Jay Shetty Podcast#1 Business Expert: Here’s how I went from $0 to 7 BILLION EMPIRE … (and how you can too)
CHAPTERS
Live stage setup: Emma Grede joins Jay Shetty in San Francisco
Jay opens the live event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, welcoming Emma Grede and setting an energetic tone with the crowd. They frame the night around ambition, confidence, and building a life on your own terms.
- •Live audience context and high-energy opening
- •Jay and Emma’s friendship and mutual admiration
- •Theme preview: opinions, fear, focus, and building big goals
Breaking the habit of living for others’ opinions
Emma explains how worrying about others’ judgments shaped her teens and 20s—and how she began shifting toward meeting her own standards instead. She emphasizes deciding daily who you’re doing your best for.
- •“If not you, then who?” as a turning-point mindset
- •Moving from external validation to internal expectations
- •Recognizing self-criticism as a daily mental habit
- •Choosing a kinder, more empowering inner narrative
The hidden cost of comparison: staying quiet and missing chances
Emma recounts how believing “everyone is watching” led her to not speak up or put herself forward. As she gained experience, she realized even powerful people are often improvising, which reduced intimidation and increased her willingness to take risks.
- •Comparison leads to silence, withdrawal, and lost opportunities
- •Realizing most people are “making it up as they go”
- •Confidence grows with exposure to high-level rooms
- •Reframing fear as energy that can be redirected
Double standards for women in business—and why Emma leans in anyway
They discuss real structural barriers and the different standards applied to men vs. women, especially around self-promotion and public criticism. Emma explains why she refuses to play the “be likable/demure” game and builds companies with women in decision-making roles.
- •Acknowledging societal barriers—not just mindset issues
- •Women often punished for confidence that men are rewarded for
- •Why Emma builds environments with women at the helm
- •Leaning into hard conversations instead of shrinking back
Start with yourself: ambition, excellence, and making your goals known
Emma advises early-stage builders to center decisions on what matters to them and never apologize for ambition. She argues that excellence in your current job—no matter how small—creates momentum and expands how others perceive your capability.
- •Be explicit about what you want; don’t keep it private
- •Excellence now creates access later
- •Pride in craft: from deli sandwich-making to denim
- •Self-focus as a temporary, strategic season—not selfishness
Career acceleration mantra: “I’ll do that”
Emma shares her three-word mantra for saying yes to opportunities before you feel fully ready. Jay connects it to the idea of learning by doing and letting responsibility pull you upward.
- •“I’ll do that” as a bias toward action
- •Vulnerability and initiative create visibility
- •Saying yes first, learning fast afterward
- •Opportunity often arrives before confidence does
Visualizing the life you want and choosing empowering self-talk
Emma describes how visualization (what many call manifestation today) helped her aim beyond her circumstances. She emphasizes that your primary relationship is with yourself—so the story you tell yourself determines how far you’ll go.
- •Early visualization and belief in “no limitations”
- •Work ethic as the bridge between dream and reality
- •Self-talk as the loudest voice you hear all day
- •Practicing who you want to become as an ongoing discipline
Don’t chase passion—follow energy, skill, and what you can get great at
Emma challenges the common advice to “find your passion,” arguing it can be misleading. Instead, she recommends tracking what energizes you and leaning into natural strengths; Jay adds that competence is what builds durable confidence.
- •Passion can be unreliable; energy is more diagnostic
- •Find what you’re good at and what lights you up
- •Competence → confidence (not the other way around)
- •Purpose often emerges after you build mastery
True focus as a force multiplier (and what destroys it)
Emma and Jay explore why focus separates high performers from dabblers, using Bruce Lee’s “one kick 10,000 times” principle. Emma argues modern culture pressures people to be everything, but success comes from going deep on a repeatable core skill.
- •Focus multiplies results in business and life
- •Modern identity pressure drives scattered attention
- •Success is rarely overnight; it requires depth and sacrifice
- •Emma’s repeatable edge: being an “excellent merchant”
Know your strengths, admit your weaknesses, and build a complementary circle
Jay discusses tools like StrengthsFinder to identify what you uniquely do well, and how naming strengths changes decisions. Emma stresses that no one succeeds alone; you win by surrounding yourself with people who cover what you’re “horrendous” at.
- •Self-awareness unlocks better career bets and hiring choices
- •Leaning into strengths beats obsessing over weaknesses
- •Emma’s core traits: focus, resilience, extreme work ethic
- •Building teams/friendships that complement—not mirror—you
Motherhood, work, and rewriting the guilt narrative
Emma shares how her kids perceive her work and how she stopped apologizing for loving her career. Jay reflects on his mother’s work ethic and argues that time is not the same as love—presence and emotional safety matter more than constant availability.
- •Dropping constant apologies changes how kids interpret work
- •Modeling ambition helps children pursue dreams without shame
- •Time ≠ love; distracted presence can undercut connection
- •Cultural pressure to be the “perfect” parent is intensifying
Define your non-negotiables and stop borrowing others’ standards
Emma explains how she clarified what truly matters to her—what she will show up for and what she won’t do (like “Instagrammable lunches”). She recommends regularly reassessing standards as life changes, then protecting personal rituals that sustain you.
- •Identify which standards are yours vs. society’s
- •Non-negotiables create clarity and reduce guilt spirals
- •Reassessment is necessary as kids and seasons change
- •Protect restorative priorities (e.g., yearly friends trip)
Trade-offs, asking for help, and telling the truth about ‘balance’
Emma rejects the myth that anyone ‘has it all’ without sacrifice, emphasizing trade-offs and extensive support systems. She argues honesty about what you give up—and comfort asking for help—liberates others from unrealistic expectations and ‘toxic positivity.’
- •Balance is often a misleading goal; trade-offs are real
- •Asking for help is a life pattern, not a weakness
- •Stop hiding the hard parts; transparency helps others
- •Success often gets harder, not easier, with scale
Audience pitch moment: test small, iterate fast, start tomorrow
An audience member pitches a food-industry show concept, and Emma coaches her to scale down and test the idea on accessible platforms first. Jay reinforces the message with his own story of a rejected TV pitch that led him to start the podcast.
- •Courage and visibility: standing up creates opportunity
- •Test-and-learn on YouTube/IG before chasing big networks
- •Iterate through small failures instead of waiting for perfection
- •Jay’s rejection-to-podcast example as proof: start now
