I judged this book by its cover. Then Emma Grede's 14 rules for success stopped me in my tracks
The Shark Tank investor's book has 14 rules for success - and I couldn't stop dog-earing mine
I judged this book by its cover.
I was browsing a bookshop with no real plan when Emma Grede’s Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work and Life stopped me in my tracks, cover first.
I knew Grede’s face from her few appearances on the US Shark Tank, where she made history as the first Black woman to sit in the investor’s chair, but I couldn’t have told you much beyond that.
By the time I finished it, my copy was creased, coffee-stained and slightly warped - it became my sauna book, read in short, sweaty bursts over a few weeks - and I’d dog-eared more pages than I’ve dog-eared in a book in years.
Start With Yourself, released in April, is a New York Times bestseller and Grede’s first book. Beyond Shark Tank, she is co-founder and CEO of the denim label Good American, a founding partner of Skims, and co-founder of Safely and Off Season - which makes her one of the most senior operators in the Kardashian-adjacent business world, not just a famous face attached to it.
The book is aimed squarely at women, and Grede, doesn’t pretend otherwise. But there’s enough in here about ambition, boundaries and plain hard work that I found it useful regardless of who it’s “for”.
The section I kept returning to is a list Grede calls her basic rules for success. Some of them:
She shifted her mindset from blaming her circumstances to taking complete responsibility for herself.
She worked hard in her twenties, “a defining decade for everyone”.
She built detail into her plans for the future - how, when, where, what - but focused most on how she wanted it all to feel.
She found a genuinely supportive partner.
She established her career before having children.
She made selfish professional decisions, leaving opportunities when the time was right for her. “It’s okay to be most loyal to yourself,” she writes.
She leveraged every job, role or contact to help her do the next thing.
She moved away from people who didn’t serve her.
She learned to call BS - including on herself.
She “failed up”, stepping into jobs bigger than her experience.
She got up after failing, and kept getting up, learning each time.
She embraced crisis, using her own suffering as a chance to transform.
She put causes she cares about, like women’s rights and economic justice, at the centre of her businesses - “without making them about marketing”.
She refused to be afraid of anyone.
“And to this day, I always start with myself,” she writes.
Grede also introduces a term I hadn’t heard before: founderitis. “If you fear you have ‘founderitis’ and want to read a brutal Wikipedia entry, the one on ‘founder’s syndrome’ is for you,” she writes - a dry, self-aware line that sums up the book’s tone better than any blurb could.
My favourite passage, though, is the one where Grede traces her work ethic back to East London.
“I learned about action growing up in East London, where everyone is always on the go, hustling,” she writes. “Anyone reading this from my old neighbourhood will recognise these principles as our basic operating manual, and they continue to guide how I show up in the world today. None of them will surprise you; they’re woven into this book, and they’re dead simple: do what you say you’re going to do, show up; your word is king, always tell the truth; stay in motion. That’s it. These are the basic principles that guide the actions I take in my life.”
No inspirational-poster gloss, no seven-step formula promising an easier life. Just a clear account of what it actually took.
Start With Yourself is out now through Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster. If you’ve ever picked up a book for the cover and been pleasantly surprised, add this one to the pile.