Fashion Mogul Says Working Moms Need to Stop Apologizing

Last week, we hosted a live show in New York City in front of a great audience of journal super fans. Onstage, I sat down with fashion mogul Emma Greed. She helped found a number of businesses, including the apparel brand Skims and Good American, with Kim and Chloe Kardashian respectively. Emma and I talked about starting successful businesses, working with celebrities, and saying no to mom guilt. You can watch the interview on Spotify. Welcome to the journal, our show about. I'm Jessica Mendoza, coming up on the show Emma Greed, on the business of fashion, making millions, and the trade-offs it takes to succeed. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible, all-day-gum V-Grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin, that still feels like your skin. Try new, grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. I'm so glad you're here tonight, I'm so excited to talk to you partly because I think you're the perfect guest for us. I've read your book, I've listened to your podcast, you heard the tagline, Money, Business, Power. I feel like this is your chance. This is my area. This is it. This is my area. All the things I like the most. Well, I want to start with the fact that we're in New York City. At a time when the power brokers of fashion are coming into town for New York Fashion Week. As somebody who's really plugged into the industry, I am curious, where is the money in fashion going right now? The money in fashion. I mean, that's a really great question. Where should it go? Where should it go? It should go to the things that we all love the most. It's really interesting, actually, because being somebody that came from more the business side of fashion, I started my career. I started my career in production, working for the great and the good of the European fashion business. Quite frankly, I spent my entire 20s going, where's the money? What is happening here? So decided to come to America where the money was and sort it out with feverish intention. So I'm coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Good American, which for me is just crazy to think about. And I think about how many companies in that time have come and gone and how many things I did before that company, how many things I've done in between that, and you know, you get this kind of one golden goose moment, which for me has been really around skims. And so it's kind of amazing and quite interesting to look back on the last 10 years and understand what has actually happened. And I actually want to talk to you about both those companies. As you said, they've both had real staying power in the industry. And you built these companies by partnering with celebrities, like the Kardashians, and not just partnering as an endorsing, which is typically what we see, but bringing them on as business partners. Can you talk about that distinction? Like, why was that so important to you? Well, it's not even a distinction, it's the way those partnerships come about, right? And I think that anybody that believes that, you know, putting talent together with a brand is an opportunity, either to make money or create a credible brand, will learn very, very quickly that that is just simply not the case. I think we can all count way more businesses that have failed than have succeeded. And so you have to come back to what it really is. Talent can be an incredible accelerator to popularity, to visibility, to the thinking it is. Well, I wouldn't say just marketing that depends on the individual, and I don't want to be overly pedantic about it, but I think it is an important distinction. What you can do with talent to accelerate the knowledge and the visibility of a product on one hand is incredible. But to make a real product work, you need a business partner. And if you're going into a partnership, the partnership has to equate to more than somebody's following. And I'm really lucky that I found partners who are capable of that. And so how much of it, okay, I know you can't really like show me the recipe for this, but how much of it was partnering with the right person, the right, and then the right product, and then the timing. You came out with skims at a time when this maybe was something people were looking for in the same with Good American. I think the timing is everything. One of the things that I've always thought about whenever I started anything is almost taking aim at the competition. And so I have an acute awareness for what's happening in the business, for what's down trending, for what might be needed. And actually when you think about these businesses, they were answering a consumer problem. They were looking at a space which was devoid of any innovation. And taking something like the plus side space, which for most fashion, businesses, and brands is a complete afterthought. You know, it's something everybody's like, okay, we're doing this in the main part of our business. Here's what our range looks like. And here's this extra 15% that we're going to put no thought into. >> And it's actually from 2016 when Good American lost. >> Yeah, I mean, you think about it. We didn't even have the vernacular that we have today. The industry wasn't what it is today. Going out on a limb to create something in this space where there was not much that was incredibly appealing, not really much understood about that customer and doing things completely differently and rewrite in the role. That's what make those companies really, really successful because you have to endear yourself to customers. As celebrity talent can drive you to a product once, but it can't keep customers coming back over and over again. Any fierce loyalty for an excellent product can do that. >> And on that note, on the product, how do you think about product as trends develop? What do you look out for? How do you decide this is going to sell? >> Well, that's something that I can't really put a kind of my finger on because when people talk to me about trends, I'm like, it's not something that I ever think about. We're not looking at fashion week. I'm not looking at trends, no one can tell you to make a size 15 and invent a new size. No one can tell you to make one-legged shape wear or a bra with a nipple on it. Those things didn't exist. They were innovations and great products and great companies are born out of doing things differently. Yes, there's an element of running a fashion business which is always going to be, let's look at what worked last year and let's iterate on that and bring something similar into the market. That's how you're led, you will die pretty quickly. It's hard to say we're looking at trends because instinctively the way I do business is to go left. It's to look at what's happening and go, okay, that's great, but what can we do that's never been done before? >> I asked this too in part because I'm looking at your sports apparel brand, Offseason, which you've partnered with, Kristen Yushik, the wife of Kyle Yushik of the San Francisco 49ers. I went to the website. I was like, this is really cool, it's very streetwear, it's the kind of thing that you as me as a woman, I'm looking for something cool to wear to a football game. It's a stretch, it's gone, but no, but it's cool, it looks great. But I was going through it, my household were in New York Jets household and I was looking at your website and I noticed there weren't as much merch for the Jets as there were for the Eagles or the 49ers. >> Did we upset you? Did you not? >> Just my husband probably was more of a season right now, a little bit. >> I mean, everything's done on a curve, but that's what I mean is like you, I assume that is on purpose. You're thinking about what merchandise to sell, who the audience is, who's going to buy this? >> Yeah, I mean look, I think with any business, there's an element of math and science and art that has to meet, right? And in any business, especially one like Offseason, which is a company that I love so much because it is a company that exists in a space, again, where women are massively underserved. And if there's any type of trend in the businesses that I run, it's doing things where I think that customers are overlooked, where there's a solution to provide, where there's some piece of the audience that is, for whatever reason, forgotten about, and in that lies a massive commercial opportunity. And so, when you think about fan apparel and you think about going to a game and the same old hoodie and an oversized t-shirt, nothing that you would look moderately cute in, and yet you look around the stands and the customer and the fans that are there, it's full of women. And women hold all of the purchase in power for the rest of their family, and so it makes sense that catering to that customer would be something that would be incredibly lucrative. Now, on the other hand, going and signing, you know, licensing deals with the, you know, LNB and the NBA and the WNBA and you know, it's like, well, not so much the cost money, but it's really difficult to do. And so, I think where I get excited and where I see opportunity is doing the things that take enormous effort that will hopefully yield enormous results, but it's not something that you would do without really understanding what the opportunity is and really, honestly, like just not being lazy, because I think that what happens is there is a turnkey and an easy way to approach everything, if you want that result on the other side of it. And my point of view is that if you do better, if you approach everything with excellence, if you go the other mile, customers intrinsically feel it, they understand. they know, they feel seen, they feel hurt, they feel represented, and with that comes a lot of loyalty and as a result repeat customers. After the break, Emma agreed on why women need to talk more about money. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Well, in the two decades or so that you've been in the fashion and retail business, you've mostly been behind the scenes, but in the last year that's quite changed a lot. You launched your podcast, a spire. You came out with your book in April, and one of the points that you make over and over in the book, in the podcast. What do I say? I'm very repetitive. I'll tell you that. Well, I think it's a superpower because everybody knows what I want from them, but go ahead. Well, in this case, this is something I'm really excited about, is you want women to talk more about money? I do. Why? Because we don't. Listen, here's a pal. I do listen, I'm going to talk to you in the audience. I tell you what it is. When you have gone out and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and you sit on the boards of lots of companies and you run companies, and I have hundreds and hundreds of staff, men and women, you start to notice behaviour in the workplace specifically. And what happens when you avoid conversations around money is that the money avoids you. And what I've seen over and over and over again is that as women, it's just that we weren't necessarily raised and trained to have those conversations. And what happens with men is that they just speak so freely about money, and they do it everywhere. They don't wait for a special, like, secret moment to share with their best mate. They are in constant interaction about every single thing, whether it's a mortgage, or it's the rate on a credit card, or it's an investment opportunity, whatever it is, big small medium in between. And women don't have enough of those conversations with enough specificity. And so I think that what happens is that the stories that we grow up with, our own money story, stays with us. And there's nothing to break the spell unless you know differently. And so my point of view, and the reason that I started the podcast, and the reason that I wrote the book is because I wanted to be honest about what it's taken for me, about the conversations that I've had, and the sacrifices that I've made, and the ways that I've done my deals, because the idea of me getting to this position is so that I can do the opposite of gatekeep, right? I want to share so that you get more and you get more and you get more, and you know by default someone's got to get less, but maybe that's the boys and that's fine because they've been getting for the longest time. So the point is that the more we speak, the more we share, the more open we are, the more this information actually impacts what we're earning. Well, in the spirit of talking candidly about money, I'm agreed. How much did you make last year? I would never tell you. Only because you'd be so jealous. I'd be like, oh, well Forbes reported 405 million is what your net worth last year, which is, I am jealous. And I think they missed a bit. I was like, that was last year, so you know, it's been a whole year. It's been a year, it's been a good year. But I asked that too in part because you do talk about, you know, growing up without much money. And so I'm curious, like, are you proud of your net worth today? Is your relationship with money more complicated than just like making more of it? That is such a good question because when you grow up with very little, you know, I was raised in East London, raised by a single mom, I'm the eldest of four girls. And so they really wasn't a lot to go around. But in that way, I was extremely focused on what I needed to live the type of life that I wanted. And it's not that I shy away from telling you an amount. It's very well publicized. The value of my company is how much I own of those companies and the net worth that is somewhat attributed to that. By the way, you know, my favorite saying is that like, who cares about any of those valuations? You know, it's like, I really try not to think about it very much. What I do care about, however though, is the path to ownership. Because the reason that I have those numbers attributed with what I've done is because I did. Because on paper, as a school leader, as somebody with very little education, as somebody that only came here less than 10 years ago, most of that shouldn't really be the case. The point is that I put myself in that situation purposely, deliberately. I took a lot of risks. I made an enormous amount of trade-offs, which also I don't shy away from talking about. And so again, I think it's really important to say, yeah, great, like I made a lot of money and the cost of that was and the reality of that is and the way that my day is as follows. Because again, I think that we're in this crazy moment in the culture right now where, you know, the kind of default path for women is that I'm just going to like manifest my way into like millions. I'm like, really? Like, I don't think that that's possible. I mean, trying to manifest it for a while, I'm sure, like, it doesn't happen. And so I think there's an element of like coming clean that's really required in popular culture specifically as it relates to women supporting women, women's empowerment and women and entrepreneurialism. And again, I do say women's three times because it doesn't exist in the same way for men. Nobody thinks like he manifested his way to it. We're like, good on him. He rolled over a few people and it all works out like, pal, do you know what I mean? And somehow we have to like, you know, like share our profit all along the way to get there. I'm like, absolutely not. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Well, talk about trade-offs. You know, you're a mother of four. Your oldest is 12. Is that right? How do you think about the space that work takes up in your life? I think about it with a great degree of pride, you know, because I worked very hard to be able to work this hard. And I don't try to hide it from my kids, you know? I am, again, I think the part of that is my upbringing. And I think for so many of us that that guilt is a story that's passed down from other women, from our grandmothers and from our mothers because the prevailing wisdom is that if, you know, I'm in New York and away from my kids, which I am right now, that somehow I should feel tremendous guilt. I mean, the truth is, I absolutely love it. Like, three nights in a hotel, I sleep diagonally in the bed. I'm like, woohoo! Didn't you say, let's go out, you know, like, but I say that in jest because again, I think a lot of women feel actually all right about leaving their kids for a few days. It's just not so cool to say that. And the truth is that we all, when you get and work yourself as I have into a position of great privilege, the idea that I have the childcare and the infrastructure, and I'm married a good person, and I'm able to do that, it's not something that I'm going to be in constant apology mode for. And so I've just kind of wiped that behavior from my thoughts and from my vernacular. And again, in doing that, I hope that some other woman would be like, yeah, I'm good. I'm going on that trip because I was asked to do that trip because I'm so good at what I do. Like, there's no shame in the game. And I'm pretty proud of being good at what you do. 100%. That isn't about motherhood or parents. 100%. And I feel totally fine about it, so long as we can all just be honest about what those trade-offs are. And you have to choose them. And I think I've chosen quite purposefully. I'm not missing a day when my kid is performing or has an art show. And it's like, am I missing that mum's coffee morning? Like, yeah, I didn't want to go in the first place. And this is going back to planning the trip all the day. I was like, I'm busy actually. I'm like, PTA meeting back. I mean, honestly, but this is also like, this is what you meant, I think, when you kind of went viral earlier this year and you said you were a max three hour mum, you've also called yourself a core memory mum. I feel like that one maybe was said for me, but max three hour mum thing was just the level of honesty, because I think when you work all bloody week, you know, Monday through Friday, and I don't do a nine to five, no one that runs businesses does. And so many that don't run businesses don't either. But by the time you get to Saturday, like, I'm not sitting down playing with my kids all day. I'm not evolving the entire weekend around my children. The reality is by 12 o'clock noon. I'm like, oh, I'm done with you lot, you know. And so what I was doing was being facetious, but also by the same token saying, it's okay. Like, let's give ourselves permission to have a level of honesty about how different ways of parenting doesn't mean that you're a good or a bad mum. And I think there are all of these labels and all of these things. And it's just such a big distraction. I think that there's so many other things that we could be focused on. There's so much more to glean from me than how many hours I spend with my kids. And actually, the better question is, Emma, what don't you do? And what are you spending your time on? And I guarantee, for any single woman, that will be a million times more valuable than thinking about the time that I'm not spending with my kids. Well, so this idea, right, like women, women cannot have at all 100% of the time. There are trade-offs. We have to, we have You have to make trade-offs, that's just the reality of life. Like this idea kind of reminds me of Cheryl Sandberg's lean-in a little bit, kind of reminds me of the concept of girlboss. In some ways, we've been having this conversation for a while. So I just want to drill down on what you're offering that's new, that's different. I don't know that I'm offering anything new and different, I think that I'm just telling my truth. I know, you know, I never wrote a book to talk about anything other than the truth of what my journey is, and actually to have an opportunity to take that outside a 30-second reel, because when your story is so publicly visible, and I am spoken to by so many women on the street every day, and the idea that I turn up to work, like looking great and put my feet on the desk and tell somebody what to do, and I was like, that's just not been the reality of my journey, I think the reason that the conversation prevails in popular culture is because we can't accept it, because the rules that we have laid out for women are constantly judged and constantly discussed and constantly debated by us. And I think there's some responsibility in that. I think that all the men in the room have no f***ing idea what I'm talking about. They're like, so okay, like great, like moving on. And yet we will have a conversation for what, when did lean-in come out, like 20 years ago? Exactly that, and so I think that we owe it to ourselves to accept it, and to say that we can accept that your way might be different from my way, that there is a commonality in the goal. I think that we can all accept, and we can all appreciate, and we can all agree more importantly, that more women in positions of power would be a pretty good thing in this world. Well, it can't argue with that, but it's a fact, it actually is a fact. But we have to also accept the responsibility that we have in that perhaps not coming to fruition as quickly as it should. Thank you so much Emma. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, my darling. That's all for today, Sunday, September 20. And here are the credits, read by two of our listeners at the live event. Thank you very much to Cyrus Atia and Autumn Billeter. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, we're out every week, the afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Woo. Nice job. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Maybe it's Mavily.