what I'm passionate about? Is passion even the right thing to look at?
What do you suggest when people are like, Emma, I have all these ideas. I don't know where to start. How should people pick something their lane to focus on becoming excellent at? Oh, you're going to hate this.
Don't look for your passion. Like, don't, don't, don't, it's so difficult because oftentimes the things that we love, I mean, they're not always great, right? I love a glass of red wine. I would have had three before I came on this stage if I was following my passion and what my heart was telling me to do, but it didn't seem right on purpose.
So I think that what you have to do is find what you're good at, find what often I think about the things that give you energy versus the things that take energy away. You know, when I saw you backstage, I was like, oh, my goodness, you must be exhausted and you must just want to go straight to sleep. And you said to me, actually it takes me three hours to get to sleep after these shows because I'm so excited after. And I was like, yeah, because you are living your purpose.
You are doing what gives you energy. And so I think you should go around and find what gives you energy and what you are good at where your natural skills are, you know, leaning and then you figure out your purpose. I don't think you can go around looking for the thing that is going to, you know, be, you know, you can't look around trying to figure out, like, I am going to have this big purpose because it's so, it's so rare that you ever get there. And oftentimes, you know, I don't think fashion was a purpose for me.
I think I liked really nice things. And I think I needed to find a career that paid me really well. So I could buy those nice things, right? Like it wasn't kind of true.
No, but the advice to follow what you're good at is brilliant because competence build confidence. Yes. And I think a lot of us are trying to do it the other way around. We're like, I want to be confident, but you can't be confident if you don't feel competent.
And the only time you feel competent is when you do something you're really good at and something you're willing to get really good at, right? It's not like you may not be good at the thing. You want to be good at right now, but you're more likely to dedicate time to it. If you think, Oh, I really want to excel at that.
I think one of the biggest challenges I see for a lot of people is if you only focus on passion, which, by the way, I love your advice. If you only follow your passion, when things get hard, you then feel not passionate about it. Whereas if you follow what you're good at, you realize whether things are going well or not, you just got to get better. And I love that you talk about focus because I'm obsessed with this idea of true focus.
You know, focus is a force multiplier in business. It's a force multiplier in work when you figure out what you can actually dedicate yourself to and give all of your focus. And you truly do that, whether in your life, in your business, in your relationships, you will find unbelievable unlocks. I don't know anyone who is successful, who hasn't been unbelievably unequivocally focused on something and gone deep and deep and figured out more and more things out and then found an unlock.
And so I really think about that as something that's completely opens up and you well to you. And when you are willing to learn and to go really deep in one place, amazing things that are happening like they do. It's like it really is like magic. What distracts us from focus?
Like what is it that's blocking us from becoming that single minded? You reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee once said, I'm not scared of the person who's practiced 10,000 kicks once each. I'm scared of the person who's practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Right? Like that's the person that's scary. Like the person who's practiced the same thing over and over again, that laser like focus. That's the scary person person who's got scattered attention.
They're not even in the competition. But why is it that we all end up being those kind of people who are like, okay, I've got to spend time on my family got to figure this out. I've got to do these three things over here. Like that's what we all feel our life with.
Well, because I feel like we're in a culture right now that tells us that you have to do and be so many different things. You know, when I grew up, it's like you drove a van, you're a carpenter, you worked in a store, you're a chef, like you didn't make, you were a thing. And now we all believe that we should be so many different things. And the truth is that it's so rewarding to get good at something.
Like I consider myself, people say to me, Emma, how you do so many things, you have so many businesses. It's like I do one thing really, really well. I'm an excellent merchant. I understand what people want to buy and how much they're willing to pay for it.
And I do that over and over and over and over again. That's it. That's all I do. And it's really important to know and to figure out how you can go deep on something and not spread yourself too thinly.
And I think this idea, you know, we as a society, we really believe these stories of like, you know, overnight success. But it isn't true, right? It's not a career plan to think like that. And if I'm really, really honest, I have never ever worked harder in my life than I do today.
That's the honest truth. It doesn't get easier when you get more successful. It gets much more difficult. And so I think if that's the life that you're looking for and you want to do great things, you've got to be willing to sacrifice some other stuff and go deep on one thing.
Yeah, and when you do it, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. No, not at all. So fulfilling. A hundred percent.
It just might feel like, oh, my goodness, there were all of these options that I had. But to me, it's really interesting to think about where your strengths are and find what you're good at and go into that thing. Yeah, I love the way you articulate your strengths. I remember years ago and I have no affiliation with this platform, but it's amazing.
I remember years ago, I did something called strength finder and it's this test that asks you all these questions. It's like $50 on the internet. You fill it out and it will give you your top 34 strengths. Oh, wow.
You got 34 strengths. Shae Shae. Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone to stay for strength. He ranks them in order.
Just Jay has 34 strengths. We all had three. No, no, no. The model is 34 strengths.
Everyone will get 34 problems. But it's all about your top five strengths. And what's fascinating to me is when I did that, and it's a thing you've got to take an hour to do properly. Of course, the more self-aware you are, the better it is.
When I look to my top five strengths and I imagine if you look to yours and I use this when I'm hiring, I use this when I'm meeting people, I use it with clients. When I look at my top five strengths, I knew four of them, but I didn't know the first one. Wow, really? On that piece of paper, I mean, sorry, on the digital PDF that it sends you back.
I was like, I had no idea that that was my top strength. And from that day on, I leaned into that strength. Well, now you've got to tell us what you're talking about. What is that?
So my top five, I'll tell the first one before the first one. There's communications in my top five. We agree. Yeah.
Ideation, intellections, ideations coming up with ideas and it's interactions having thoughtful, reflective discussions. And then the fourth one, ideation, intellectual communication. And there's one more in there. I can't remember.
And the top one, number one was strategy. Strategy. Yeah, it was my number one skill. And I never knew that.
Like, I wasn't conscious of that. And the moment I became conscious of the fact that I'm extremely strategic, it shifted my entire world. It shifted everything. And I would encourage, like I said, I have no affiliation with the company.
I highly recommend you do it because you might look at those and go, wait a minute. When you articulate your strength, you're so clear. You're like, this is what I'm good at. Yeah.
And when you're able to do that, it fills you with confidence. It fills you with competence. And all of a sudden you realize why your life's been going wrong. Yeah, not only that.
You realize what you need around you because my whole thing is that none of us are successful alone, right? I arrived here tonight with like a smuttering of people with me, right? Because you don't just wake up and turn up like that. Sadly, I don't.
It took a lot to roll me out here tonight. But I do think it's kind of interesting because I think about my own streams. Like I have an unbelievable ability to focus. Like that is something that I'm very, very good at.
I am as resilient as a person gets. Like it takes a lot to get to me and I can take a lot of knockbacks and I can take a lot of bad news. And I have a work ethic like you wouldn't believe. Like it's just I can work and work and go and go and go.
And I've needed those three things. But there's an enormous amount of things that I'm just horrendous, like not just a little bit bad. Like really bad. I am super impatient.
Like I have no patience. And so I have to surround myself with people that have the things that I don't have. And I think that it's again so important to understand like who you are not. Like where are your weaknesses?
What are you not good at? And again, we always go around going, you know, what do I need? Who am I? Like me, me, me, me.
And it's like it's so important in your life to surround yourself with friends, with business partners, with colleagues that have all the things that you don't have. And I think that that is one of the reasons I've been really successful. I surround myself with the right people constantly. As I'm listening to you, I'm just thinking about how this self awareness principle for everyone sitting here is so powerful.
And we're so told in society to get better at what we're bad at. And I remember, and this is real for me, when I became a consultant after I left the monastery, finally got a job. I was lucky to get a job. I was rejected by 40 companies before I got it.
And when I finally got that job, they were telling me, you've got to be good at Excel. You've got to be good at PowerPoint. You've got to be good at this. You've got to be good at this.
And it was like a suite of things you had to be good at. And I was like, I do not want to be good at Microsoft Excel. I don't want to be good. I still don't know how to do a VLOOKUP, right?
For any of you geeks out there. This is the wrong town to admit that. Let me tell you, they're like so past that here. They're like, oh, Jai, you're like, bro, seriously, we're like AI in over here.
But it's that kind of idea of like, you're so, you're told to get good at things that aren't your thing. And you constantly are wasting all this time and energy focused on that focus. You've got a finite amount of focus. And if you're spending it on all the things you're not that great at, maybe you'll get average at those.
But if you put it in the thing, it's never saying the things are good at. You can become phenomenal at those. And that's what we need to encourage people to do. Yes, it's really true.
Really true. And I want to ask you, you have four adorable children. Adorable. Like the cutest, like truly the cutest.
You post them out of them all the time as well. You have an amazing husband as well, who I love. Yeah, it's like, what a great man. Yeah, and it's just beautiful to see what you've been able to create.
What did you say? I said, I'm a lucky girl. He's a lucky guy. I think so too.
And when I look at, I was wondering, if we asked your kids, what does mom do? How would they explain it? Oh, my goodness. So my kids, like this is like a big like graduation week for everybody, right?
So I've been 11 year old and eight and twin three year olds. And the three year olds had like one of those projects where it was like, you know, what your mom's name, your dad named it, and my kid said, our mom goes to work all the time. And I was like, you know, it's one of those things. I'm like, what are you going to do?
You know, and there was a part of me that I was like, do I feel shame about that? Am I comfortable with that? But, you know, I've really made it a point to tell my kids how much I love work because I felt that with my first two, I was constantly in some cycle of apologies. I'm sorry that I'm leaving.
I'm sorry that I'm going to New York. I'm sorry that I'll be back late tonight. And what I realized is that I created a narrative that I didn't really like what I was doing. And I had this conversation with my daughter as I was going to New York like, you know, a few months ago, and she said, I'm so sorry.
You've got to go on this trip. And I said, hello, when I go to New York, I have an amazing time. I sleep diagonally. I go out with my friends.
I drink too much wine. Like I have the best time and she said to me, oh, okay. I have an amazing time. I'll see you in three days.
And I thought, wow, I did that. So I'm working really hard to let my kids know. Yeah, like I'm not the mom that is at every drop off. I'm not the mom that is volunteering at the school.
But guess what? There are all of these other amazing things that I do that I enjoy. And I'm not trying to make you guys feel guilty about it. I'm not trying to play a martyr.
These are things that I really love and enjoy. And I kind of feel like my kids are cool with it because they've been raised like that and they know that they can go after their dreams unashamedly. And I feel like if we start to shift that narrative with our children, it'll make everything so much easier because nobody wants mum guilt. Nobody wants any parental guilt.
And we all know it's there, but we don't need that. Yeah, it's, you know, I can only speak about it from being a son to a mum that I love. And I've told you this before, like my mum was the breadwinner of the house. She'd wake up in the morning, make me and my sister lunch to take with us to school, make us breakfast.
She'd drop us to school, go to work. We'd get picked up by an Annie from school. We'd wait there for a couple of hours. My mum would come back from work, pick us up, make us dinner, help us with our homework.
And then go back to work in the evening. And I really believe that my work ethic is because of watching my mum work. Yes. And here's the interesting thing.
I didn't have a lot of time with my mum growing up, but I never felt unloved. And I've started to realize that time doesn't equal love. But that's what we've all convinced us of. We're like, if I'm there for you all the time, then that means I love you.
And actually that's not the case because I'm there all the time, but I'm not happy. I'm not really present. I'm on my phone. I'm distracted.
I'm over entertaining you. You don't get time to be bored. You don't get time to be disconnect. Time doesn't equal love.
And I feel like today we put a lot of pressure on parents to have to be everything at home and perform at work and the amazing partners. When I look around, it's really hard on my friends that I see having that pressure to be a perfect parent, a perfect professional, a perfect partner, a perfect everything because it wasn't like that. But we also have to figure out where does that pressure come from, right? Because oftentimes it's coming from some outside source or we're putting it on ourselves.
And I did an exercise for myself when I first had great. So like 11 years ago, and I've wrote down what was important to me because you know what? There are certain non-negotiables like if my kids in a play, if they're, you know, like we had a big graduation thing today, like I am there. But I don't know that I think it's important to make like Instagramable lunchboxes.
Like that's not something I need to do, you know? And so I don't do that. But you know, it's like, it's really important to figure out like these my standards or these somebody else's standards and one of my non-negotiables. And so I feel like once you get there, everything suddenly falls into place.
And that's the important thing like in all parts of our life, like where are my standards? Where are the places that I feel that I will absolutely not be happy if these things are happening in my life? Where are the places that I feel like I would be making a sacrifice versus what is everybody else thinking of me? Or did I see that I feel like I need to be keeping up with?
What do the school tell me, you know, I need to do? Because half the time, you know, if you can level with things in your own life, like you'll be okay. So I think it's really important. And I constantly have those conversations with myself because life at your, you're in this constant change mode, hopefully, right?
Like what worked for my kids when they were five doesn't work for them, 11. And so I try to reassess constantly like, how do I really feel about these things? And I write it down. I'm like, it's really important for me to have a girls trip once a year.
And I do that every single year without fail. Like I don't, like, I don't negotiate. And I'm like, say to my husband, oh, I can't like, can't figure out the data. It's like it is happening.
That is one of the things that makes me happy because those connections, those relationships are something that I find absolutely precious. And so I just have a bunch of things that I feel are non-negotiable in my life, but then mine, it's my list. I own it. It doesn't belong to anyone else and it doesn't come from anywhere else.
And the rest I just say, I'm not doing it. So good. So good. Honestly, like, I love the standard piece because maybe someone standard is to make Instagrammable lunches.
Yes. For them. I love watching those videos. I watch the video.
I just want to make a lunch. And that's also beautiful. And that's kind of where we're struggling, I feel, where we're making someone else's standards, our standards, as you said. And that's where everything goes wrong.
You know, and again, I want to go back to a point you made earlier about this. Women get this, ask this question, especially as CEOs, especially as business builders, far more disproportionately than men. To be honest, anything, men, you can ask this. And so when I'm asking this, I'm asking it self-aware.
And when I make that point, that women always get asked, oh, how do you balance it all? Right? Which men don't get asked? Like, I'm sitting with a male CEO.
Ever. No one goes, hey, wait a minute. How do you balance it all? Yeah.
And you get asked it and all the rest of it. And then how have you been able to, and this is true for me too, and I think about it, but you've done it with, you do have beautiful, we were just literally, when I saw you this today, you were FaceTiming your daughter and she was building a crown. She'd made a magnetile. Yeah, it was so happy with it.
So happy with it. So happy with it. Beautiful. And we were talking to her and then, and then he ends your husband who I know to and he's like, having dinner while you're getting ready and chatting.
And it's so beautiful to see, right? And like you're finding time for all of these really important relationships, even though you've been so kind to come out and help me out with this. And so when I see that happening, I'm like, what does it take? What does it take to be the powerhouse CEO, to be a present wife, to be a connected mama?
What is that taking? And I know, I know you, I know you don't believe in perfection. I don't. What is that?
What does it take? So at the risk of sounding and saying things I've said a lot, I do talk about the ideas of trade offs all the time. I talk about the idea of an unbelievable amount of help, but I think the most important thing to talk about in the context of where we are today is really thinking about ourselves, really thinking about ourselves. Because if the standard, and if people look at me and think, well, you know, her hair's done and the husband's nice and the kids look perfect and that house is good and she's running all these companies, you would have missed the entire point of me because what I do well is what works for me.
That's what works for me. And I think that if we think for one second that we have to emulate and we have to take pieces of everybody's life, like that's where we start to go wrong. So for me, I have nannies. I have other people that do things in the house.
I have like so much help, but I've never had a problem my whole life in asking for help. It's something that I do all the time. If I have a problem in my business, I call a competitor. If I can't figure something out, like I'm on the phone trying to work it through and that becomes a pattern in your life, like asking for help, not comparing yourself.
And so why say to not just women to everyone who's trying to figure out how to do all this stuff is work it out for yourself. Don't let the standards of what you see around you impede on how you feel because the idea that anyone's got it all down is just fake and I don't like that's the truth. Every single day, if you see me here, it means that my kids didn't have me at dinner tonight. If you see me here right now, it means that I'm giving something else up.
And so my life is this series of trade-offs. It is this series of I'm doing one thing, but I made this decision today because I was like, I want to go to Chase Shady and talk to people. And that's fine, but I don't feel bad about that. I'm not going to talk to myself about it, but I think that we have to really look into ourselves and decide what's right for us and stop trying to chase this idea of balance and also stop lying.
You know, I just stopped lying about it. I started to say this is really hard. I really have to make difficult choices. And when I made choices that were seemingly selfish or about me, I stopped hiding them because I thought that was doing a disservice to other women.
So when I'm out, I'm going to say I'm out. When I'm not with my kids, I'm going to say I'm not with my kids. When I say I only do school drop off twice a week, that's on a good week. So I'm just going to stop lying and everyone else can follow suit.
You're changing the game. Like, you actually changing the game. And that's why I was so excited. By the way, I was so excited because literally just a couple of weeks ago, Emma launched her own podcast, I spy with Emma Greed and I want everyone in here to go on their Spotify or their Apple App or whatever app you use.
Oh, and you leave tonight and I want you to go subscribe to a spy about Emma Greed. You're so loud. You're not already. I mean, I mean, because I really feel like your voice in this space is so refreshing.
It's so revolutionary. It's totally redefining what women can think about of what's possible, what's expected of them, what's what's perfect, what's not, what's real. And I feel like you just being real and honest is genuinely what's needed in the space. I don't know anyone else who's doing it.
And it's something I love about you. I mean, all of you and I admire it so, so deeply. I mean it. No, I love you.
Thanks, Jay. I'll tell you later. I love you. I have to tell everyone that on my first day of filming, I filmed with Jay and I wanted to die.
I was like, why are you the first person that I'm filming with? You know, you work because and I tell you why because this is and it speaks so much to who you are. You know, I thought about my dream guess. I was like, who do I want to talk to?
And so I text Jay and I thought, you know what? You want to see the show and watch a couple of episodes and maybe if I'm super lucky in like six or nine months, he'll come on the pod. But of course, you were like, yeah, when should I come? And I was like, oh, I can't believe it.
So you were the first person, which was so crazy. But you know, I'm really happy to be doing this thing because I've spent my entire career building businesses and after a while, you start to realize that as much as the solution you are, you're also part of the problem, right? You're part of the problem of what people look to and see sometimes as unattainable. And so what I wanted to do with this podcast was A, start telling the truth.
B, to really talk about like what it takes because I feel like there's so much toxic positivity out there and it's totally unhelpful for all of us. So I was like, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm going to, you know, be me from East London, which means I really tell the truth. And you know, I'm going to get the people that I have worked so hard to get to know because they will come on and they will speak to me in a way that perhaps they wouldn't to somebody else.
And it's been amazing because I really look at, you know, we're all in some way trying to build the life of our dreams. We're all trying to live out this idea of what we find aspiring, but it's different for different people and we all have different opportunities. And the more I would go around this country, I get constantly stopped by people that would say to me, I've got two kids and I'm like 35 and I just want to change and could you give me some advice? And I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if you could figure out how you could scale mentorship?
And so for me, the idea was just that simple, just have conversations, be really honest, talk to the people that I aspire to the most and give people the tools so that they can make and build the life of their dreams. And it's honestly been like the biggest privilege because I feel like when you come at something with a really good intention, like unbelievable things happen and it's only been, I don't know, it's been like a couple of months of filming, but I feel like it's been pretty magical and people are doing exactly that. They're coming there. They're telling the truth and it's actually helping people.
What more do you need? I love it. I love it. All right, I want to take you up on that.
I want to take you up on that. I'm going to give someone a really special opportunity today and therefore I want you to really honor it. If you raise your hand, I want it to be because you have something really valuable and something really thought through and something really maturing your idea because I believe it's such a special opportunity. Tonight's been all about doing things, not caring about what people think to take your moment to make sure that you don't miss out, to say I'll do that as Emma taught us earlier, I want to give someone the opportunity in a moment to come up here and have 60 seconds to elevate a pitch, their idea to the one and only Emma.
So if anyone has a business idea, a dream for a business idea, company, AI, whatever it is, I want you to raise your hand. I'm taking a look around, raise your hand, raise your hand and seeing a lot of people. This is great. I'm looking up there up the top.
I see the light as well. I see the light as well. Let me go. Let me go do it.
I'm going to come out and talk to you. Oh my God, he's the friend and reporter. That's the one saying. I want to get up the audience.
Give it up for Kaye, everyone. Well done. I love it. It's no nice to meet you.
Congratulations. Well done for standing. I chose you because you stood up. Kaye, I'm going to ask you to come over here on our spot.
This is for you. We're going to give you 60 seconds to share your elevator pitch to the one and only Emma Reed and the audience. Hello, my name is Kate Wood. I'm from Redding, California in 2020.
I had twins as well about eight months later. I opened my first restaurant about six weeks ago. I opened my second restaurant, but I've always had this. I've always had this dream to have a YouTube show and take it to the food network.
My dream is to start a show called Staj and where you can either take celebrities or other people, influencers and each season would be that person and you put them in different spaces for an episode. So each episode would have an adventure challenge. It would have like a high end challenge and it would also have something really like heartwarming all in the food industry. We expose you can expose meat packaging places.
You could go into prisons. You could go to high end Michelin star restaurants, but each episode that celebrity or that person would be a staj and you'd have to take on those challenges. You'd have to step into that risk. You'd have to expose different parts of this industry and it's sort of this meeting between triple D and dirty jobs, but all in the food industry because it's such a huge industry that I love so much and it takes so much every day for us to make this happen and we all just love creating food and feeding people.
And so I just thought it'd be a really lovely TV show idea and I would have to take that first step to be a staj. And so that's my idea. Anyway, thank you. It's amazing.
Here we go. Ready advice. So the first thing I want to say is I love that you stood because you were the first person that I saw and that's why I was like I'm going for you there because you just stood up. So the idea that you would even put yourself out there in that way is a really big and important first step also on restaurant number two.
Congratulations to you. That's like insane. It really is. I mean, the beauty about the media climate and where we are right now is that you can do things in a really big shiny Netflix big budget, beautiful way or you can scale ideas down and you can test into them.
And I think that one of the most amazing things I've seen really, really working my career is when we've taken things that we thought could have potential to be really big and really global and we tested them on smaller platforms like figuring something out on YouTube or figuring out like an Instagram version of what you're trying to do. Your idea is to take something, you know, like a whole industry and to go into somewhere, you know, like the prisons that you mentioned or whatever it might be, but why would you not test that? Instead of with an influencer with one of your friends in a more localized situation and figure out how it works because there's some beauty to this idea of test and learn. One of the things that I 1000% know as an entrepreneur is that you've just got to start.
Like if you have figured it all out and you've written a big presentation and you're waiting for the one magical day that you're going to, you know, meet, test around those some pictures and Netflix, like that day might never come, but you could get out of the starting block and just try something. And then the beauty of that is that you get to test and learn and you fail and you iterate and you start again. So I would take this idea that you've got and extrapolate the best pieces of it and try it in some really little small way, whatever you can. I'll do it tomorrow tomorrow.
Give it up. Thank you, my love. Very nice to meet you. Give it up.
Okay, everyone. I don't believe we did that. What's that? I can't believe we did that.
No, it wasn't much fun. It's like that. It's what you said. Like someone saying I'll do that.
Raising a hand, Kate's courage and also just having a great idea, having a great thought and that advice you gave was spot on. I love the advice you gave. I think it's so valuable to hear that. It's interesting you said that.
When I first wanted this show to exist, I actually started on purpose because I picked the TV show that got rejected seven years ago. No. Yeah. I had a TV show idea.
I actually had the opportunity to pitch at Netflix and pitch at ABC and pitch at MTV were still around then and they turn you down and I got rejected. They rejected my TV show idea. Oh, they must be. And so I had a podcast.
Yes. Yes. So, you know, like just hearing that like gave me juice once because that was exactly what happened to me. Emma, you have been phenomenal tonight.
You are truly one of my favorite people in the world. Everyone, make sure you go and subscribe to aspire with Emma Green. Apple Spotify, YouTube, all the platforms, follow Emma and Instagram if you don't already. Give it up for Emma.
Green. Thank you. You're the best. I love you.
Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now. You set a goal today.
You achieve it in six months. And then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen.