If you’ve followed the Kardashian family’s journey through their reality television series, you would have seen them launch many businesses.

Some of the more prominent ones would be Good American fronted by Khloe Kardashian and Skims by Kim Kardashian.

The Kardashian sisters’ success has been fuelled by their collaboration with the right partners.

One of those partners is Emma Grede.

In a Goop Podcast episode where Gwyneth Paltrow interviewed Emma Grede, they spoke about Grede’s journey from high school drop out to successful retail maverick.

I’ve picked out some sound bites on how Grede designed her own unique path.

She knows herself very well

Like Chief Product Officer across the design and planning and merchandising production, that’s my comfort zone. That’s where I excel and I love.

I’m a person that gets really into things. And I think what I do is the same thing over and over again.

I’m a merchant at heart. I have a pretty good idea for what women want and how they want to feel. And I’m obsessed with pleasing customers.

And so what I do is focus my energies around, what could that be? And so I feel like for the last eight years, the fixation has been on making people look and feel their best and doing that in a way that is like surprising and can just delight people.

You have a problem, I’m going to fix that problem.

And then getting shit to people quickly. Like it’s not that deep, you know, it’s not that difficult.

No, I do a couple of things really, really well. And then, you know, I hire amazing people to work around me and do all the shit that I’m not so good at.

And I feel really lucky because what I do is help bring a vision to life.

And I’m pretty good at that.

Her enthusiasm and work ethic opened doors for her

You know, it’s like I started my career in a place where, you know, I didn’t have any particular skill.

I was just someone who loved fashion and would come with like such enthusiasm that people would be like, well, she’s a, you know, she’s a girl of a lot of energy.

She’ll do anything to like be in the room.

And that’s that was the truth. But I parlayed that into that enthusiasm and that kind of like love and passion for fashion into people noticing me. Into clients then saying, yeah, you can come and work on this job.

She compounds the gains from each stage in her career

You want to invest in my next thing? So I feel like I’ve just been the queen of leveraging them wherever I am into the next thing. And so that’s a constant theme in my life.

I just like take whatever I’ve got and I springboard it to the next thing..

She believed in herself very early on in life

She (Gerde’s Mother) really taught me that, I do say this all the time because it’s one of the most fundamental parts of my upbringing. She was like, Emma, you are not better than anybody else, but nor is anyone better than you.

And so when I got into what it was that I wanted to do, when I started going out in the world and figuring that out, I really believe that.

I was like, nobody’s better than me. Like my mom told me that, that must be absolutely true. And so it gave me this foundation to think that I could do anything.

She was like, so long as you work really hard and you put everything in and you’re yourself. And that was the thing that was always playing to me. Like, don’t change, I’m good enough.

And so I just was raised with this idea of like, I’m totally good. I don’t need to change anything about myself. I am a smart girl and I’ve got lots of skills and I’m just going to work my ass off.

She Journals and practises Gratitude

And I understood that the more I could get down on paper, the more I could get out of myself, the better I would be

She is a Generalist who is Good at Focusing

I’m a bit of a generalist. I do a few things kind of well.

…I’m very good at focusing, right? I know how to focus on what matters. I know how to get better at the things that matter.

And I’m very good at tuning out everybody else’s opinions.

She acknowledges that she doesn’t spread herself too thin

… “Like I hire real experts because at the end of the day, I’m a bit of a generalist.

I don’t do lots and lots and lots and lots of things.

I do very, very few things well.

She communicates clearly to lead effectively

And as a leader, I think it’s my job to articulate what the possibilities are for you to feel great about what it is that you do. So having a mission, having a purpose, having a vision that is something that is so clearly articulated that every single person, it doesn’t matter if you work on the front desk or whether you’re in the C-suite in the executive leadership team, you know exactly what we’re here to do.

Source Credit: Quotes are from The goop Podcast: Emma Grede on Unapologetic Ambition, 13 May 2025

Featured Image Source: British Vogue