Aspire with Emma Grede

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 and Emma examine the qualities behind that extraordinary career. Ari opens up about growing up with severe dyslexia, being bullied, and using the anger he carried from those experiences to drive himself forward. He explains why you have to say what you want, how he works until he finds the yes, and why curiosity only becomes valuable when you act on it.

They also explore the harder side of success. Ari reflects on the rage and aggression that helped him build his company, the moment he realized those qualities could no longer take him forward, and the work he has done to become a better leader.

They get into:

• Turning dyslexia and rejection into emotional endurance
• Why nobody will advocate for your future more fiercely than you
• What Ari learned from starting in the CAA mailroom
• His relentless approach to calls, rejection, and finding the yes
• How he turns curiosity into relationships and opportunities
• Why company culture is shaped by the behavior leaders tolerate
• What founders misunderstand about how long success takes
• Knowing when the qualities that built your career need to evolve
• Why Ari ultimately values a life of meaning over a traditional legacy

Ari’s new memoir, Roll the Calls, is available now.

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 about self-belief, independence, motherhood, aging and becoming the woman you want to be. Diane opens up about the choices she made as a working mother, why guilt and fear are not options, the mistakes she's made along the way, and what it takes to like the person you've become.

Diane shares:

• How to build the kind of self-belief that carries you through every stage of life
• Why the most important relationship you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself
• How to stop comparing yourself to other people and own who you are
• Why guilt and fear should never drive your decisions
• What motherhood taught her about raising independent children without losing yourself
• Why independence has always mattered more to her than money
• How to learn from mistakes without letting them define you
• Why kindness is a currency — and how it compounds over time
• What getting older has taught her about confidence, clarity and becoming more yourself

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 your life is the biggest power move you'll ever make
• How to build confidence before you feel ready
• The question that exposes whether your full schedule is progress or avoidance
• Why you should ask for more money before resentment sets in, and how to do it
• The case for treating your choice of partner as the biggest business decision of your life
• What most successful people get wrong about happiness
• Why your reputation is built when there’s no immediate reward

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 go to plan.

In this conversation, Andrew shares the lessons he took from his father, the setbacks that shaped how he built Theory, and the advice he gave Emma when she was becoming a brand owner. They explore how to trust your instincts, choose the right investors, and build a profitable business with staying power.

They get into:

• Taking over as CEO of the family business in his twenties
• Losing control of the company — and what he did next
• Getting fired, and why he never saw it as failure
• The experience he brought to starting Theory at 40
• Why profitability has to be part of the plan from the start
• What founders should actually look for in an investor
• The lessons he took from his father that still shape how he does business

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, marriage, and leadership. Durana shares why financial independence matters deeply to her, what 27 years of building alongside her husband has taught her about disagreement, and how her definition of success has changed from making money to owning her time.

You’ll learn:

• Why Cymbiotika bootstrapped for five years before taking outside capital
• What infrastructure needs to be in place when a business starts growing faster than you can keep up with
• The expensive lessons founders can learn from going into retail too quickly
• What a $25 million strategic raise brought beyond capital
• Why celebrity investors became a part of Cymbiotika’s growth strategy
• How to make decisions when data challenges your instincts

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, now with a reported $228 million valuation; Crown Affair, launched in 2020 and scaled from roughly 55 to 600 Sephora doors, with a dry shampoo that has ranked #1 in the category; and Danessa Myricks Beauty, a profitable-since-launch business that had already grown to roughly 500 SKUs before entering Sephora.

From getting into Sephora and staying there, to raising capital vs. bootstrapping, to building community you can't reverse-engineer—this is the real playbook for 2026.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What separates brands that last, and why launching is easy but sustaining is hard
• How to build community with soul, purpose, and mission
• The truth about retail and the operational and financial discipline it takes to scale in Sephora
• How to fund your vision, what outside money is really for, and why finding aligned investors is key
• How founders evolve with intention and decide what to control, when to delegate, and different ways to lead a brand through growth

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 dollars. When it’s time to panic, Jill will tell you. When everyone else is panicking and you shouldn’t be, Jill will tell you that too. Your money. Your move. Let’s go.

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 get them. 

In this episode, Emma Grede sits down with Brooks to unpack what is driving our unhappiness and what science actually says about building a meaningful life. Brooks reveals the two questions he gives his Harvard students to diagnose whether they’re experiencing a meaning crisis, why our brains struggle in a world of constant comfort, and how to use social media without letting it drain you. 

You’ll learn:

• Why achievement rarely satisfies us for as long as we expect
• What money can—and cannot—do for your happiness
• The five-year exercise that reveals whether your priorities match how you spend your time
• What to do in the first and last hour of the day to protect your attention 
• The step most people skip that makes new practices stick
• How to pursue a big goal without becoming emotionally attached to the outcome
• The simple ritual to shift your baseline happiness by 15 percent in 12 weeks

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 side of success people rarely see: losing years of her life when Alias made her famous, disappearing from friendships, and how the constant presence of paparazzi warped her confidence. 

Jennifer shares:

• What Jennifer is only now realizing about approval and earning her place
• How years of rejection and several failed ideas prepared her for entrepreneurship
• What she’s learned about holding anger without burying it
• How to recognize the value you bring without conventional qualifications
• When fame and visibility can help a business, and where they cannot
• What it actually looks like to protect a company’s mission
• Why your biggest chapter doesn’t come with an age limit

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, you’ll learn:

• What your financial priorities should be in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s
• Why your ability to earn can be more valuable than your savings early in your career
• How your beliefs about money can influence what you earn, ask for, and keep
• How to negotiate salary, equity, and other forms of compensation more effectively
• The difference between earning money, building wealth, and protecting what you’ve built
• Why investing early matters—and what can happen when you wait
• How to think about financial independence as freedom, security, and choice