Start With Yourself

Start with Yourself is a game-changing, no-BS guide for anyone seeking meaningful success on their own terms. It’s an essential framework that will give you the tools and mindset to unlock your full potential in life and business—straight from a woman who defied all the odds to become a serial entrepreneur, cofounder of culture-defining global businesses, a non-profit champion and host of the Aspire with Emma Grede podcast. All while raising a family of four children.

Based on the factors of her early life—she’s the child of a working-class single mother who grew up in a rough neighborhood in East London and dropped out of high school—you’d never guess that Emma Grede would go on to become one of America’s richest self-made women.

This makes Grede singular and unique, but she’s convinced you can do it too: Start with Yourself is a blueprint to her mindset and how she thinks about business and life, structured in easy takeaways, so you can immediately apply her philosophy to what you’re trying to build and create.

Among her most blazing insights, Grede identifies what she calls “Old Thoughts”: stale thinking, outdated ideas; set-in-stone rules ingrained into the culture about work life balance, the crassness of money and the unseemliness of ambition—which aren’t actually rules at all. They’re biases, Grede insists, system errors, and we must strike them from our minds in order to create a greater sense of control, even mastery, over our day-to-day and long-range goals. 

Ultimately, this is a book for everyone tired of feeling like a bystander or passenger in their own life. Grede offers tangible and applicable-right-now solutions to create a mindset, an overall system of thought to manage emotions, clarify ideas, and illuminate the right next step—while always staying positive.

It’s about gathering yourself after failure. It’s about being accountable but also forgiving yourself. It’s about not expecting shortcuts while never being bashful about grabbing them when they appear. It’s about pushing hard for wins and never apologizing for your dreams.

Above all, Grede offers a new vision for work and life that encourages readers everywhere to take responsibility for their own thinking to achieve personal and professional success at the highest levels.

Author Biography

Emma Grede is the ultimate modern mogul, turning big ideas into some of today’s most influential consumer brands. She’s the cofounder and CEO of Good American, the founding partner of SKIMS, cofounder of Safely and Off Season, and now the voice behind the Aspire with Emma Grede podcast. A leader with purpose, Grede also lends her time and expertise to global impact organizations, serving on the board of directors for the Obama Foundation and Baby2Baby, and has recently become a King’s Trust Ambassador. Her journey proves that success and substance go hand in hand. Grede lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Jens, and their four children.