Emma Grede took the stage at the ForbesBLK Summit in Atlanta and did something you don’t often hear on left-leaning stages: she told the truth about failing and what it taught her. Her candor about a painful business misstep and the hard lessons it forced on her stands in sharp contrast to a culture that too often prizes image over results.
Long before the headlines about celebrity collaborations and multimillion-dollar valuations, Grede admits she underinvested in talent and expanded into Los Angeles without the local knowledge or team to sustain it — an error that forced her to shut that office within a year. Real entrepreneurs know that expansion without capable people is ego dressed up as strategy, and Grede’s account should be a warning to anyone who thinks hustle alone substitutes for competence.
What followed was accountability: she owned the mistake, rebuilt with smarter hires, and turned painful lessons into a playbook for growth. Grede talks openly about taking failure apart, learning the “rule of thirds” in the grind of entrepreneurship, and using those scars to make better decisions next time — exactly the kind of resilience free markets reward.
Make no mistake, Grede also rode the rarefied air of celebrity partnerships to scale brands like Good American, leveraging a built-in audience to hit massive sales early on. That kind of acceleration is America at its frenetic best — private enterprise meeting popular demand — but it also exposes a truth conservatives understand: celebrity clout can amplify success, but it can’t replace hard business fundamentals.
Her résumé now includes founding roles with SKIMS and Good American and high-profile civic involvement, a reminder that the private sector still produces leaders who reshape industries when left to compete. Those accomplishments are real, but so is the concern that some modern business circles trade meritocracy for curated narratives and quota-driven optics — a trade-off hardworking Americans shouldn’t be asked to accept.
Grede’s story is a lesson patriots should celebrate: admit your mistakes, fix the team, learn, and let the market judge the result. In an era of ever-louder demands for identity-based solutions, her message reminds us that accountability, competence, and the willingness to fail and try again remain the cornerstones of American success.
