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She’s the founding partner of Kim Kardashian‘s $5-billion-dollar shapewear empire, better known as Skims. She’s also at the helm of Good American, Khloé Kardashian’s denim label focused on inclusivity and innovation. Back in 2025, she launched an all-new brand with designer Kristin Juszczyk, the NFL, and Fanatics — called Off Season and specializing in elevated fan apparel. The high-powered woman behind this resume, which only begins to scratch the surface of her accomplishments? Why, it’s Emma Grede: the 43-year-old British entrepreneur who’s credited with propelling the Kardashian family’s business ventures to greater heights.
Despite having a robust public following and frequently posting bits of her life on social media, Grede was, for the most part, an enigma until this month — when her debut book, “Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life,” released in hardcover on April 14. Already, it’s been embraced as the bible of entrepreneurial success, breaking down Grede’s four-plus decades of lessons learned about everything from dragging yourself out of obscurity to navigating other people‘s directives on establishing a work-life balance.
‘Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life’ by Emma Grede
Price upon publish date of this article: $25.74
In fact, that latter opinion of Grede’s, freshly exposed, has been making the rounds online — and drawing more eyes to her book — as of late. In a Wall Street Journal profile timed to the arrival of “Start With Yourself,” she describes herself as a “max three-hour mum”: admitting that she spends no more than that amount of time with her children on the weekends, devoting the rest of it to personal pursuits. “Cutting sandwiches into star shapes? That was never it for me,” Grede tells her WSJ interviewer, stressing the fact that, to her, overparenting is a big no-no in context of other priorities.
Right from the introduction of the book, Grede gets candid about where she came from and how she got to where she is now. The power suit–clad businesswoman didn’t start out as a power suit–clad businesswoman after all. She shares that, for the most part, the role models in her early life “put everyone ahead of their own dreams and fell into rutted expectations that yielded mostly heartbreak and financial dead ends.” The East London–born Grede further reveals that she never finished secondary school or the London College of Fashion, for that matter; had to later learn about her dyslexia diagnosis; and grew up in chaos, “with occasional violence and very few means.”
Then, a self-generated change of circumstances led to the podcast; the spot on Forbes’ “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” list; the $70-million real estate portfolio; the title of first Black female investor on “Shark Tank”; and the book that’s currently sitting in the #5 spot of Amazon Charts after going live just a few weeks ago. What’s in between the before and the after? “Reading as many books as [she] could get [her] hands on… question[ing] everything… and learn[ing] from every encounter,” per Grede.
Emma Grede and Martha Stewart speak onstage during the “Start With Yourself” book tour launch on April 15, 2026, in New York City.
Courtesy Craig Barritt/Getty Images
The kicker? In “Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life,” Grede strives to help readers get to where they want in life, no matter the specific objectives, versus simply tooting her own horn and gatekeeping the wisdom. Instead of prescribing a concrete course of action, however, she says that “this is a book about mindset” — about ridding yourself of what she dubs “Old Thoughts,” managing your emotions, and rewiring your daily processes to better fit the future you’ve dreamed of all along. Grede makes the introspection required to achieve this easier by way of handy prompts at the end of chapters (along the lines of “what are three things you wish you did more of last year?” or “what are you avoiding?”), with space to write your answers inside the book.
‘Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life’ by Emma Grede
Price upon publish date of this article: $25.74
She acknowledges all the roadblocks that have announced themselves on her path over the years — operating inside of a “boys’ club” included — but urges her readers-cum-acolytes to not let such hinderances become defining.
Says Grede: “I don’t have time to wait for equity; I’d rather make it.”
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Meet the Author
Stacia Datskovska is a Senior Commerce Writer at WWD. Previously, she worked at ELLE DECOR as an assistant digital editor, covering all things luxury, culture, and lifestyle through a design lens. Her bylines over the past five years have appeared in USA Today, Baltimore Sun, Teen Vogue, Boston Globe, Food & Wine, and more. Prior to joining ELLE DECOR, Datskovska learned the ins and outs of e-commerce at Mashable, where she tested products, covered tentpole sales events, and curated gift guide roundups. She graduated from NYU with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and international relations. Datskovska regularly reports on new, notable book releases in the worlds of fashion, self-development, and beyond.
