Fashion Mogul: Stop Apologizing for Being a Working Mom, and Talk About Money
Emma Grede says if women avoid talking about money, money avoids them; by talking about it first, picking the right partners, and doing the business others can't be bothered with, she turned overlooked customers into loyal repeat buyers.
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A celebrity is an accelerator, not a partner
Grede says that if you throw a star and a brand together expecting to make money or build credibility, you will quickly find it doesn't hold up. A celebrity buys you one burst of exposure and attention, but it doesn't keep customers; only a strong loyalty to a good product brings them back. So she insisted on treating the Kardashian sisters as real business partners, not spokespeople — the partnership has to be bigger than ‘someone's follower count’. She admits she was lucky to find partners capable of doing that.
— Emma GredeTarget a market nobody is seriously serving
Grede says that before any business she looks at the competitive landscape first, and knows what is declining and what might be needed. When Good American entered the plus-size market in 2016, the whole industry treated it as a bonus ‘extra 15%’, and even today's talking points didn't exist. She believes it was rewriting the rules completely in a space where nobody was innovating and customers weren't understood that made the company succeed. She stresses that she never watches fashion week and never chases trends, because ‘if you're led by trends, you'll die very quickly’.
— Emma GredeThe harder the business, the more it's worth doing
On Off Season sportswear, Grede says women are badly overlooked in fan merchandise: the stands are full of women, and women control the household's purchasing decisions, yet all they can buy is generic hoodies and oversized T-shirts. She sees that as a huge business opportunity. She also admits that negotiating licenses with the NFL, NBA and WNBA ‘isn't a question of spending money, it's extremely hard to do’, but what excites her is precisely doing things that require huge investment and can bring huge returns — provided you really understand where the opportunity is, and don't cut corners.
— Emma GredeIf you don't talk about money, money avoids you
Grede says that managing hundreds of employees and sitting on several company boards, she has observed a pattern at work: avoid conversations about money and money will avoid you. Men talk about money anywhere, anytime — mortgages, credit card rates, investment opportunities, big and small; women lack enough of those conversations, and enough specifics. She believes the money stories we hear growing up stay with us unless someone tells you something different. That's why she does a podcast and wrote a book: to break that silence rather than hoard the information.
— Emma GredeWhat she cares about is the path to ownership
Asked about her net worth, Grede says the figure Forbes reported ‘missed a little’, but her favorite line is ‘who cares about those valuations’. What she really cares about is the path to ownership: as a school leaver with very little education who came to America less than a decade ago, by any normal logic those numbers shouldn't belong to her. She deliberately and consciously put herself in that position, took on a lot of risk, and made a lot of trade-offs. She also pushes back on the idea that you can manifest your way to millions, saying that doesn't work.
— Emma GredeMaternal guilt is a story handed down to us
Grede says that guilt is a story passed down through generations of women — grandmothers, mothers — with the default logic that if you're in New York and away from your children, you should feel enormous guilt. But she says she actually enjoys it: three nights in a hotel, sleeping diagonally across the whole bed. She thinks many women actually feel fine about being away from their kids for a few days, it's just not cool to say so. She acknowledges she has childcare, infrastructure and a good partner, so she doesn't live in a permanent state of apology, and says she has cleared that behavior out of her thinking and her vocabulary.
— Emma GredeA three-hour mom at most — a joke, and also true
Grede explains her ‘three-hour mom at most’ line: she works Monday to Friday, and not nine to five, so by Saturday she isn't going to sit with her kids all day or let the whole weekend revolve around them — by noon she's ‘had enough of you lot’. She says it's a joke, but it's also saying: you're allowed to be honest about parenting differently, and different doesn't mean you're a good or bad mother. She thinks the better question is ‘what don't you do, and where do you spend your time’, which is more useful to any woman.
— Emma GredeWomen keep putting the rules on trial themselves
Asked how she differs from Lean In or Girlboss, Grede says she doesn't think she's offering anything new, just telling her own truth, with the chance to tell it more fully than a 30-second video. She thinks the topic lingers in pop culture because we can't accept it — the rules set for women are constantly judged, discussed and argued over by women ourselves, and some of the responsibility is ours. She says every man in the room probably has no idea what she's talking about and just thinks ‘so what, carry on’. She argues for accepting that our ways differ, while the goal is shared: more women in power is a good thing.
— Emma GredeIn their own words · checked verbatim
talent can be an incredible accelerator to popularity to visibility
Emma Grede3:18
celebrity talent can drive you to a product once, but it can't keep customers coming back over and over again. Only fierce loyalty for an excellent product can do that.
Emma Grede5:19
if that's how you're led, you will die pretty quickly
Emma Grede6:24
what happens when you avoid conversations around money is that the money avoids you
Emma Grede10:31
who cares about any of those valuations?
Emma Grede13:46
the idea that I have the childcare and the infrastructure and I'm married a good person and I'm able to do that, it's not something that I'm going to be in constant apology mode for
Emma Grede15:48
let's give ourselves permission to have a level of honesty about how different ways of parenting doesn't mean that you're a good or a bad mom
Emma Grede17:49
more women in positions of power would be a pretty good thing in this world
Emma Grede19:50
Figures
| Years since Good American was founded | close to its 10th anniversary | 2:17 |
| Emma Grede's net worth as reported by Forbes | $405 million | 12:41 |
| Number of Grede's children | 4, the oldest is 12 | 14:48 |
| Year Lean In was published | 2013 | 19:50 |
Glossary
- max three-hour mom
- Grede's self-deprecating phrase: by noon at the weekend she's had enough of the kids, used to break the default standard that a good mother must be present all day.
- core memory mom
- Another phrase Grede uses for herself: being present only for the truly important moments in a child's life, rather than all of the everyday ones.
How to listen
Founders building consumer brands, considering celebrity tie-ups or partnership structures, and professionals thinking about women's relationship with money and the trade-offs of motherhood.
The opening small talk about New York Fashion Week and Jets fan merchandise can be fast-forwarded.