Emma Grede knows how to make noise. The cofounder of Skims and Good American has been dominating headlines (and social media) over the past week with hot takes from her new book Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work and Life. Some examples: “The Kardashian whisperer who says three hours with her kids is enough.” “Work-from-home culture is career suicide.” “She’s rich, self-made, and wants women to boldly talk about money.”
Grede’s takes on remote work and parenting, especially, have been firing up the internet. I caught up with her over Zoom recently as the first headlines were trickling out but before the firestorm fully ramped up. “I’d be more worried if nobody was talking,” she told me (a Kardashian-adjacent philosophy if I ever heard one). And “people always get touchy about parenting and kids,” she acknowledges. “I think that when women tell the truth in public, it’s not unusual that people pick at what they say,” she adds.
In follow-up interviews, Grede has declined to backpedal. By “three-hour mum,” she means that she’s spending three hours with her kids completely dedicated to what they want to do, before taking care of herself and other needs on the weekends.
Amid all the noise, I think some of Grede’s best business advice is not quite breaking through. She has more to say about being a working mother: she writes that her own ambition increased after she became a mom (she now has four kids). “I have this living, breathing human being that was going to count on me, and I did really feel a surge,” she told me.
For those who haven’t followed her career, she has worked with multiple members of the Kardashian family to build brands that shift culture. Skims is now valued at $5 billion and is expected to IPO. Recently, she’s branched out to partner with Kristin Juszczyk on Off-Season, a high-fashion take on sports merch.
Grede writes in her book that as a founder, it’s important to evaluate whether you should actually also be the CEO of your brand. She’s not the CEO of Skims—that job went to her husband, Jens Grede. She does hold the CEO title at Good American. “I think that CEO is kind of lined up into, ‘you are the only decision maker,'” she told me. “When you’re in an owner-operated business, you can choose where you sit. You don’t have to be the CEO to be the one calling the shots.”
Too many founders are caught up in the look of the CEO job, she argues. “I think we’ve got into this place where what it means to drive a business and to create shareholder value and to make a profit is completely lost,” she says. “Because everybody is obsessed with the marketing and the party and the invite and the influencer. That stuff is not the icing on the cake. It’s the cherry on the icing on the cake. It’s not even a thing.” And that’s coming from the cofounder of Skims—a brand co-founded by the ultimate influencer, Kim Kardashian.
Grede is obsessed with giving real, honest advice to women. The worst advice she’s ever heard? “Stay in your own lane.” “What is your lane?” she asks. “Know what you don’t know.” “How are you going to figure it out?” she wonders. “These things are not helpful.”
Her take on the modern workplace ultimately comes down to this: “We are desperate for more women in positions for power, but nobody’s coming to hand you power. You have to take it for yourself.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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PARTING WORDS
"I’ve never been this age. So let’s just like, you know, figure it out. You still never know what’s coming around the corner."
—Anne Hathaway on aging
