Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Authors Like Emma Grede
Start With Yourself is a practical, direct guide for women who want to stop waiting for permission. If you found yourself nodding along — or arguing back — these books will take you further.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Ambition · Career Mindset · No-BS Advice · Updated July 2026
Institutional Ambition · Direct Comparison
Sheryl Sandberg
Lean In argues that women hold themselves back inside corporate structures as much as those structures hold women back, drawing on Sandberg’s years as a senior Facebook and Google executive. The Wall Street Journal directly described Start With Yourself as “Lean In for the post-girlboss era.”
This is the most frequently cited comparison to Grede’s book, and for good reason: both make an unapologetic case for putting ambition first, though Sandberg focuses more on navigating institutions from within.
Permission · Behavioral Science
Mel Robbins
Let Them tackles the exhausting habit of waiting for other people’s approval before acting, using psychology and behavioral research to build a framework for letting go of what you can’t control.
Where Grede works from her own business history, Robbins works from research — but both are answering the same core question Start With Yourself asks: why are you still waiting for permission?
Direct Voice · Personal Story
Rachel Hollis
Girl, Wash Your Face mixes Hollis’s own messy personal history with blunt, conversational advice about dismantling the lies women tell themselves about ambition, motherhood, and worth.
Hollis shares Grede’s plain-talk register and refusal to soften hard truths, applied to a broader slice of a woman’s life rather than specifically her career.
Entrepreneur Blueprint · Origin Story
Sophia Amoruso
Amoruso’s #GIRLBOSS traces her own unconventional rise from shoplifting teenager to founder of a hundred-million-dollar fashion company, turning her story into a blueprint other entrepreneurs can apply.
This is the closest match in origin story and format: a self-made founder converting her own against-the-odds rise into practical, structured lessons, exactly as Grede does in Start With Yourself.
No-BS Tone · Personal Transformation
Jen Sincero
You Are a Badass uses irreverent, conversational language to push readers past self-doubt and toward taking action on the life they actually want, blending humor with pointed challenges to the reader’s excuses.
Sincero’s voice is the closest match to Grede’s on this list: direct, funny, impatient with excuses, though applied to personal transformation broadly rather than career specifically.
Against the Odds · Venture Capital
Arlan Hamilton
It’s About Damn Time recounts Hamilton’s rise from being homeless to founding a venture capital fund investing in underestimated entrepreneurs, offering practical lessons drawn directly from that unlikely path.
Like Grede, Hamilton built something from genuinely difficult circumstances and converts that story into a usable playbook rather than a straightforward memoir.
Corporate Leadership · Candor
Bozoma Saint John
The Urgent Life recounts Saint John’s career as a high-profile marketing executive at companies including Apple, Uber, and Netflix, alongside personal loss, in a voice that refuses to separate professional ambition from personal honesty.
Saint John shares Grede’s insistence that success and vulnerability aren’t opposites, and that the full, unfiltered story is more useful to readers than a polished highlight reel.
Corporate Leadership · Longer Scale
Indra Nooyi
My Life in Full traces Nooyi’s twelve years as CEO of PepsiCo, alongside the immigrant story and family life that shaped her leadership, offering a longer-tenure counterpart to Grede’s founder-focused story.
If Start With Yourself made you want the corporate version of the same ambition, Nooyi gives you decades running a Fortune 50 company rather than building a single brand from scratch.
Fear of Failure · Ambitious Women
Reshma Saujani
Saujani’s Brave, Not Perfect argues that girls are raised to be cautious and perfect while boys are raised to be brave, and that this early conditioning is what later holds ambitious women back from risk.
This covers ground closely adjacent to Grede’s “Old Thoughts” concept — internalized rules that aren’t really rules — in a similarly candid, personal voice.
Mindset · Self-Worth
Danielle LaPorte
The Desire Map reframes goal-setting around how you actually want to feel rather than external markers of success, blending business pragmatism with an emotionally honest approach to ambition.
LaPorte shares Grede’s interest in dismantling inherited rules about what success is supposed to look like, replacing them with something more self-directed.
Where to start if you loved Start With Yourself
If you want the classic comparison, then…
Read Sheryl Sandberg. Lean In is the book critics keep placing Start With Yourself next to.
If you want the same problem, more research, then…
Read Mel Robbins. Let Them tackles waiting for permission from a behavioral-science angle.
If you want the closest voice match, then…
Read Jen Sincero. You Are a Badass shares Grede’s direct, impatient, no-excuses tone.
If you want another founder’s blueprint, then…
Read Sophia Amoruso. #GIRLBOSS turns her own unlikely rise into practical lessons the same way Grede does.
If you want the corporate-scale version, then…
Read Indra Nooyi. My Life in Full brings the same ambition to running a Fortune 50 company for over a decade.
If “Old Thoughts” resonated, then…
Read Reshma Saujani. Brave, Not Perfect names the same early conditioning that holds ambitious women back.
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