Everything Is Content - Is Emma Grede Bringing Back The Girlboss?

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Hello EICeo's, lean in for a second – we're talking about the return of the girlboss.Emma Grede is the entrepreneur and business partner of a handful of Kardashian businesses. She's recently entered the media circus promoting her debut book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life, and in the process started a few conversations around work, motherhood and WFH culture.Thank you for all of your incredible thoughts for this one <3 love O,R,B xoxoEmma Grede: the real mastermind of the Kardashian empire Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Rochera and I'm Anoni and this is Everything in Conversation. The discourse mixer for your Friday shot of content. Lovely Beth is on holiday for this one but don't worry she'll be back in your ears this Friday. We'd love you to take part in these conversations whether you're agreeing or disagreeing we want to hear from you and you can share your takes by following us on Instagram at Everything is Content Pod. That's where we decide on topics and invite you to get involved. This week we're tackling some comments. from businesswoman and entrepreneur Emma Greed. She's mostly known for co-founding Chloe Kardashian's jeans company Good American and is a founding

partner of Skims. You could say that she is now most famous for being the business partner to Kardashian fashion ventures. So Greed 42 has a rags to riches upbringing story. So she grew up really poor in East London, dropped out of school at 15 and had dyslexia. But despite all of this, she managed to build her own business at the age of 26, which was independent talent brand worldwide, a talent management and marketing agency. So that is the story that Greed shares, but Sarah Monavis notes in her profile for The Observer, quote, that despite her story

of struggling to pay bills, she says her drive comes from her mother, who in fact worked on Morgan Stanley's Swiss trading desk. And this week, we're diving into some comments Greed made during the promo run for her debut book, Start With Yourself, a new vision for work and life. There are two themes to the comments with the first centered on working from home. In an episode on Kiki Palmer's podcast, Greed stated, what I think is that work from home culture is a career killer for women. We talk about all of this sort of upside of Zoom culture, but none of the rigidity of it. And no one will really tell you, but careers require proximity and visibility. You want to pay your eyes, you want the next promotion, you want the big corner office. Guess what? You need to be there.

And the second discourse spark was her stating she was a quote, Max's three-hour mom, to her kids on weekends. The quote came from an interview with the Wall Street Journal published in March, and the 43-year-old businesswoman said she spends the rest of those days focusing on activities for herself and likes to opt for, quote, high-impact, core memories with her kids, like fishing trips or New York getaways. So there's quite a lot to unpick, and the discourse has ranged from her being a toxic voice for overworking to an out-of-touch millionaire and delusional. I love some tweets. I'm going to bring them up. There was one from I am Kira D. who said Emma Greed is on an elite marketing run for her new book.

And then there was another quote from at Fukomi, who said, getting angry at Emma Greed is pointless and just highlights you are not her target audience. The truth is those who subscribed to the cult of masochistic ambition have to play it by its rules. She is simply saying them out loud. Performative over work is rule number one.

Oh, it's so interesting. I had never, I'd seen Emmer Greed's face, but I'd not necessarily been that familiar with her or her work until the last couple of months when I started seeing her on every podcast, on every social clip, and mostly because I was seeing a lot of the outrage in the comments. And since then, I have kind of been following and been interested by some of the events she's been putting on in London and the people that have been going to them. What did you think of Em agree before this? And what do you think of her now after hearing these quotes?

So I didn't really know much about her. I knew they had this kind of like silent, beautiful partner propping up a lot of their ventures. That's the Kardashians. And so I was ambiently aware of her, didn't really know her name. And I thought that the concept of her was really fascinating. This person who partners with the Kardashians and quietly is the business behind a lot of their ideas, obviously you don't really know how that shakes up. But something about that is really interesting, that being your MO, partnering with celebrities.

And a lot of those businesses appear to be very successful and appear to be making a lot of money. I know Skims is actually very successful. I'm not so sure about Good American. I believe the stats are still really good for it. But the concept of her is really interesting, especially because she was so silent and like not very well known. And now if she's stepping out and becoming kind of like the celeb CEO influencer alongside actually being an entrepreneur, it's just, it's really interesting just to see how many of the same kind of hustle culture quotes always come from these people. I find it funny because I can't take it

seriously. And maybe that is a bad thing. But I struggle to take a lot of these quotes and these kind of business chats very, very seriously. And I think it's just. such a privileged thing to say for a lot of these figures and it's just not the same thing as most people experience. But what do you think anyway? It's really interesting because I really don't like high performance girl boss stuff, even though in some ways I technically am of that girl boss era. Like I started my career through being an influencer and then I had a podcast and I've written a book and like I have kind of followed that landscape to get where I am and I actually do kind of do high performance things in my life, but I get such an ick about the way people talk about it. And I don't

know if that's actually internalised misogyny, maybe the thing that makes me bought kind of when I see this content. But I saw a really funny video from Shantae. And I don't know if you saw this, Shantay Joseph, friend of the pod, writer of the viral Vogue article. And she did a reel and she said, I'm overjoyed at the return of the girl boss. Those ladies on LinkedIn took their stilettos off your necks for four minutes and all of a sudden we're seeing tradwives. All of a sudden the content is, oh, my boyfriend's so smart. He does everything. I can't do anything. And I sat with that for a second, I thought, maybe she's right. Is the girl boss the lesser of two evils? Is the takedown of the girl boss of pink feminism? Is that what birthed the trad wife? And if so,

maybe the girl bosses do need to come back. That is so funny. And on that note, we had a few messages from people, including Lauren, who said that Emma agreed is Cheryl Sandberg 2.0. And Louise, who said, is this not essentially Cheryl Sandberg's whole lean-in-stick, but repackaged for millennials. And we all know what nonsense that was if the book, Careless People is to be believed. As a mother myself, this just feels like yet another wealthy woman with no real clue, giving us advice on how he can make the often drudgery of motherhood less horrendous. The answer is, in essence, have lots of money. And I think it's really funny you say that because I also am like a reformed girl boss. I feel like even though I find the concept of overworking, essentially grinding yourself

to dust in pursuit of ambition, gauche, to say out loud, it is important. practice a lot of what I have to learn to not do for myself. I have chronically overworked previously and that is not a humble brag genuinely. It's not good. It's not like no one should be pleased with that unless that's actually what you want to do. So I find it interesting. I completely agree with you. I find it interesting that I find these business influencer types so or icky and yucky when personally they do say the thing that I probably naturally apply to myself. And I think it's because politically I just completely disagree with it on a personal level, how I subscribe to it is this pressure to just overperform. And I think because of that, I don't like the fact that it is

presented in neutral terms. I don't think any of us should be subscribing to that. And I remember when we spoke about the Brue Dog founder and all of his nonsense about if you care, you should be dedicating hours and weekends to your job and all that kind of bullshit. And I have to say, again, when you're not top of the roster, when you are not the CEO of a company, when you are getting past her for promotions when you are being chronically underpaid than the colleague next to you with half the experience. Tell me why you are going to want to come to the office Monday to Bloody Friday and show your face. It's just, I think the nature of work is so unfair and so disproportionate and you are not accessing the same level of money, power, stakes, personal stakes in a company

that Emma Greed is for the Kardashian Ventures that she's a co-founder for. So I think it's all well and good to say you have to invest your time and energy. But I just don't think that's realistic and I don't think that's fair. I think if you have your own business, that's a completely different thing. Obviously, dedication makes sense. I think it's much harder to separate and have those rules, even though you should. I just think her vision of what commitment is is not the same level she should necessarily expect from people who do not have the same rewards as her. Totally. And on the overworking thing, I've also overwatched, but at no point in my life has it yielded the same successful results as her. This is the other thing like so many people do

overwork. There are people that are working more hours than her, but they're working like three very badly paid jobs in order to just pay the bills. And they're also a mother. So I think it's part of this American dream. It's actually the Wizard of Oz. It's not really real. I think if I had a business that was hyper successful and I was also a parent, I could also find it within myself. Do you know what? I'd turn around to my partner. I'd hire a nanny and I'd say I'm going all in for the next five to 10 years because I have created this thing and it's making me millions of pounds. It's not easy, obviously working hard, but it's much easier to work hard when you're getting paid. lot. Like if you're throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is so much of our jobs,

and also putting in loads of hours with the maybe the vague sense that at some point you might get paid for it, it's much more exhausting, much more draining and I think much more likely to lead to burnout than if you're actually genuinely getting paid for all of those hours that you put in. And I do think there's so many of these kind of like gal boss online who are really the exception to the rule, like the Grace Beverly, who's like this entrepreneur that's making millions and millions of pounds. She's interesting and fascinating because that won't be everyone. Emma agreed as interesting and inspirational and aspirational because it isn't everyone's story. And that's, I think, where it kind of rubs.

At the same time, I do think there is something to be said for being inspired by and believing in, going back to that neuroplasticity thing we spoke about before, I think you can take something in a positive way from thinking that maybe you could be that person and that might manifest in you becoming more successful if you genuinely believe that there's like an end goal in sight where you will reach your dreams. I do think you can kind of talk yourself out of being successful by deciding that it's never going to happen for you. And then every action that you take follows that thought pattern. So you do kind of start sitting back a bit and you don't really try hard enough.

Like I think there is utility and usefulness to people being at this top end of the spectrum of success and working hard and giving people something. But I think where it rubs people up is there is so much there that is just under explored, which we had so many interesting messages about. So Emma said, the headline grabbing takes by celebrity CEOs fail to mention they have, luxuries that enables their lifestyle. They can pay for nannies or assistance to do things like prepare lunch, pick up the kids from school or put their child to bed. If Emma wants her to career to be the sole focus of her life, it makes me question why she wanted to have kids in the first face and what her kids think about this three-hour thing. Do they wish they have more time with their mom? The first bit of the message I agree with, the second bit, I then am like, I don't know if that's helpful either. But we did have another interesting message that was on the same vein. So we had a message from Molly that said, an interesting take I've seen on this from the point of view of people who had a mum like, I'm agreed. Whilst my mum didn't run multi-million pound businesses, she did work a demanding corporate job. And as a result, I spent a lot of time in wraparound childcare during my school years, with no grandparents or extended family around to help out. My dad could work every hour under the sun and he did, but it was ultimately my mum who I really missed and wanted. I was so jealous of

friends whose moms either didn't work or work part-time to be able to collect them from school, etc. I think my point is when we hear stories like this, the children at the center of the story are often completely forgotten. I think that's really interesting too, but it also, Then all of this is another thing, like just different flavors of misogyny at the same time, because why can't the mother be the one that goes and spends more time on her career? And why can't the dad be the one that's a fulfilling parent does that point to the fact that maybe dads haven't worked out how to offer the same level of love and comfort as mothers have? Is it just an innate thing that children want their mothers?

I don't know. I think it's such a complicated and sensitive topic. And it is interesting. And I do think it's incredible that women should have access to having really high-standing careers. but I just think everything she says is sort of so flattened one dimensional that it's bound to cause controversy. Yeah, and I do really subscribe to the fact that I think she is obviously very intelligent. I think she is, you know, saying slightly provocative things to get people talking about her. She has had almost like a debutante year in stepping out in wanting to be a figure in her own right,

separate to the Kardashians, and she has. We're talking about her on this podcast because she said things, which warrant podcasts like ours discussing them. So I think she's doing what she needs to do. And I think that's why I'm struggling between taking it super seriously and then also interrogating it. But I don't think she's lying. I think she's just saying things that she believes that she knows will have a slightly inflammatory response.

With the double standard aspect of it, that's something that she said that men have constantly spoken about to be the CEO of ex company that's, you know, on the Futsi 100, I am not able to spend time with my kids. Men sing about it when they're not even asked about it. and she has got a lot of flack for saying something similar. And it's hard because it is a provocative thing to say, to be completely honest. And I also do think at the same time, there is this protected idea of motherhood that basically means if you are not this one type of mother, which is a perfect stay-at-home

mother who dotes on her kids, does not have any hobbies for herself, loves only her children and nothing else, and then cooks and cleans for her partner, you will be shamed. And I think because of those very narrow margins, her saying something, that is genuinely quite like an unusual way to parent and not something that many of us are exposed to people saying and openly talking about. It is challenging and she has been the receiving end of backlash. But at the same time, I guess part of me is like, if you look at a figure like her, imagine if she said, I managed to spend 10 hours a day with my kids every single day, every weekend, we have amazing activities. You would just be like, this is some absolute bullshit.

So I guess in a way, part of me is glad that she just said the quiet part of the quiet part. loudly and just said what is the obvious part that to be somebody like her who is very clearly successful, wealthy, compounding her wealth, doing all of these massive ventures, she is unable to also give the same dedication to parenting. I think that is just the honest truth. And even though it's not palatable and it challenges a lot of people's conceptions of motherhood and what the point of having a child is, I think part of me is also just like, well, I'm glad she said it, you know? The only thing that I wish she didn't say and I think actually I actively feel is contributing to something negative, which she doesn't have to, is the work from home thing. Because somebody told me years ago, the person who sets the tone of a company is the most senior person. So if you're in a nice company, often the CEOs have a very relaxed, open, warm approach to working, which is why it comes from the top down. When she says if you want to be getting the promotions, if you want to be successful at work, you have to be in the room. That very clearly is her experience. of working, which makes sense. She's probably been in a lot of very male, very sharky environments,

very business, since presenteism is very important. But now she's at the top of that field. She could very much challenge that. She could set the tone of a company and say, okay, I experienced that, but to be honest, it doesn't have to be that way. My version of a company is XYZ, which is what good, interesting bosses do. They shape a company completely differently to their experiences of work up until that point. So I think she's almost like a victim of that mentality, but she hasn't challenged it or wanted to do anything with it. She's very happy to continue it. And that's my problem. Yeah, it's so interesting to go, sorry, right back to the beginning of when you were talking about the thing with dad saying that. And it's so true. And I think what the issue is, is that it should be

that women can do the same as men and that there should be a way that children are supported and happy enough with their mothers working that much. So it's going to be so many situations, then it's happening more and more where women are on their husbands and do you have to work more. I think the problem is that, like you just pointed out with the work thing, is there is no structural system to support mothers to do that, inclusive of the fact that so many dads are just not able to step up to the plate through sort of like weaponising competence or just the way that they've been socialised, men feel a real sense of injustice when they are forced into the shoes of being the primary parent. It's something that the cut has done loads of articles like there's been so many

pieces about these men who feel really frustrated when they suddenly find themselves being the one doing the pickups and the drop-ups, making the school meals. So that's one thing. So basically she's kind of like so many of our messages said, selling a fantasy to women where it's like, that sounds all well and good, but how are you saying we should do this? Which is why the work from home thing again is like a double nail in the coffin. And I haven't seen if,

so I don't know if you know who mother puck her is and a White House, but she is, yeah, yeah. I don't know if she's spoken about this, but I imagine she probably has, but she is constantly campaigning the government. She has this whole thing called Flex Appeal, which is all about her mothers need to be accommodated in the workplace,

e.g., they need to finish work on time so they can pick up their kids from school. they need to be able to work from home. And it's her whole thing is instead of making women as similar to men as possible, Allah, Cheryl Sandberg and what Emma Greed saying, it's like make work forces accommodate for mothers, make hours be flexible, make it so that it makes sense for mothers to return to work because they're able to do that. Because the truth is in most scenarios, unless you're rich enough to hire a nanny or you have family that live really nearby, for most mothers, even if they wanted to work that hard, it's physically impossible. And there was that massive controversy not that

long ago about this GP who, sorry listeners, if you can hit it, I think it's actually hailing and it's just all coming directly at my window. There was this GP who, and I might butcher this, but basically, she was a British GP who could never collect her daughter on time from school. So she scheduled, so she's scheduled to have a patient an hour earlier and then always pretended that she had a patient in the evening. So she was seeing the same amount of people that blocked out her time so that she'd be able to get, pick up her child from school. And I think they tried to sack her as she had a disciplinary hearing. And basically then all these people came out to say, it's, so fundamentally ridiculous that mothers, like the way that it works, it just doesn't work for women.

So I think Emma Greed's proposition is a nice one, it's a total fantasy. Yeah, and we had so many messages for this. It clearly riled people up and people had so many thoughts on this, which I found really interesting. We had a message from Jack who said, parents are sick of being given parenting advice by millionaires with staff. Good for her, but it's hardly relatable. The world is full of people telling parents they're doing it wrong. We need more encouragement and support, not lessons from the super rich. She can afford, to be honest, most of us can't. And Becky said, you can't have it all and becoming a mom shows you that. It's a fucking shit show navigating how you juggle that. Good luck to everyone.

I don't agree with her, but to be honest, yet to find the template that works for everyone and the budget. So ahead of this episode, I listed to a few of her interviews. She's positioned herself as a girl's girl, right? Her big thing is empowerment for the safe empowerment means nothing. And she's hating of buzzwords like women holding women up because in her experience when she's been at these tables of these big female CEOs. She's like, oh, I'm soliciting a lawyer on XD or how much did you pay for yours and they won't give her the details. And she's like, that's not a real girl's goal. That's not female empowerment. You can say, oh, I'll like your social post, but real pay transparency is empowerment. And I think we're just kind of rolling back

to this very narrow idea of what female empowerment is again. And it's kind of bugging me that she's just doing the girl bullshit again. And I think it's just a shame because these people, could be saying really interesting things. She could be talking about that. Pay transparency is an issue, but it's also an issue. The fact that workplaces do not accommodate people unless they are childless, unless they can give 60-hour plus to a job, those people will skyrocket and get promoted and reach a level of success that most people cannot. They have chronic illness if they decide to pause their career to have a child and then try and re-enter. It's just rather than tackling those issues and doing interesting things with her power in this like workspace. It's just like very narrow

for very ambitious women who, or very ambitious people who decide to take a singular path, which is her path. And I don't think she's interested in tackling it in any deep way. And maybe I'm putting too much on her. I just feel let down a bit because I guess there is so much potential for people who get to have these rooms, get to have these platforms that are just the highest people in these working environments to do these things and they just don't want to. I think it's such a thought time to be saying this as well because so many people, I mean, we know the birth threat is declining and we've spoken about it a million times and a lot of that is just people choosing to be childless. But a big portion of that is actually people going, I can't afford to have children.

When you've got a woman being there being like, I've got this multi-million pound career and I've got children and I'm doing that. I think it just feels so tone deaf because there are people genuinely going like I would absolutely love to have children, but I simply can't afford it. I can barely afford to pay my rent. And we had a message from Moni, which read, I so wish women could have it all, but I don't think that will ever be the case. I'm personally happy to choose domestic life. over my career now. That also made me feel sad because the truth is the reason we can't have it all is because we end up doing it all. So even those women who are career women are still being essentially the full-time parent, the parent who thinks the most, the one who takes on the most mental

load. And so you're always acting from a place of deficit. What really needs to be substituted in here is not taking away the possibility for women to have careers and to be mothers, which is this massive societal change that happened when women could go into work and then nothing else was ever implemented to then factor in for the fact that women do all of this unpaid labor all the time anyway. It needs to be structural governmental change in terms of availability of childcare, the cost of kind of like nurseries, flexible timings on working so that parents can, you know, go and pick up their kids, you know, increase paternity leave. There are other countries that do facilitate this better than others, but mothers are just underserved systematically to the point where you

do have people saying, like what Molly just said, you know, I guess I'll just choose my domestic life over my career. That's also an absolutely stellar choice if that's what you want. I just makes me feel sad that more often than not now, most women are faced with that option, which is career and I won't even try to have children because I don't think I'll be able to afford it or have the time or be capable of it or I'll have my kids and I guess my career is, you know, a pipe dream. And actually, Beth re-shared this quote from Barbie, which she was like saying how when it first came out, she didn't get it and everyone got really angry at her. And the quote is when the character who's played by the mum from Matilda says, mothers stand still so that our daughters can see how

they've come. And everyone got really, everyone got really cross about at the time. But that is essentially what Molly's message is. It's like, I guess I'll wait here. I'll pause now. And then my children, I'll give them a better like. And it's like, we should be at a better point than this. But also economically, we're at a place where like, no one's out earning their parents. That's the first time that's not happened in the years, like that we are, everything feels quite regressive. So to have this, I guess, one main character who's kind of fixed a really specific situation and her individual scenario that means that she can have it all, it's inspiring to some, but I can see how it's just totally devastating to others. On the working from home thing, just to wrap this up, I know

it's such an uneven playing field when it comes to working from home. I know that at least in journalism, a lot of magazines have brought people back in four days a week, my partner's in four days a week and we had a message from Amy who said, I'm a lawyer and sadly I have found that whilst hybrid working has zero impact on my work, it has limited my opportunities for growth. Sadly, there is still way too much focus on being physically present in the office. It's almost like those who are physically more present are seen as more committed and therefore rewarded. I don't think Emma's comments are wrong. I wish they were and maybe it's not a bad thing to be highlighting this fact so that women aren't missold working from home as a magic answer for being able to do have it all. I do wish instead that the

focus was more on how we can change this to make the workplace fairer for all. And yeah, it just, if you have any more thoughts about working from home or your feelings about motherhood and work and attempting to have it all as a woman, please do you send them in. It's always relevant for us. Yeah. And do you think it really is that without the girl boss, we gain the tradwife? And if it's not girl boss or trad wife, what is the secret third thing? Because that's what we've all got to start maxing, although I do agree with everyone that says we've got to stop using the word maxing thing, but let's secret third thing, Max, whatever that is, not girl boss, not tradwife, the secret third thing.

Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We genuinely read all of them and they guide our discussions and if we could read them all we would. So please do keep sending them in. Please also give us a follow on Everything is Content Pod on Instagram and TikTok. And even more importantly, a review, we read and love them all and a Spotify comment. We have been adoring chatting in the comments with you. We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye.

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