The School of Greatness
Start With Yourself: The Mindset That Built an Empire | Emma Grede
13 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What mindset allowed Emma Grede to overcome her challenging childhood?
I think that we've got ourselves into a really dangerous position when we feel like the only businesses that are valid are billion dollar unicorn sized and shaped ones. There's a lot of different ways to do businesses and so I would think are the limitations real or are you putting them on yourself before you get out of the gate?
Emma Greave, in the house, one of America's richest self-made women, having built multiple billion-dollar brands, and she's now the author of Start With Yourself. She's here to challenge everything you think about ambition, success, and the life you're capable of building.
You have to get out of your own way. You got to make sure that your biggest enemy isn't between your own two ears, right? You have to say to yourself, okay, wait a minute, I have these giant aspirations. You've got to get off your desktop, out of your head, and do something.
If you could go back to the younger version of you, with all the lessons you know now, what would you say to her?
I'm going to be really honest with you and say something that's maybe deeply unpopular because of where we are in this country right now.
very excited about this one of the things i'm curious about is how you were able to become so successful with your mindset first without having everything growing up in the perfect environment because i know you didn't have the perfect environment the perfect schooling all the opportunities given to you so how did you develop a mindset that allowed you to have a thriving life thriving marriage thriving family thriving health thriving community and everything else you've created
I love that you start there. That's like the best thing, the best first question ever, because I feel like where I come from and the way that I started is so foundational to my success. And I often hear people talk about, you know, scarcity or childhood trauma or like the stuff that happened to them in a negative way. And I think for me, it was fundamental to the person that I am now.
First of all, like I come from East London. I'm the eldest of four girls there.
raised with a single mom and so my life was really like from the beginning it was about doing right there was a role to play it's like my mom's the dad i'm the mom we've got three kids together and my job was to like get them out the house make the packed lunches iron the shirts get them to school by which point i would turn around go home and watch oprah so i mean
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Chapter 2: How did Emma learn to manage her emotions and anger effectively?
You know, she was going to like bingo after work. She was doing what she was doing.
She was doing the relaxing.
I was left with these kids playing. Of mine, my sister's. And, you know, it was up to me what I was going to do. And I just knew like you could make the day great or you could make the day terrible. And I was like, I've got to make the day great because these kids, they're vibing off of me.
Sorry if I don't know this, but was your father never around or?
No. So my mom and dad split when I was like five years old. So my mom had three kids under five when she was 28. So when you think about that, like she was such a young woman and it was tough for her. It was really tough for her. So that's why there was never like a, oh my goodness, do I have to help my mom? It was like do or die. Yeah. Of course you have to help your mum.
Like you've got things you need to get through the day. Everybody's got to do what they do. So my dad wasn't around. He came back in my life in my kind of late teens. And he's like, he's a great guy. You know, in my head, I was like, it didn't work out between them. That had nothing to do with me.
And so it's like, I've done so much therapy and so much work on myself and, you know, looked everywhere for the daddy issues. But again, I never thought that was about me. I was like, those two didn't work.
Interesting. So you didn't feel like he left you or anything that just
I mean, let me tell you, in no uncertain terms, he did. But it's just that I never thought that was a verdict on me. No, I mean, listen, I could probably have done with the presence of him. But, you know, I had an incredible granddad. I had amazing uncles. And, you know, in my book, I talk about those people that in my life like came and rescued me, that came and they were my figures.
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Chapter 3: What role does self-trust play in achieving success?
You mentioned beforehand that you've been married for 17 years. You got four amazing kids as well. Thriving business, thriving marriage, thriving kids. What did your parents' separation teach you about how to have a thriving marriage?
Well, you know, I think that what I learned from my mom is that you don't make compromises on the type of person and life that you want to live. And as I've gone into my marriage, I think I was very clear about that.
How did that look?
So I, you know, it's like I've had, you know, quite a lot of boyfriends. I went around before I found the one that I decided to settle down with. And I think I was always really clear about what type of man I would want to be with. You know, I'm a very ambitious woman and it would never have worked for me to be with anyone who is anything other than that and anyone who... accepted anything less.
Or wanted you to be something different.
Yeah. Like that was never going to happen. And so I think that in everything I do, I have really high standards, but I have high standards for myself. I have high standards for everyone around me. And so when it came to like looking for a husband, my standards were high. I was like, I'm cute. I know what I'm doing. Like I'm a good package. I can, I can make it work.
I don't need anyone for anything. And so I think when I was looking and thinking about, you know,
boyfriends ever in my life and certainly whoever i was going to settle down with i i kept those standards really high i was not going to settle like i was never going to settle and the funny thing is you know i met my husband when i was what 24 and so relatively early by today's standards um but i knew immediately i i knew that that was the man i was going to marry wow really yeah
First day, the first moment. Like the first moment, because what I should tell you is that my husband turned out to be my first ever investor. So when I met my husband, I actually started working for him and his business partner. And after about six months, I spun out into my own company and they were my first investors. Pre-relationship, pre-marriage. But you knew when he was your boss.
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Chapter 4: How can we reframe our hardest life experiences as strengths?
So I don't need to sacrifice my integrity or my decision-making to go somewhere. I mean, listen, there are things that I say no to all the time, but also like I'm wired not to be a people pleaser. Like it just isn't in me.
I can sense that about you.
Even as a kid, before I had choice, like it just isn't my makeup. It's just, I'm not wired that way.
Until maybe like four years ago, I was wired to be a people pleaser.
You were?
Until about four years ago when I actually learned about boundaries and confrontation and just like saying no to people and being like, no, I'm not going to do this.
It's also part of where I come from.
Yeah. You have that energy.
You don't say things to make people happy. And also you're judged. It's not even like just the toughness. It's like you would be judged for actually like not doing what you meant and not saying what you mean. So in that way, it's like I am just like hardwired to tell you the truth.
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Chapter 5: Why is it important to put money at the center of your goals?
Where would you be if you weren't in a beautiful marriage though? Not that you need your husband, but in some ways we need other people to experience beautiful moments of life and to experience more love and abundance. So I guess I'm asking, not questioning you, but asking like, where is that line of not needing someone? but also needing other people to create those moments in your life.
So I love that question because I'm somebody that really thrives in community. Like it's like I have my people, like my ride or die. And make no mistake, like I need my husband. My husband is somebody that I think is my best friend and he's the person that I find the most interesting on the planet. And I still really fancy him. Thank God. And and I really need him.
I think that I don't when I say I don't need him. Anyone, my expectation on people is never that they will be everything to me. Like I haven't set the ends up to be like all the things that I need because I need different things from different people.
And it's like, I have like a bunch of girlfriends and I have the people that I work with and I have my sisters and I have my family and I have my husband. And my life is like a tapestry of all of these different things that I've created around me. And I need all of them. I need everything. I need all of it. And I love that because I am somebody that like, like I'm a real life person.
You know, I want to be in person with you. I would like give the phone up tomorrow. You know, I am an in-person person. I want to do meetings. I want to be in the office. I want to chat with you for three hours. It's like I have zero time for like nightclub chat, you know, frivolous conversations. I want to go straight in, all in. Tell me everything.
Tell me about your wife, the kids, thing, the thing. Do you know what I mean? That's what I care about. So I am a person who needs those relationships. And that's what makes it so difficult when you move away from home because you move and you lose... You know, the kind of price of opportunity is familiarity. Do you know what I mean?
You lose everything that you feel so good and that makes you tick and that makes you you to some extent. And so I feel like those sacrifices and those tradeoffs, while they've been important and amazing for my success, I have given something in order to get that back.
What have you given?
Well, you've given up. Like, you know, familiarity is an interesting thing because when you're somebody like me,
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Chapter 6: How can you break free from the influence of others' opinions?
I don't want to, like, I don't want to do new people all the time. Like, I would rather, you know, it's like I'm invited to a lot of things. I don't want to go. I want to like, you know, I don't want to go. I want to be with somebody that I care about, who cares about me and talk about that thing that happened. You know, it's like, that's just who I am.
And so I think when you leave where you're from, a little piece of you, kind of falls away because I don't have that same connectivity with all of the people that I love. I had to give something up to get something else. And so there's a real cost to that.
I feel like mentally and in the world, you've been achieving greatness since you were a young kid from having multiple jobs to running your siblings' lives and managing all these things and also having a positive mindset along the way to transitioning into the business world and being extremely successful.
And in your book, you have a quote on page 70 that says, the ascent to greatness is rarely pretty and you'll learn the most from failure. Since we're on the school of greatness, what is the thing you failed the most that has taught you about greatness?
First of all, I love the name of this podcast. It's so good. I stole the mug there because I was like, I'm going to drink from the School of Greatness every damn day. I was like, let's go. You know, the reason I try to include all of the mistakes and all of the failings is because they have been in hindsight, right? So hard when you're in it.
But of course, they've been the places where I've grown and everybody knows that. And I have kind of retrained my mind at this point to look for the fear, to look for the moments where I might not come out on the other side in the best way, because I know that that's where all the growth is.
Really?
And it's a really difficult thing to do because specifically for women, I think that we are sort of engineered in a way where our emotions can take so much of our decision making. And what I talk about in the book is how I, or one of the reasons I think I've been able to
build this life is because i've been able to manage my emotions not that i've got rid of fear or guilt or sadness or anger or any of the things i feel but i've trained myself to understand what is useful and what is going to get me somewhere and so when i think about all the failures i don't look at them as like an assault on me and my character i'm like that was just a moment where i had something to learn and and life had something to show me and i had to go through that terrible time yeah
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Chapter 7: What does Emma mean by thinking in seasons for life decisions?
And then I can have fear and guilt and disappointment, but not against somebody else's idea of why I should be.
Interesting.
this is fascinating because when i was 13 i begged my parents to send me away to a private boarding school you did i begged them they did not want me to leave no who wants their 13 year old to leave but i grew up in such a environment you know that was just didn't feel emotionally safe for me you know and so i was i ran away essentially right and i wanted to get out and i couldn't get out fast enough and i i don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to get away from your environment or wanting to run away
For me, I needed to run away for certain reasons for my emotional safety. But eventually, I couldn't run away from myself later. Like I was still running away internally, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, right? Chasing and running away to try to fulfill something. It doesn't mean it's right or wrong, good or bad, but it's just what I did to survive until I had to come back home to me.
What was the thing you were running away from the most? And when did you feel like you came back home to you, to emotional safety within yourself?
I think that what I was always running from was a future that looked like all the stuff that was around me. I was scared that I would end up like all the women I could see. Crying over some guy that left them, devastated that someone had cheated on them, left broke and alone. You know, I could see that despair all around me. And I was like, that can never be me.
That can just, that can never be me. And also I saw a lot of women, not my own mother, but they were at the mercy of the partners that they had, right? So when he was up, they were up. New car, new curtains, lovely stuff, all great. But then when that went away, It was gone. You know, you had a drunk husband and, you know, no money and the car goes and the woman's just like, what happened?
And I was like, no way. Like, no way could that ever be me. And I saw it in my own family and I saw it in the people around me. And so that was like a
fear of mine and so for me working and having this idea of my life was like that was gonna be my escape that was like that's my plan that's my get out plan and then i get to decide and i'll create the the buffer and i will be in a position where it doesn't matter who is around me like i'll be good yeah And to the point where that still shows up in my life today, my husband laughs all the time.
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