I want to ask you something that I think most conversations about wealth and investing never get around to asking.
What if the biggest obstacle standing between you and everything you are trying to build — is you?
Not the economy. Not the lack of capital. Not the closed doors or the wrong passport or the industry that was not built for you. Not any of the external barriers that are real and valid and worth naming.
You. The un-examined parts of you. The patterns you inherited before you were old enough to choose them. The anger, the fear, the default emotions that run quietly in the background of every decision you make — every relationship you build or burn, every opportunity you step into or step back from.
Because here is what I have come to understand in this season of my life, investing is not just about where you put your money. It is about who you are becoming in the process. And sometimes the most important investment you will ever make is not in a business, or a brand, or a piece of real estate.
It is in yourself. In your healing. In the work of becoming the person who is actually capable of receiving everything you are building toward.
Today’s story is about a woman who understood that — at nineteen years old, on a tube platform in London — and what happened in the years that followed when she did the work.
Her name is Emma Grede. She is British. She is mixed, half black and half White. She is the co-founder of Good American, founding partner of SKIMS, and one of the most powerful women in fashion and business in the world today.
And her story begins not in a boardroom. Not in at a negotiation table. Not in a moment of triumph or strategy or brilliant insight.
It begins with a deaf woman on a tube platform — and a version of Emma that she is not proud of.
THE TUBE STATION: THE MOMENT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
Emma was nineteen years old. She was underground in a London tube station, running late, heart racing, the incoming train audible in the distance. The woman in front of her was fumbling with her card at the turnstile — slowing everything down, blocking the way.
Emma snapped.
She screamed. She shouted. She was seconds away from physical rage — from shoving a stranger out of her way because she could not contain what was rising inside her.
The woman turned. Her mouth made sounds.
“I’m deaf.”
And Emma — nineteen years old, furious, burning — said: “Well, are you blind too? MOVE.”
She pushed past her. Got on the train. And as her pulse finally slowed down and the doors closed behind her, she put her head in her hands.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I want to pause here. Because I think it takes extraordinary courage to put that story in a book. To say — this is who I was. This is what was living inside me. This is the version of myself that I had to face before I could become anything else.
And what Emma did next — that night, sitting on that train with her head in her hands — is one of the most powerful acts of investing differently I have encountered this entire season.
She enrolled herself in a free anger management course. And she went — every week — for three years.
THE INVESTMENT: DOING THE WORK NO ONE SEES
I want to talk about what that decision actually was. Because it would be easy to gloss over it — to treat it as a footnote in the story of a woman who went on to build billion dollar brands and close deals with Natalie Portman and sit at the most powerful tables in fashion and business.
But I think it is the foundation of everything that came after. I think it is the investment that made all the other investments possible.
Emma grew up carrying anger. Not because she was a bad person — but because anger had been the language available to her. It was the emotion she had learned. The default she had inherited. The thing that rose up when she felt powerless, or overlooked, or blocked — which, as a young Half Black British woman trying to build something in spaces that were not designed for her, happened often.
And she knew — sitting on that train at nineteen — that if she did not deal with her anger, it would deal with her. That it would ruin relationships she needed to build. That it would close doors she was working too hard to open. That it would keep her trapped in a version of herself that was not capable of receiving the life she was trying to create.
So, she invested. Not in a course with a prestigious name or a certificate to hang on the wall. In a free anger management course in London. Week after week after week for three years. She learned to close her eyes and breathe until she came back into her body. She plumbed the roots of her anger — her childhood, her mother, the things she had been given and the things she had been denied. She learned that the goal was not to stop feeling angry. It was to become skilled at expressing it. To choose something different. To put an adult in the driver’s seat — an adult capable of looking after the younger, angry version of herself that was still living inside.
She also quit smoking weed. She recognized it as a contributing factor and she let it go.
None of this was glamorous. None of it was the kind of investing that gets written up in business magazines or celebrated on panels. It was quiet, unglamorous, sometimes painful inner work done in rooms that nobody photographed.
And it changed everything.
THE ESPADRILLES: WHEN INNER WORK MEETS OUTER STRATEGY
I want to fast forward now. Because I want you to see what the inner work made possible.
Emma had built a career as a broker — the person in the middle between brands and celebrities. The one who made the deals happen. And she was good at it. But good is not the same as great. And great — the kind of great that puts your company on the map — requires something more than skill and hustle.
It requires the ability to truly see the person across the table from you. To understand what they value. To care enough about the outcome to do what most people would not think to do.
She was brokering a deal between Dior and Natalie Portman — ahead of what would become one of the most famous and enduring fragrance partnerships in the industry. And the day of the meeting arrived. The Dior team showed up.
Every single one of them was wearing leather shoes. Leather accessories.
Natalie Portman is a famous vegan.
Emma looked at the team and felt something shift inside her — not panic, not rage, not the default emotion of her nineteen year old self. Clarity. The calm, clear-eyed recognition of a problem and the immediate decision to solve it.
She went out — this woman who was, in her own words, not rich at the time — and spent a couple of hundred dollars buying espadrilles for the entire Dior team. Non-leather shoes for a meeting with a woman whose values they had nearly walked in ready to ignore.
They did the meeting. Natalie Portman signed. And that deal — that single, relationship-defining, values-honouring deal — put Emma’s company on the map. For two years she walked into every brand meeting in the world with that story as the opening slide of her deck.
It was worth every penny of the espadrilles.
THE CONNECTION: WHAT THE TUBE STATION AND THE ESPADRILLES HAVE IN COMMON
I want you to see something. Because I do not think the espadrilles story and the tube station story are separate. I think they are the same story — told ten years apart.
The woman who screamed at a deaf stranger because she could not manage what was rising inside her — that woman could not have bought those espadrilles. Not because she did not have the money. Because she did not yet have the capacity. The emotional intelligence. The ability to pause, observe, and ask — what does this person need? What do their values require of me? What is the move that serves this relationship rather than just my own urgency?
Those questions require a regulated nervous system. A managed inner world. The kind of emotional infrastructure that Emma spent three years building in a free anger management course in London.
The espadrilles were the return on that investment. And the return on the espadrilles was a career-defining deal. And the return on that deal was two years of open doors and opportunities she could not have imagined standing on that tube platform at nineteen.
This is compound interest. Not of money — but of self. Every layer of inner work creates the capacity for the next layer of outer achievement. Every investment in who you are becoming expands what you are capable of building.
THE LESSON: THE INVESTMENT THAT PRECEDES ALL OTHERS
I want to draw out what I believe Emma’s story teaches us — because I think it is the most important lesson of this entire blog post.
You can have the strategy. You can have the vision. You can have the knowledge and the ownership and the visibility and the leverage. And still — if the inner work has not been done — you will find ways to sabotage it. To burn the relationships you need. To let the unmanaged parts of yourself make decisions that the best parts of you would never choose.
The investment that precedes all others is the investment in yourself. Not your skills. Not your brand. Not your intellectual capital. You. The emotional, psychological, spiritual work of becoming the person who is actually capable of receiving what you are building toward.
Emma did not wait until she was successful to do that work. She did it at nineteen with no money and no blueprint and no guarantee of what it would make possible. She did it in a free course in a room that nobody glamorised. She did it because she looked at herself honestly — at the worst version of herself, on a train with her head in her hands — and decided that person was not who she was going to be.
That decision — that investment — is the foundation of everything she has built since.
Invest in your healing. Not as a luxury. Not as something you will get around to when things slow down. As the most urgent and foundational investment you can make. Because the version of you that has done the work — that has processed the anger, the fear, the inherited patterns, the default emotions — that version of you is capable of things the unexamined version never could be.
Invest in emotional intelligence. The ability to read a room. To see what someone values. To pause before reacting. To choose your response rather than be chosen by it. This is not soft skill. This is the skill that bought the espadrilles and closed the Natalie Portman deal and put a company on the map.
Invest in your relationships. Emma understood that burning relationships was not an option — she was working too hard to set herself free. The people around you are not obstacles or assets. They are the fabric of every opportunity you will ever encounter. Invest in them accordingly.
And invest in radical honesty about who you are right now. Emma put the tube station story in her book. She did not hide it or minimise it or reframe it as something more flattering. She looked at it directly and said — this is where I started. This is the work I had to do. This is the investment I had to make before any other investment was possible.
That kind of honesty is rare. And it is the beginning of everything.
CLOSING: THE DRIVER’S SEAT
I want to leave you with the image that Emma uses in her book titled Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life — because I think it is one of the most powerful metaphors for this entire season.
The driver’s seat.
She writes about the decision to never again vacate the driver’s seat and let her unthrottled rage take the wheel. About the work of ensuring that an adult — a regulated, self-aware, emotionally intelligent adult — is always the one driving.
And I want to ask you today: who is driving your life?
Is it the version of you that has done the work — that has examined the patterns, processed the anger, chosen something different? Or is it the younger, indignant, unexamined version — the one that reacts before it thinks, that burns what it should be building, that lets fear or fury make decisions that wisdom never would?
Because here is the truth that Emma’s story teaches us. The most powerful investment you will ever make is not in a stock or a property or a business. It is in the person sitting in the driver’s seat of your life.
Invest in her. Do the work. Take the free course. Go back every week for three years if that is what it takes.
Because when she is regulated and clear and capable of truly seeing the people around her — she will buy the espadrilles. She will close the deal. She will build the thing you have been dreaming of building.
And she will do it without burning down everything she loves in the process.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud over here
Book Recommendation: Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede