If You Only Listen to One Podcast Today, Make It This One
Episode
92 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Relationships, Startups
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Excellence Over Perfection: Excellence focuses inward on effort quality you control, while perfectionism measures against external expectations. Apply excellence to every task—making sandwiches, folding clothes, making beds—because how you do anything is how you do everything. This magnetic quality draws opportunities and people toward you regardless of your current position.
- ✓The Rule of Thirds: Accept that pursuing difficult goals means feeling good one-third of the time, mediocre one-third, and terrible one-third. This framework prevents despair during bad periods and maintains humility during wins. Understanding this pattern as normal keeps you balanced and prevents quitting when challenges inevitably arrive in any worthwhile pursuit.
- ✓White Space Strategy: Identify market gaps by obsessing over your entire industry—pricing, distribution, competition, customer problems. Grede spent ten years studying fashion before launching Good American for women size sixteen and above, a 68% underserved market. Know competitors' price points, product specifications, and positioning better than they do before launching anything.
- ✓Network Reality Check: Your actual network comprises vendors, factory workers, bank relationships, and lawyers—not celebrities or executives. Grede's fashion show production contacts were riggers and lighting designers who connected her to corporate CMOs. Stop seeking mentors at networking events; instead ask questions of people adjacent to your current work and build from there.
- ✓Energy-Based Skill Discovery: Determine your strengths by what gives versus drains energy, not passion or interest. Negotiations energize Grede even when difficult; spreadsheets deplete her. Lean into energy-giving activities rather than chasing perceived passions. Take multiple jobs simultaneously to rapidly identify what energizes you through direct experience, not contemplation.
What It Covers
Emma Grede, CEO and cofounder of billion-dollar brands Good American and SKIMS, shares her journey from East London poverty to Forbes' self-made women list, revealing the blueprint for building extraordinary success through responsibility, excellence, and relentless work ethic.
Key Questions Answered
- •Excellence Over Perfection: Excellence focuses inward on effort quality you control, while perfectionism measures against external expectations. Apply excellence to every task—making sandwiches, folding clothes, making beds—because how you do anything is how you do everything. This magnetic quality draws opportunities and people toward you regardless of your current position.
- •The Rule of Thirds: Accept that pursuing difficult goals means feeling good one-third of the time, mediocre one-third, and terrible one-third. This framework prevents despair during bad periods and maintains humility during wins. Understanding this pattern as normal keeps you balanced and prevents quitting when challenges inevitably arrive in any worthwhile pursuit.
- •White Space Strategy: Identify market gaps by obsessing over your entire industry—pricing, distribution, competition, customer problems. Grede spent ten years studying fashion before launching Good American for women size sixteen and above, a 68% underserved market. Know competitors' price points, product specifications, and positioning better than they do before launching anything.
- •Network Reality Check: Your actual network comprises vendors, factory workers, bank relationships, and lawyers—not celebrities or executives. Grede's fashion show production contacts were riggers and lighting designers who connected her to corporate CMOs. Stop seeking mentors at networking events; instead ask questions of people adjacent to your current work and build from there.
- •Energy-Based Skill Discovery: Determine your strengths by what gives versus drains energy, not passion or interest. Negotiations energize Grede even when difficult; spreadsheets deplete her. Lean into energy-giving activities rather than chasing perceived passions. Take multiple jobs simultaneously to rapidly identify what energizes you through direct experience, not contemplation.
Notable Moment
Grede sold one million dollars of Good American jeans on launch day, then discovered by 11am she had no inventory replenishment plan and was months away from restocking. She spent the afternoon personally calling customers to apologize and explain thirteen-week delays, learning customer service fundamentals while her team questioned her CEO fitness.
Episode Transcript
Hey. It's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm just gonna start the show by saying this is one of the single best episodes we have ever recorded. You are in for something extraordinary. This is not only one of my favorite conversations that I've ever had, but there is no question your life will never be the same again once you listen to it. Today, I am joined by one of the most successful self made women in the world in business today. Emma Greed is the CEO and cofounder of $3,000,000,000 brands, Good American, SKIMS, and Safely. But this is not a business conversation. This is a conversation about getting everything that you want out of life from a woman who fought her way to the top. This is, hands down, one of the most inspiring, motivating, energizing conversations that I have ever had in my entire life. I cannot wait for you to experience this, and I don't say that lightly. Today, you're getting the blueprint on how to live an extraordinary life. And I'm gonna say right up front that even if you feel like you are starting with nothing, this conversation is gonna make you realize you can still create something extraordinary. Now, Emma grew up in East London to a single mother. She struggled through school at the age of 17. She dropped out of college because she couldn't pay for it. This is a story of how she went from there to becoming the cofounder of $3,000,000,000 companies. You are going to be blown away by her magnetism, her relatability, her passion, and the truth bombs she is about to drop over and over and over again. She has hopped on a plane and flown across the country to be here for you, to tell you step by step exactly how to dream bigger, how to create the future you want, how to start where you are, and build something that makes you proud. Emma's remarkable story is proof that there is no limit to what you can create, and she is gonna show you exactly what it takes to bet on yourself, especially when the people around you are doubting you. What you're about to learn is gonna help you turn your dreams into reality, and I just can't wait for you to hear this. Hey. It's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. It is always an honor to be together and to spend time with you. But today, in particular, I am so excited that you're here because here's what I know. You're the kind of person who aspires to something bigger. You wanna create a life that makes you proud. Oh my god. Are you in the right place? You're about to experience one of the most extraordinary conversations I've ever had in my entire life. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, first …
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