Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede - 2

It’s a simple image, one that I drew compulsively as a child: a Christmas tree decorated so beautifully and meticulously it could have been in the entryway to Selfridges, piled with presents underneath. This tree stood in front of a gigantic window next to a handsome console, though I didn’t know the word “console” back then. Twenty years later, I realized these drawings had been a premonition: They matched, detail-to-detail, the first house I bought with my now-husband, Jens. It was December, and I had just brought our first child home from the hospital. I sat there, holding little Grey, feeling tired and blissful, and then I looked up and was startled. As the scene came together, I burst into tears.

Jens looked at me tenderly and said, “Isn’t it amazing we have a baby?”

“No,” I said. “What’s amazing is that I drew this scene five hundred times when I was a kid.” Jens had bought this fancy 1970s Danish console, and we had a massive tree. I hadn’t really looked closely before, but in that moment I realized it perfectly matched my sketches from when I was nine years old. While only about ten miles from Plaistow, that house with Jens was a world away—it represented the future I had been dreaming about, a future that called me forward. This future seemed to have little to do with my childhood, although I’ve come to understand the way I’ve stitched them together throughout my life, building a bridge to where I am now.

When I walk into rooms in the US, people think I speak the Queen’s English and immediately code me as fancy—but I speak like an East Londoner, which is anything but posh. I’ve never identified as just English. I will always and forever be from this distinct area, which encompasses the most impoverished inner-city area in the UK. It’s a vibrant and incredibly diverse community—large populations of Sikh and Hindu Indians, Somalians, people from the Caribbean, English and Irish—forged together through its own culture, down to the way we dressed. In East London, you wear every good thing that you own at the same time—all your jewelry, and your best clothing is visible. And the sneakers? The sneakers are always fresh and never dirty.

While in many ways I’d have loved to have been born in the suburbs, into a stable upper-middle-class family with two parents and the promise of a pedigreed education, I’m so grateful that I grew up in those streets, as it was there that I learned my basic operating manual. In East London, you learn manners: You respect your elders, and you don’t talk shit about parents or kids. Your mum’s your mum. In East London, people say what they mean—your word is king—and people do what they say. There’s no real room for meaningless pleasantries or loose talk when you’re trying to survive. And, if you lie, flake, or cheat, you’re going nowhere—or worse. I I’ve learned over the years—especially working and living in Los Angeles—that this is not standard for most. So many people make promises they have no intention of keeping, shy away from unpleasant truths because honesty makes them uncomfortable, and operate under the delusion that things should just happen for them because everything has always worked out before. This has not been my reality. I have never been a bullshitter, and I’ve never felt entitled to success—even now. I credit my East London upbringing for this: When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. I never spare people from the truth. And I am always in motion, working to make my next dream materialize.

My dreams are big—bigger than my fears and bigger than the console and the Christmas tree that I drew as a little kid. Throughout my childhood, I knew I didn’t belong in Plaistow—not in a bad way, just that it wasn’t my destiny. Plaistow is etched in my heart and a huge part of why I’m successful and who I have become, but it didn’t feel like home. I remember watching as the neighbor kids played with the paving pebbles in the driveway and thinking, I’m not supposed to be here. This is not me. They were my best friends, and I loved them, but I always felt different, certain I’d been dropped into the wrong place as a baby. I definitely couldn’t imagine signing up for the same fate I saw around me. I shared a room with two of my younger sisters, and at bedtime I liked to read to them and make up stories from our grand future. I would cut up pages of old Vogue magazines and fill scrapbook after scrapbook, dreaming about a different life for us. I knew it was out there. I could see it in the magazines—and more importantly, in my mind’s eye. Intuitively, I understood I could trust the visions in my head and use them as signposts for what might be ahead. II As with all the visions I’ve received, I never assumed they were foregone conclusions or eventualities. I knew I simply didn’t quite know yet how to achieve them but would figure it out. From a young age, I understood that my dreams would require work.

I got my first job delivering newspapers when I was twelve, which taught me two things: First, it exposed me to the early-morning workers, a whole host of people who got up at the crack of dawn to get ready for real jobs (the grafters, as we would call them in London)—as opposed to the nightlife crowd that I was more familiar with who didn’t get out of bed until noon and then hustled to get by. III As I did my route, I could see these early risers through their windows as they sipped their tea and read the news. I wouldn’t have had this language then, but it was a meditation—and made me maniacal about creating my own morning routine. To this day, I set myself up in a very specific way. Because I’m up early, I don’t overdo it with alcohol, and I don’t stay out late on weekdays. The second thing my paper route brought me was a fascination with the news and information gathering. I would always buy a paper for myself so I could read about the world. I couldn’t get over the idea that you could buy that much info for fifty pence! While I wasn’t yet fully living in the world I dreamed of, that didn’t stop me from wanting to understand it. I credit this “always in learning mode” mentality for being a huge part of my ongoing success. I operate from a place of feeling like I don’t know what I don’t know, but I can learn anything.

From twelve until fifteen, I continued to get up at five o’clock every morning for my paper route, even though I found additional—and somewhat easier—ways to make money. I worked at a shop, I sold fireworks seasonally (even though I was too young to buy them), and I made sandwiches at a deli. With each one of these gigs, I did an impeccable job: I made a beautiful toastie (and still do). I also managed to strike up a big business making hundreds of pounds selling Ralph Lauren and YSL shirts that “fell off trucks” to teachers during recess, and real Fendi Baguette bags to old ladies who won big at the bingo hall. (I still have a beaded Baguette that I knew was too beautiful to sell.) As a tween, I often had a wad of cash in my backpack, but because my fashion supply chain was uncertain, I kept my gig selling papers for thirty pounds a week. Plus, that morning ritual anchored my entire day. I learned from my family that you could never rely on a consistent flow of cash, so you should always hedge your bets.

I don’t know if it was this early experience as a hustler on the playground or the fact that my mum focused all her maternal energy on making sure we looked put together despite whatever shit was happening at home, but I’ve always been obsessed with fashion—and finding a job working with clothing felt like a foregone conclusion. I also didn’t have a lot of other models for what was possible, especially for women. There seemed to be more options for the boys—they were going off to football academies, they were becoming mildly famous rappers, MCs, and DJs—and because of this, they were making a lot of money. There just didn’t seem to be as many roads out of Plaistow for the girls. I still remember the pamphlet I picked up at a school fair for the London College of Fashion: It was thin, matte, long, and so chic. I chose the business course, mostly because it was the cheapest program, but also because I didn’t think I could sketch like a real designer, though I was certain that I could run Topshop someday. I scraped and saved half of the £6,500 tuition and borrowed the rest from my uncle Joe, my mother’s brother, who was very good to me throughout my childhood.

When school started, I was sixteen and I knew I was in trouble—I was sleeping on Marcus’s couch and essentially living on my own, as my mother had moved to Spain. I didn’t really even have a place to unpack my bag or the wherewithal to organize my life, much less the functional support I needed to help me be successful at school. At the time, I didn’t realize I had dyslexia either—while I felt motivated, I literally could not get through the work.

There was that, as well as the reality that the London College of Fashion is in London’s West End, five minutes from Selfridges and Browns. I told myself I was doing “market research” by stopping in to see the new Alaïa or Dolce & Gabbana instead of going to class, but I found myself constantly distracted from school by my growing interest in flipping through racks of high-end fashion. And then I became sidetracked even more when I took a part-time job at a store across the street and performed so well I started taking on additional days. The upside of my time in retail is that I came to understand one of my genius spots: I can sell anything to anyone—even account cards, which are like a store credit card. I used to sell more account cards in the two days I worked a week than the rest of the team who worked the store full-time. I loved being the number one salesperson—plus, for each account card I opened, I’d earn fifty quid. Nobody wanted to open an account card—at the time, it was even more time-intensive and manual, as you’d have to fill out a lot of physical forms—but I could convince everyone . Even when someone would be declined, I’d get them to come back with proof of income so we could finish the process. I was relentless. The money was tantalizing, and by the end of the first semester, I’d effectively worked my way out of college. I didn’t finish the year; I dropped out.

While I found studying difficult, I had an endless appetite for work—via my time in school, I understood that you could get apprentice-like work placements. I wrote about a hundred letters. Every single designer in London received a letter from me, along with every showroom and every PR agency. When I didn’t get a response, I showed up in person and rang the bell, hoping I could engage someone, anyone, in a conversation to really underline my interest. Ultimately, I landed gigs at Aurelia PR, which at the time was the shit; I worked for an amazing label named Gharani Strok, which was the hottest thing at London Fashion Week; and I did some time at a concierge company called Quintessentially. IV

These work-study jobs were unpaid, and you would spend sixteen hours a day toiling away—nobody was worried about your welfare or worker rights—but these apprenticeships were invaluable. V Beyond beginning to build a network, I went around London figuring out everything I didn’t want to do, which is probably the most important thing you can do early on in your career. I worked and I also watched. The fact that I was a few steps removed and not an employee gave me an interesting vantage point to study the fashion world as an outsider, an industry I was intent on joining.

When I was eighteen, I landed a real job at a fashion show production company, where I stayed for six years. We produced a lot of London Fashion Week and worked on sponsorships for the best designers in London, so I got exposure to Alexander McQueen, Matthew Williamson, and Vivienne Westwood as they realized their visions every year. It was so exciting to work in any proximity to those creative geniuses. But for most of the less-famous fashion talent, I couldn’t understand why there seemed to be no money in any of it. The economics made no sense as I watched young, talented designers go upside down producing their shows, completely disconnected from their own businesses.

Ultimately, I found this production company incredibly toxic. At times it almost felt like a parody of stereotypically bitchy bosses who pitted us all against each other and made us feel terrible— but I learned an awful lot. And for that I’ll always be grateful. I didn’t think they were great businesswomen, but I was so close to what I wanted to do and what I loved. I was close to the creativity, I made a lot of contacts, and I got to know the industry from the ground up. Much of it was deeply unglamorous, but such is the reality of most careers, even the most glittery ones. While I was there, I learned how to budget, I learned how to be organized, and I learned how a designer moves from concept to collection—and the hard reality that these shows were a terrible waste of money for most, and they had no clue how to transition their artistic vision into the retailer orders that would ensure their labels would thrive. It was only ever about creating a show and the corresponding pressbook. There was so much ego attached to the artistry that nobody was talking about a merchandising plan, or the ROI you’d need to see to justify spending £150,000 on a runway show.

Ultimately, this chasm between vision and reality became my bridge to build—and this turned into the beginning of my career. From what I recall, it began with the need for TVs. A designer wanted a wall of TVs for their show backdrop, similar to one Donatella Versace had done—and naturally these aspirations did not line up with their budget. So I called Toshiba and somehow convinced them that it would absolutely be in the best interest of their brand to align with this young designer. They shipped me a load of TVs in exchange for their logo on the credit sheet, and I was off to the races. I worked in the sponsorship division for the next few years, where I would call and call for dollars. I had a friend of the family who was a football agent, and he told me to commission brands 10 percent, but that felt like too little—so I asked for 20 percent and got it. The problem is, though, that none of this revenue was going to me. Six years in, I was bringing in millions of pounds but only netting a £26,000 salary. We were the only division of the company generating any profit. I went to my bosses to renegotiate my compensation, and after arguing for a while, they told me they’d give me a £4,000 pay raise. And so I quit, as I realized that what I was doing for them I could create on my own. Rather than waiting for these women to take care of me, I needed to take care of myself. Nobody else could do that for me.

For the first time, I got really clear about my vision for my future, and I started a process that has done well for me over the years: I made a plan for turning thirty and forty, and I’m currently working on my plan for fifty. I write these plans down. I write them as a vision statement about how I want to spend my time and what I want to be doing. I assess where I am and where I want to be, and often connect this to concrete financial goals: When I was in my twenties and building my plan for my thirties, I decided I didn’t want to be a salary girl forever, and that someday I wanted to fly in the front of the plane—and that I wanted a housekeeper to come once every two weeks. My current list—Emma @ 40—lives in a sticky note on my phone so I can look at it every Sunday and ask myself whether I’m moving closer to where I want to be or shifting offtrack. Once I write it down, I work backward and then break it into yearly/monthly/weekly chunks. I know that changing habits and engineering results requires consistency, routine, and focus—and continuous improvement, as nothing happens overnight. Every year on my birthday in September—my “new year”—I assess the year that’s passed and plan for the year to come, a plan that needs to be realized by the actual new year. I think of this as grounding my vision, or the beginning of the process of materializing my future. I highly recommend you do this with me so you can establish the map for where you’d like to go and use it as a touchstone for the weeks and years ahead. Plus, I can tell you from experience that it’s fun to understand how much you actually control in your life.

1. Looking back at the goals you didn’t achieve this year, what were the main reasons you couldn’t get there?

This question requires brute honesty. You must examine the answers that come up first, and continue to ask yourself why? It’s critical that you look to yourself and don’t blame external factors.

Write it down.

2. What are three things you wish you did more of last year?

Don’t overthink this. It should be easy to come up with a list of three things that give you joy, feel aligned with your purpose, make you feel accomplished, have a positive impact on you, etc.

Write it down.

3. What are you avoiding? And what are you scared of doing?

This could be something small like learning a new skill, or something life-altering. You choose your “hard.” I always try to think about this one for a long time. What would you do if you didn’t give a shit about what anyone would say?

Write it down.

4. How do you plan to learn and grow in the year to come?

For me, this past year was about going to the Hoffman Process, taking a course in Transcendental Meditation, and learning to swim—yes, at forty-two I was learning to swim. I try to find progress each year.

Write it down.

5. Habits and boundaries: What habits do you want to create, and what boundaries should you establish?

I put these two together because to me they are both about defining limits and nonnegotiables. I never write more than three for each, and I rarely achieve all six, but that’s a good start. The mere act of writing them down moves me forward.

Write it down.

Once you’ve committed to a vision for yourself, it’s time to move on to managing your emotions, because an inability to regulate your reaction to the world can undo any plan.