How To Stop Playing Small With Skims's Emma Grede

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Grace Beverley • Jul 14, 2025

Audio Brief

Show transcript
This episode features Emma Grede, who discusses how her East London upbringing fostered an intense work ethic and a drive for financial optionality, alongside critical advice for entrepreneurs navigating today's market. There are four key takeaways from this conversation. Emma Grede's East London "grafter" culture instilled a powerful work ethic, reinforced by seeing hard work consistently yield results. Her core philosophy, "the way you do anything is the way you do everything," advocates applying high standards across all tasks. Grede's primary early motivation was not passion, but achieving financial optionality for freedom and control over her life. Successful entrepreneurs must adeptly identify major economic opportunities. Grede pinpoints Artificial Intelligence as the current "gold rush," emphasizing its transformative potential. She passionately encourages women to engage with AI to avoid missing this significant tech boom and ensure their participation. During precarious economic times, consumer behavior shifts, prioritizing certainty and established value. Consumers retreat to trusted brands and are less likely to spend on unproven or "frivolous" new products. Businesses should therefore focus on offering reliable and essential items that provide demonstrable value. To stand out in a crowded market, entrepreneurs must embrace their unique perspective and contextualize existing ideas with their distinct approach. Lasting success is not built overnight; it requires a disciplined, long-term 10-year vision rather than short-term expectations. This prevents overestimating short-term gains and underestimating long-term potential. This episode provides invaluable insights for entrepreneurs aiming to build resilient, impactful businesses by combining a strong work ethic with strategic foresight.

Episode Overview

  • Emma Grede discusses how her upbringing in East London's "grafter" culture instilled an intense work ethic and a drive to create financial "optionality" in her life.
  • She shares her core philosophy that "the way you do anything is the way you do everything," emphasizing the importance of applying high standards to all tasks, both big and small.
  • The conversation shifts to practical advice for entrepreneurs, including how to identify major opportunities (like the current "gold rush" in AI) and adapt to consumer behavior during economic uncertainty.
  • Emma encourages founders to embrace their unique perspective to stand out in a crowded market and stresses the critical importance of adopting a long-term, 10-year vision for success.

Key Concepts

  • Foundational Work Ethic: Emma's drive is rooted in her East London upbringing, where being a "grafter" was the norm, and was reinforced by seeing hard work consistently lead to positive outcomes.
  • Motivation as "Optionality": Her primary early motivation wasn't a specific passion but the desire to earn money to create freedom, choice, and control over her own life.
  • Philosophy of Universal Excellence: The belief that a high-performance mindset should be applied consistently across all areas of life, from minor tasks to major professional endeavors.
  • Consumer Behavior in Uncertainty: In precarious economic times, consumers retreat to trusted, established brands that offer certainty and are less likely to spend on "frivolous" or new, unproven products.
  • Identifying the "Gold Rush": Successful entrepreneurs must identify where the current major economic opportunity lies, which Emma identifies as the boom in Artificial Intelligence.
  • The Power of Unique Perspective: The idea that success doesn't require inventing something entirely new, but rather contextualizing an existing idea for the current moment and bringing your own unique approach to it.
  • The 10-Year Horizon: The principle that significant, lasting success is built over a decade, not a single year, cautioning against the pitfalls of short-term thinking.

Quotes

  • At 0:10 - "Today's guest was the first name I wrote down." - Host Grace Beverley reveals that Emma Grede was her number one dream guest when she first started her podcast.
  • At 0:28 - "You will know she is bold with her goals, vocal on her values, and unapologetically ambitious." - Grace describing Emma Grede's well-known reputation for being a powerful and direct business leader.
  • At 1:15 - "I'm always working hard." - Emma Grede’s direct and immediate response when asked if she is "working hard or hardly working."
  • At 1:34 - "The way you do anything is the way you do everything." - Emma sharing her core belief that one's approach to small tasks reflects their overall standards and work ethic.
  • At 2:17 - "I just needed to like make some money to be able to give my life optionality." - Emma explaining her primary motivation for working so hard from a young age was to achieve freedom and choices.
  • At 27:06 - "I'm going back, I'm going to what certainty is... I'm not testing out this new thing because that might be a waste of 20 quid that I don't have." - Describing the consumer mindset during economic downturns, where people prefer trusted brands over risking money on new products.
  • At 27:22 - "There's then the gold rush, right? Like where is the gold rush? And right now we all know that that's in AI." - The speaker identifies Artificial Intelligence as the current major area of opportunity for entrepreneurs.
  • At 27:31 - "Every single woman that is listening to this podcast... has to get their head around AI because we missed, as women, the first tech boom and we will miss this boom if we don't really embrace it." - A passionate call to action for women to educate themselves and get involved in the AI space.
  • At 27:57 - "It doesn't matter if there's a million brands that do what you do. You are not doing it. Right? Like you, you have to understand that your unique take, that your way of bringing that to market... is going to be very different." - Advising entrepreneurs that their unique perspective is the key differentiator in a saturated market.
  • At 28:24 - "You've just got to contextualize it within the context of the moment and then know that it's coming from you and therefore there will be something special about it." - Emphasizing that success comes from understanding the current cultural climate and infusing a product with one's personal value.
  • At 29:19 - "People tend to overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years." - Highlighting the importance of having a long-term perspective when building a business.

Takeaways

  • Apply a high standard of excellence to every task you undertake, as your approach to small things reflects your overall capability and work ethic.
  • Identify and pursue the current "gold rush" in your industry—for aspiring entrepreneurs today, this means getting educated and involved in AI.
  • When launching a business during an economic downturn, focus on products that offer value and certainty rather than non-essential or "frivolous" items.
  • Don't let a crowded market deter you; instead, focus on differentiating your offering by infusing it with your unique perspective and execution.
  • Adopt a long-term vision for your goals, planning for a 10-year journey rather than expecting transformative results in just one year.
  • Clearly define your core motivation for success, whether it's passion, impact, or achieving the freedom and "optionality" that comes with financial independence.