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Emma Grede, co-founder and CEO of inclusive fashion brand Good American alongside Khlo\u00e9\u00a0Kardashian, and founding partner of Skims with Kim Kardashian, has had a boardroom seat to the billion-dollar impact social influence can have on business. But she says it takes a lot more than influence to turn ambition and ideas into lasting success, and she has plenty of advice from her path to self-made millionaire to offer other women.<\/p>\n
In Grede’s new book “Start With Yourself<\/a>“, which came out Tuesday, she writes that women are often held back by how they are conditioned to think about money, leadership, and the permission to pursue their ambitions.<\/p>\n “There’s a lot of social conditioning that happens to us … ‘she’s a good girl,’ and it teaches you to be small and be quiet and to be a pleaser,” Grede told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin during the latest episode of the “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players<\/a>” podcast, which was also released Tuesday. <\/p>\n That conditioning early in life can leave a long and lasting negative impact on women, Grede says. “If you sit in fear about sticking out or doing something wrong, it’s going to be really hard for you to start something new because you’re so fearful. And if you’re a people pleaser, you’re probably not going to say what you really mean. … And if your ambition to make a lot of money only lives inside of you, and you haven’t really vocalized it, then why should anybody pay you more?”<\/p>\n Grede<\/a> was named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers<\/a> list. <\/p>\n Here are a few more key takeaways from her CNBC podcast appearance where she discussed many of the themes in her new book.<\/p>\n Being honest with yourself may need to be the first step in ambition.<\/strong><\/p>\n Among Grede’s primary advice to women is take a hard look at what may be holding them back. “Why don’t we just get honest about some of this stuff and recognize what in our emotional lives is holding us back? Because once you understand it, you can start to correct it,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n And that will help to have the confidence to pursue ambitions.<\/p>\n “I always talk about this idea of ambition being a little bit uncomfortable, and you need to be able to learn to lean into that discomfort,” said Grede, who grew up in East London and was raised by a single mom with limited financial resources. <\/p>\n Then ambition has to be coupled with vision and a plan, and a lot of hard work. “Ambition needs to find you working,” Grede said.<\/p>\n Ideas are never enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n Her long-running, successful partnerships<\/a> with the Kardashian family are built on more than just celebrity endorsements. “You\u00a0have to be able to have an intrinsic understanding of what your partnership brings and what it does together,” Grede said. “You have to be able to trust each other.”<\/p>\n The Kardashians did bring cultural reach, fame, and confidence, and Grede says she brought operational experience from having already run a successful business<\/a>. And both backgrounds have been critical to building structures that helped Skims and Good American grow in the areas of shapewear and inclusivity. “You choose one another. Here’s what I uniquely bring, and here’s what you uniquely bring. And that just flourished,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Khlo\u00e9 Kardashian and Emma Grede attend the Good American Miami Launch Party at Good American on October 24, 2019 in Miami, Florida.<\/p>\n Alexander Tamargo | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Grede, who has been a recurring judge on ABC’s “Shark Tank” and was the show’s first Black female investor, says entrepreneurs need to come to the table with more than just ideas.<\/p>\n “So many people have ideas,” she said. “My point of view is that coming to me with an idea is useless. I want to see the difference between somebody who has an idea, and someone who can get something started. When I get a PowerPoint presentation, that is one thing; it’s very different from getting a product … I like people that have started. I am not so interested in those that you know are sitting around waiting for someone magically to appear and make all their dreams come true,” she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Women cannot let any single failure deter them.<\/strong><\/p>\n Grede’s perspective is shaped partly by failure. She launched a global talent and brand agency, but failed when she attempted to expand the business to Los Angeles. “I failed miserably,” Grede said. But she did not allow that failure to define her trajectory. “That situation was bad, that thing didn’t work. But what can I take from that?”<\/p>\n She argues that failure becomes more emotionally sticky for women than men, particularly when it turns inward and becomes self doubt. There will be bad days, she says, but you “take the learnings and move on.”<\/p>\n “What I don’t like is this thought that everything is so finite, that as women, you have a failure, and that failure should then live with you forever, because we don’t apply those same rules to men. When a man has a terrible failure in business and loses a ton of money, and his thing goes under, he goes, ‘Well, you know, that was a disaster, on to the next one.’ Whereas a woman, she’s like, ‘I did this terrible thing, and it sits with me.’ No, no. Enough of that. … things happen. You learn from them, you live with them, you move on,” Grede said. \u00a0<\/p>\n For success at work, you need to be in the office.<\/strong><\/p>\n For women who are currently in corporate settings, Grede \u2014 who worked in the corporate world before building her own businesses \u2014 says visibility will play a major role in career advancement, even in a world where remote work is still popular. In-office work experience compounds over time, and often determines who gets the next promotion or responsibility, Grede says.<\/p>\n “A great career requires visibility, and it requires proximity, and there’s nothing else that can replicate that,” she said. “You might not like to hear it, but you are not being considered for the same promotion and pay increase while you work from your living room as somebody that’s there in the office every day.”<\/p>\n You won’t catch Grede on many video conferences. “I refuse all Zooms,” she said. “My team will tell you, it really has to be an emergency for me to be on a video call.”<\/p>\n Follow and listen to this and every episode of the “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players” podcast on<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Apple<\/a>\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n