Emma Grede has urged women in business to trust their intuition and stop waiting until they feel ready, saying hesitation can be one of the most costly habits in professional life.
The Skims co-founder was speaking at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, California, where she said her confidence had been shaped by both success and failure.
“I don’t second guess myself,” Grede told editorial director Ellie Austin. “I think a lot of us have that skill, but we talk ourselves out of it, and we second guess ourselves a lot. One of the most expensive habits that we have as women is waiting until we’re ready.”
Grede, 44, said she had become comfortable trying ideas and failing repeatedly. Over time, she said, failure “stopped mattering” and no longer prevented her from acting.
Raised by a single mother in East London and educated without attending university, Grede is chief product officer and co-founder of the $5 billion shapewear company Skims. She is also an investor and fashion designer, and recently launched the luxury sports-fashion brand Off Season with designer Kristin Juszczyk.
She said trusting her judgement had helped Skims develop products that entered unexpected areas, including a push-up bra featuring a raised nipple detail. While the design was initially viewed as provocative, Grede said it was intended to support women who had undergone breast reconstruction following a mastectomy.
Other products, she said, respond to established demand, while items such as a face sculpting wrap are designed to create and establish a new market.
“One of my special sauces is to go in and say, ‘Well, how do you take a problem that exists within this and make it make sense for a new generation of customers?’” Grede said.
She described her approach as less about dramatic invention than improving products and paying close attention to detail.
“So much of what I do is not brain surgery,” she said. “It’s about making things 1% better. It’s about taking existing markets, but really paying attention and really being focused on the excellence of products.”
Grede has also set out her approach to work and ambition in her book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life. She said much of the advice aimed at women was designed to be reassuring rather than practically useful.
“What I’m not doing is trying to make people feel comfortable,” she said. “I’m talking about the reality of what I do, and so I actually think that so much of what’s out there, specifically in women’s media, is to make women feel better.”
Grede said her focus was instead on results and the demands of running a business, including the sacrifices and compromises involved.
“And I’m interested in that because I’m a results-oriented person. I’m an operator, and so I talk about the truth and the quality it is to operate in my life. I’ve never been shy about saying this is what I had to do. These are the sacrifices that I had to make. These are the trade-offs in my life. These are the things that I don’t do.”
