There’s a specific kind of ambition people like to romanticize—sparkly, effortless, even inevitable. Emma Grede doesn’t sell that version. In her new book, Start With Yourself, which came out Tuesday, the business leader and co-founder of Good American alongside Khloé Kardashian, and founding partner of Skims with Kim Kardashian, argues that ambition doesn’t become lasting success just because you want it badly. It takes more than influence. It takes honesty about what’s blocking you.
Grede, who’s also been in the orbit of boardrooms and big brand decisions, ties the problem to something less tangible than strategy decks: conditioning. She talked about how early messages teach women to stay small—“she’s a good girl”—and how that lesson can hang around long after childhood. In her words, social conditioning can leave a long, negative impact, especially when fear of sticking out or making a mistake quietly controls your next move. And if you’re the kind of people pleaser who doesn’t say what you really mean, that also limits how clearly you ask for what you deserve.
The book’s timing matters too. Grede is now associated with a wave of conversations about leadership, money, and confidence—exactly the themes she puts on the table. She was named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list, and during a podcast appearance released Tuesday, she pushed the idea that ambition has to become more than an inner thought. If your drive to make more money only lives inside you—and isn’t vocalized—why would anyone pay you more? It’s blunt, almost annoyingly straightforward. Like hearing the truth when you were hoping for encouragement only.
A recurring message from Grede is that self-honesty may be step one. She says women should “get honest about some of this stuff” and identify what in their emotional lives is holding them back, because understanding it makes correcting it possible. She also describes ambition as uncomfortable—almost a physical sensation—and says you have to learn to lean into that discomfort. Growing up in East London with limited financial resources, raised by a single mom, Grede’s personal history becomes part of the argument: ambition is not just feeling; it has to find you working.
And then she goes after another common myth: ideas are never enough. Partnerships, especially high-profile ones, can look like pure luck from the outside. But Grede’s view is that the Kardashian family collaborations weren’t just celebrity reach. She describes the need for an intrinsic understanding of what the partnership brings—plus trust. Cultural reach, fame, and confidence are one side; operational experience is the other. Both, she says, helped build structures that let Skims and Good American grow, including in shapewear and inclusivity. She makes it sound almost like a craft: you choose one another and each brings something specific—then it can actually flourish.
Grede also treats entrepreneurship like a filter, not a fantasy. Entrepreneurs need to come to the table with more than “a PowerPoint presentation,” she says—because an idea is useless if it doesn’t become a product, a plan, or momentum. There’s an impatience there, and maybe it comes from experience: she once launched a global talent and brand agency and failed when she tried to expand to Los Angeles. “I failed miserably,” she said. But she didn’t let that failure define her trajectory. For her, the key question becomes what you can take from it.
That’s where her perspective on failure turns sharpest. Grede argues women often carry setbacks differently, when failure turns inward into self-doubt. She doesn’t like the idea that a woman’s failure should “live with you forever,” especially compared to the way men are allowed to move on. “Things happen,” she said—learn, live with them, move on. For women climbing corporate ladders, she adds another hard-edged belief: visibility still matters. She says a great career requires visibility and proximity, and she wouldn’t dress that up for remote-work comfort. “I refuse all Zooms,” she added—only joining if it’s truly an emergency.
If you caught her on this latest run of advice, you might’ve heard it in the room where you were listening—maybe that muted buzz of a phone on a desk, or the faint noise outside as someone shuffled a chair. Either way, the throughline stays consistent: start with yourself, but don’t stay stuck inside yourself.
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