Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI DEEP DIVE: Emma Grede's Girlboss "Propaganda" or Hard Truths? The Controversies Behind 'Start With Yourself'

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MINI DEEP DIVE: Emma Grede's Girlboss "Propaganda" or Hard Truths? The Controversies Behind 'Start With Yourself' · Mini Scroll

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Coming up today on Mini Scroll, I'm diving into the history of
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Emma Greed, the businesswoman behind so many Kardashian
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brands, and exploring the criticism behind her new book,
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Start with Yourself. Hi everyone, welcome to Mini
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Scroll, the daily Internet culture podcast bringing you the
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biggest stories from social media, the creator economy and
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the digital space. Every Monday through Thursday
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and sometimes Fridays, I'm your host, Lauren Meisner, the
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founder of the Australian youth digital media brand and
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Centennial World. Welcome back to a mini deep dive
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today for Friday. If you guys are watching, I know
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I have a wet patch on my crispy white T-shirt.
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I sat down to record and I saw that I smudged some makeup on it
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and I didn't have time to let it dry.
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So hopefully we'll dry over the course of this episode and it's
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not too distracting. All right, as promised, today
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I'm bringing you guys a mini deep dive into who Emma Greed
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is, her career history, her book.
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I'm going to talk about some of the things I really liked about
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the book because I have read it and I will also share my
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opinions on the criticisms. And I was getting so heated as I
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was reading the book and driving in here today thinking about
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what I was going to talk about. I'm hoping that I can like keep
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it together and I get to say everything that I want to say.
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Like I obviously have extensive notes, but you know, sometimes
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when you're prepping, you forget things that you wanted to say.
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Like, you know, when you're thinking to yourself and you're
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like, oh, I need to remember that or I need to say that and
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then I forget. I'm really hoping I don't forget
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any of that stuff because I have opinions.
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I have opinions. OK, so first let's talk about
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who is Emma Greed. Emma Greed is the businesswoman
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behind so many Kardashian brands.
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And at the moment she is the talk of like business mom,
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entrepreneur women, TikTok for some viral sound bites and
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headlines that coming out of her book tour.
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So Emma Greed was born on September 23rd, 1982.
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She's from Plasto in East London, England and was raised
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by a single mother with her three younger sisters.
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She talks a lot in her book about how she was parentified
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and her childhood was largely defined by ensuring that her
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sisters were taken care of. One of Emma's first jobs was
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delivering newspapers as a teenager and in her book she
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says that doing the morning like newspaper rounds really helped
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her see a different lifestyle. She was exposed to the early
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morning risers who are getting shit done early and that really
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inspired her. She also talks about how poor
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they were growing up and how that shaped her relationship
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with money and ambition. So she attended the in school of
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fashion, but she ended up dropping out, I think it was in
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her first year, she said, because she couldn't keep
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affording the tuition. After leaving college, Emma
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started working at a concierge company before joining a fashion
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production agency as a fashion show and events producer.
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So it sounds like Emma had a very classic, like entry level
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fashion industry experience where she worked basically 24/7
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for no money. And after six years with the
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company, she left after asking for a pay raise.
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And they said no. A huge part of her role was
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landing sponsorships. And she was like, I could see
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how much money I was making this company.
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So I went in and I asked for double my salary.
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I think she was saying she was making like 28, £1000 a year or
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something like that. And they basically laughed at
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her. And she walked away from that
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company after that. So after she left this company,
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it sounds like she met her now husband Yens through the
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industry. She said one of her friends was
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a fashion publicist. Obviously she works in fashion.
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I feel like a lot of Emma's kind of like early career, it sounds
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like so glamorous if you're not in like media, fashion, beauty,
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like these industries. But this is very normal.
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Like the stuff that she's saying, you know, saying that
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one of her best friends was like a fashion publicist.
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It's like, you know, one of Annabelle's best friends is a
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beauty publicist. Like that sounds glamorous if
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you're not like in the industry, but once you're in it, you know,
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like it's just a regular job like every other job.
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And a lot of these entry level jobs in quote UN quote glamorous
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industries are like grunt work. Like they are really tough and
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really unglamorous when you go behind the scenes.
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So yes, she met Yens who was the Co founder of an agency called
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Saturday Group and they met through the industry, like I
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said. So she worked at the Saturday
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Group in like a business development sales role for two
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years and her business unit that she was in charge of was making
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so much money that apparently they approached her like the Co
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founders approached her, including Jan's her husband.
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He wasn't her husband at this point.
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And she did say that they weren't even romantically
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involved when this happened yet. So approached her and asked if
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she wanted to basically separate her business like as a as a
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separate entity from the company.
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It could be under this Saturday Group umbrella still, but it
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could be like its own company and they could have different
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elements to the business. So instead of just doing like
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fashion sponsorships and stuff like that, they could involve
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like talent management and entertainment management and
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that kind of stuff. So that's how she really got
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into like celebrities was when her career at Saturday Group.
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She was making them so much money.
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They approached her to do like basically her own thing under
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their umbrella. And they said, let's like expand
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what you offer. So I'm going to go into this at
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the very end, but This is why I cannot subscribe to those who
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say that she's only successful because she married Yens.
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I'm not saying that her dating him wouldn't have contributed to
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her overall career success. At this point.
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She was like 27 and she was so good at her job that they
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offered her basically to launch her own company under their
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company umbrella. Like even if he was madly in
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love with her, a successful entrepreneur who also has a
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business partner who is not in love with Emma are saying to
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her, like you are so good at this that we are going to put
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millions of dollars and all these resources into you and our
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reputation on the line for you to launch this.
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Like that is why I just cannot subscribe to the narrative that
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she is only successful because she married some like rich man.
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OK. So in 2008, she started her own
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talent management and entertainment marketing agency
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called Independent Talent Brand. And I believe it was her company
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before Saturday Group. So Inca Productions, I think is
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what it was called. They threatened to sue her if
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she started her own agency because they did not leave on
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good terms. And she says in her book that
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because of that, she spent years dodging her old bosses at events
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in like industry, things like that.
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And that's something that she will never forget.
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And she does give you some like inspirational words of like,
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this is how I got over confrontation basically.
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Like, I was so terrified of confrontation, especially in
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like a professional setting. And I spent years, like,
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dodging, and it was just like, so much expended energy for
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nothing. So here's why you should just
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get over your fear of confrontation really quickly.
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She says now that she's so successful, every once in a
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while, somebody from their company will like, reach out and
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ask for a collaboration or like to work with them in any type of
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capacity. And she says even though that
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was a long time ago, I will never forget that they
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threatened to sue me. Not that they wouldn't give her
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a pay rise, but that they were so, like, shitty about her
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leaving. And so she says, I always turn
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them down. I never forget.
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OK, so 10 years after founding ITB, it was acquired.
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You guys, again, like I can't stress enough, if this woman was
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not amazing at her job, if she was not an absolute gun, she
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would not have these opportunities.
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Her company got acquired 10 years later.
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It's also really hard to get service based companies acquired
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as well. OK, so Emma really came into the
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mainstream zeitgeist through her business ventures tied to the
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Kardashians. She and Yens moved from London
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to LA in 2017 and together they have launched Good American
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Games Safely, which is like a plant based cleaning product
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brand. I don't know if you guys
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remember them, it's with Kris Jenner and Chrissy Teigen.
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And those are just a few of their businesses.
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They're the main ones that it seems like they work on right
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now. Emma and her husband, it seems
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like since they moved to LA, their strategy is basically
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like, find a celebrity ambassador to be like, what's it
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called when it's like celebrity investments?
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And it's like their likeness is being invested, maybe not their
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money necessarily. So anyways, to launch Good
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American, which was the first one, Emma said she raised
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$3,000,000 Yens and his business partner gave her $1 million.
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They wouldn't give her the rest. They said, like, you don't know
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the jeans industry, you don't know, like fashion retail, so
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why don't you go raise money from other people?
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And I really liked how she talked about starting Good
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American and how she was like, so out of her depths because at
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that point she was a very successful establishment English
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businesswoman. And raising money, especially
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from something you've never done before.
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I know having $1,000,000 check from somebody already helps,
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like being able to say, oh, so and so has already invested in
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me, that definitely helps other investors get on board.
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But yeah, she talks about how like the board was like on her
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ass because she made so many mistakes in the early days of
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Good American and she didn't know she was doing.
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And like all this stuff that's so like relatable and just made
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me feel so good. OK, so she's also been a judge
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on Shark Tank. She has a podcast called Aspire
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where she interviews founders and high net worth individuals.
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And she has an estimated personal net worth of $400
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million. All right, let's get into her
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book. So her book is like a
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combination of a business book, a memoir and kind of like a self
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help book. I read a lot of business books
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and a lot of memoirs from really successful entrepreneurs.
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This book is definitely more inspirational.
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I'm practical, I would say. However, it is a book for me.
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Like I can't stress enough. This book was personally written
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for me because, OK, for perspective, I think a lot of
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you guys know this, but I don't have a business partner.
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I don't have a mentor. Like I don't have like a formal
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mentor. I don't have investors.
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I'm a solo founder. I don't have a board.
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Like I am in the trenches of doing this all on my own.
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We're also bootstrapped. So like I am in the trenches of
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doing this completely on my own. I I need all the help I can get.
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And like I said, I read so many of these books and I was like,
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yeah, I am literally at the perfect stage in business to
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read this book. I think if I had read this book
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even like 3 or 4 years ago when I'd still been in the business
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for three or four years at that point, like I've been in
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business for seven years now, I think if I read this book even a
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couple years ago, I wouldn't have resonated with it as much.
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I wouldn't have understood it as well.
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Like this is truly a book for people who have been doing
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business for long enough, like building their own thing for
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long enough or like climbing the corporate ladder for long enough
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where they have a vision and they've made enough mistakes,
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they've had enough wins. They understand like who they
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are in business, if that makes sense.
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Like they understand their strengths, their weaknesses, and
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they're actively like working on certain things.
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Like I'm no longer at the stage of trying to figure out like how
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to run a company day-to-day or try to find product market fit
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or who our clients are. Like I'm past those stages.
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Obviously everything is like always evolving, but you know
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what I mean? I have been doing this for long
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enough that the things that like keep me up at night are no
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longer those. It's things that are more like
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abstract on my entrepreneurial journey.
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And that is a lot of what she talks about in this book.
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They're the things that like, I think you really only understand
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once you've been in the game long enough and you have like an
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intimate understanding of who you are when it comes to your
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entrepreneurial journey and like what you personally need to work
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on to get to like the next stage of business.
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Because it's so fucking true. Like you will never get to that
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next stage if you are not constantly working on the things
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that you need to internally. But you can't start working on
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those things until you have all of the like, practical shit
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figured out. So there are a lot of women on
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social media who are saying like, this book is not for
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everyone. And I completely agree.
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I don't think it would be super impactful if you are thinking
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about starting a business or in the early stages of starting a
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business or if you've made it. I mean, if you've made it, then
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I don't know what made it really means, but you know what I mean.
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If you've quote UN quote made it, you wouldn't be reading this
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book. I really think it's for those
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business owners who are trying to get to the level you're no
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longer like fighting for your life to scale like building
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brick by brick, like there is enough momentum that you are
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growing and it's not such a struggle to grow.
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And I really feel like that is who this is for.
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OK, so let me share some things that I loved about the book 1st
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and then I'll get into my opinions on the main criticisms.
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It was not the most groundbreaking book I've ever
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read about like business and memoir and entrepreneurship and
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aspirational shit. Like definitely not.
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But it was fine because I am actively working on the things
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that I believe are holding me back as a founder and thus
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holding my business back because I'm very cognizant of those and
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I'm always trying to work on them.
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I was able to read this book and like take some good Nuggets away
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from it, you know, in relation to those things that I'm always
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working on. So people are really acting like
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she said some insanely entitled stuff in this book without like
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a single thought about if it was right or wrong or how that would
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land. And that is incorrect.
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This book is filled with caveats, and it is filled with
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discussion of inequity and privilege and all of that
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nuance. But the point of the book is
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that it's motivational, right? It's like to encourage you to
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move past that, to, like, accept that things are inequitable and
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that it might be harder for some people than others.
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But like, that's just life. And like, here is how you can
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essentially like change your mindset to an extent to move
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past that. And she does have some parts
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about how, you know, if you really care about changing the
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systems, like you can do that from the inside.
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I know that's a bit of a problematic take.
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I know that's like not totally accurate, but she frames it as
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like putting your own oxygen mask on 1st ahead of others.
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And I think many would probably argue based on what we know of
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her, like we obviously don't know her, what we know of her.
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She maybe hasn't modeled that in her businesses.
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However, she also doesn't claim to do that.
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Like this is not a book for leaders on how to create more
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positive working environments. This is not a book for leaders
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on how to treat your staff better, right?
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Like this is a book for female entrepreneurs who have limiting
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beliefs that they're trying to overcome and how you can do
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mindset work to move past that. I really like how she has a huge
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focus, focus throughout the book on sacrifice, but having
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sacrifice and like letting go of the guilt of that sacrifice
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because you obviously can never have it all no matter how hard
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you try and what your sacrifices are.
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I don't have children, but I think a lot of that is her
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speaking to mothers who are working mothers, corporate
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mothers, entrepreneurial mothers.
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And even as someone who doesn't have kids, the way she talks
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about letting go of guilt did give me some Peace of Mind.
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Like I have a lot of guilt for how I have not been able to be
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consistently present, like in my marriage, in my friendships with
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my family, in my fitness, like in my life in so many ways since
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building Centennial, especially since becoming a solo founder.
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And her messaging around letting go of guilt really helped put
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that into perspective for me. Like this is the phase of life
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and I'm going to be doing this whether I feel guilty or not.
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So like, why waste my energy on feeling guilty because I'm not
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going to change it, right? I'm not going to just like pack
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up Centennial because I feel so guilty that I can't like go to
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the gym six days a week anymore and spend all the time that I
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want to with my husband. Like this is the stage that I'm
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at and I'm accepting that this is the stage, but like, don't
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feel guilty about that. She also has this chapter on
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sadness. I wish she wrote a whole book on
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this. OK.
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She has a chapter on how she often feels very sad and very
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lonely given what she's had to prioritize and how she chooses
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to spend her time. And it's so relatable.
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You know, we hear a lot about like entrepreneurial mental
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health. And I would hear about that
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before I was a founder, before I did my own thing.
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But you really never think it will happen to you.
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Like, you really don't understand the depths of it
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until you're in it. And it doesn't go away even when
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things are good. Like there is just a consistent
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dark cloud forever hanging over you that dulls your whole life
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when you are trying to scale something, even when things are
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going well. And that is something that I was
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very much not prepared for and that I struggle with every
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single day. And it was so amazing to hear
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her articulate that and say like she objectively has it all.
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Like literally has it all has done the thing that like so many
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female entrepreneurs would be striving to do.
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And she says, like I am very often incredibly sad and very
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often incredibly lonely. And finally, I really loved the
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way that she speaks about money for me personally at this phase
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of my entrepreneurial journey. Like my biggest hurdle mentally
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and emotionally that I've been working on conquering these past
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couple of years with my therapist is my limiting beliefs
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around my ability to generate revenue, my worth as a business
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owner and like centennials worth in the market in general, my
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ability to build and scale a media brand.
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And all of that comes back to money.
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And of course that is manifesting in a lot of imposter
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syndrome. Deep comparison with my peers
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like this is gonna sound really dramatic, but I genuinely feel
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like the biggest loser of all time.
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Like most of the time, I have constant feelings of that.
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But I found so many like helpful little pieces in her chapters
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where she talks about money, even just like some of the
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solidarity that she shared. She talks about how so many of
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the most successful business women in the world that she
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knows, like a lot of them still feel bad about talking about
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money. They feel like they're bad with
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money. They don't know enough about
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money. They feel uncomfortable
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confronting money situations and all of that talk because that's
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specifically like something I'm struggling with that I'm working
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towards fixing in myself or not fixing, but like working on in
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myself. It spoke to me, OK.
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It made me feel so not crazy. Like I say to myself 100 times a
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day, like, is this normal? Is it normal that it's this
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hard? Is it normal that I'm struggling
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this much? Like is it just me?
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Am I, I'm actually just really bad at this and that's why this
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is so hard. And because I don't have a
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mentor and I don't have investors and I don't have a
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business partner, you know, like I don't have anyone to share
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that with and to kind of gauge that with.
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Like I do have a lot of friends who are founders, but a lot of
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them are founders in like totally different industries
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where it's like unrelatable to media or they're at different
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stages, like whatever it is. And I'm just constantly like, is
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it the industry? Is it me?
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Is it a combination of everything?
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Like, is this normal? Should I just pack it all up?
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Like, I don't know what's going on?
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And so to hear throughout her book that so many women, even
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the most successful ones, struggle with their beliefs
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around money and struggle with kind of understanding how they
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relate to money and things like that, I was like, Oh my God,
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that makes me feel so much less crazy.
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All right, let's get into the criticisms.
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The overarching criticism about her book is that this is girl
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boss propaganda and we need to move on from hustle culture.
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We are past that. Nobody has time for that.
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Nobody wants to hear any like girl boss hustle culture tech
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bro propaganda right now. This book, you guys, I can say
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without a shadow of a doubt, is not girl boss propaganda.
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This is a book about the reality of what it takes to build a
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billion dollar business. Those women fronting the girl
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boss movement like years ago, you know a decade or so ago.
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The reason why it was like quote UN quote propaganda is because
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they were pitching it like it could be for everyone.
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They were saying like women from all walks of life and all stages
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could do XYZ and should be doing XYZ.
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That is not how she is positioning this book at all.
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This book is for a very targeted audience and I feel like a lot
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of the distaste for the Kardashians or wealthy people or
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just like Emma in general, or maybe she rubs you the wrong
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way. I think a lot of that is
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clouding how people feel about this book or how people think
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they feel about this book. Because from reading the book,
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I'm going to say like most people that have takes on social
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media about this book have not read the book.
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So yes, this is a book for people who want to over index on
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work, who want to grind. Like this is literally for the
19:32
people who dream of Labor. OK, I am one of those people,
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Sean. My husband says all the time if
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you won like $500 million in the lottery, you would just put all
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of that into Centennial and keep working seven days a week.
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And that is the truth. Like I love to work.
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I want to work beyond anything else, and that is who this book
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is for. OK.
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That being said, she does say early on, I didn't write notes
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on this, but she does say early on, you know, that like, she
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works for everything she has and there's no combination of
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circumstances necessarily that got her to where she is.
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And I can understand why she feels like that, obviously
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coming from her background. But I do want to say that is
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something, of course, like I don't necessarily agree with or
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subscribe to. There are so many circumstances
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that can lead somebody to being successful.
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Everybody has their own versions of privileges, and luck can play
20:27
a huge role in that as well. So yeah, I, I don't love the
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narrative when people are like, I worked for every single thing
20:34
I had, Like, I believe you. I believe you work that hard.
20:38
And she says it's in the book. Like, if you want to have an
20:39
extraordinary career, you need to work extraordinarily hard.
20:42
She says, I've never met anybody who is like, build something
20:45
really massive without putting in like, literally decades of
20:48
work. All right.
20:49
The next criticism is that she is a three hour mom.
20:54
So a major point that's been talked about specifically on the
20:56
press tour is how Emma defines herself as a Max 3 hour mom on
21:00
weekends. So she explains that this means
21:02
focusing on high impact, intentional quality time with
21:05
her children rather than daily like a busy work parenting,
21:09
which allows her to balance her career, her personal time, her
21:12
friendships, all that with her children.
21:14
OK, so I don't have children. My opinion here is not really
21:16
going to be valid because I'm not a business owner.
21:18
That's balancing having a family like having children, right?
21:22
But I will share my own experience with having a three
21:26
hour mother. My mom is a therapist and for
21:28
most of my life she was AC suite executive.
21:31
She sat on multiple boards in the evenings.
21:33
She taught classes at university.
21:35
She very much identified as a career woman first and a mother
21:39
second. She was truly a three hour mom.
21:43
And I can tell you I fucking loved that growing up and I love
21:48
it even more as an adult. And that is what I saw in so
21:51
many women in my life growing up, like my aunts, so many of my
21:55
friends, mothers were like VPS, C suites, like owners of
21:59
multimillion dollar businesses. A lot of them were the
22:02
breadwinners of their families and had much bigger careers than
22:05
their husbands. And I feel like the self esteem
22:08
that that instilled in myself and my friends growing up was
22:12
something that I will be forever grateful for.
22:14
And I am not diminishing how feeling like you have a
22:17
financial safety net and all of those things that can come with
22:20
having parents who are obviously making a lot of money and very
22:24
successful in their careers in that capacity.
22:26
Like, I'm not diminishing how those elements of course can
22:29
play into yourself esteem and yourself confidence, but I
22:31
really feel like being surrounded by so many women and
22:35
a lot of these women were like boomers.
22:36
So as I'm older now, like my mom is 70, as I'm older now, I can
22:40
also see like how many barriers they had to fucking breakthrough
22:45
to achieve what they achieved. Things that I just didn't even
22:47
realize obviously when I was much younger and growing up.
22:50
I can really see how that impacted kind of how I entered
22:54
the working world, like with this level of confidence that I
22:58
might have not had if I didn't have so many women in my life
23:01
that were modeling something like that.
23:03
And that actually isn't my mother's experience at all.
23:06
So this is a little bit of family lore I'm dropping for you
23:09
guys. But my mother is the eldest
23:10
daughter of six children. And when my grandmother, her
23:13
mother, was pregnant with the 6th, my grandfather left in the
23:17
middle of the night and abandoned his family.
23:19
This was the 60s. He took the car, my mom's family
23:23
had to go on welfare. My grandma got a job as a
23:26
greeter at Walmart, and my mom basically had to become mom to
23:30
her siblings. And of course, like in the 60s,
23:32
not a lot of families divorced. So it was like this huge scandal
23:35
as well. So I think knowing that growing
23:37
up, that puts into perspective for me, you know, like, why my
23:40
mother was so passionate about her career and making it for
23:44
herself. And it also gave me a level of
23:46
like cultural awareness, of course.
23:48
But I think in general, I was so proud that my mom had this like,
23:52
completely different life, completely different identity.
23:55
It didn't make me feel any type of way except for proud that
23:58
motherhood wasn't her identity. OK, let's talk about her work
24:01
from home. Take basically her take on
24:04
working from home. She says you need to be visible
24:08
in the office otherwise you will be passed over for
24:11
opportunities. And she also said if you work
24:13
three days a week for me, so if you work part time, then don't
24:16
come asking me for a pay rise. Now I believe she is speaking
24:20
first of all from the data like very much unfortunately there is
24:24
research that backs those statements up.
24:26
And I understand why people are like, but why would you say
24:29
that? Like, why would you put that
24:31
into such concrete writing that is perpetuating A harmful
24:35
narrative when if you were going to say something like that, you
24:38
know, you could have also extended solutions or you could
24:42
have made it clear that, like, that is incredibly inequitable.
24:45
And I will say, like I said in the book, like she does talk
24:48
about a lot of these imbalances and things like that.
24:50
And she does have a lot of caveats.
24:52
She does, she puts it everywhere.
24:53
She was like, I know it's not fair, but like, this is the
24:55
reality. And I think she very much was
24:57
speaking from her own specific perspective, her own specific
25:01
truth, her experience. And that is the point of this
25:04
book. This book is not a book about
25:06
finding balance as a mother and a business owner, right?
25:10
It's actually, I would argue the exact opposite.
25:12
It's a book about how to make your entire world your business
25:15
and to stop caring that you've done that, basically.
25:19
But this is where I differ from her opinion on this.
25:22
I was really trying to think like, how could she have framed
25:26
this differently? And because it's not something
25:29
that I necessarily resonate with.
25:31
So as somebody who's building a business that is truly a
25:34
fraction of a fraction of the size of anything she's ever
25:37
built, obviously I don't agree with this perspective.
25:42
And I think it's because Centennial has been bootstrapped
25:45
this entire time. So we've never received like an
25:48
influx of money where we can hire multiple people at once,
25:51
right? Where it's like, OK, now I have
25:53
a team. Every single team member has
25:56
been added where it's like brick by fucking brick building,
25:59
right? So in that case, my team is
26:01
small. And when you're working in a
26:03
small team, a start up, a scale up, or like a small business in
26:06
general, every single person counts so much that there is
26:11
literally no way that somebody who works from home, even if you
26:14
work from home full time, would be passed over for a promotion.
26:18
Because it's impossible to not be visible in these teams.
26:22
You know, like everyone contributes so much to the
26:25
business. They are so important to the
26:27
business that if there is opportunity for promotion, you
26:30
being in the office or not isn't going to make that big of a
26:33
difference. Because when you are in such a
26:35
small team, especially one that's been bootstrapped, like
26:37
your work and the contribution that you're making to the
26:39
company is so much bigger, like so outweighs if you're visible
26:43
or not. I'm not forgetting about you
26:45
just because you're working from home.
26:47
So it makes me think that it's probably more so coming from the
26:50
perspective of businesses that she's built, because it seems
26:53
like she has mostly built businesses that have had capital
26:56
infusions. Almost right away.
26:58
I wanted to read a comment that I found on Instagram.
27:01
So it was from Emma's press tour, her book tour, sorry.
27:04
And she was being interviewed by Bose from Real Housewives of
27:08
Beverly Hills, who was a career woman herself.
27:10
That's why she was interviewing her.
27:11
If you guys don't watch Housewives.
27:13
And anyway. So this is a comment that was
27:15
left on the real on Bose's page. Quote, I am a huge fan of both
27:18
of you. But our dear Emma also went on
27:20
record and said she does not give raises to those working
27:23
three days a week. That is a direct quote.
27:25
As a successful businesswoman myself, this rhetoric is
27:27
problematic. We cannot devalue part time work
27:30
and working from home. It is in fact the leadership
27:32
that we are granted that is a boon to do better when given a
27:36
platform. How powerful and incredible
27:38
would it be to highlight leadership that empowers these
27:40
positions instead of villainizing them?
27:42
I agree it's important to leave with the truth.
27:44
I just wish it wasn't an incomplete sentence and we could
27:47
follow with how we do better. I believe the discourse comes
27:50
from doubling down on those same policies.
27:52
I say this truly as a fan. Both of you have said many, many
27:55
wise things throughout the years and there are other layers to
27:57
this conversation that are missing.
27:59
Of course that is just one of them.
28:01
But another comment on this post reads telling women, especially
28:05
black women, that proximity returning to the office is the
28:08
path to advancement assumes the system itself is neutral.
28:12
It's not. So yes, there are definitely a
28:14
lot of missing pieces in that conversation and I understand
28:18
why it really upsets some people.
28:21
I still believe that it's because Emma doesn't really care
28:25
if she's upsetting people or not.
28:26
She is telling her story from her own perspective.
28:29
All right. And finally, you guys, I need to
28:31
address the fact that she married a millionaire and
28:33
everybody thinks that's why she's successful.
28:35
So people are losing their minds that she won't give credit to
28:38
her husband for her success because he was wealthy when they
28:43
got together and obviously he helped invest in good American.
28:47
But her whole book is about women owning their success,
28:51
owning their worth. Like, it would be so
28:52
antithetical for her to say that her success is because of her
28:55
husband. And it's just not the gap
28:59
between growing up in East London with a single mother
29:03
where you were like completely parentified as a child, barely
29:06
graduating high school. She talks about how she was
29:08
incredibly dyslexic. I'm not an emigre stand, OK?
29:11
I feel like I'm out here like defending her.
29:14
I'm not like I appreciate a successful career woman and I'm
29:18
trying to like gather as much as I can from everyone out there
29:21
who's putting out content about this.
29:23
That's why I consume her podcast and stuff.
29:25
It's not cuz I'm like necessarily a fan of her, but
29:27
the gap between like her childhood, her teenagehood, and
29:31
then like having to drop out of uni because you couldn't afford
29:34
tuition to marrying a millionaire like that is a
29:38
ginormous gap. In her 20s she was offered her
29:41
own business division because she was so good at her job.
29:46
How many nepo babies and women married to very successful
29:50
wealthy men do we see out there and probably exist that we just
29:54
never see? Who cannot make a business work?
29:58
Who could be given all the money in the world and can't make it
30:01
succeed? Of course, once she was with her
30:03
husband, whether they were dating, engaged, married,
30:06
whatever phase of relationship they were in, of course that is
30:09
going to now be a massive privilege for her.
30:12
But to say that all of her success is because she married
30:16
this guy is so misogynistic and I fucking hate it.
30:21
All of that to say, I feel like this book was misrepresented in
30:25
terms of like the media headlines and how people are
30:27
talking about it on social media.
30:29
I think if you actually read it, you'll realize a lot of the
30:32
sound bites coming out of it are taken out of context or they're
30:35
sensationalized. I think multiple things can be
30:37
true. I think we can disagree with who
30:40
she works with, the Kardashians. I think we can disagree with how
30:44
she's presented some very unfortunate but real facts about
30:48
the reality of being a working mother, the reality of trying to
30:52
build a business in this economy as a woman.
30:55
But I think at the end of the day, this is a book that shares
30:59
very hard truths. It's not a book that is sharing
31:03
advice on how to change those truths or how to deal with those
31:07
truths. It's a book sharing those truths
31:10
and saying you better accept it if this is the kind of career
31:13
that you want because it's going to be really hard to get it any
31:16
other way. Anyways, guys, that's it for
31:18
this mini deep dive. Thank you so much for listening.
31:20
I love you guys. Please remember to rate, review
31:23
and subscribe. Reminder, we have a public
31:25
holiday on Monday, so I will talk to you on Tuesday.
31:28
Centennial World Podcast Network operates on Gadigal land.
31:32
We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the
31:35
traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to
31:38
elders both past and present.