Woman Evolve with Sarah Jakes Roberts - Stop Playing Small, Darling w/ Emma Grede

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

So much of what you need can be found within, but ambition has to find you working. Just ask Emma Grede, one of today's most influential and highly accomplished self-made women. Seemingly born rogue and unbothered by the rules, she and Sarah Jakes Roberts peel back the layers of how an East London upbringing taught her to move in truth, no matter the room. And let's not romanticize the process, sis. You'll face unenjoyable work, self-limiting beliefs that aren't yours, and emotions that take advantage of your patterns. But our girl Emma made it clear. It's the prerogative of a woman to look after herself. So start where it matters most—start with yourself and pre-order a copy of her book today!

Welcome to the Woman Evolve podcast. My name is Sarah Jake's Roberts. I am so glad that I get to be with you this week. You know, this week's mind your business question has been stuck in my head just like on repeat on loop because she echoes something that I thought was true that I had to learn actually wasn't true. It's about learning to forgive ourselves primarily when we're in our youth and how challenging. can be before. I give you my answer and my own story, though. I want to hop right into it. So let me play it.

Hi, Sarah. I have a question. So, first off, I love you so much and I just thank you for who you are and everything that you represent. I was listening to your podcast about messy histories and you were talking about Tamar and a lot of things that she experienced and how God knew her heart

and everything like that. And he also wanted to how some of the things you went through, you healed from them by understanding that God recognize your efforts, your intentions, and he shows you grace and mercy. And looking back, you no longer have any form of regret or guilt on what you went through because everything panned out the way it's supposed to. As someone that's in the early 20s and can't really necessarily see or really comprehend what exactly the future holds. How are you supposed to about healing from a path that seems so close? Like through the process of time, you're able to kind of heal because the past becomes further and further away. And I think that's how you overcome certain

obstacles. But when you're actually in it or when you're young or you don't have that ability to really say that you experience life enough to kind of look back to that. I can say, I don't, I don't regret this. I don't regret that. How are you able to get over that? How are you able to be able to say that, you know, everything worked out for my good if you're still in process? You don't necessarily know that everything is going to work out for your good.

If that makes sense. So hopefully that makes sense. And if I could just get clarity on that, I would greatly appreciate it. God bless you. I think that I felt like, she did that the older I got, the easier it would be for me to forgive myself. What I didn't know until I was probably 22 years old, I was at a point where I can't necessarily say that I had forgiven myself as much as I was at a place where I had accepted myself. Just because you accept

the skin that you're in doesn't necessarily mean that you forgive the steps that you took in order to get to where you are. I shared my story at my dad's conference and these were. And these women came up to me, they were 70 years old, 80 years old, and they said things like, I got pregnant as a teenager too. And when you got up there, you told my story and I haven't forgiven myself either. It wasn't until I heard those stories that I realized that time does not ensure that you will forgive yourself. Just because the days pass by, it doesn't mean that there's this secret sauce of forgiveness that you'll experience in each day, that it really is about what you do with the time. So it doesn't matter whether your mistake was yesterday and you're waiting for new

experiences to distance you from your mistakes or they were 20 or 30 years ago. There is no indicator of when you'll be able to forgive yourself that is based on time. Instead, it is based on this principle that I have learned that I want to share with you who called in and maybe those of you who are listening who are wondering what it means to forgive yourself. I want you to recognize that forgiveness has a lot to do with compassion. We're talking about forgiving ourselves and in many ways it's saying I no longer want to be defined or limited by the mistakes that I made in the past. When I need to forgive myself, it is because I am in some way defining myself by what took

place or defining my potential for my future based off of what took place and I want to be free from that. There is something powerful that happens when we begin to have compassion for the version of ourselves that we have unforgiveness or regret towards. When I think about my life, a lot of the decisions and the pain that I experienced was a direct result of the choices that I made. And because of those choices, I wanted to experience forgiveness. When I began to look at why I made those choices, I got one step closer to compassion. when God looks at your life and God looks at the choices you made and the decisions that you made, God's not just looking at what you did. God is seeing why you did it. It doesn't mean that God's like,

oh, it's okay because I understand why they did it. It means that God can hold both truths in his hands that I understand why. I understand what and I can still cause something good to come from that. I understand why you did what you did, that you were in pain, that you were hurting, that those thoughts, and mentalities have become normal for you based off of where you came from. I understand why you did it. It doesn't change the fact that I want something different for you, that I want something different from you. And the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to teach us and to guide us into making the types of decisions that God knows we're capable of making. And so I ask the Lord to help me, one, to see myself the way that you see me. And we hear this said a lot maybe in faith spaces.

I want to see myself the way that God sees me. And that doesn't mean I just want to see the good parts of myself. Lord, I want to see the way you look at my pain. I want to see the way you look at my mistakes. I want to see the way you look at my failures so that I can see them from a lens of love. God is love. So when God is looking at the choices you made, God's not looking at them and he's pointing a finger saying, I'm condemning you and I don't want anything to do with you.

God sticks close to us even in those moments where we haven't made the best choices because no matter how dark or difficult, the choices we've made are, God can lead us into perfect truth, into a better way of living, believing, and thinking. And so as it relates to learning to forgive yourself, I want you to begin to ask God to help me see my mistakes, my failures, my insecurities, the moments where I was a villain, help me to see them the way that you see them

so that I can have compassion for myself. When I think about me being 13 years old and a teenage mother, I can tell you, this is how I know God is done to work in my heart. I used to feel so much shame. Like, I used to cringe at who I was. Like, how could you be so stupid? How could you make those choices? How could you have been so dumb?

These are the words that I used to say to myself. Now when I think about that 13-year-old girl, I see the whole story. I see how she felt abandoned. I see how she felt rejected. I see how she was looking for love in all the wrong places. And the most immediate thing that I feel beyond anything is compassion. you got to find a way to take care of yourself, even if that means in some ways feeling sorry for yourself

that you made those choices, not bad about yourself, but sorry for yourself. I'm sorry that you made those choices. I'm sorry that you were hurting. I'm sorry that you were broken. When you can begin to have compassion for yourself, you can begin to receive the love of God for yourself and the settling of God for yourself.

And the settling of God is when you realize that God can still meet me, where I am. There's a scripture in the Psalms that says, if I make my bed in hell, you'll be with me. That means that the love of God can chase me into some of the most darkest moments of my life that the Lord's grace and mercy is available to me no matter what. So I don't know what you have experienced. I don't know what you're trying to distance yourself from. But my suggestion is this. Maybe instead of running from it, you confront it. You stare it down with love. You stare it down with compassion. and you stare it down with the belief that no matter how bad life has been,

that God can still make good out of difficult circumstances. Like I said last week, it is Financial Literacy Awareness Month, and we talked about that thing called revenge spending, but I want to propose to you for financial literacy awareness that your budget and TLC could have something in common. Stick with me. Have you ever heard TLC talk about them creeping? So I creep.

Sometimes your lifestyle begins to creep, and when your lifestyle begins to creep, your budget begins to creep, and it happens so subtly that you don't even recognize it. It's called lifestyle creep. And when lifestyle creep becomes a part of our spending habits, it's when things that used to be considered discretionary where we didn't have to have them now become mandatory. Maybe we get a bigger car or a better car because our increase happened on our salary, or maybe you need prime. to bring it between seven to 11 instead of just waiting until the end of the day, those little incremental creeps begin to impact your budget. When we talk about financial literacy, we know that there are big things that can cause us to have some financial decline, whether it is dead or making large purchases or maybe just having payday loans. We always talk about those big items, but this week and for the months to come, I want you to consider the subtle ways that your lifestyle begins to creep. You might be able to wait 15 to 20 minutes extra for your door dash. Maybe we plan ahead for the groceries. We schedule them so we don't need them there in the

moment. Pay attention to those little ways that your lifestyle begins to TLC because you don't have time to be robbed by premium services at a time when we're trying to have premium vacations. That is your financial literacy awareness tip for this week. And again, if you need more support, more resources. I want to encourage you to visit Woman Evolve TV where we've got, listen, you can do a seven-day free trial, get all of the information you need, and then cancel the subscription because sometimes that's the only way that you can get what you need without letting that lifestyle creep. Let me start by saying this. Before we get into this week's interview, I want to say this, I have been forced to become a business girly. It is not my default setting. I love what I get to do, where I get to talk with

women where I get to write, where I get to speak to all different types of people. But I realize that the moment that I began having to build a business and to pay people and to pay contractors and have insurance that I am not going to be able to do this and just catch vibes, I'm going to have to become a business girl. And it is not my default setting. It is not what I've always wanted to do. So I am always eager to listen to people who have that natural instinct towards business. Emma Greed is one of those people who have that natural instinct towards business. I started reading her book and I thought, oh, you know, how good can it be? Chow, it's very good. It's very good. First of all, she starts off by just getting our lives together,

like off the bat. You have to get this book. It's going to change your life and it is going to give you practical tools and a plan for how to start with your own limiting beliefs, your own plan, your own strategies so that you can get your life moving towards a direction of fulfillment and execution that changes the way that you see yourself and your potential. For those of you who don't know, Emma Greed is a businesswoman, serial entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She is the founding partner of Skims, the co-founder and CEO of Good American, and on the board of directors for the Obama Foundation. Need I say anything else? My girl is out here doing her good work, and she is dropping gems for you and for me that's going to change the way. Listen, not just the way that we do business,

but the way that we do life, the way we take care of ourselves, the level of assertiveness that we bring into the room. She has helped me with this book understand some leadership skill sets that I had that were underdeveloped and it's helping me to begin to develop them

towards intention and strategy that I believe is going to be impactful for decades to come. She launched Good American in 2016. She made the list for America's richest self-made women under 40 by Forbes in 2022. In 2025, Emma teamed up with fashion designer and Kristen in the National Football League and Fanatics to launch a sports apparel brand called offseason. You are going to be inspired and empowered by this conversation. Let's get into it.

Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have this conversation with you. You're like my new favorite person in my head. Likewise, my darling, I'm so happy to be here. You know, this year for Woman Evob, all we are talking about is going rogue. So I opened this book and I'm thinking to myself, what are some of the themes that I will have to extrapolate in order to figure out how Emma Greed has gone rogue? I'm two paragraphs in when I'm like, you know what?

Emma was born rogue. She was born breaking the rules. Like you have this clarity, decisiveness, assertiveness. Most books like this, there's like this warm introduction. You're trying to be relatable, trying to make sure everyone's uncomfortable. I feel like you just come out of the door like, this is who I am, this is where I'm headed, this is who I'm not, and let's go. Have you always been rogue?

Most of all, that is such an introduction. You know, for somebody who is so strategic and planned for and considered, about what they do. Rogue is an unsettling thing for me to even think about. I think that I am really honest. And what I've learned in my life and my career is that being dishonest only is ever doing a disservice to me. And when I decided to write this book,

I thought that, you know, if I'm actually going to create something that will truly be like a tool for ambitious women, then it has to start with the truth. It has to start with honesty. because I honestly believe that one of the big things that's holding us back in the culture at large at the moment is the idea that women are supposed to behave a certain way and feel a certain way. And I just am over it. I'm done with it.

And I really believe that some of my behaviour and the way that I act is the reason that I've been able to be successful. And if we've got more role models that are able to talk to us in a different way and show us a different way to be, then perhaps we'll start exhibiting some of those behaviors. I love that because I feel like women have been taught to set their intentions towards being nice, being kind, being palatable. And you said, I just want to be honest. Giving women permission to be honest about their journey, their dreams, their potential, that is unnecessarily revolutionary.

And to your point, unnecessarily revolutionary, because we're surrounded by men who state their ambition, who state exactly what they want. They talk about what they need and why they need it and how they're unashamedly going to go and get it. And yet, when a woman does that, it's like, really? She ain't going to put her kids first. She's not going to talk about how much she's going to give away in her business. She's not going to talk about impact and purpose and all of these other things.

What I want women to understand is that we can all do deeply meaningful work and be properly compensated for it, that you can actually care about money and care a lot about other things. things as well. And I think the balance that we've got right now is completely out of whack. Okay, so I want to get into that a little bit later because the way that your book sets this conversation up, you don't just necessarily dive right into it. Although, I was surprised that we start off like, I feel like you mentioned in your book, a coming to Jesus meeting, this feels like a come to Jesus meeting. Because really in part one, you start talking about how you plan out your year and then you reverse engineer it backwards into the habit,

and patterns that are required to fulfill whatever that plan is. So can we talk, first of all, a little bit about the progression that you've gone through in order to get to this space of being open and honest and allowing it to show up in your work by first, starting with the plan, and then I want to talk about emotions. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm so glad that you start there. I mean, look, at the end of the day, this book that I've written, start with yourself,

is about self-leadership. It's about what you can do for yourself. and I think that so many of us have hopes and dreams and ambition, but we don't couple that with a concrete vision. And what I mean by concrete vision isn't vision boards, it isn't manifestation. It's what do I want and how am I going to get there? And so when I talk about vision,

I like to get very concrete about it. The life that I want to live is going to require this from a financial perspective. It might not happen in the town that I live in, so I need to go here. So I like to get like really specific around the goals and the vision and what you really want and not be scared of it because I think what holds so much many of us back is that we're not honest with ourselves.

You want to be famous? Say you want to be famous. If you want to be rich, you've got to say you want to be rich because hiding behind your ambition is not going to get you anywhere. So it's at that moment of coming to some sense of truth with yourself, really, really being bold about what the vision is. And I think that if we could get really honest with ourselves and put it down, it helps us articulate what it is that we're going to do. And so I'm not, I don't want people to think about vision in as something that is passive.

It's something that you are going to work towards. It's something that requires a set of actions. No one gets to manifest their way to greatness, right? Ambition has to find you working. And so I want to connect those two things and make sure people understand that part. Emma, you just said ambition has to find you. find you working. Oh, yes. You would just drop a bomb on the WOMBow podcast like that and just keep talking. Okay, so it makes me want to read a part of your book that I feel like really speaks

to that, which we're skipping, because I wasn't going to do this until later, but when I read this. Look at you with the bookmarks. Like Oprah over here. She's like, let me tell you, I read this. You're scurring me over there. You said your success and ability to move forward is not merely a function of lucky happenstance or a grateful mindset or being in the right place at the right time. To be in the right place at the right time, you must put yourself in motion. You must take action and you must take responsibility for that action. Oh yeah. Because again, so many of us are hoping. We're hoping to have the conversation. We've rehearsed things in our heads. And I get so many people that I meet maybe in the street or at an event or backstage at a conference and

they say, will you be my mentor? I'm like, I have 15 minutes. Ask me a question. Yeah. What is it that you need right now and take your moment? And so I think that what I'm trying to say there is that so much of what we need is within us. Right? And I do understand that people find that really difficult to grapple with. But I come from a place where I had nothing. All I had was myself and my dreams. And so I had to figure out how to go from there to where I am now.

And so it had to be me. It had to come from these hands and this ability to make calls. and this ability to write letters, and then the ability to go to work, and none of it ever looks quite like you think it will. I did so much unenjoyable work. You know, it was never like, I want to be in fashion, like I'm going to get into a fact.

No, you don't get that. You get put in a cupboard to pack up samples and not invited to the fashion show that you worked on for three months. You know, so I want to kind of dismantle this idea of what we think it all looks like. And I think that social media has really set up an entire generation to have a disconnection with what it really takes to be successful. There is no such thing as an overnight success.

I have been working since I was 12 years old. I had a paper out. Then I worked in a deli. Then I did a lot of work experience. And then I had a really bunch of terrible jobs that taught me all the different things that I didn't want to do. And so the way that I'm speaking, I'm not an expert, right? I'm not an expert in anything.

All I can tell you is my experience and what has worked for me. And so I'm trying to be really, really clear and honest about this idea that you have to do an unbelievable amount of work to be successful. And anyone that tells you any different is just not telling you the truth. Do you think that there is an element of accountability that comes when we speak our dreams out loud? And that's why we internalize them. Because I'm thinking about my own fear of failure or fear of success

and all of the things that come with it. And it's like if I own this and it doesn't work, then I have to deal with the heartbreak of it not working. so I'd rather not say anything at all and sometimes rather not even put the plan in motion at all because I'm afraid that it's going to fall apart. What do we tell people who've had these experiences where failure keeps them from getting emotion?

Well, the truth is that we all have emotions that rule our decision making. And so this book, and one of the things that I really try to delve into, is for you to have an understanding of those emotions. We all experience fear and joy and anger and guilt. And we have to have an understanding of how that impacts the decisions that we make.

And when you get to the root of it all, you're really doing a lot of work, right? Not just the work that we want to do to get on with our ambition, but the internal work. Like I've understood now at this beautiful age of 43 that I am that a huge part of my job is to get close to myself, to understand the stories that we tell ourselves. And I quote one of my friends in the book, Diane von Furstenberg, and she's the most incredible and brilliant woman, but she says the most important relationship you'll ever have is the relationship you have with yourself. And that starts at a really young age because we tell ourselves what we can do. We tell ourselves what we're capable of. We tell ourselves what stories and journeys and jobs and people offer us. And so you've got to get all of that straight from the outset. So dealing to learning to deal with your emotions. And for me, the big one was anger.

I grew up in a place where the default emotion was to go to anger. Is somebody trying to disrespect me? Is somebody trying to take something that is mine? I felt like I woke up enraged every single day. Now, to be successful in the workplace, that doesn't work. It doesn't work that when somebody does something that you either think is manipulative or they leave you out of something that you immediately go to anger. And so I've had to do a lot of work to understand where did that come from

and how is it not serving me? But equally, we have to realize that fear and guilt, specifically for women, do really similar things. They take the patterns that were ingrained in us as kids, and they take advantage of those patterns. And so if you're not careful and you don't get to grips of the emotional piece of it, you are going to find yourself walking a familiar path.

And I think so many of us feel that. You're like, wait a minute, I'm like back here again? Is this happening to me again? I feel like this. So we've got to learn to deal with a problem. emotions in order to get out of our own way and fulfill our true potential. I love that you haven't had this cookie cutter life because someone's like, you know what, when I get successful, then I'll deal with these emotions.

But until I get there, I do not have time to deal with the anger, the fear, the shame and the trauma. And yet what you are suggesting is that if we are going to arrive there in one piece, that we can deal with it along the way or perhaps even before we throw ourselves full throttle into words. Listen, 100%. if you don't deal with your emotions, they will deal with you. It's just that simple.

There is no choice. It is not the preserve of somebody that has more time or somebody that has more means. You just have to do the work. Do you want to tell the story about you being on the subway? Can I tell you? We could not tell it, but we could tell it. But it's in the book and it's a good, it's. It's one of the things that I really, you know, I have to tell you.

I didn't know you at this point. But when I wrote the book, in my mind's eye, I was always thinking about Oprah. Like, Oprah is my person. And I'm like, you know what, Emma, there's just some stuff that you cannot say in front of Oprah. And this story was one of them because it's so embarrassing and so awful. So the story goes that, you know, every day I would commute to work. And in England, you get on the train, on the underground. And, you know, you put your little ticket in like you were in New York or whatever.

And you go and you go on your merry way to work. And one fateful day, I was in a rush and in a rage and probably things. thinking about how hard done by I was, I would have to get up every day and then do my work experience and then do my studies, you know, very like the opposite of what it means to start with yourself. I was blaming the world for my circumstances. So in a rage, I go down to the tube and somebody is fumbling with the ticket and instead of being patient and instead of having any grace and instead of imagining what that person might go through, I lose it. And I almost kind of move this poor woman out of the way and she mouths to me that she is because I'm saying

excuse me excuse me excuse me and getting really Larry and she says I'm partially death and rather even in that moment of breaking down and saying I'm so sorry I then go oh my goodness what are you like you know blind as well and I just move this woman and I sit on the train 30 seconds after that and I go where who am I? Yes what am I doing like what is what is ruling my attention and the way that I behave right now. And it was in that moment, I think I was probably like 19 years old, that I decided that I have to do something about this anger that is my default way of dealing with anything that's difficult. Because if I don't, I'm going to be doomed. I'm going to be left in a life that is not what I want and doesn't suit me. And so I ended up going

into like a group therapy situation, like a community group therapy situation. But the tools that I learned for anger management there are tools that I still use today. I didn't understand that you could take a breath because where I come from is somebody upsets you, you do whatever you need to do to stop them upsetting you. It was never a thing of like, let's go inside and understand what's happening. It was like, let's react on the outside to show everybody how tough you are. So I've had to really work on figuring out how I can do things in a different way. I want to commend you for telling the story. It's so embarrassing. Literally, I'm sweating three months too right now. No, no, but let me tell you, because this is what gives you credibility.

Because when we talk about women who experience anger and it changes the way you show up in the world, very few people understand the depths of pain that produces that level of anger. And this idea of I just got discontent with myself to me is when everything begins to change. I tell a story all the time about when I was in my first marriage and I got really angry and I got my car and I ran the cars over and over again until there was a woman in the car. It's the whole thing. It's not about my book. It's about your book.

But they call the police on me. I need to read that book. But it was in that moment that I realized I don't like who I am. I don't like the way that I'm showing up in the world. And that really was when you started with yourself. Now you're 19 years old. You're not the superstar that we know now. You're going to group therapy.

To me, it says that you can start anywhere. That it's not just starting with yourself, that no matter what stage of life you're in, that you can start anywhere. And to have the awareness that, like, I may not be able to have the one-on-one therapy, but I can get in a position where I'm around other people. To me, that is healing.

That's the journey. So I'm grateful that you shared the story. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. You talk a lot about, you know, where you've come from and some of the ideas and paradigms that exist as a result of that.

But there are some benefits that you attribute to your success as well that you connect to where you come from. Can we talk about One, can we talk about East London? East London. Is it the ghetto? It's the ghetto.

It's the ghetto. Towers off of cars. Yeah. It's, it was a, you know, it's so interesting because to me, I always felt such a sense of safety being from East London because you live in a true community. People had your back. I lived in like this little cul-de-sac. I knew every single neighbor. If you were hungry, you'd go in somebody else's house and grab a snack.

It was all very idyllic. But by the same token, it's a dangerous place. And when you live in the ghetto, you have an awareness of your level of unsafety. You don't leave your things around because your things are going to get stolen. You don't leave your door open. You know, it's like there's always that sense that you could be in danger somehow. And I'm really lucky because I feel like I was somewhat shielded by my family, because I come from a very tough family.

But in my mind's eye, I wanted to get out of that place. I knew that wasn't where I belonged. But I'm really grateful to that place because it gave me a sense. of who I am. And I think that as a businesswoman, as a woman as a person, having an underlying set of values becomes really, really important. And what I've understood is the things I learned in that place, staying true to your word, right? When you say something, living up to that, being kind to people, really being a person that is about their community and not just being about themselves. And these are all things and traits that I learned in East London that have come into

my business and into my personality so much more as I've got older. And so I really credit that place for just giving me a sense of what was important in life because it was foundational for me. And so you extracted that from that environment. Do you worry now that your children are being raised in a different environment, that some of that grit and tenacity that you were able to acquire there, that they're going to, will they have to work harder? Do you ever think about that? Well, look, I think the fair thing is we all worry about our children, and this is a huge part of my book. I actually think we all worry about our kids a little too much, actually. My kids are growing up in Bel-Air. They're the least gritty kids. They won't last two seconds

in plaster, let me tell you. It's not something I worry about because I think that there's a part of me that kind of would almost want to go out of my way to engineer hardships for my kids because in my head they have it so easy. But they're living their own lives. They're going to have different challenges and my job is really to make sure that they are loved and make sure that they're cared for. But it certainly isn't, you know, as I think is the kind of result of today's style of parenting to move obstacles out of their way. It isn't to make sure that they have a certain type of upbringing. I'm a very, very dedicated hands-on mom who loves her kids. But there's also a line where it stops. Right. There's also this line where I'm like, you're going to have to figure

things out on your own. That's not my job. My job is to make sure that you're loved and cared for. And beyond that, you're going to have to figure some stuff out. And that includes finding who you are and what lights you up and what your passion and your purpose is, but it's certainly not going to be the same as mine because we're not living the same lives. And I feel like they have you too, you know what I mean? Well, they see me, right? They see me every day.

And I think so much of parenting is done in the moments that we don't understand it's actually happening. What are your kids seeing every day? Well, my kids see me every single day. Get up, put on a suit, and go to work. That's their experience. They know that I am living my dreams. when I go away for a few days to New York or to wherever where it is, I might be going,

I don't make excuses to my kids. I don't pretend that, you know, I'm so sad to be leaving and that it's so hard for me to leave. Because usually it's not. Usually I'm quite happy to get like a few days on my own, right? And usually I'm going to do something that I've worked really, really hard for. So I try to just have a level of honesty with them because I am not trying to make them feel guilty and nor am I prepared to walk around feeling guilt for something. something that I really want in my life and for something that I'm really happy to finally be

able to do. That brings me to the next problem with your book. Here we go. Rock him out. So here I am flipping through the book. I'm like, okay, I'm managing my emotions. I'm working through career and now it's to family. Oh, good. And I'm like, she's about to teach me how to balance the family, how to do all of the things with the kids. And, and, you know, no one was more shock than I to open the family portion. And within just the first few paragraphs, the single most, important thing I do every day is look after myself. Oh, what a terrible one. It's in the family. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you got it right. It's in there. Yeah, yeah. So what you're saying to me is that you consider yourself a part of the family. The family's not like a separate entity. So you are... The mom is the family.

I mean, what is the family without the mom? What is the family without the mother who is there, who birthed everybody, who is looking after everybody, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to put everybody's needs before your own. And I think for me to be resource, for me to do what it is that I need to do, because again, I put my dreams and my goals and my ambitions really high up on my list of priorities. That's what's going to make me happy. And if I'm happy, my kids are happy. And if I'm in a good mood, let me tell you,

My husband's definitely in it. And so this isn't to say, and again, I want to make this really, really clear to women. This isn't to say that caring a lot about yourself has to take away from someone else. And this is the trap that we've got ourselves into. We imagine that because you're doing one thing, it immediately takes away from someone else. This is the scarcity mindset. And it happens in money and it also happens in family. And it's a little bit like, you know, anyone who's got like more than one kid, you know,

when you're pregnant with that second kid, you're like, how am I going to love this kid as much as I love the first one? Like it's just not possible. This child is my be all an ender and I love him so much. And then the second kid comes and it grows. Like the love literally grows and expands. And what I know to be true is that the more you look after yourself, the more your capacity to look after other people comes.

And I'm telling you it's true because I've done it. So I just think that while we're all kind of running around trying to think, you know, how far can I stretch my resources, how much should I not do for myself, maybe I shouldn't go and get my hair done because, you know, such and such needs me over here. No, stop with that. Like, absolutely stop with that. Who are you helping? Absolutely no one. And so I really, really believe that it is the prerogative of the mother, or should be the prerogative of the mother, to be able to look after herself. And when I talk about that, it isn't just about haircuts and getting nails done.

This is about going back to that piece about the work. Like, what do you need to maintain your life? What should you be doing? Because it isn't like you push a baby out and all your ambition flies away. In fact, for me, it was the total opposite. When I had a baby, I remember sitting there with him and I'd never felt more ambitious in my whole life. I was holding this, like, living, breathing, human being.

And I was like, now I know what it's all for. Now I know why I worked this hard. and what is like coming in my future and how I want to show up for my kids and how I want to be a role model in my life. So I think that we should probably do away with this idea of like, you know, mom gets the smallest piece of chicken. No, absolutely not.

You know, and even as you're speaking, I'm like making excuses. Well, you know, that wouldn't work for you because of X, Y, and Z. And to your point, it's... Well, can I challenge you? That's your wiring, right? That is actually what the culture has... taught you because we have watched TV and we have watched our own mothers and we have almost like debated with our friends in this like who's getting the least mentality. Like stop with that.

Is that what we want to, is that what we want for our daughters? Because I have four kids, two of them are women. I don't want them to behave like that. Yeah. I don't want them to put themselves long, like last on a list at the end of the day after they're exhausted and then think about themselves. Who is that helping? We need women. We need female leadership. We actually, like, and when I say we, I'm talking about the world needs it. Right. We are really in a time and a place in a space right now where what women uniquely bring to an organization, to a business, to the culture is needed. So why on earth would we do that least resourced? It doesn't make any sense. we need to come into every situation ready to go with our best selves.

And again, if you are sitting around waiting for somebody else to come and say, now is your time, you're going to be waiting. You have to take it for yourself. You have to create what you need yourself. That's exactly why I was going to say, because I find that we're just taking whatever's thrown our way, whether it's whatever time is left over, whatever resources are left over.

And I want to talk specifically professionally as it relates to our compensation or our investment needs, we're just kind of scraping by and doing whatever we can. And you suggest in this book that we have an opportunity to come to the table, owning our full ambition, the potential that exists within our organization,

and demanding for the resources to align whenever possible in the rooms where we have opportunity. I really do, but I actually think before that demand, there's a level of responsibility required. Okay. Because I really believe that, and listen, we have to be able to make some sweeping generalizations without it becoming like a clip on social that, you know, right? So I'm going to make a sweeping generalisation. Women get roughly 3% of VC funding.

It isn't or entirely not our fault. Okay. Right? Men pitch about profitability. women pitch this idea of purpose. And often when you are in a situation where you are going into a room and you are asking for money, you're trying to raise, you're trying to sell your idea. To wrap it up in this idea of performative impact isn't helpful. When you're running a business, you're running a business. The purpose of running a business is to make a profit, whether you like it or not. Now, if you're doing that on your own dime, you do you. But if you're going out to seek capital, to seek funds for your company, You have to get real about what you're doing it for. And that's what this entire book is about. I really want women to understand that, you know, ambition requires some discomfort.

Careers require some sense of proximity. If you want a family, you'll have to think about timing. If you want power, you're going to have to learn to take it. And so when we hide behind the really what is needed and really what we're talking about and we don't think about money and we say, oh, you know what, I'm just going to do this great thing and the money will come. The money doesn't come. It just magically appear.

You have to be really clear. And so I just want to make sure that women start to get their heads around some of these things that hold them back. just because you're clear about your intentions and you're saying that you're creating this business to make a profit, it doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you less than. I have always had companies that have some element of social good that give back, but not before they're profitable.

So when I see somebody pitch me an investment and they tell me that they're going to sell one, buy one, sell one, give one away. I'm like, really? Like before you're profitable, you're going to support. your whole community before you're able to support yourself and your idea and your infrastructure, like it doesn't really make sense. So I think that we've just got to like really get things weighted in the right way. And we're not doing that very well right now. I do. I think part of

this is cultural too, though, because there is this idea of I've got to take care of my entire family. And so I do think that women are going into business thinking to themselves, this is going to be the way that I bring my whole family out. This is going to be the way that I break generational curses of poverty and of financial instability. But owning that first I need to be profitable for myself by myself before I can reach back does require a permission that I don't know that we're comfortable leaning into. And I understand that, you know, more than you might imagine, because coming from where I come from, there's 50, 60, 70 people behind me that either I partially take care of or they would like me to take care of them.

But there's a time and a place even for that. You know, I was really lucky I had Michelle Obama on my podcast. And, you know, she spoke about this idea of her and Barack Obama not being able to pay off their student debt until he'd written his first book. Like it took that long. They didn't buy her mother a house until they were out of the White House. These are two of the most, like, incredible, brilliant, powerful people on earth. there's a timing attached to any of these things, right? Like you cannot think that when you're on your journey,

when you're on your way up, that that is the moment because you have to get yourself into some kind of stable place before you can think about taking care of others because you know what happens, people do it too early, they do it too soon, and all of the sudden they're back down with everybody else. And again, this isn't about being selfish. This is just about what's your starting point?

What are you optimizing for? And so I think that, again, if we could change some of those really deeply rooted ways of thinking to be what they are, it's like you've got to start with yourself. You have to get into a place where you're in a safe enough and secure enough position before you start thinking about everybody else. And we all know it. Everyone has a family tax. When you do well, that's part of what you should expect. You're going to have to bring some people along the way. But you do it at a time that makes sense for you. What's it like working with your husband? Oh, you know, we've worked together for so, so long now. I almost don't remember a time when we didn't work together. You know, the interesting thing is we don't work that closely with one another. We found a way where, you know, like, there are things that he's good at, there's things that I am good at, and we kind of, you know, come together,

but it isn't like we work on the same things. Like, that would never, that would never work for me. But I have a huge amount of admiration for him. And I feel like, you know, he's my biggest cheerleader, you know, like he's the one who maybe believed in me at such an early stage before I even believed in myself. He was my first investor, by the way. Oh, really? Full transparency, I married my investor. Okay, he told, we'll get into that another time because they told me only have 15 minutes left.

Oh, look. But no, when you were about to have a meeting and he told you that you were thinking like an employee. Employee mentality. Yes. You know, it takes someone really close to you sometimes to, like, hit you in the spot. Yeah. But it was so true. And I actually think this is something that a lot of women experience, and we might not be able to put a label on it,

but you know that we're constantly waiting for permission. At this particular time, I was walking into a board meeting. So I'd started my first agency. It was going really well. I was walking in on a profitable quarter and yet feeling really uneasy about asking for more money for myself. And I said this to my husband, and he was like, what do you mean asking for more money? You're going to tell the board as the CEO what it is that you need. And it had never really struck me that, you know, as a person who led everything in the business,

I led the strategy, I would decide what we were doing if we were opening offices in another place, who we were hiring. But I wasn't making those same decisive decisions on my own behalf. Of course, I went in, totally, you know, dropped the employee mentality, everybody what I want, why I needed it, and no one even questioned it. And we went to the next part of the agenda. And so I think sometimes we can be living so much in our heads. And again, we get so caught up in the stories that we tell ourselves that it's just time that you tell yourself a different story. And so I got out of employee mentality because I was like,

this doesn't suit me anymore. This is not serving me anymore. And so I always say to women that come to me, I'm like, is this actually happening or are you telling yourself this? Like, Do other people think this about you? Or have you just repeated this so many times over and over again that you've come to believe that it's an actual thing? And I would say 50, 60, 70% of the time, it's not real. The fact that you said it takes someone close to you to be able to tell you that type of insight

about how you're showing up in the world, I think is the beauty of relationships, but also the vulnerability that is connected to them as well. And I am wondering because you... Sorry. No worries. Excuse me. Because you have such a strong personality and because you have had to survive and pull yourself up

and really make things happen for yourself, what vulnerability was required for you to let someone into your life in such a way that they see not just your strengths, but also the areas where you have opportunity to grow and to feel safe enough to let that happen without fearing that they changed their mind about you? So that's a really brilliant question. And I actually think what it comes down to is getting to what is the truth? Because I think so much of where I come from,

I was constantly in a defensive position, imagining that somehow, because of the experiences of the women around me and because of what I'd seen and thought about men, that something negative was in my path. And what I had to do was detach all the things I'd seen and witnessed in my past to the reality of the person that was sitting in front of me.

And so I had to judge him on his behaviour and the way he treated me and essentially had to get out of my own way because the experiences that I come loaded and coded with were nothing to do with this man. And so I had to take him on face value and that was really difficult because I was telling myself, well, you know, eventually a man will leave you and then eventually a man will do dirty on you and eventually,

but that wasn't what I was getting from him. And so it's a little bit going back to this idea of like, what are you telling yourself and what is true? And the truth for me is that I actually happen to marry a really wonderful person who I think is my best friend and my greatest supporter. And I really believe that the decision of who you are going to spend your most precious time with, who that relationship is, is probably one of the most important business decisions you will make. Who you decide to partner with is going to change the way and change what you're able to do because you've either got somebody in your corner rooting for you and as things develop in your relationship and you have children,

you know, I'm going to be out on a book tour. Who's looking after my kids? Well, of course I have nannies, but I need my husband. I need him to say, you go, you fly, I support you and not to guilt trip me and not make me feel like I'm not pulling my way or doing what I should do. And so that decision of the right partner ends up being key to your success.

And the minute things get out of whack and out of balance, you've got to really be clear about that not being what's right for you, right? And it doesn't. And again, you know, I see so many people in a position where things start off really well and then one person goes in one direction and one person goes in another.

You have to be focused on what is right for you and your partner is just a massive, massive part of that. You know, it makes me realize that I think part of the story that women tell themselves is if I maximize my potential and I am whoever I need to be as a powerful woman in business and tech and wherever that a man's going to be threatened by my success. And that's part of the reason why we play it small or we pursue the career and just assume that no one will want us. I'm just like wrong man. Yeah, I, because my husband is my biggest cheerleader as well. I say to myself all the time. Like, if you believed in yourself

the way your husband believed in you, how would you show up in this moment? Because he just thinks the world of me. But now that I'm listening to this book and this message about the stories we tell ourselves, I'm wondering how much of that is really true that a man's going to be threatened by our success so we have to play it smaller and not have a man

at all. And listen, don't get me wrong. I actually believe that there is a certain amount. I tell people what to do all day, right? I'm in charge, I go into the office. I have to check my masculine energy at the door when I come home. Because nobody wants a wife who's like brings whatever she's going through like home and is telling everyone what to do. So there is an element of also having this balance of like, who do I get to be

when I walk into my home? And again, if you are with the right person, they're going to understand that too because I want somebody who is going to be sweet with me and understand the more vulnerable parts of me. And I want him to, you know, lift me up when I need that too. So it's not uncomplicated and I think I've been with my husband for 17 years now things change with neither of us are who we were when we first got together but I think that the the supportive partnership or the type of relationship that I was looking for was always going to be about growth and I accept the way that he's grown and in return I accept I expect him to accept the way that I'm growing yeah okay so before we go I'm always thinking about every gamut of women so at woman evolve we have this mantra

no woman left behind. Oh, I love that. We've talked about profitability. We've talked about scaling businesses. I'm thinking about women who are transitioning from incarceration. They have high school degrees. When you start talking about millions of dollars in VC funds, there's a distance there. But they are great at doing nails. They know how to do hair or they want to maybe have a store. What do you tell the woman whose dream feels small in comparison to the world of big dreamers? and what would you tell her about scaling and owning her ambition and potential? So I think the first thing to say is that to me there are no small dreams. Your dreams are your dreams and they're just as important regardless of the size.

And also I don't really limit the way that I think and speak to people that want careers or have ambition. You might be a really ambitious person that wants to be a homemaker and stay at home. So I really want to kind of get rid of this idea that if you're not reaching for the stars and looking for some big career in AI that you can't have a vision for yourself and that you can't reach for the stars. I think what's really important is that, and what sets me apart, I really think, is that I'm a lifelong learner. Now, if you're somebody that is, you know, a hairdresser and you decide, you know, that you want to be the best in hair and you'd quite like to own a salon one day, then you need to be the best in hair and you need to be excellent at that

thing. And so what I always think about is wherever you are in your life, how do you become excellent at that thing? How do you keep yourself in constant learning mode? And a lot of that is about the company you keep. It's about how hard you come to work, right? It's like you can't be ambitious three days a week. Yeah. The two things don't work. Like if you want an extraordinary career, there's going to be an extraordinary amount of effort that needs to go into that. And so I try to just be really honest about what is it that you can bring into a situation uniquely. And so it doesn't matter what the output is. What it's all about is how much excellence are you bringing into that situation. How much are you evolving and learning and driving forward? And we can all do that

because we can all decide that today is the day I'm going to do things differently. This morning, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be grateful that I'm alive and I am going to put a hundred percent into doing the best manny that I've ever done. Because you know what doesn't go unnoticed? Excellence. When you are excellent, and you know what this is that. When you have an excellent now girl, you don't know that go out anywhere. And you tell your friend that she's excellent and she tells someone else and so on and so

forth. So I think it's really about doubling down on this idea of whatever you are doing, you're going to put everything into it and be amazing at that thing. Okay. That was brilliant. And I think such a clarion call, because people, want to be successful but not excellent. And I think putting that at the forefront of anything that we do is going to be life-changing.

Before we go, can you tell us your gratitude practice? Oh, yes. So it's very simple. And I have to, you know, I give Oprah full credit because I grew up in a time when it felt like Oprah was always on the TV. And no one was talking about meditation, manifestation. It was a very different moment, like pre-internet. We didn't get information as we did. And Oprah was on the TV talking about a gratitude journal.

And when you live in a place like I lived, it was grey, there were no trees, there was nothing beautiful in my house. And so you really had to learn to use your imagination. And she would talk about being grateful, like, what could you be grateful for? And I'd be like, I'm so grateful for this cereal. And I'm so grateful that I have all these Disney movies on the side, you know, because you'd have the videos all piled out. And so you start to find the things that you're thankful for in the smallest areas. and I do exactly the same today. It doesn't matter that the things that I'm grateful for

and maybe a little bit more grand. I put my hand on my heart and I find the things that I'm grateful for. I think the difference is now that I am very purposeful with it. So it's like if you're on my team, if you are around me, you will know that I am grateful for you

because I'll go out of my way. So I try to be both grateful to myself, but then I have some kind of out of, outward pouring of that. And I try really, really hard to figure out, like, what is it that I have that I can lend to other people? So, like, every day, more Monday through Thursday, I will do a call typically with a female founder on my way into the office. Because people just need information and proximity to information is really hard to come by if you're a hairdresser and you don't have anyone that you know in the business community. So spending 30 minutes on the phone. And I have

a gratitude to even be able to do that. Who am I to be driven to work and be comfortable and not have to commute anymore that I can't just pick up the phone and give something that is so easy for me to do, like a piece of my experience to somebody else. So for me, it's about the circularity of how you think about gratefulness.

You give it to yourself first. I am to start with yourself, girl. So you first, and then you move it into action. And I, again, am very, very purpose-orientated. so I am not performative. That doesn't work for anyone. It's like I'm action-based. I'm like, what am I doing to move it from here over there?

Because then it moves, right? Then it goes to the next person and the next person. And that's what I'm kind of fixated on, this idea of how you take what is great for you and what you've created for yourself and how you can move it outwards. That's the entire reason that I did this book because there are so many business books out there.

But there are not so many business books written by women that were raised like me that have four kids, that have had big businesses that have been super successful and small businesses that have failed and medium-sized businesses that I'm still trying to figure out. And so it's like taking that experience and being honest with it.

Like I talk a lot about all the failures that I've had. And I think that that is equally important because nothing ever goes to plan. Yeah. Like literally nothing. And so I feel like if you can impart that knowledge, you're probably, or I'm probably on the road to being where it is that I really want to go.

go. You have done a phenomenal job living up to your desire for this book. As someone who hadn't had an opportunity to sit with you, I felt immediately, one, like I was talking to a big sister who wasn't going to take any of my excuses, but wasn't also going to let me leave any potential on the table. And that I felt cared for. I felt challenged while being cared for. So thank you. Thank you for the gift of this book and for your life and experiences and sharing them so generously. Oh, I'm so grateful to you. What a lovely, wonderful woman you are. Thank you. Thank you. So kind. One of the things that stood out for me in this conversation that changed the way that I show up in my relationship and my business and my marriages

and friendships has to do with being honest about what you really want. I have fallen victim to this idea of I am just going to go with whatever's handed to me or I'm going to try and keep up appearances so that no one knows exactly what I'm going through. And I have learned to, own my desires as it relates to whether I need help because come on somebody being honest about what we really want could come down to us saying that I really need help or I really do want to start this business. I really do want to write this book. I am learning to be honest about what I want so that I can begin to channel my energy and my movement towards the direction of the desires that are in my heart. There's a verse in the Bible that talks about the Lord giving us the desires of

our heart. The pursuit of the desire of our heart requires us to truly own it so that we can embody it. And so I pray that there's something about this conversation that moves you one step closer to embodying the fullness of the desires of your heart. With that in mind, I want to pray with you. Lord, I am asking that you would allow your plans to burn inside of our hearts with such passion, that we decide that we have no other choice but to pursue it, that we would no longer see our destiny as optional or our gifts and talents as something that is nominal. Lord, place our urgency on the inside of us, that we would be serious about establishing your kingdom and all that we do. God, I pray that you would purify our hearts. If there's anything in us that is not a reflection

of you, maybe it is something we want, but it's not. something you want for us, help us to lose that desire so that your desire can come forth, rise to the surface, and begin to propel us towards action. I sense right now that there's someone who's listening and they're right on the cusp of saying yes, right on the cusp of having the courage to step fully and boldly into the direction of what you have for them. I pray that even as this podcast comes to an end, that your voice would begin to increase to become louder and louder until it is the guiding voice that leads them into action.

Thank you for this time with your sons and daughters, because we know the fellas be listening. Lord, we thank you for the gift to allow our gifts to reach them and the combined effort of what happens when we all say yes. Bless them and bless us in Jesus' name. Amen.