Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede - 15

It was a dark day. I’d told my board at ITB that I was cooking a little business, but when Good American launched, some were pissed. I may have underplayed it a little bit, but I did the whole thing by the book, crossing my T’s and dotting my I’s. They still felt (erroneously) that I should have given them a piece of the business. They felt like I had fucked them. I countered that not only had I not fucked them, I’d delivered an incredible return on their original investment in me: I’d started the agency earning a £45,000 salary with some equity and delivered a hundred times back to them.

I’d always assumed after I sold ITB that I’d be asked to stay on to run the thing—I’d built it, so how could it possibly function without me at the helm? I hadn’t thought through the logistics—and assumed I’d just fly back and forth between Los Angeles and London with my two- and three-year-olds in tow (nuts!)—but they made the decision for me. They did not give me a lock-in and cut me loose. Jens told me it was the best thing that had ever happened to me, but in that moment, it sure didn’t feel that way. Some of it was personal. I felt like I was abandoning my entire team by moving to Los Angeles. I had pulled a lot of people and agencies into ITB, and I felt I owed it to them to stay until the bitter end. It pained me massively to leave them. And some of that pain could be attributed to the fact that my ego couldn’t handle being dismissed. I felt like I was the company. I wouldn’t have known what to call it then, but I had founder’s syndrome.

Founder’s syndrome “is the difficulty faced by organizations, and in particular young companies such as start-ups, where one or more founders maintain disproportionate power and influence following the effective initial establishment of the organization, leading to a wide range of problems.” 1 I Ultimately, ITB carried on without me, in many iterations, and I carried on as well, learning to become less emotionally attached to my businesses. I also came to understand that they are not the vehicles for my identity either. My identity stays with me. Ultimately, you are failing in business if you are not constantly training your team to replace you. If that’s not your goal, if your business relies on you for its success, then you aren’t building a durable company. You should be able to look through the ranks of your company and see a multitude of stars and stars-in-the-making—people you help thrive and grow. And, if you have a functional business legacy, you should also be able to see many stars from your company now doing their thing in the wider world. If you’re building a business that can’t exist in your absence, you’re building a vanity project. That’s fine, but it’s a different kind of thing.

It’s interesting, but in this next phase of my life, I’m more inclined in building one of those. Rather than building companies with partners and the prospect of exponential commercial growth, I’m interested in creating a small container that can house my curiosity. As I mentioned, I talk about my life in chapters, and I think a lot about how you end one chapter and begin another. I believe I’m done—for the minute—building new brands. I’ve done it a lot. I’m thinking more about what it looks like to reach people’s minds and to teach what I’ve learned. And I’m also looking to create something with more meaning for myself, where I can continue to learn alongside you.

For most of my career, I’ve been focused on growth and making things as big as possible; now, I want to do things that are small, yet maybe even more impactful. I want to build something that can be done in a single room with five people—yet reach millions. I want to understand what it would feel like to live with a little bit more space in my life, where each day isn’t compressed with meetings and I have a bit more time to think, or even have a coffee after school drop-off—can you imagine that this has happened to me just once?! I’m curious to see what might happen in the absence of so much pressure, or how I might act with even more room to breathe. As always, I’m interested in action.

If you’ve been tracking the structure of this book, you’ll know that we started with VISION before MANAGING OUR EMOTIONS and then addressing OLD THOUGHTS. It’s my belief that if you can get a handle on how you feel about the world around you and clear your mind of limiting stories, then you’re in the best possible position to take the correct ACTION! While I can’t prescribe the specific actions that you should take in your life or in your business, I can show you how I set myself up to take the right ones—or at least actions that are most aligned with where I want to go in my life (back to VISION). I act all the time. It’s how I learn, it’s how I get my energy, it’s how I understand the world.

I learned about action growing up in East London, where everyone is always on the go, hustling. Anyone reading this from my old neighborhood will recognize these principles as our basic operating manual, and they continue to guide how I show up in the world today. None of them will surprise you; they’re woven into this book, and they’re dead simple:

1. Do what you say you’re going to do, show up.

(Decide what you’re going to do with a clear heart and mind.)

2. Your word is king, always tell the truth.

(It doesn’t have to be the “brutal truth,” the truth is good enough.)

3. Stay in motion.

(You always have to be learning to be in contact with the world.)

That’s it. These are the basic principles that guide the actions I take in my life.

I want to reiterate another point I’ve made throughout this book: You can’t build anything of value by yourself. Everything you do will be better by bringing other people into it, to teach you what you don’t know, to add strength where you might be weak, to give you leverage on your time and energy, and to give you an honest reflection of how you’re showing up in the world. I always hear from people, Emma, you do so much. I really don’t. When it comes down to it, I make decisions, and I make decisions quickly, and those are often the right decisions because I have a lot of practice, and I pay a lot of attention to the world. You can learn to do this, too.

But never underestimate the impact or importance of a team. There is an army that helps me, both at home and at work, and I never want to lie about that to other women, because it keeps the whole story going that we should do it all with grace and a full face of glam. I don’t do it all. Not even remotely. I don’t cook (though I love to), I don’t clean, I don’t mow the lawn or water my plants, I have two nannies at all times for my four kids, I have a personal trainer who comes to my house, and the budget for self-care. I largely get to do what I want because I’ve created a lot of optionality in my life through stacked success and an excellent team. You can do this, too. Don’t laugh, you can. It might take a minute, but it is absolutely possible to build a supported life where you get to dream big and deliver against the vision you have for the world. I’m proof positive that this is a potentiality. I’m incredibly privileged now, but at one point, in the not very distant past, I was a young Black girl with absolute shit for prospects. I knew I had enough though because I had myself. You, too, can start there.

MY BASIC RULES FOR SUCCESS

And to this day, I always start with myself.