Everyone has an opinion about Nara Smith. Very few people have asked her how the business works. At 24, with four kids under six and one of the most recognizable formats on the internet, Nara is running a company she plans to keep growing for the next 50 years. Emma and Nara get into the moment a viral format turned into income, and why she left the modeling agency that had represented her since s

Vanessa Van Edwards has spent nearly twenty years studying what makes some people easy to talk to. Her argument is that conversation is a skill rather than a personality, and that most of us are simply out of practice. She joins Emma to talk about how to prepare for the conversations that matter, what to say when you meet someone who could change your career, and how to handle feedback and disagre

Ari Emanuel is one of the most powerful people in entertainment and the real-life inspiration for Ari Gold on Entourage. He started in the CAA mailroom before co-founding Endeavor with three other agents and very little money. Over the next three decades, he merged the company with William Morris, acquired IMG and UFC, and helped reshape the modern entertainment business. In this conversation, Ari

Diane von Furstenberg created the iconic wrap dress in her twenties and built her namesake company DVF into one of the most recognizable fashion brands in the world. More than fifty years later, as she approaches 80, she's entering a new chapter — with a lifetime of lessons to share. In this episode of Aspire, Emma sits down with her longtime friend and idol for a deeply personal conversation abou

On this special birthday solo of Aspire, Emma Grede shares 44 rules for life, business, and success—her personal operating system for nearly everything. This is everything she knows to be true about money, work, marriage, and motherhood, plus the beliefs she actually uses to make decisions, build companies, and recover from her mistakes. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why taking responsibility for

Andrew Rosen has spent nearly five decades building, investing in, and shaping some of the most influential brands in American fashion. As the co-founder of Theory and an early investor in brands like TWP, rag and bone, Veronica Beard, Alice + Olivia, Good American and SKIMS, he’s also one of Emma's closest mentors. His advice comes from doing the work — and learning what happens when things don't

Durana Elmi knows how to build a business. Before Cymbiotika, she built and exited four companies. She then took a wellness brand with one employee, one product, and almost no infrastructure and helped scale it into a $150 million business alongside her husband Shahab. In this episode of Aspire, Emma sits down with Durana to unpack the decisions behind that growth. They also get candid about money

It's easier than ever to launch a beauty brand—and harder than ever to make it last. In this first-ever Aspire founders roundtable, Danessa Myricks (Danessa Myricks Beauty), Dianna Cohen (Crown Affair), and Amy Liu (Tower 28) get honest about what it actually takes to build and scale a brand people believe in. These aren’t early ideas—they’re Sephora-scale businesses: Tower 28, launched in 2019, n

There’s a lot of dopey financial advice out there. Jill Schlesinger is here to call it out, answer your questions, break down the financial news that actually matters, and help you manage your money without losing your mind. No jargon. No judgment. Just clear, actionable financial guidance about saving, investing, buying a home, managing your career, and deciding how to spend your hard-earned doll

Arthur C. Brooks believes we are living through an age of emptiness—a time when more people feel distracted, disconnected, and unsure of what will actually make their lives meaningful. In his latest book, The Meaning of Your Life, the Harvard professor and New York Times bestselling author examines why so many of the things we chase in pursuit of happiness can leave us feeling unsatisfied once we

Jennifer Garner is an award-winning actor, producer, longtime Save the Children ambassador, and co-founder of Once Upon a Farm, an organic children’s food brand. After rising to fame on Alias, she built a career spanning more than three decades before entering entrepreneurship at 45 and helping grow Once Upon a Farm into a $724 million publicly traded company. Jennifer joins Emma to talk about the

In this solo episode, Emma shares how she thinks about money, from the lessons she learned growing up in East London to the principles she uses today. She gets into her personal financial priorities, why your earning power can matter more than your savings, how to negotiate from a position of strength, and why no woman should ever outsource the understanding of her own finances. In this episode, y

Emma sits down with Krissy Cela, founder and creative director of Oner Active, for an honest conversation about building a bootstrapped business on track to generate close to $300 million this year. Before Oner, Krissy spent a decade building a fitness audience and business from a student laptop, long before either was considered a conventional career path. Today, she owns 50 percent of one of the

Erin and Sara Foster have spent more than 15 years working across television, fashion, media and investing. Today, they are behind the hit Netflix series Nobody Wants This, the fashion brand Favorite Daughter, a production company, a venture fund and a growing slate of projects—but their success did not arrive according to a master plan. In this episode, they join Emma to unpack the failures, pivo

Every woman should understand the partnership she's entering before a crisis forces her to. This episode is that conversation. Laura Wasser has spent 32 years as one of the country's most sought-after divorce attorneys. She’s the person people call when a marriage is ending. But what makes this conversation so valuable is that almost everything she knows matters long before anyone gets divorced. T

Emma Chamberlain started posting videos at 16, before anyone fully understood what the creator economy would become. Within a couple of years she’d become one of the most watched people on YouTube with over 12 million subscribers, ambassador deals with Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Lancôme, and a Spotify-exclusive podcast. She helped define a new kind of fame, built one of the most recognizable perso

Reshma Saujani a leading advocate for women’s economic power, the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, and the force behind the new documentary No Country for Mothers. After helping change the culture around girls in technology, she has turned her attention to the policies and assumptions that continue to push women—especially mothers—out of the workforce. In this conversation, she joins Emma

Kristin Cavallari became a household name before she'd even graduated high school, and spent the next two decades building a life, a business, and a family under constant public scrutiny. But this conversation isn't just about the version of her life you've seen on screen. In this episode, Kristin sits down with Emma for a candid conversation about money, financial independence, and what it actual

In today’s solo episode, Emma dives into real listener questions: the actual mechanics of building from nothing, starting a business with no capital, why having no money can be an advantage, plus more nuanced questions about navigating your career, handling tricky mentors, and knowing when to quit. She also gets into more personal reflections about her marriage, what her life looked like in her tw

Alicia Lyttle is the CEO of AI InnoVision and one of the clearest voices teaching entrepreneurs and operators how to actually use AI to make money. Her clients run from solo founders to Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies. She's been teaching people how to build online for 25 years, long before the current AI wave. People call Lyttle the Queen of AI for good reason. The AI conversatio