Emma Grede - ‘Ambition Is Something I Am Entitled to’

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Sony Music

Society & Culture

4.7 • 9.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s guest is a female billionaire: the co-founder and CEO of the Good American inclusive fashion brand and a founding partner of SKIMS, the shapewear and loungewear company. Emma Grede’s close working partnerships with the Kardashian family have led her to become an advocate for empowering women through business. Now, she’s publishing her first book, Start With Yourself, in which she explores everything from building personal resilience to developing self-forgiveness. In this episode we discuss her East London mindset, her famously controversial (!) attitude towards work-life balance, being a mother of four (her twins were born via a surrogate) and her experience of miscarriage. Female ambition, fertility, the discomfort of hard work…I’m so grateful to Emma for opening up on subjects that are so often shrouded in silence. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 03:02 Ambition Loves Discomfort 05:57 Growing Up East London 07:31 ‘Too Ambitious’ 08:34 East London Business Code 11:15 An Employee Mindset 19:13 Work-Life Balance Myth 26:34 Fearless Hustle Mindset 27:53 ITB Rise and Influencers 29:08 LA Office Ego Crash 31:40 Parenting as a Team 32:56 Fertility Reality Check 38:19 Good American Expansion Misstep 46:25 Mother’s Influence 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: I have always thought about ambition as something that I am entitled to as long as I work for it. If you want to be extraordinarily successful… Then extraordinary work is required. You become confident because you know you can get through things and you know what's on the other side of failure. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Emma’s debut book ‘Start With Yourself’ - is available to buy now The Testaments, a new Hulu original series, streaming exclusively on Disney+ Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Melinda French Gates - another extraordinarily successful female philanthropist, who co-chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization, for 24 years: swap.fm/l/Zr3OTH30YZpvPRiXIkeX Mo Gawdat - an incredible guest who has been on How to Fail FOUR times - most recently in December last year to talk about the most common mistakes we make in love: swap.fm/l/Daw9T2DZbicGt0aOZZVX 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and Emma answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email podcastadsales@sonymusic.com _________________________________________________________________________ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think the idea of work from home culture is career suicide, specifically for women.
0:06.9	I always have thought about ambition as something that I am entitled to as long as I work for it.
0:13.8	I, you know, started a business with Chloe Kardashian and the rest is history.
0:18.0	Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes that failure doesn't
0:21.6	define you. It's how you respond to it that is the true test of character. Before we get into
0:26.8	this conversation, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single
0:32.2	episode. I have some very exciting news. My great friend Dan Jones, who you'll know as the host of This Is History,
0:43.8	he's a phenomenal historian and novelist, although I don't really like to tell him that because he's also very smug.
0:49.2	Anyway, the two of us have known each other for years and we've got a new podcast. I know, sound the history
0:56.0	alarm, we're extremely excited about it. It's called History's Greatest Fails. See what we did
1:02.6	there? And Dan and I will discuss, you guessed it, some of the biggest failures in history.
1:08.1	We'll be chatting about everything from failed romance, think Henry VIII and
1:12.5	Anne Boleyn, Anthony and Cleopatra, as well as overlooked women like Ada Lovelace. And we'll be
1:18.9	chatting about Richard III and happy accidents in history. Go and search for history's
1:24.5	greatest fails wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
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1:51.5	And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed
1:57.8	have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. I've been in a position
2:03.7	to hire a handful of people in the past, and it can be a slow and overwhelming process. I wish I'd
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