# The Executive Producer | Emma May

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/barney-s-tavern-7770794/the-executive-producer-emma-may
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/barney-s-tavern-7770794/the-executive-producer-emma-may.md
Podcast: [Barney's Tavern](https://stenobird.com/podcast/barney-s-tavern-7770794)
Published: 2026-07-07T01:41:20+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/cf093006
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/cf093006/1ab590c2.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/barney-s-tavern-7770794/episodes/the-executive-producer-emma-may
Duration seconds: 4193

## Resource

Emma May — entrepreneur, lawyer, and former insider in the Alberta Premier's office — joins Chris to talk about building Sophie Grace under relentless pressure, trusting your creative gut, and a candid take on Alberta's referendum from someone who's been in the room. I've known Emma May a long time — long enough to have watched her move from law, to real estate, to the inner workings of the Alberta Premier's office, and now to building one of the more quietly remarkable companies I know. Sophie Grace makes modular, mix-and-match workwear for professional women, and its customers are the kind of people who lead governments, run trials, and preside over universities — women who, as Emma puts it, are "the executive producer, not the movie star." I wanted Emma at the tavern because she's an entrepreneur in the thick of the scale-up grind, the same as me, and she's fought off a run of challenges most founders never face all at once: a 145% tariff that made her U.S. business impossible overnight, the death of her manufacturer with product half-made on the table, an inventory crunch that landed straight into a port strike. She talks openly about how she got through it — including the "rule of first sale" comeback that rebuilt the U.S. into 60% of her business — and about the personal ground underneath it all: a separation, losing her mother, and finally finding the stability to trust her own vision. We got into the things that make her business unusual — why authenticity beats AI-generated marketing, what Lululemon and Chip Wilson reveal about the war between product innovation and corporate drift, and why she personally messages her best customers just to understand them. And because Emma and I share a political past, I couldn't not ask: as someone who once helped run the Pr…

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## Transcript

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