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When you are chasing a dream, you're going to be happy about a third of the time. I have lost and failed more times than I've succeeded. We don't talk about that. I felt like it was the end of my company and my career, but it wasn't. It was just a failure. One of America's richest self-made women. Fashion and business powerhouse, Emma Green. I spent such a huge part of my life being so crippled by fear for so long that held me back. It was rough.

Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments, and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

The best-selling author and host. The number one health and wellness podcast. On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. You know that my goal is to introduce you to incredible thinkers, thought leaders, people who are making an impact and a difference in the world, rule breakers, people who are changing the way we think, lead, and live. And today's guest is someone I've wanted on for a long, long time. So I'm very excited that I finally have her sitting opposite me. I'm talking about the one and only Emma Greed, CEO and co-founder of Good American, the first fully inclusive fashion brand that celebrates all dimensions of female power. In October 2016, Emma launched Good American alongside Chloe Kardian. What started as the largest denim launch in history, Good American is now an iconic inclusive fashion line of denim, ready to wear, swim, shoes, and active wear. Emma is also a founding partner and chief product officer of Skims, a solutions oriented brand creating the next generation of underwear, lounge, and shapewear, you already knew that, and co-founder of Safely, an accessible premium home care brand dedicated to creating high quality plant based cleaning products.

Emma is now recognized as one of America's richest self made women by Forbes and serves as chairwoman of the 15 % pledge and also as a board member of Baby to Baby. And for me, beyond all of this, I'm just happy to be sitting with a fellow Brit in L. A. I'm just so grateful, Emma, because I've been watching you. I've been following you. Your energy, whether it's a picture or a video, is so magnetic and so real. Now I meet you in person. I'm like, It's amazing. Thank you.

For being here. Honestly, I could not be more happy to be here, A, definitely, because you're a fellow Brit, but I have been listening and watching and reading you for so long. This is the thing that I've been most excited about for the longest time. Thank you for having me today. You're the sweetest. Very happy. It's a big tick for me. I'm like, Yes, let's do it.

You're the sweetest. I want you to know, literally, my whole team was so excited you were coming today. Everyone has such major fans. They're big fans of you.

I can't even imagine that. Even when you say it, I'm like, Really? It's true. I'm like, Oh, no.

I want to go back to I remember that you and Chloe were doing a live years ago. Yes. And I literally just came on because I saw you both live. And I came on and I was just saying, Hey, guys, just being friendly. And we were like, Wow. You both shifted the entire... I just want everyone to understand this. They're on a live talking about their incredible brand that is crushing it. And Little O'Me comes on. We're like, Jay, we love him. And it was the sweetest thing. And I was like, how did... I felt terrible, so I logged off because I felt like... No, no, no. We were.

Like, Where's he gone?

It was so sweet. And I was just like, how conscious and kind and thoughtful. Anyway, I want to dive straight into your incredible journey. That's why we're here today to understand you, the human behind this incredible journey and incredible story. And I want to start off with what is your earliest childhood memory that you think is indicative and defines who you are today?

That is such a brilliant question. This is what you do, right? You ask the best questions. I'm so glad you're going to say, Why did you start Good American? It's so interesting. I come from East London. And East London is like coming from Long Beach, Englewood or Brooklyn. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's the street. It's the part of London that if you go back 30 years ago when I was a kid, it's just not the place where you would happily hang out. I had a fantastic upbringing there, and I think it's very defining. East London has been very defining of me, my personality. You were really raised in a community to have huge respect for the people around you, huge trust, actually, for the people around you. But it was pretty devoid of any aspiration and certainly any glamor. And I was one of those kids that just grew up always looking at what could be next and what was in my future. And I just fell into this like, Fashion magazine land. It's like I would do my paper out, I'd get the money from that. I'd spend it on an issue of like Vogue or L or Marie Claire.

And it was that great moment, late '80s, early '90s in England, where we had so many incredible movements, Brit pop, Brit art, but all of those supermodels like Naomi and Kate Moss. And I saw that as a means of escapism. I never thought about it as a potential for a job, but I was like, Let me just lift out of where I am and aspire to something that was beautiful and aspirational, because I couldn't see that anywhere around me. And so when I think about my childhood, I think partially about this piece of East London, where there's an honesty and an authenticity and a level of just being the person that you say you are, living by a certain set of values. And then this other part that was like, Get me out of there. Do you know what I mean? That's the honesty of it, really.

Where do you think that comes from? I think some people are like, We become products of our environment. And so if some people are in a group of people or in an area that is unambitious or not striving, it's easy to fold into that. Where did that come for you personally? Was it someone in your life? Was it something you read? Was it the magazines? Where did that belief come that there could be more, there may be more, there is another place to go to?

I think that it must have come from my mom in some ways, because I honestly, I didn't know anyone that owned their own business. Where I come from, everyone worked a job and you work for somebody else. And jobs were seen as exactly that. There was no career, there was no vocation, there was no purposeful doing of what you do. You get up, you went to work, you probably found it miserable, and you try to get out of there as quickly as you could. And for me, I really thought that there has to be a better way to live. I was like, shouldn't there be some excitement and enjoyment? But I don't know where I got it from. The sense of value and the sense of ambition has always been in me. And people always say to me, How did you get to where you are? And I go, Well, it's much more simple than people think. It's like, I really value myself and I really value my goals. And I don't think it's much more complicated than that. But I was taught that by my mom, who was very much like, Listen, Emma, you're not better than anybody else, but nor is anyone better than you.

And so when people talk about imposter syndrome, I look around, I'm like, That's just made up. We all feel exactly the same, like deep, deep down. And that sense of me feeling like I could achieve was just built in. I've never felt a lack of confidence. I've never felt less than. I always felt like if I worked hard enough and I really put everything into it that I could achieve, I still feel like that today. I don't expect things to be easy, but I've never had a sense of I couldn't.

Yeah, what a great way for your mom to set you up. What an amazing recipe. It's beautiful to hear that because I love that perspective of no one's better than you and you're not better than anyone. That's such a great equalizer.

Absolutely. And the two things are really important, because I grew up with such a respect for everybody else around me, regardless of where they come from or what they were doing. And I think that as a kid, I was surrounded by a lot of people that were doing what they had to do to get through the day. And I never looked down on anyone. I always thought, well, you know what? As long as you are doing something, you find an interest in something. And for me, that came at a very early age in fashion, but it was much more a means of escapism than me sitting there and really appreciating the clothing or the craft. It was a means to dream.

Absolutely. I love that. And tell me about you touched on it there, but I want to talk about your first job. And I like doing this with people because what's really interesting to me is people forget, especially when someone's at the peaks of their careers, and achieving incredible things. When people ask you the question of how did you get to where you are, it almost takes away from the fact that there was a first job that wasn't.

This CEO. But especially now, right? Because we have this idea through social media that everything happens overnight. I think I've been grapped in a way since I was 12 years old and like, boom, I get some success at 40 and people think you're an overnight success. I have worked every job imaginable. I had a paper round when I was twelve until I was 15. I worked in a delicateson. I worked in clove shops. I served in restaurants. It's like I've done every job in fashion that you could do at the lowest possible level imaginable while not being paid. It's like I've done all of it. But actually, for me, when you talk about people and your point of view on life, like I am of a naturally positive disposition, disposition, I always am a person that thinks about the glass being half full. And so even when I worked in that deli and I was making a sandwich, I was going to make you the best turkey sandwich you've ever had in your life. And I would wait and look at you and be like, How good is that sandwich? Is that an amazing sandwich?

I chose the best amount of turkey with the right amount of pickle, and I'd make it look nice, and I'd cut it beautifully on the plate. And do you know what I mean? So for me, I can take pride in anything. And I also take a huge amount of learnings from everything. So for me, I used to think, well, one day this will be useful to me. One day learning how to make a perfect cappuccino or making a customer happy or discussing how things work in a shop or a delicessent will be useful to me. And I actually think about all of those experiences as being very formative. And I enjoyed all of them. I've really worked. And I think everybody talks so much about hard work, but they don't really talk about enjoyable work. I had a lot of enjoyable jobs that I just had to get through, but I never, ever let it put me off. I always saw them as a means to the end. I think when we talk about that now, what does hard work actually means? It means getting up and thinking about the end goal when you're nowhere even close to it.

But you can see a pathway. And for me, it was always about that. I could always see very clearly that I'm going to do that to get to that to get to that. And I've been quite planned, I feel, in so many ways in my life.

I'm so glad you raised that point because I feel the same way that you don't have to love a job to learn from it. And I think we all are thinking, Well, I hate my job. I dislike it. It's the worst. It's a waste of time. I'm in the wrong place. But actually, if you just shift that to be like, What can I learn? What experience do I not have? How can I interact?

How do I not want to behave? This boss drives me crazy. I'll never be this boss. I remember I had a boss like that, and I used to literally write down in the back of my book, You should never, ever speak to people like that or call someone out in that way. And I think that's been so formative of what type of leader I want to be. But the two things for me haven't been mutually exclusive. I think that two things can be true at the one time. You can be unashamedly ambitious and focused on what it is that you need while also being an inspiring and empathic leader who lifts other people up. And so I've been thinking about those type of things since I've been a boss for the last 15 years as a direct reflection of what I didn't experience when I was an employee. And so I actually think, God, all of those experiences were really good for me, because now I know what I don't want to do.

Yeah, absolutely. I did a paper round, too, by the way. Did you? Yeah, that was my first ever job.

-i love it. That was heavy work. -it was so hard work. But that's where I feel like I got my appreciation for the mornings. I'm such an early bird. And I remember doing those paper rounds in the dark in England. And it was amazing because most houses were quiet, and then you'd see this one house where there's a little glimmer happening. And I thought I learned the power of the mornings from that particular job, like getting out, getting a Head Start. I'd go home, I'd put on my school uniform before any of my sisters. I'd be sitting there with a cup of tea while they were all scrambling around. I was like, This early morning stuff, there's something.

To it. That's interesting. I used to do mine in the evening. Oh, did you? Because I didn't have to do in the morning, so I do it after school. What about your people getting the papers?

What happened to them? I don't know. They're a day behind.

They worried you. That's what I was talking to. I don't think anyone read the paper. That's amazing. I'd walk around with my headphones on, I'd be listening to Eminem, and I'd have like.

This- Oh, I know.

That paper route. I have this really weird looking trolley that I'd pull around and then I'd have to take the papers into a bag. That bag's.

Done to my growth. You are bringing me back. I believe that, too. I have a lopsided shoulder because of that bag.

It was so bad. But yeah, I learned the same thing. For me, so all the kids in my area, what they used to do, the other kids who did the paper routes, they used to throw the papers off the edge of the train track or in a bush or whatever it was. Then the guy who ran whatever-I have a company it was that did the paper routes, he said to me, goes, Jay, you're the only reliable person I have, so I'm going to give you all their streets. I love it.

You're like that, quits in. Yeah, exactly. You're out here.

Making money. Yeah, it was amazing. I love that you said that, that you learned, and I love the passion. I wish you were at my local deli. And that stuff still happens today. Last year I was doing a show for YouTube, and I interviewed this TikToker called Mark L. Washington. If anyone doesn't know who he is, he's awesome, great energy, super talented, young guy. I think he worked in a subway, and he used to dance and sing while he served. Right. And not only did he used to upload that to TikTok, he got found that way. And now he's got this incredible career. It's amazing. And I love that energy of back then when you were doing it and it took you maybe a lot longer to find that success. He was doing it more recently. He found it. But it's interesting to see that it's the same... What was the hardest job that you did, the most enjoyable, the most uncomfortable, where you actually looked at it and went, Maybe this is not worth it? What was the one that pushed you to the edge?

It's so interesting. It was probably the job that I did before starting my first company, because such a part of that. I worked in a fashion show production company, which if you imagine that I want to be in fashion, you think, Yes. The reality of that is that you're building stages. You're working on this concept of whatever you're producing for three months, the show goes up and down in ten minutes. Everybody goes off to the after-party and you're doing D-rig and you're like, This is the worst job ever. And so I transitioned into this role of sponsorship, which was so formative for the first business that I ever started because it was all about brand partnerships and marketing and collaboration. But my role at that point when you know nobody was just cold calling. I would just have to hit the phones and the rejection. And you can't help but take that personally. You're like, I haven't made one connection today. And that I found so disheartening. But I even knew then I was like, This will be worth something, because for every little knockback you got, every three days you'd get one glimmer of hope and you take one meeting.

And out of those ten meetings, maybe you'd start one deal. Actually, it was just very telling about yourself. What are you good at? And now, as I think about entrepreneurship and because I meet so many founders, that skill of sales and storytelling, if you ain't got that, you can't do this job. You can't. You can't sell to investors. You can't craft a story to customers, and you certainly can't get into the heart of what makes a brand successful unless you can sell and storytell. Again, it's just one of those things that I had to go through, but it was miserable getting there. It's beyond miserable.

I didn't realize how many different similarities we have in our background. Oh, really? I worked at the Business Design Center for a bit, and I did the internships then. I'd work there over the summer and stuff. And all I had to do was sit there and call to sell the stands because they'd have all the different stands for the bike show or they'd be fashion. -it's formative.

-yeah.

It really is. I remember the cold call. I look back at then, I remember before then I was quite introverted. I was quite shy. And then all of a sudden, when you're doing 300 cold calls a day, it goes away. It's gone. It's gone. And it's amazing how so much can be removed from not your personality, but this fear and insecurities that we often have as a kid.

100 %. And I feel like even now, when I think about fear and what that's meant in my career so much, because it's actually been helpful in so many ways. I always think about myself now and it's like, if I am not a little bit scared about what I'm doing, like even coming here today, then I'm not growing, I'm not moving forward. I'm not going in the right direction. And so now I find myself looking for the fear. I'm like, What can I do that's going to scare me? Because I know how to make jeans. I can make you fantastic knickers all day long. But actually, branching out and trying to do something else is the stuff that keeps us as humans growing. And I think about that all the time because I spent such a huge part of my life being so crippled by fear and failing. I dropped out of school when I was 15 or 16. I can't actually remember. I must have been 15. But that always left me with this inferiority complex that I wasn't educated enough. I'd work in London around all of these very hoity-toity, wonderful people that were fresh out of Cambridge and Oxford and had these wonderful educations.

And I always felt a bit inferior for that. I was like, I'm going to get caught. They're going to find out that I don't have that educational background. I don't speak in the right way. And I feel like for so long that held me back until I realized, No, that's my fuel. That's what makes me me. And if I'm not a little bit scared, now I find myself just actually looking for it because I know I need that fire in my belly the whole time.

Did you ever feel that anyone ever made you feel inferior because of a lack of the formal education? Or was it an internal?

I'm sure they did, but it was much stronger than internal voice. It's like I don't think anybody... You know what it's like. When you're in London, there is such a class system. And people know immediately. In this country, they think you and I sound like the Queen. And we know in reality, we don't, babe. And in London, any English people listening to that, us absolutely know that. And so there is always that you open your mouth and immediately you're judging, you know exactly where I'm from, and you can attribute a set of circumstances to that. But I think it was much more about the voice in my own head. And I think about that an awful lot now in the way that I've set up my life and my businesses. And I believe very much in this idea, like this rule of thirds. I think about it constantly. When you are doing something very difficult or you are chasing a dream, you're going to be happy about a third of the time. You're going to feel okay about a third of the time. And the other third of the time, you're going to feel pretty crappy.

You are going to feel bad. And if the ratios get out of whack and things are not actually you're too happy, you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And if you're actually spending too much time, you're probably not thinking about it right. But I do think that that leaning that I've had my whole life, like the idea that I shouldn't be comfortable and happy all of the time actually really helps me so much. And I think about that idea of the third and the third and the third, and it doesn't scare me anymore. I'm like, Oh, I'm just having one of the days that is my crappy day. That's okay, because what I'm doing isn't straightforward. It isn't what everybody's doing. And it's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be heavy. It's supposed to not be comfortable all the time. And I think that that, for me, has been a way that I can actually get through those times that are a bit more tricky.

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I love that. I've never heard someone say it like that before. Oh, really? Yeah, that's such a unique way of thinking about it. You said the thirds are okay, happy, and.

Then terrible. And then terrible.

Yeah, and that's so spot on. I've never heard someone break it down like that simply.

I am a very simple girl. I have to break it down like that for myself. But it's really helpful because I think in any part of your life, especially now, because I work with so many people, there is this idea. And also I'm a mom of four, so there is this part of me that's like, I just want my kids to be all right and to be happy all the time. I'm like, Actually, no, because it's in those moments. And you know this more than anyone of challenge or difficulty, that's when you grow the most. But we shouldn't... Rather than trying to remove that from my children or take those times away from my employees or think that's not okay. It's like, No, guys, that's what it's about. And if you're coasting through life and doing something really simplistic, fine. You might just feel all right all the time. But I am so happy when the good is good that I'll take the okay and the bad. It's worth it because it actually all comes out even in the end.

For sure. When you were chasing the dreams back in the day or trying to build it up, were you dating? Did you care about that? Was that like...

Because now.

Obviously you have a beautiful family. Now you have a beautiful family, you have a wonderful partner, you have four kids, as you said. But I wondered then, I feel like a lot of us spend a lot of our teens and our 20s thinking about love. Totally. Was that how you were too?

100 %. I don't think I've ever been without a boyfriend. I'm a person that needs a someone. And I went around a little bit, and I was very happy to settle down at 25, 26. I don't feel like I missed out because we started so early. I was out in the clubs when I was 13, 14, and then I had this stint in a pizza when I was asked to leave school. I've had a lot of living before I got there. And I think that I've always been someone that has chased love. I love that feeling. But as you get older, you realize what that really means. Today, it's like, I want to be loved back. But it's not all about that rush. I've been with my husband now for 15 years, married for 11, and the things that I value have completely shifted. And we've been on a journey together. And I think that in life you need chapters. And just as the same, like in career and you needneeding transitions and to transform, relationships need chapters like that, too. The first five years, we traveled the world, we partied, we got drunk, we did all the things that you do.

And then we went through a period of having children. And that's extremely challenging on any relationship, especially while the two of you are enormously ambitious. And I think that what I have with my husband is this extremely unique partnership where he always understood that I was ambitious and I needed to do things, and he's completely supported that. I think that the love that I have for him has grown exponentially because I've still been able to chase all of my dreams outside of the relationship and the family structure while having someone really support me do that.

We won't go down the stint in the beething.

No, it's.

Really fun. Go on.

We're doing a calling part.

Go on.

Tell me. I just feel like it. There's a part of my life where I think there was a need to escape. And I found that I was a real club kid. That's what I enjoyed. I wanted to go out. For me, it was actually never about getting smashed, but it was like the music and those super late nights and that whole community of it. I was friends with the DJs and the MCs, and I was on the list, and I did that whole thing. I think that was a huge formative part of my childhood or not my childhood, my late teens, early 20s. It's like I needed to go and get removed myself from what my everyday life and my upbringing was, and it introduced me to a lot of alternative things and people and ways of being. You go to Ibiza, you learned yoga for the first time. I was like, Well, what's this? Nobody I knew in plaster was doing yoga.

I didn't know anyone in Ibiza was.

Doing yoga either. Not for the island, David. But it was like there's things that I think that part of my life really opened me up to. And I felt like in some ways, even though I saw a lot as a kid and I was experienced some pretty gruesome things, there was a whole part of life and a way of living and a level of peace and understanding of people that was not ever explained to me and was not part of my childhood and my upbringing. And I learned that much later.

Thank you for sharing that. It's so interesting. Again, we often feel like the next chapter will be better. And you've just broke it down and said, Well, no, actually, there's going to be every chapter and every chapter has its reason and it has its story. And you just said, I love that I live life that way. And then when I met my partner, I knew it was going to work. And even that had so many chapters inside of it. Absolutely. How would your mom describe what she saw as a little girl to who she sees now?

I think she'd say same, same. I was always a pain for everyone around me. Literally, I was that kid. I didn't have many friends. I wasn't that the popular kid. My sisters were all massive athletes, hugely popular. I was a bit more of a loaner. I had two or three really solid friends. Sounds exactly like today, actually. But I was that kid. I was in my own head. I've always been a dreamer. But my mom would always... She was like, You're a dreamer, but you're a doer. I always had those two things. I don't think I've changed that much. I think about myself, I've been absolutely the same since I was seven years old. This is how I've always felt. This is how I've always been.

That's epic. That's so cool. I wonder how you see that with now being a mom, too. Now when you're looking at your kids-.

I know.

-and their personalities.

It's wild because I think like so many mums, especially mothers that work in the same way that I do, you're plagued by this idea of what you're supposed to be and do as a mother. And because I grew up with a mom that left the house every day that went to work, I have maybe a different idea of what I'm supposed to be providing for those kids. I think it's really important that my children see me living out my dreams, and hopefully they'll do the same for themselves. But the question always boils down to like, How do you do it all? And I really think it's important to dispel that myth of doing it all because women have been really sold a crock of crap. It's like you can't have it all the time. And my life is a series of trade-offs. That's just a fact. I'm not the mom who is at the school gate. I'm not there for pick-up and drop-off. I'm not at the school gala. Hopefully, my kids get something else from me, which is a sense of actually living out your dreams and what you're supposed to do. And I think that they will see that and really appreciate having that for me.

But I think it's very important that we stop talking about this idea of balance because there is no balance in my life. It's rubbish. It's like, I have to go wherever the energy is that morning, and my children have to fit around that. Nothing's changed. Like I said, I'm still the same person. And for children, yes, it changes the routine of your day, but it doesn't change who you are fundamentally. And I am one of those people that think my children have to fit around me, and that's just a fact. It is what it is.

I'll say as a kid who grew up with a mom who is working that hard and had her, my mom trained to be a financial advisor so that she could be self-employed, as we called it. She was an entrepreneur, but the language wasn't there.

Totally. She could manage her own time, right? That was it.

She could manage her own time so she could be there for us. My mom would make us breakfast, drop us to school, pack lunch.

That's.

Amazing. And then she'd go to work, pick us up, feed us, and then go back out to work. And sometimes I'd join her. I'd go out with her in the car.

My son's in my.

Office today. When she was with clients.

It's amazing. I know I should have.

I love that. I should have. I saw my mom be so active. My mom was never... She wasn't around, just hanging around the house. She wasn't available in that way. Again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying my mom wasn't. As someone who grew up with a mom like that, not only do I love and respect my mom insanely, I also just saw that you could still feel loved without having loads of time.

100 %. It's about quality, right? I always think about that. My kids need me in a 100 % capacity, not half looking at my phone, not half doing work, not surrounded by lots of people in the house. And I really try to think about them as individuals, because I have a boy and a girl and then boy, girl, twins. And I like to do things with my kids individually so that I can really understand who they are and what their needs are, not like this family pack, because it very quickly becomes that. I'm like, like all of you in the car. But I think that, again, when you grow up in a big family, you have ideas and experiences of how it wasn't so great and what you'd want to do differently. And so I try to apply that. But I think for most women, it's really important to just lower the expectations a little bit and be honest with ourselves about what we're capable of, because it's really something that I think there's so much being thrown at women all the time about what you should do and how you should advocate for yourself.

And it, quite frankly, is just too much. It is not feasible. It is not something that we can all cope with. And I think that you do what you do to get through the day. And we should all just lower the expectation levels a little bit. That isn't to say lower your ambition level, but that's just to say don't feel bad about what you're doing. At the end of it, it's like we all do as much as we can, and our kids will all be all right. They don't need us to usher them through every experience in the day.

And.

They'll be who they are. They'll be who they are.

How did you make peace with that? Because I feel like I love that perspective, and I'm sure it's going to help so many people. But I think people struggle with this. We love being the controller. We love making sure everything's right. We also so hard on ourselves, as you were just saying, because people were hard on us, and now we think we need to be super mom, and maybe our mom did it, or maybe our auntie did it, whatever. I think there's a lot of people who are just like, I get that, but I don't know how to make peace with that.

100 %. It's a great question. And I always think about, I'm somebody that's absolutely fixated and fascinated by memories. I always go back and I think about the big, important things in my life. What did I really enjoy from last year? What were the moments that are here in my memory? And when you do that, it very rarely has anything to do with any level of perfection. The best moments are the sporadic moments that were unplanned. When you're sitting there, the kids are a mess. You're in the garden, something happened that just made it so. And it's never the moments that you forced. It's never the things that you planned. It's never the ones that you spent all your energy on. And so I think that it just becomes about this great... You've got to weigh it up. You've got to weigh up what is worth it and where do you derive enjoyment from? And I think anyone who looks at their life will actually find that it's in the small stuff. It's in those moments that you just let it all go. And so I think it's such a good exercise, especially for women and moms to just backtrack and say, in the last 12 months, what were the single best moments that you had?

And then you will absolutely not stress about whatever it is that is weighing you down today because it's never what you think. Ever. It never has been for me.

Yeah. And don't judge the moment, right? We're so quick to be like, I said the wrong thing. Totally. And all of a sudden, I said the wrong thing, becomes I messed up today.

I shouldn't be here. I don't belong. I'm not supposed to be part of it. And it's so interesting. I remember there's this brilliant story about when Oprah was going through this crazy, crazy time in her life, and she turns up at Quincy Jones's house for dinner and she said to him, Oh, my God, it's so terrible. It's so awful. Have you seen the press? And he's like, What are you talking about? He hasn't seen anything, right? Because at the end of the day, no one's watching you. No one's watching you like you're watching you. Most of your mistakes is in private. And so I often think about that because it's like everybody's so bothered about their own stuff and what's going on in their head, they're not thinking about you. And so sometimes you just have to release a little bit. And I always try to think about what is real and what is ego. And so much of it is ego, especially around the mom part, funnily enough, because we're all trying to do and be better than what we had and change things for our children and be this impossible, wonderful, perfect mother.

And that's nothing to do with your kids, because what your kids want is just a bit of you in the most simple way. They don't care about any of that stuff. Again, it really is that challenge of really sitting down and speaking to your children and thinking to yourself like, What actually matters. And I think it's like those small moments.

Yeah, that's well said. And as I said, as someone who received a lot of that from my mom, I felt like I never doubted whether my mom loved me or not. Whether she could come to my rugby game or not, or whether she could come and watch me at the class, rehearsals or dramas or whatever we were doing, if she was there or she wasn't there, that wasn't how I felt loved or not.

You knew she.

Loved you. Absolutely. Yeah, because it's such a core part of my life. I feel today I have so much love to give because of how much my mom.

Love me. 100 %.

And it's not that she was.

There every moment.

100 %. On the flip side, I'm sure there's people who would think, God, my parents were around all the time and I didn't necessarily feel connected.

And you didn't necessarily connect, exactly.

Yeah, I didn't necessarily feel connected. You've talked about this before and I really like it, this whole idea of you can't have it all. And everyone's always talking about balance. I agree with you. I don't think balance exists either, even in my life, because I often get that, Oh, Jay, mindfulness and meditation. I'm like, But that's not balance. You're actually constantly using these tools and techniques to be back at a point of -Zero. -equanimity. Yeah, exactly. To be back at a point of equanimity. But there isn't this idealized balance. When it comes to you and your partner, you both have great careers. You do some things together, lots of things individually. Absolutely. How does that... I guess my question there is, what is the one thing you both need from each other that allows you to stay connected whilst having collective empires, individual empires, and then a beautiful family as well on top of all of that.

I honestly think that just comes down to love because it's different things in different moments. And if you really, really love someone, then you do what they need in that moment, whether or not it's good for you right there or what you might have discussed. That comes down to, do I really love this person and want the best for them in this thing, this moment, this decision? And more than anything, I have such an admiration for my husband in many different ways in how he thinks and how he approaches things and what type of father he is. And love does lots of different things. But usually it grows or it dwindles. It's like in relationships. And I think that mine is still growing, but it just comes down to the fact that I love him. It isn't any more complicated than that. We have lots of things that we do together. And I do think there is a huge thing of this idea of chapters and having projects together, to some extent, children at that, because you go through this like trying to get pregnant and then being pregnant and then having the baby in those early days and then those stories about those early days and then buying houses together and doing those houses up.

And so there is this element. And with us, we've also had the businesses that to some degree and in some businesses, we've done those things together. And so there have been these chapters and these projects that have been extremely pivotal in our life. And you often see that that when couples have kids that fly the nest, it's like suddenly they don't have a project anymore. It's like everything's done. And they're like, Okay, we don't have anything. So we have that together. But I feel like in my life, I'm extremely ritualistic. That's just how I am. And there's parts of our relationship that have taken on some of those rituals in terms of how we think about time, just us and not with the children, how we think about setting up our mornings. And those things become bedrocks and foundations for what I think is like a healthy relationship.

Yeah, what I really gained from what you're saying right now, and I hope everyone's listening and taking notes too, because there's so many great insights that are like, you're just sprinkling them everywhere. I'm trying to catch them. I love the idea that if you value a relationship in your life, your relationship is only as good as the stories you've lived together and the memories you've made. And if you stop making stories and memories with people, then you're constantly living in the past.

Exactly, which is so unhealthy. And you've seen that in so many friendships. When you're no longer creating together, you have nothing but your old memories, and after a while that just dwindles. So you need to consistently create. And that can be big things or small things. It can be building a shed in your back garden, but something that you live out together and you see to fruition and you create and you make. And I think that that's a really important part of relationships.

Yeah, and to keep doing that and to keep getting excited together about something. Absolutely. Rather than just like, How was your day? And then you're talking about your own world and then their world.

And all of that separation. And that's how so many couples, I think, where it goes wrong, you're living out the most exciting parts of your life entirely separately. And I feel with us, it's like we just bought a cold plunge. And the cold plunge has become the thing, right? We're literally just like, How many minutes are you going to do? How many minutes are you going to do? Oh, my God, are you going to put your head under? But it becomes this thing that you're living out together and now we'll be like cold plunge bullies to all of our friends. Even something so small like that can be so magical for a relationship because you're learning and pushing and doing something together.

Yeah, we do the same. Do you? No, you don't? Yeah, we do. But my wife-.

So L. I. J.

-my wife, she's so good in the cold.

No.

She's not. She's so good. I'm so jealous. And so I can't even try to beat her.

Because- Well, I'm married a Swedish man, so I feel like I'm at a disadvantage from the outset. I'm like, You were basically born in the ice. Come on. I'm like, Of course, you're better at this than I am. That's amazing.

And then we've been playing Pickleball as well. That's our other thing. Oh, I.

Love that. Have you played it? I have a Pickleball court, but I don't think I'm going to be on it anytime soon.

It's so fun.

You guys can come over and you can show us how it's done.

It's so much fun. Again, it's just taking on a new project, whatever it may be. I love that you were saying that you love memories and that you almost have a memory bank. I was going to ask you, do you think there's a memory in your life that you've locked away or hidden away that you're like, it's almost like I've seen that movie Inception? And it's like he locks it away in the basement and he never goes there because it has... Sometimes it can be good, bad, it can be anything. But do you have a memory you've locked away?

I think I probably have a lot of memories that I've locked away. And it's really interesting. We should have maybe done this podcast in a month. I'm going to go to the Hoffman Institute. I think I have an enormous amount of that in my life. And I said to you earlier, I think about my life in terms of practice. I'm practicing every day who I want to be. And I think that's a great way to teach my children because they do what they see. And I never beat myself up about my past, who I've been, my background, where I came from, because I know that I'm constantly moving and evolving. And I feel like if you're not working on yourself, then you're not really living. Do you know what I mean? I feel like the purpose of my life is to explore how I can be the best version of me. And I don't just mean that in business. I mean in every single facet of my life. How can I be the best mom and the best wife and the best boss? All of those things that mean a lot to me. But it takes work and it takes practice and I don't get it right every single day.

And when I think to answer your question about memories and things I've locked away, it's when I've not been proud of my behavior. But those are always things that I am willing to hold my hands up to and work on. And I feel like I've done, especially now I live here, you come and you do the work. It's just the grown-up thing to do. And I feel like that's been one of the reasons I've enjoyed being in LA so much is because I've had this whole, obviously, all the success with the businesses. But on this other side, I've had this huge awakening in terms of who I am and who I'm supposed to be and how I'm evolving as a person and so I really feel like those are things that I'm still exploring and I will be until the day I die. I'm always in learning mode.

I love that. You were invited back afterwards as well, so you don't have to worry about - With the crying. No, what I mean is I hope this is not going to be the last time you come. But what's a memory that you'd love to relive or you revisit often mentally and you could close your eyes and you're like, Yeah, I'm there. I'd love to live that again because it.

Was so- It's so crazy. I think it's probably, I mean, it feels so my kids, but the birth of my first child. That was so insane and amazing. And it's really funny because women often say everything changed then. And for me, everything changed in that moment. I remember having just had gray and Jens was holding him on the side of the bed and I thought, I have got to get out of this bed and go to the office. And that's all I could think of my head, because all of a sudden I had the reason I was doing all of this stuff for, and it never become more clear to me than in that moment. I was like, Okay, now real life starts. Wow. Yeah, that's really how I felt. I was like, Get me back into the office immediately.

Oh, my God.

Gosh. Forget the baby. Nothing about going home and snuggling with my child. I was like, I have a reason to do what I'm doing now.

That can co-exist with loving your kids to.

Death, right? 100 %. Because again, you can be so many different things. I am a super nurturing, hands-on mom, and I really enjoy motherhood. I just have other stuff that I like too.

Why do you think we struggle to have those two ideas?

Because society has set it up that you're one or the other. You're either putting on your heels and banging out the door and don't see your kids and put them to bed, or you're like, It's really sweet mom. It's like, No, I'm both. I'm actually everything. I am every woman. Just tough. I think that actually what it is that there are all of these misconceptions about what you are allowed to be. And I don't think we put those same things on men because men can be totally in the office and kill in the deal and then just be this incredible dad throwing like a football on the weekend. You're fully allowed, and it's fine. But for women, it's not so fine. And so much of what I do in my work and my businesses and actually just trying to be honest about me and how I operate is to dispel a lot of those myths, because I do think that we are not one dimensional, and you can be so many different things and also so many different things to different people. I'm one person to my husband and one to my kids. And if you were to come in my office, I think they'd give you a whole different version of me.

I like it all over.

It's true that we all have to... There's all different facets to each part of ourselves. And I wonder- But.

It's about the level of acceptance, right? Are you allowed to be that? And is it accepted? And that's why, Jay, it's so interesting. I don't think I've ever listened to a podcast where a man has been asked about imposter syndrome. Not once. It is a question that is the special reserve for women, as is the question of balance. No one says, Hey, Yens, how are you balancing it? Oh, the brands and the business and the kids. No one says that to my husband.

I'm glad they didn't ask both of those questions.

They say it to me every day, every single day. What is it like to be a black woman in business? I'm like, What question is that? But there are things that for women, we're still not able to get over this idea that we have in our heads that we can't be many things to many people. I just don't believe in that at all.

I'm with you. I'm with you. I really feel that naturally all those questions are coming because that's what people are scared about and insecure about and worried about. And as you said, it's come because it's been created in society. There was this research paper a long time ago, and I won't get it absolutely accurate, but the point was that when men and women look at a job application, if men can do some of it, they'll apply. And even if women can't do one part of it, they won't apply.

I see that every single day in my own office. A guy will work for me for six months and come and ask me for a pay rise. And then I will say to a woman, I don't think you've had a pay rise for like a year and a half. Do you know what I mean? Or somebody that will come in and say, I speak absolutely fluent Spanish, and a woman who's pretty 90 % there, won't even mention it on our website. There are those obvious things. And that's just about so many times for women, there is this natural nurturers. We naturally play down our skills. And I think that that is just something that society has taught us. And so I think about it all the time. I'm quite the opposite. I'll go in and pretend I can do anything in a pitch meeting, or it's like, I say what needs to say to get it done. Do you know what I mean? But I do think that for so many women, there is this magical golden moment in your life where you're free of a lot of constraints. Maybe you don't have a mortgage, you don't have children yet, you're not in a really serious relationship where there is this moment to be incredibly selfish.

And for most women, when all of the responsibilities pile on, they stop doing that. And I think that actually, just as women, we would do better to be selfish for longer in our lives. And that's the type of thing. And so many people will be like, I just don't like the word. Can't you find another way to dress it up? Absolutely no, because I mean what I say. You do have to think about yourself because nobody else is thinking about that for you. Everybody else is too busy thinking about themselves. And so this idea of being selfish shouldn't feel like such a foreign thing for women or a dirty word for women. It's like you have to be. There is no other way to get ahead and to do what you want to do. You have to put your needs and your wants and your ambition first because no one is going to do that for you.

Do you lay awake, scrolling at bedtime, or wake in the middle of the night and struggle to fall back to sleep? Start sleeping better tonight. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and my podcast, Nothing Much Happens Bedtime Stories to help you sleep, has helped millions of people to get consistent deep sleep. I tell family-friendly bedtime stories that train you drift off and return to sleep quickly. And I use a few sleep-inducing techniques along the way that have many users asleep within the first three minutes. I hear from listeners every day who have suffered for years with insomnia, anxiety at nighttime, and just plain old, busy brain who are now getting a full night's sleep every night. I call on my 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to create a soft landing place where you can feel safe and relaxed and get excellent sleep. Listen to Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories to help you sleep with Katherine Nicolai on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Laverne Cox. I'm an actress, producer, fashionista.

And.

Host of The Laverne Cox Show. You may remember my award-winning first season?

I've.

Been pretty busy, but there's always time to talk to incredible guests about important things. People like me have been screaming for years. We're going to watch the Supreme Court. What they're doing is wrong. What they're doing is evil. They will take things away. I can only hope that Dobbs is that Pearl Harbor moment.

Girl, you.

And I both know what it took to just get through the day in New York City and get home in one piece.

The.

Fact that we're.

Here and.

What you've.

Achieved and what I've achieved, that's momentous.

It's not just.

Us sitting around complaining about some bills. The only reason.

That you might think, as Chase said, that.

We're always miserable is because people are constantly attacking us and we're constantly noticing it.

Listen to the Laverne Cox Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share.

I'm Eva Longoria. I'm Mayta, Gomez-Rejón. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History. -on every episode. We're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories. Decode culinary customs. -and even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Corn or flour? Both. Oh, you can't decide. I can't decide. I love both. You know, I'm a flower tortilla. You're a team flower. I'm a team flower. I need a shirt. Team flower, team core. Join us as we explore surprising and lesser-known corners of Latinx culinary history and traditions. I mean, these are these legends, right? Apparently, this guy, Juan Mendo, he was making these tacos wrapped in these huge tortillas to keep it warm, and he was transporting them in a burro, hence the name Listen to Hungary for History with Eva Longoria and Mayte Gómes-Rejón as part of the Maycultura podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah, and it's hard, isn't it? When, like you were saying, you've tried to be the boss that you didn't have. I can identify with that. I try and be the bosses that I didn't have. I think it is really wonderful when you see a great relationship building with people you work with where they recognize you're being the boss that they never had as well, and you are, too. You're also realizing they're being a great person of your team that hasn't been like other people have been. How have you learned to sense that and know that when you're like, okay, well, me and this person can go and build together and create together, or this is the right person to recruit onto my team, or what are the things that you're looking at and trying to decipher? Because I think right now we do live in a world where also people are thinking about a job as a paycheck and they don't care, whereas you're very passionate, you're very driven. You always have been since the deli. If you've cared that much about the deli and the sandwich, obviously you care so much about what you do today.

Totally. How do you.

Do that? I think I'm really realistic because you will have those people in your business that come to work with you literally because a good American, we are B-Corp registered, and people feel that they want to work in a company that cares about the environment, that cares about what they're putting out. And you'll get people that care about the mission and the vision and the values. But I don't expect that everybody will care. I know that there are some people that just come and they just want their paycheck. And so for me, I try to separate who I am and what I might need from what somebody else might need. My expectation is that not everybody's bouncing in there trying to kill it for me. I'm pretty sure that a lot of these people come in and they do their job and they're working on their side hustle halfway through the day. And that's okay. It's like that's not for everyone. And I think that as I've got older, I've learned not to put my type of ambition on, or not to try to reflect that onto everybody that's around me. And those people, well, of course, they'll rise to the top, they'll make themselves known.

But it isn't for everybody. It's just a fact. And also you need that when you're building a team. If everybody was an ambitious little monster, it would be a disaster. You need people happy to come in, grind, do their job, and leave at five o'clock.

That's just facts. Absolutely. How did you make that leap? You just said earlier, I'm just connecting the dots. You were like, I was never around anyone who was an entrepreneur who had their own business. Everyone worked a job.

How did you- Accident, Jaysheddy. Accident. Okay, gone. It was a total accident because I never set out to start my own company. I was frustrated that I wasn't being paid enough where I worked. And then was like, All right, well, if you don't like that, then you're going to have to do something else. But I was also acutely aware that no one was going to come and hand me a company on a plate. Like, Here's this company to run. You pass them with no experience, and you jumped up 24-year-old. And so I was very acutely aware that I'd have to do it myself. And that's where it came from. I'd love to say that I had this great idea and this great ambition, but it came out of frustration and not being paid enough and feeling like I wasn't getting the value back that I put in. That's the honest answer.

Yeah, I know. And I think that's very relatable. I think most people are in positions like that, but that doesn't lead to the courage to do it because we feel like, Well, what if it doesn't work? What will my friends say? And all those things that come up because we're scared. Even for me, I remember I had a steady job and this is after I'd left the monastery, I'd come back home. I'd finally found a steady job.

I was dating my- It's such a good sentence after I left the monastery, isn't it good? You should try and wind that in anyway. I'd be like, So after I left the monastery...

I was just trying to give context, Emma. This is the British banter. Emma is like, fully, I love it. I don't have a.

Sentence like that, and I want one. I might just take it, bang it out.

You've got a B-30, you've got plenty. But no, so I was in the steady job and I was dating my now wife. I remember going, This is not working for me. I wasn't killing it and I wasn't doing badly. I was doing all right. But I just knew it wasn't my place. I remember I probably spent two years there feeling that way.

Totally.

-you're just thinking about it, reflecting on it. You're like, What do I do? What if it doesn't work? Walk us through that a little bit, because I think a lot of our listeners may actually be feeling that way. A lot of our audience is actually listening going, You know what? I'd love to... I'd love to forget doing what Emma's done now. I'd just love to get out of where I am now because it's- Totally.

You know what I mean? I think the truth of it was that I've never been that scared of failing. And for me, at that time in my life, I was making a small amount of money. It's fair to say that I didn't have any... No one was relying on me to pay rent. I had a tiny, tiny little... I lived in a high rise in East London with no front door and a gate on the door, no oven, just a microwave, no fridge. I put my milk on the balcony just to paint the picture of where I was at that time in my life. It was rough. And honestly, what I thought is that how could I lose? At this point, I could always go and get another similarly not inspiring job. And so that idea of fear of not failing was really key. But I've always been very honest with myself. You know, everybody has a voice in their head, and some people have a voice that chats them up. It's like, I do. But I also have that voice that's like, Emma, know what you don't know. Don't be too silly in this situation.

In that instance where I decided, let's get out of this job and try to go and do something else. It was enough understanding of it wasn't that good where I was. If it really didn't work out, I could always get back into something like that. But also that thing that just says, What happens if you don't do it? For me, I was miserable and I really saw a better life for myself. And I was like, I will just regret this when I'm 35, for example. And so it was really about just going like, No one's going to take a chance on me. I have to take the chance on me. And then maybe someone else will be inspired to take a chance on me, which is ultimately what happened. I left that role. I got employed in another job. And then when I got into that job, my now husband and business partner at that time, they saw me and they were like, Well, this girl is good. She has something. And they ended up being my first investors when I was 25 years old.

That's.

Incredible, isn't it? Which was... Which to me, even at the time, it felt crazy. And I remember questioning, and I was like, Why would anyone invest in me? And then I thought, Of course, they'll invest in me. Who else are you going to invest in? You might as well. I'm as good as anybody else out there. And that's when that thing started ticking in. I think sometimes you've just got to not be too afraid to lose. And the truth is, Jay, I have lost and failed more times than I've succeeded. We don't talk about that. That's not in the articles. I don't post that on Instagram. But that's just the fact. I've made so many mistakes. Before I got here and had three very successful companies, I had a dog of an agency that I opened here in a very successful business that was thriving in London and thriving in New York. And I opened an office in LA, and I embarrassed myself. I completely let the company down, I let the ball down, I let the staff down. I underinvested. I did all of the classic mistakes. And at the time, I felt like it was the end of my company and my career, but it wasn't.

It was just a failure. I've had lots of things like that happen, lots of public embarrassments and things that didn't work out. And it sounds like such an obvious thing, but it's like, Well, how do you recover from that? And so for me, it's always been this thing of like, All right, well, I've dusted myself off. I've survived worse. And I think a lot of that comes from my upbringing. You see a lot of stuff go down and you can get through things. I think I'm pretty good at getting.

Through things. And this is that quincey moment where I'm like, I didn't even know. No, it's like- See, there you go. Yeah, it's amazing. It's so fascinating how quickly we are... It's so fascinating how quickly we point out people's faults and then forget about them. 100 %. And that happens so fast.

Because it's not as fun a story, right? People want, at the end of the day, I believe in the goodness of humans. We default want good stuff for each other, and we want to see each other win. And people are very happy to celebrate alongside you. I agree. -alongside you. You're much more concerned about your failures. You're much more concerned about your fears than anybody else out there. And I think every now and then, I just have to tune myself back into that piece of it.

Yeah. And it sounds like what I really like is that you've got this ability, and I've been watching the whole interview, and it's like you've got this ability to know what the different voices in your head are. You're very clear about, this is the one that's being real, this is the ego. This is giving me the hype that I need.

Right now. 100 %. But also, I know their voices. I know they're not me. And I always knew that because I have an ability. My whole superpower in life is about being able to turn it on and off. And so I am acutely aware that those are just things that I have at my disposal... Sometimes they work to my advantage, and sometimes they work to my advantage, and sometimes they work to my disadvantage. But I don't think that it's me. Does that make sense? I know who I am. It ain't all of that. It's not the chatter, none of it. It's just I'm something else.

That's an incredible distinction to know and have and build. Did that come from... Did you read something? Did you learn something? Was it just you started listening to yourself? Did you spend a lot of time alone? I'm intrigued as to what you did to gain that skill because it's a skill, and you're obviously aware of it.

I think I'm just that like Oprah generation. Do you know what I mean?

I'm in.

This weird... You come home every day from school. Oprah was on the TV telling you to be grateful. What do I have to be grateful for? Have you seen my house? Have you seen my trainers? I need new shoes. And it's like, I didn't get it then, but I started to believe it, and I started to read. I am an avid reader. I read so much, everything, and always have since I was 13. And again, it was that means of escapism. And so I started reading things like The Power of Now or all of these things that like conversations with God. I remember I read that book and I was like, just blew my mind, because I didn't know anybody that thought like that. And so maybe I just absorbed it. A bit of Oprah, a couple of books. And it went in. I understood it and it made sense to me.

No, it's as simple as that. And the same generation. I grew up in the same way. And it's so true how these tiny little messages just start connecting dots. And that's what kids are built on and young people are built on. You could have heard the same thing at school every day, but because it wasn't simplified and easy and digestible, you don't remember it. But you remember the random TV show you watched that your parents had on in.

The background. Exactly.

That's amazing. I love witnessing it in an interview with someone where you're like, Wow, this person is so aware. And I want to talk more about, hopefully this is what you don't get to talk about as much. Or maybe, like you're saying, men get asked this stuff and maybe women don't. I'm intrigued. But we were talking earlier, you're a brand marketing genius. You're super attentive, aware, conscious. You have this ability to think about products and brand in a different way. How do you select problems to solve? How do you choose which problems you want to work on and then make sure that you build something that actually solves that problem?

I think about it in the sense of myself. I think it would be very difficult for me, and I'm not saying other people can't do it, but to do things that you can't relate to. I always start with the idea that if it's a problem for me, likelihood is it's a problem for other people like me, whether that be other young women, or other women in the middle of America. But it's like the starting point. It's always, what do I find problematic? And then I think the lens and the red thread that goes through all of my companies is this idea that, and again, I hate saying it because in the last five years, it's almost become like this buzzword. But when we think about inclusivity in business and what that actually means, including and thinking about the most amount of people possible. When I started Good American, it was actually a reaction to this idea that so many women, women of color, plus-size women are just completely left out of the fashion conversation. And why is their dollar any less valuable than anybody else's? And so I had worked in marketing for all of these years.

For 15 years, I grew this incredible agency, and I'd done castings and put projects and collaborations together for the biggest and best brands in the whole world. And I'd been part of actually falsifying an image of inclusivity. It's like you have a group cast, you need a black girl and an Asian girl and then this and this and this. Actually, when you thought about the product and when you thought about the senior management of those companies, it looked nothing like that. The product didn't work for anyone over a certain size. And the boardrooms were just all made up of typically white men making the decisions, usually for women. And I just thought to myself, There must be a better way to start a company. But it came from problem-solving for myself. And I go back to this idea of when you think about businesses, it makes more sense that they would be geared towards serving more people. That's just good business. Forget DEI and I, forget this idea of diversity, equity, inclusion, being something that companies need to do now. It's just good business. And when I talk about it, this idea of inclusivity and diversity being a superpower in business, it's not something that I just say, it's something that I do.

That's where the process actually starts. I'm thinking about how can I best serve customers the most amount of people? And then when there's an acknowledgment of someone who isn't usually acknowledged, of course, it goes without saying that suddenly they feel seen, they feel heard. And they're like, I'm going with this girl. I'm going with this brand because it's the first time anyone's spoken directly to them. And I think that it's such an underthought about part of business. People usually bolt it on at the end. And I'm like, No, it's right where you start. It's in the inception of those products. It's in making 32 sizes. It's in doing nine different shades. It's in the very beginnings of what you're creating. And then you can dress it up and make it look nice and put the right branding on it. But actually, it starts way earlier than that. And so I actually think about customers in a way that I think most people don't.

Where did you, not learn that, but where did you learn to look to understand that? Obviously, you started with yourself. But I'm like, Why didn't people do that before? Because like you just said, it's better business, it's better financially, it makes more sense, it makes more people happy. What do you think blocks.

Companies from-I think it just comes from where decisions are being made, because it's like you don't know what you don't know. I've sat in enough rooms trying to pitch enough businesses to a group of people that aren't my end audience. I have actually said in meetings before, maybe you should phone your wife or daughter, literally phone them, because you don't understand this because it's not for you. I think that decisions are made in such an abstract way in most companies. And you see this when companies make mistakes. There we've seen a lot of big fashion brands and big consumer brands make mistakes that have seemingly come across as insensitive, racist, completely misogynistic. That's just where a decision is made. A company isn't inherently racist, like the whole company. It's just the decision making process is flawed, i. E. There's not enough people in the room of a different background to say, Hey, perhaps put the T-shirt on the other kid, then it won't be an issue. I think that this just comes from the idea of where are the decisions made in that company and who's making the decisions? I know that the more people you bring around the table from different backgrounds, we're not just talking about race here, we're talking about age, education, the full gambit, the better the company will be.

Yeah, that is such great. I love what you just said about asking someone to call their partner or their daughter or a son or whatever it may be, because you're so right. I think so many people sit in meetings and they're looking around going, these people don't know what they're talking about or they just don't understand. Totally. How have you maintained? I guess the question is, how many of those meetings did you have to sit in until you felt like, I'm just going to do this or we're just going to figure it out? Or did you look for someone who agreed with you and had your values and did the research? Or was it like we're just going to build it ourselves? Give us a bit of that, because I think a lot of.

People say, You know, it's so interesting. I'm at that point in my career now where I don't sit in a lot of meetings. Now they pitch me, which is lovely. The shoe's on the other foot. I'm like, Come over here and I'll let you know if you can come in. Good for you. I love that. But in the early days, I think that I sat in a lot of situations feeling like... The great thing is I never doubted myself or any of those ideas. I just thought I hadn't found the right people yet. It's a little bit like, I'm happy to kiss a lot of frogs. And I always have been, because again, I don't think it should be so easy. When you're doing something that is new and without so much definition and unproven, it's supposed to be hard. And again, it's like anything. I never let it get to me. I just was like, Poor chicken, he doesn't get it yet, and he will do, and he'll kick himself. And that's fine. It's part of it. I don't mean that in a smug way, but I never doubted what I was doing. I was very clear, especially when we started Good American.

I was like, this thing people don't understand, and we'll just get them to understand it.

Definitely. I think that's such a great mindset to have, and to not have the smugness or bitterness because that person just wasn't in the right space. Exactly.

You don't know what you don't know.

Totally. It's totally cool. I feel like that all the time. I'm trying to find the people who want to be part of this story. And if they don't want to be a part of this story, that's totally cool.

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. What happens when the person you idolize, the person you think you know best, turns out to be someone else entirely? In a world where everyone is trying to fix themselves, fix their minds, fix their bodies, what does it look like when we settle into the reality of what it might mean to be unfixed. And what if you were kidnapped by your own grandparents and left with an endless well of mysteries about yourself and those around you? These are just a few extraordinary puzzles we'll be exploring in our ninth season of Family Secrets. With over 32 million downloads and nearly 100 unique stories in our feed, we continue to be in awe of our guests whose stories of courage and tenacity about breaking through the walls of secrecy never fail to amaze. I hope you'll join me and my astonishing guests for this new season of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the Overcomfort Podcast with Jenika Lopez. Yep, that's me. You may know my late mom, Jenny Rivera, my queen. She's been my guiding light as I bring you a new season of Overcomfort Podcast. This season, I'll continue to discover and encourage you and me to get out of our comfort zones and choose our calling. Join me as I dive into conversations that will inspire you, challenge you, and bring you healing. We're on this journey together. I'm opening up about my life and telling my story in my own words. Yes, you'll hear it from me first before the cheeseman lands on your social media feed. If you thought you knew everything, guess again. So I took another test with Ancestry, and it told me a lot about who I am. And it led me to my biological father. And everyone here, my friends laugh, but I'm Puerto Rican. Listen to the Overcomfort Podcast with Jenika Lopez as part of MyCulturan Podcast Network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Of.

Course, because they won't be great partners to you down the line. Absolutely. You either get it and you want to be part of it, and you are happy to know that you don't know it all, because it's about new space. If we were all doing the same thing and trying to set up the same companies, we'd never find the skims. Exactly. You'd never land on it. You'd be like, That's too complicated. That's not how we do things. And you'd skip over the great stuff.

How have you managed to continue to stay hungry and also stay innovative when things are good? Before you talked about, I didn't like my job, I wanted to get out. Milk was outdoors. There's a pain that pushes you in a better direction. I'm not saying you don't have pain anymore. Of course, there's stress as well.

I don't have that much pain. You know what I mean? I've daily dramas, but the pain is gone. You know what it is? You are fueled every day by... A piece of it is competition, right? It's like, I look at everything. There is no one who knows more about jeans and Nickers than I do. I look at every competitor. I go out in the market, I see it. I know the promotional cadence. I know everything everybody else is doing. And I think that that natural inquisitiveness is part of what keeps me good. But at the end of the day, it's like, I just want to win. It's like, I don't feel satisfied. And also it's like, How could you? It's just been a couple of years. There's loads of people that have had successes for six and for three years. I don't think that's the end goal. The end goal is to build generation or generationally defining businesses. And that doesn't happen quickly. And also, I'm not stupid enough to think or to let a few years' success get to me. There's a lot of people that had a few years' success. That's not the end game.

And so I think about now, it's about really taking the foundations of what we've built, not sacrificing any of your principles and still being able to grow and to thrive and to hire people. But that gets more and more difficult the bigger you get. There's one thing saying, We're going to do business this way when there are ten of you and you're doing a million dollars. It's very, very different all these years in because there's no model. There's nothing that you can go out and emulate. We are making it up as we're going along.

How do you define winning now? Is that how you.

Define winning? I define winning now by doing things that excite me. We just launched this insane push-up bra at Skims, and everyone's talking about it. It's all over the place. That's exciting to me because one of my girls in England will call me and be like, Oh, my God, I need to get that bra. I love that. And I still get a thrill from... It's like I love what I do. I genuinely really love it. And I just want to keep getting better at it. And for me, it comes in so many different ways. It's like I love giving people opportunities. I love the hiring part of it and getting to work with all different people. And I think that those things, for me, feel really successful. But if you were to ask me just to boil it down, it would be like to continue the growth and what we're doing without sacrificing the principles that we set the companies up with.

I.

Don't want to dial it down because we're reaching some critical mass.

We were talking about that. You have daily traumas, you said, not pains.

Nobody talks to me when things are going well. My life is just a series of problems. From the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed, that's just a fact. The stress level is unbelievable. And I do think that's important because you wouldn't know that looking at me or maybe just speaking to me. But my job is not all trying different fabrics out and hanging around my models. That's just not what I do.

What do you find to be the most stressful thing about building a business? And what do you do in order to deal with it?

I think the most stressful thing is probably the expectations, that that comes from the outside. I honestly believe you're only as good as your last launch. I never, ever drink the Kool-Aid, ever. And I think that I happen to work in extremely high profile businesses where everything that we do is scrutinized. And with that comes a level of stress. It comes back to that thing of being very ritualistic. I am militant about the things that work for me. I suffer with migraines. I get super... I carry stress in my body. And so it's like, I get up very early, I wake up, I work out, I meditate. I make sure I have to be up before my children are up because I need quiet time. I need time to focus. I'm religiously grateful. I have trained myself to focus on the great stuff in my life because I feel like there is so much noise, whether I like it or not. And so I could be overwhelmed every day in the things that are going on around me. And at the end of it, I'm looking up going, Wow, the ceiling in my bedroom. How could you even have a ceiling?

I could never imagine that I'd have such a beautiful ceiling, ever. I am someone who truly stops to smell the roses, quite literally. I can find good happiness, joy in anything. And I really make it a point and a priority to do that every day. And even as I have my tea, I have special tea from Japan, and I have a special pot that I put it in, and I just like, taste it. And every day it's like I'm tasting it for the first time. But if I didn't do those things, I would lose my mind. I would lose my mind. And so I think I've just trained myself to enjoy the rituals and the small things and be hyper grateful because there is no difference between me and all of those kids that I went to school with in East London. And I should be so lucky. It's like we're here in the sunshine, overlooking the whole of LA. I'm chatting to you. I'm going to go into my office where I'm the boss and people are going to film me chatting about stuff. I don't have anything to complain about.

But I bet and from what I've learned today, you were like that even when the milk was outside.

Hundred %, I was like, At least I have a balcony. I don't have a fridge, but I have a balcony.

Because if it wasn't there then, it wouldn't be there now.

Hundred %.

If you went on a walk with Little Emma as a memory, you held hands and you went on a little walk with her, what do you think she'd say to you?

I think she'd say, Well done, love. You did it. Keep going. Keep going. I think so.

What would you say back?

I'd say, I am.

What would you think I'm doing?

-i'm.

Doing it. I'm literally.

Walking forward now.

Stop putting pressure on me.

I always sit here and I think, Oh, my goodness, I'm so proud of myself. But honestly, Jade, when I think about what that means for me now and the level of responsibility that I feel, that is the thing that really fuels me today, because when I do something, I feel a weight and an expectation of a group of people that have been historically left out and marginalized from a lot of these conversations and a lot of these opportunities. And there is this huge sense of responsibility that I have for women, especially young black women and minority women and kids that just grew up poor anywhere. I think about all that stuff every single day. And I think that real success for me will be when I am able to really pull what I've got and what it is that I strive for and continue to achieve and have that affect a lot more people. And I do that in ways. Through my chairmanship of the 15 % pledge, that's been like a huge undertaking and an amazing amount of work that I have been able to do. But for me, it's like that is only scratching the surface.

And I think more and more of my work will be in how can I help so many more people that are like me get out of their circumstances and be able to contribute more? Because it just is mesmerizing to me that I've been able to go so far. And it ain't because I'm something special. It's because there were a series of circumstances and then enough grit and determination that I was able to do it. And so it's like, how do you put other people into the same circumstances so that if they have the will that they can do it too? And so that's where I'm fixated.

Right now. What's been one of your favorite success stories from that or a memory or a story from that.

It's so funny because it happens again in the smallest ways. I get hundreds of people reach out to me to say, Listen, I'm starting a business. I'm selling a thousand dollars a month from this clothing brand. And it's like, I'll jump on the phone and I'll give someone some advice. I had a girl a couple of years ago. She was like, I think I'm going to get into Selfridge's and I want to know how to do that. How do I structure the contract? Anyway, fast forward two years later, I do my first ever ask me anything because my team pressured me into it. I'm like, Social is just not my bag. But anyway, so I do the first ask me anything, and all the girls are asking me the same questions. How do you start a business? How do you thrive? And this girl comes up and then she says, I just want to let you know that I now do however many tens of thousands a week at Selfridge's. And it was all because you helped me walk through that contract and I took your advice and I stuck to the distribution plan and did it.

And I was like, Oh, my God! And so it's always those tiny things for me. And again, that's just about giving someone your time. So I'm really trying to think thoughtfully about how I can do more of that in a more systematic and a bigger way, because, sadly, I can't answer every phone call or every DM that comes through.

What are you talking about? That's so beautiful. I think that component is such a big part of happiness and success.

Of course it is.

Because you're so right. No one who's got to the top is any more special. Just going back to what your mom said at the beginning. You ain't better than anyone else. And as soon as you start thinking it, or people also start thinking it that, Oh, yeah, that person's there because they're faster, smarter, better. Or when we do the opposite, when we go, They don't deserve to be there. Exactly. No. I should be there. Both of those just take it away. Hundred %. I look at your journey and I really admire the way you live and think. It's such a wonderful mindset and it's such a strong... You've been able to craft something that's so resilient and you can- I know that's a good word. Yeah, what you've been able to build. I'm talking about almost like if we were to physically look at your mindset, it's so resilient. Because I can hear, as we've approached it from so many different points of view. It's like you have such a clear philosophy on how you live, who you are, what matters, what doesn't matter. I look at that clarity when I see you as like, that's the reason you are who you are and where you are, because you're just so clear.

I feel like no matter what would happen either way, it's like that is what you're betting on, and that's what you've been building and focused on.

I think so.

I.

Think so. Someone write that down.

I really.

Need it. I really need it. It's so kind. It's so kind. I love that you say that. It makes me so happy because you never think about yourself in such clear terms like that. You are who you are in so many ways. And I see that with my own kids. They're like four people that I think, You got exactly the same upbringing. We all live in the same house. I don't do one thing different. And yet they are just these four tiny individuals. And at six months, it's like, You know exactly what kid you've got. You know if this kid is super anxious, if this kid is super obnoxious, you know exactly who they are. I'm sure there's lots of things and changes coming in their lives, but so much of it is just in you. And then you layer circumstances onto that and you know what you're capable of, what you can and can't affect, and what you should be doing. And so I always look at it like I was living a very nice, very privileged life in England, and I moved here specifically for work. And it's been wonderful for work, but in so many other facets of my life, being in LA has been an eye-opener.

And it's actually fueled me in a way that I really never expected. And I always think, if you elevate your health, you elevate your life. It's like if you elevate your thinking, you elevate what your capabilities are. And so for me, it's just been wonderful and an amazing moment to be here because I've been able to elevate so many things that I do. And I think that that should only end up in a bunch of other people being able to benefit from that.

Absolutely. Well said. Write that down. Print it out. That was yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's incredible how I think a lot of people label LA as Hollywood and think of it as just that. But it's like I feel the same way as you, like moving here. My eyes have opened up to so many more things that are really valuable, important, insightful. I've met people who are doing incredible things. What you just said now of opening the door and trying to break down, just a few months ago, we had Lewis Hamilton here talking about 44 and talking about how he's trying to help people of color get into the world of Formula One, which is a normal, which him and his father were able to do. You start seeing that happen across fashion, sports, business. And that's so incredible because you start thinking about all those Little Emmas and Little Lewises and everyone else out there totally who's just trying to figure out whether they have a shot.

Yeah, 100 %.

They do. Yeah. Emma, we end every episode with a final five, which we sit down and do as a fast five, which means every answer has to be one word to one sentence maximum.

One word to one sentence, all right.

I'll rein myself in. I always ruin it because I get intrigued. All right, okay. So Emma Green, these are your final five. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

I wish that I could make this sound as powerful as it was for me. That's the first thing to say, but it's a good one. It was to make a decision and move on.

Because.

You can be so stifled by your decisions. And when you are just stuck, it just does so many other things to you. And so I think it served me really well in so many ways. I used to think about it just for business, and now I don't. I think it's make a decision and move on.

I always say to people, stop trying to make the right decision. Just make a decision and then make it right.

Totally. You can do it afterwards. You can go.

Back afterwards. I love that. That's great. We've never had that on the show. I love that. Question number two. What is the worst advice you've ever.

Heard or received? Stay in your lane. What was.

The lane? I don't know.

But someone was trying to stifle me. And lucky enough, I listened to my little Emma inside and gave her a big old beep. Never stay in your lane. I love it. But it's interesting because I think all the growth in my life has come when I have stepped outside of whatever lane I was in at that time. And so it's useless advice, actually.

Absolutely. Question number three. How would someone who doesn't know you that well describe you in three words? I wish if you're listening to this, you just missed out on the best facial expression. You need to go to YouTube right now.

It's always such a worry. Goodness me, the things I've been called. How would someone describe me? I think they would describe me as kind. I'm a kind person, ambitious, and not to be messed around with.

Got it. I like it. I like the third one, not to be messed around.

I can't think of that the one word, right?

Yeah, that's good.

I think that's what people think about me. They're nice, tough. Kind but tough.

There you go. And ambitious. Question number four. How would someone who knows you very deeply describe you in three words?

Sensitive, very thoughtful, and tough.

I love that. That's brilliant. We need to get you up in the podcast. Yeah, exactly.

To verify. To verify, for sure. You'd go tough, tough, and tough. I love it.

Emma, your final question, fifth to final question. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Very specifically for the time we're in right now, it would be to lead with kindness. Nothing else.

Yeah, we need it in every little interaction.

In everything. It's so powerful. And it's what I teach my kids. It's like just be kind. It doesn't take much, and it goes so unbelievably far. And when I say that about myself being kind, it's like that is something that I think about every single day. How am I treating people? What do people get from me? And I'm talking about everyone. Everyone. It's just a fact. Just be kind.

Emma, great. Thank you for coming on. Thank you very much, obviously. This was incredible. Everyone who's been listening and watching wherever you are, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're at the gym, whether you're driving to or from work, whether you're listening with your friends, I want you to know that please go and tag me and Emma in the moment that stood out to you. Maybe there's a quote, maybe there was so much wisdom sprinkled across this entire episode. I hope that you find the ones that resonate with you. I hope that this helps you make a shift in your career. I hope this helps you make a shift in your mindset about how you're trying to balance what's going on in your world. I hope this helps you think differently about the choices and decisions you're about to make. Please tag me and Emma across social media to let us know what stood out to you. Please show her a ton of love. Emma, thank you for doing this. Thank you for opening up. Thank you for being so real and wonderful to spend this much.

Time with. It's been a pleasure. I've loved every second. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Emma. It was so.

Good to see you. Thank you. If you love this episode, you will also love my interview with Kemdall Jenner on setting boundaries to increase happiness and healing your inner child.

You could be reading something that someone is saying about you and.

Being like, That is so unfair.

Because that's not who I am. And that really gets to me sometimes. But then looking at myself in the mirror and being like, But I know who I am. Why does anything else matter?

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Hi, Jenna Kalopas here with the new season of My Overcomfort Podcast. What's Overcomfort all about? It's about inspiring confidence in all of us and choosing calling over comfort. Every Tuesday, I'll be having real and honest conversations. You'll hear it from me first before any cheasement hits your social media feed. Join me as I create a space where opening up is not only okay, it's encouraged. Listen to Over Comfort Podcast with Jennifer Lopez on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.