the bossbabe podcast - 325. Emma Grede, Multi-Billion Dollar Brand Founder on Mastering Your Craft + Building Cult-Like Brands

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

If you had the opportunity to pitch a business idea to Kris Jenner - would you be ready? We’re revising a conversation I had with Emma Grede, a genius in the fashion industry who worked her way from retail to Co-Founder and CEO of Good American, founding partner at Skims, and Co-Founder of natural cleaning solution company Safely with Kris Jenner (+ being a mom of 4 and so much more.) Emma shares how she’s intentionally built relationships, while staying focused on her principles and helping others win. Including how Good American set the standard for inclusivity in the fashion industry and beyond. This episode is packed with lessons for how to master your zone of genius and how powerful relationships are for your business whether you’re looking for a business partner or not.  HIGHLIGHTS The career and entrepreneurial journey that led Emma to being CEO and Co-Founder of Good American + more The power of building relationships and genuinely seeing how you can help others get what they want How Emma pitched Kris Jenner the idea for Good American LINKS Listen to the FULL episode with Emme Grede - How I Made History In The Fashion Industry + Broke Industry Standards With Good American CEO Emma Grede FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

It was always about this campaign in the moment and not a truth in the company and an ode to being diverse. It was just about, oh, this is what we need for the moment. And I was like, well, wouldn't it make sense if a company actually just behaved like this all the time, where it was truly inclusive and truly diverse and not just in how it presents itself in a certain marketing campaign, but actually within the company as well as on the outside. A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Bay podcast. All right, you guys, happy Thursday.

Things have been really interesting this week. I think I told you guys we had no childcare and that has meant that family have flown in to support us, which has been absolutely incredible. We've just got a full house right now and it's so energizing and fun and I love that Noemi gets to be around all of her family it's just been incredible having the best time and then on the work side we'll just do like a life update why not on the work side chaos like I love to be open with you guys absolute chaos so so many things have been going well I did a keynote at Brendan Bouchard's event coaching summit last week, and it just went so well. I was so nervous. It was my

first proper keynote and I just absolutely loved it. And I really, really want to do a lot more of that. So that was amazing. Um, I also told them on stage, what's actually coming in boss babe. There is something so big coming in Boss Babe so soon. Like if you're listening to this, it's coming in a few weeks. I've said this many, many, many times, but if you are not a society member, join the society. It's bossbabe.com slash membership. You are going to really kick yourself if you don't end up joining because every single paying member at the time that we launch this product is getting it completely free and it is going to be more than double the price

of the society so you're going to kick yourself if you don't have a membership so get a bossway membership that is the most important action you need to be taking from this podcast is get a boss membership it's really important but something really really big is coming if you also join you can also watch the q a session i did the session last week, or I actually told them what was coming. If you are a member and you haven't seen that yet, definitely dive in. But anyway, that's not what's been chaotic at work. That's been great. That's been going so well at Boss Babe. We are building something that is truly my best work yet. I think it is world-class. I've never seen anyone else do it. It's incredible.

But on the chaos side, so our email deliverability, which is basically our open rate, click-through rate, all of that, we have hundreds of thousands of people on our email list. It's our biggest asset in the company. Our deliverability has always been really, really good. And I'm always thinking about how we can improve this. And I got cold emailed by he kept following up and sending me really valuable emails and he was talking about how he really thinks he could boost our deliverability and get our open rates like 50 60 percent which on hundreds of thousands of emails that's huge for your business so anyway I checked out a company I actually know the founder you know we're not best friends but we're in similar circles I really thought yeah yeah I trust this company so why not let's give it a shot so we hired them let me just be clear we hired them to improve email deliverability our domain before that was like really high status

all that stuff like green ticked all the boxes it was awesome to say they fucked up is the biggest understatement of the century. They got our entire bosswave.com blacklisted. We cannot send emails to our list and have them land in inbox. So a lot of you listening, if you're on our email list, you're like, where did your newsletter go, Natalie? It went into spam and it has been the biggest mess up I think we have had in the company so it's been a nightmare working with this team because actually diving in I won't mention the team that's just not something I would do but by the way if any contractors or agencies say that Boss Babe's a client please just email Boss Babe for a reference because so many agencies say they've worked with us they actually haven't and I really don't want you to work with this agency.

You would never find out who it was if you Googled email deliverability or whatever, because that's just not their main service. Clearly, you know, I don't want to bad mouth them, but just please email for a reference. Anyway, they completely screwed it up. So we have been unable to send emails. Emails is our biggest driver of revenue. It's not the best way that we keep in touch with people. It's been a nightmare. I mean, thankfully, we still have all of our emails. Worst case,

we need to get a new domain and start warming up a new domain and sending from that. So we're just in repair mode right now. And I just share this because I don't ever want anyone to think that behind the scenes of my business is like rosy and it's perfect. It's not. Businesses never perfect. There's always something. And this is our something right now. So it's been intense. There have been lots of curse words said. There have been lots of stressful moments among my team

because we're a strong team of A players. And we just don't often deal with stuff like that because we really double, triple check our work and this agency didn't do that and just basically sent out something they should never have done and it was a whole mess so pray for us and hope that your newsletter lands in your inbox sometime soon that'll be great but anyway going into this episode I am really excited to share this one with you so this is a moment taken from a previous interview that we did with Emma Greed. So she has actually built a multi-billion dollar empire. She is the CEO and co-founder of Good

American. She's a founding partner at Skims and she's also the co-founder of Safely. So she has business partners with Khloe Kardashian, with Kim Kardashian, with Kris Jenner. She is an incredible entrepreneur. And this conversation was just so, I just learned so much. It was really transformational. And this moment in particular that I want to share with you was incredible. So with that, I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you don't employ anyone to improve your email deliverability anytime soon. Let's dive into the episode. My first real job, so outside of retail, was actually working at an event production company. And so I was part of the team that would do fashion show production. And I love anything to do with fashion. That had been my absolute love and passion since being a kid. And so for me, being able to work at London Fashion Week and be close to the designers and PR and everything that went around producing a fashion show was so exciting. And then I found myself in this really kind of precarious and sort of narrow role, which was actually doing sponsorships. So finding money and collaborative partnerships for

designers so that they could essentially have the cash that was needed to put their shows on. So it was extremely niche and something that when thinking back, you always wonder how you find yourselves in certain jobs. But I just had what is known now as gift of the gap. And I was good at conveying my real passion and real kind of dedication to wanting to work with these designers. And so I found myself in a pretty small company. And I, in my kind of view, looking back on it now, you know, I was a big fish in a small pond. I was still very low down in the company, but it was a relatively small company. And so I found myself in this great position of being able to speak directly to brands and broker these partnerships between brands and fashion designers. And that for me is where everything started.

So what was that like? I'm guessing when you first started, you were pretty inexperienced in this because you were young. So what was that like learning everything and how did you move your way up? Were you just hustling like crazy? What did that look like? Yeah, it was just a hustle because at that point I had come out of studying business at fashion college or dropped out, I should say. And really for me, it was about the hustle. It was like having the passion because I really, really loved the brands and the designers

that I was tasked with going out and finding sponsorship for. And so there was a genuine, I wouldn't say understanding of their businesses, but a genuine understanding of like what they were trying to do and what they were trying to convey. And all I can say is that being really horribly inexperienced, I probably just got through on sort of passion and hustle alone, you know, because I really didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't a sophisticated negotiator that understood how to structure really complex sponsorship type agreements that were multi-season and there were product components of those and other contractual components that would certainly outlast where I was in that negotiation. But I was really keen and I was really passionate and I'm a good salesperson and

so I really just hustled my way through and then I guess I was just good enough to learn. I think every contract I ever did you would pick something up, you'd learn something that would make the next negotiation better or the next conversation better but it was really like sales. It was cold calling because it's not like I had a bank of contact. By that point, I then sort of turned 18 years old, but I didn't know anyone. And so you were really on a whim, cold calling, trying to get the right person, a decision maker on the phone who had the keys to some type of budget. And it was just pure hustle. I love that. And so what did that journey look like from starting on the ground and starting to forge these relationships to eventually becoming managing director of a company and then CEO,

which is such a massive jump? It was a jump. It feels like a jump even now. It's really interesting because I think for most people, somewhere along the way, you find someone that believes in you. And I was very lucky in that very early years of my career, you're kind of naive enough to just maneuver your way around. And then I found myself, I guess like my second job that I landed myself at was at this fantastic PR agency in London.

And the two guys that essentially owned that holding company saw something in me and they said, hey, what you're doing is really interesting. And have you thought about starting your own company? And honestly, when I think about it, Natalie, I never had thought about the end result and that being making good money, working around the people that I felt passionate about. And I'd never really thought about that in the context of my own business. But it became very apparent. I'm a bit of a lone wolf. And even in any company that I've worked in, you know, in the first company, I kind of was in this sponsorship division on my own. And then my second job, I was kind of outlier and support division of the PR company. And so I was effectively pretty much doing my own thing. Anyway, I just never

really contextualized it at the time as that entrepreneurial spirit. I was just getting on with things and doing what I'd always done and finding a way. And it was really Jens and Eric at the Saturday group that saw that in me and said, we'd like to support you in starting something that is your own thing. And I thought, great, why not? It seemed like a good idea at the time. And how were you so I was 23 24 at that point which is so young to go out on your own in that industry especially yeah it was young and I think I felt you know it was this amazing time in London in the company that I was in it was called the Saturday Group and it was a culmination of a lot of different agencies, wholesale sales and a fashion advertising agency and PR. And they had the greatest client roster that there was. And

there were these two incredible entrepreneurs at the helm of that company that I really respected. And so in that way, for entrepreneurs, it can be really difficult because what you're good at isn't necessarily what keeps a business ticking, right? They gave me was almost like the infrastructure, the legal, the accounting, the office, like the physical office and the back office. And so it was a really easy thing for me in the beginning because I just got to do what I was really good at. And so until we actually decided to spin that out and create its own entity entirely, I almost was cocooned. And then, of course, that only lasted so long until we decided, actually, this is going to be really successful. And we spun it out into its own thing.

And that's how ITB was essentially born, which is the company that I founded and spent the next 10 years of my life building. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible.

I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe. And so what made you start to decide to take the leap from ITB to founding your own fashion company? Had you been doing that stuff in the interim or what was that journey like? Well, it was interesting because what we did at ITB were talent-based partnerships and there'd been this real shift in the industry.

When I started, it was all about attaching the biggest, most fabulous A-list talent you could to brands, right? So when you see Natalie Portman in a Dior commercial, those were the types of deals and agreements that I was putting together. And then you kind of had this onslaught of the beginning of influencers. And it was early days. No one had a manager.

There were no big agencies. You were often dealing with the influencer direct or their mom or their boyfriend. And we saw that happen. And then there came this almost next onset of agreements that was really about celebrity and talents taking equity in brands. And so I did a couple of those agreements that were really high profile and very successful. And then you kind of look back and you go, wow, that's great. And I was paid handsomely and got a brilliant fee for this. But look what's happened now in the wake of like having put that together. You know, you've got these two person and a company that have actually created a really great business together. And so for me, I then just was like, well, I need to do that for myself.

And so that was really what got everything ticking. And I thought, well, what do I want to do? You know, I'd spent the first sort of 10 to 15 years of my career almost falling into what it was that I was doing. I never felt like it was a conscious choice of, oh, I'd like to partner up artists and brands or celebrities and brands. It's just what happened. And so it was the first moment in my career that I'd had a moment to actually stop and think, what do I actually want to do? And I knew that I wanted to be closer to having a more creative role, but I was also very aware of what I was good at, which is more the kind of business and strategy side of things. And like I've said, I consider myself to be a pretty good salesperson. So I thought, how can I take everything that I know I'm really good at? And then I also saw what was happening in the industry and being around fashion. I was very aware that you had this sort of mainstream fashion industry that served the

majority or what seems like the majority of women. But then as you started digging a little bit deeper, you know, you had this little plus size industry that was actually serving most women, and the two had nothing to do with each other. And so for me, I was like, there's going to be an opportunity in putting these two things together. And actually, when I started to dig a little bit deeper, it became so apparent that I was going to build a business that was based on the principles that I really believed in and saw in my own life as being true. And that of women, I think, regardless of our differences, we have a lot more in common than we do have differences. And so I thought it would make sense to start a brand with inclusivity being right at the heart of it. And I've been part of way too many, I guess, you know, putting campaigns together for brands where you're almost casting by numbers. It was

like, well, we need this girl for this region and this person for this region. And it was always about this campaign in the moment and not a truth in the company and an ode to being diverse. It was just about, oh, this is what we need for the moment. And I was like, well, wouldn't it make sense if a company actually just behaved like this all the time, where it was truly inclusive and truly diverse and not just in how it presents itself in a certain marketing campaign, but actually within the company as well as on the outside. And so that's really how the idea of Good American started. And going back to that, you seeing the rise of celebrities taking equity in brands, and you were the one that was helping brands and celebrities do that. How did you even get

a start in that? How did you get to know these people? Because I imagine in that world, you started just like you said, you're a very good salesperson and going out there and doing lots of brand partnerships and fashion. So how were you starting to get these contacts under your belt? You know, it's really interesting. I had a reputation. So what started with just me, and it was me for a long time, I think for like the first four or five months, I was completely on my own. And then I bought an assistant in, you know, another agent in. But, you know, I guess four or five years into the company at that point, I had a reputation. And so I'd really cornered the market for fashion, lifestyle, luxury, retail brands. I understood the fashion business and really understood the entertainment business and what it means to put those two things together. And so you start to have a reputation as almost like the exporter of American talent

to Europe. So I was working on behalf of a lot of these big European brands bringing the big US talent in. And so it made sense that if you had done an advertising deal with somebody or a little PR deal, and they wanted to work with talent in a broader capacity that they would call me and so it was really by reputation alone. I love that and it really just goes to show what can happen if you do work hard and you're building relationships not just thinking how they're going to benefit you but actually really showing up and showing how you can help people. So speaking of Good American you started talking about why it really mattered to you to start a business like this and so so I'm curious, did you have this idea and then you thought, okay, Chloe would be an amazing person to partner with on this? Or did the two of you

come together and think, okay, what business are we going to start? Like which part came first? No, it was really, I had an idea for a product. So I think once I'd started thinking about, oh, I'd like to actually have a business where there was talent involved, but it was a business that was built on purpose. I then started thinking about the fashion industry and product. And really, for me, it was about focusing in on these pain points. So women find it horrible to shop for jeans and horrible to shop for swimwear. And so for me, denim made sense because I'd had a lot of denim clients. I'd been around that industry and I thought I understood it. And so that was the kind of big awakening was,

can I make a better pair of jeans? And I thought, absolutely yes, because nobody's making jeans for a real curvy body. So that was the first thing. And then I started thinking about who would be a really great partner to come on board in this with me. And actually, the first person I thought about was Chloe. And really, the reason for that was because, A, I had the relationship. And I have to be honest about that. You know, I knew Kris Jenner. I could get her on the phone.

We'd had lunch a number of times. And we'd done a number of high-profile deals together, but never with Chloe. And then I also thought about what's the right type of personality, because you're always trying to think about a match for what you're trying to do. And what I really understood about Chloe is that she'd been different sizes, she was on this kind of massive body positivity journey, but she'd never really changed, like from an outside. And at this point, I'm a fan, I'm just another girl watching the show. But to me, she always seemed so confident, confident regardless of her size and so I went to Chris really pitching what

I knew of Chloe on the show and saying don't you think that she'd be interested in this and she was like well maybe but you have to speak to Chloe and then the rest is history. I love that and was Chloe your first business partner or had you had business partners in the past because I know you were essentially out on your own even though you had the you were kind of with another company yeah was this your first business partner she was my first real business partners what I had before were really investors so I was like a you know a lone wolf in my own setup with investment and that was really interesting because what I run was a joint venture so I'd taken investment from two different entities, from two different companies. And that was a huge

learning curve in itself because essentially I always had to balance the two sides and that being two very different agendas. And again, took a lot of those learnings into what I was doing for Good America. And so I was like, okay, I don't want to have to sacrifice my principles for whoever is coming into this company to back it. And I think one of the first things Chloe and I spoke about were like, what do we really want to do? What do we really believe in? And she got what I was trying to do immediately because she was that girl. She had been on the outskirts of fashion, not being able to fit into samples, not being sent the same things as her sisters had. And so she, to me, was like the poster girl for what I was trying to convey. And then it was really easy because we were like, OK, we're going to do this.

Then what does inclusivity mean? And we were like, all the sizes. Well, what is all the sizes? You know, so it really was this kind of beginning naive conversations. But out of those early conversations, I think came the principles by which we run the business still to this day. And actually even thinking about the moment that we're in now, where ultimately all businesses are having to make sacrifices and we have steadfast to our principles. So we're like, of course, we are going to have to pivot and change what we're doing. But there's a set of principles by which we operate. And actually, those are the things that really keep you focused in a moment like this and almost sort out what you need to do for you

because it's like we're not going to sacrifice on these things but then we can give on these other things i love that and i love that you're talking about it because i completely agree still means pivoting in line with your values and sometimes times like this really just force us to take a good look at what we're doing because when everything's going so well you can be spending time on things that might not be driving revenue or driving an ROI but the minute something like this happens it's like okay let me really re-examine what we're doing and also keep it aligned absolutely I also think Natalie and I think it's really important to say that also happens when you're successful and then when you're really not successful right because you start to spend your time on things that seem important but aren't

so when you're really really busy or when you're not really that busy it somehow kind of gets you off kilter and I think one of the things that I really try to focus on in my life is having very very specific goals because there are so many, when you're in a business like Good American, there are so many options. There are so many opportunities. There's so much that we can do. And in any given day, I have to be extremely focused. And so for me, if it's not getting me close to one of my goals, then I just say no. And it's a really great way to prioritize what you're doing every day. you have your principles and you have your goals and that ultimately determines how you're going to spend your time I absolutely love that and I want to go into that even more so what does it look like for you to

have very very specific goals and given how much you could be doing how do you decide what those are well first of all I think it does all come back to this idea of principles. And in Good American, that is really about what we set out to do, right? We wanted to serve all women. And there are lots of corners that you can cut, cost savings that you can make. And honestly, when you're sitting in a moment like what's happening right now, you have to stop and think, wow, like if you're launching a new category, would it just be easier if we shot it all on one model? Well, yeah, it would.

And it would be a damn sight cheaper too. But that isn't what we do. And the customer has come to have an expectation for what Good American is going to give them. And so that's not a corner that we're willing to cut. But there are other areas where you can be more nimble. And so again, I think it all comes back down to having a set of principles

and knowing that is ultimately what is not just what customers have come to expect from you, but why you're successful. Because if I trace back and look at all of the things that have ultimately happened in our company, sometimes they're not the things that I spent the most time on. It's like size 15 was such a revelation for Good American, but it wasn't like a big piece of strategy. It was looking at some returns data and understanding that we were essentially like missing a whole bunch of women that fell between this kind of plus and missy size. And so I was like, let's make a middle size. Okay. And then we did it. But, you know, it turned out to be this big defining moment for the company.

And sometimes things like that happen if you act on your gut and if you act on your principles. The principles of our company are to serve all women. And so if you're missing something and you fill it in, that is just brilliant. So it worked for the customers, it worked for our principals. So I often find if you can keep going back to those things, that they guide you as opposed to the other way around. you