Richard W. Rodriguez
From her hometown in Louisville, Kentucky, Paden Sickles’ journey in the Army led her to Texas, Missouri, across the globe to Korea, back to Georgia, and eventually a return to Texas.
“I think Texas is home now,” she says.
She retired as a captain last year with lots of great experience and one surprising truth that stuck with her: Foot health is critical, and the sock industry was missing the mark.
Twelve miles on foot here through rough terrain, and 100 miles there patrolling and land navigation. Grueling stuff on your feet, she says. She thought it was her boots that were insufficient. She started buying different kinds of boots. Then she discovered she was spending about $200 a month on socks.
“I was just burning through them,” Sickles says. “And that's how we got here. I started Googling socks. I did not think entrepreneurship would lead me to this.”
“This” is her company SickFit, a small, direct-to-consumer sock brand and manufacturer of streetwear that she personally designed. Sickles is founder and CEO of the Arlington-based company, which employs eight. Sickles was looking for a solution to her problem — a problem that led to other problems through the kinetic chain — and those around her in her unit. Today, her socks are helping children with ADHD, autism and neurodivergent issues, as well as factory workers, and athletes — yes, even U.S. Olympians.
“I like to say that we solve real world problems for real world people and how they work, compete, and live.”
We discovered Sickles through the Good Soil Forum in Dallas, a dayslong convention whose speakers this year included Oprah Winfrey and T.D. Jakes, who chairs the organization.
The Good Soil Movement is a thriving network dedicated to equipping entrepreneurs with the connections, tools, and resources they need to grow and scale their businesses. With an ambitious mission to help 1 million entrepreneurs each generate $1 million in revenue over the next decade, Good Soil is driving economic stability and building pathways to generational wealth. Since its launch, the movement has expanded to more than 26,000 members, providing small business owners with practical support and real solutions for long-term success.
A pitch competition featuring founders from across the country is part of the forum. Sickles finished third and won $75,000 and mentorship from a Wells Fargo business adviser. The finals featured entrepreneurs from Austin, Georgia, Oregon, and South Carolina, as well as Kia-Shun Voltz from Red Oak.
“It was a good experience,” Sickles says. “The best part is being able to tell people the story and invite them along our journey, to be a part of it, and help us change the world, one sock at a time, is what I love to say. Money is always nice, but it's the people that I can help after that, that I’m able to bring into our audience and really educate them on what we do and why it matters.”
The story begins in Lexington, Kentucky, home of the University of Kentucky, where Sickles attended undergraduate school. She studied economics there and was a member of the ROTC. When she graduated in 2016, she was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army.
Military service was something she had had on her mind for a while. Her parents gave their blessing to join the Army, but they also wanted her to go to school.
“They said, ‘You figure it out,’” Sickles says. “All right. I’ll figure it out. Growing up, we would travel a lot and we would always be in the airport and I'd always see soldiers in uniform and I looked on them as heroes and I wanted to become that hero for somebody else. So yeah, a little cliche, but I wanted to be a hero.”
She also comes from an entrepreneurial background. Her father owns a land surveying company licensed in seven different states.
“Seven or eight,” she corrects herself. “He loves what he does.”
While in the Army, Sickles also earned an MBA from Northern Kentucky. But it was while working for Uncle Sam that she learned about socks and the dangers of inadequate sockwear.
Including her time in ROTC, Sickles spent 11 years serving as a U.S. Army Engineer Officer, in some cases helping shape the careers of some of the Army’s first enlisted female combat engineers. Her time in uniform was marked by hard-earned accolades — Air Assault, Expert Soldier, Spur Rides, and grueling 100-mile challenges.
Beneath all that, however, was persistent foot pain so severe she often skipped graduations just to avoid lacing up her boots.
Determined to find a solution, Sickles took matters into her own hands. She tested 87 pairs of socks across continents, conducting A/B trials during PT formations — swapping socks before long runs and ruck marches to collect real-time feedback from peers and leaders alike. These experiments, conducted while she led some of the Army’s most elite troops, became the groundwork for a bigger vision.
But that wear and tear caught up with her in the form of multiple surgeries to repair knee ligaments surgeries and herniated discs. All of it eventually forced her to leave the Army.
Transitioning out of the military was one of the most difficult decisions Sickles ever faced. The Army was all she had known, and she was next in line to take command, a long-held dream of leading her own company of soldiers. But after her second ACL surgery, complications arose. Doctors informed her they couldn’t operate on the same ligament a third time. Faced with a life-altering choice, she had to step back.
“I will always have a lot of love for the military. It's shaped me into who I am today,” she says. “Obviously, the decision was difficult at the time as I was kind of going through it, but I was prepared. I've always said that when I'm no longer being challenged in a position and my brain isn't being stimulated, then I know that's my time to leave an organization. The timing was perfect for me.”
At the same time, SickFit, the business she’d started as a passion project, was gaining momentum. Though she didn’t recognize it right away, something larger was drawing her toward entrepreneurship. Raised in an entrepreneurial family, the drive was in her DNA, but she never expected it to take root so soon.
Eventually, the realization clicked: She was stepping into a new kind of mission — SickFit, which became a new way to lead and innovate. Like the military, entrepreneurship required the same intensity, the same discipline, and the same desire and heart.
SickFit has quickly earned a reputation for delivering high-performance compression socks trusted by even Olympians. Three Olympic track-and-field athletics last year wore Sickles’ socks on the biggest stage — the Paris Olympics. American Paralympians Brittni Mason and Jaleen Roberts, and Jorinde van Klinken of the Netherlands — a two-time NCAA champion at the University of Oregon and Arizona State who threw the shot put and discus — all wore the socks, quite a testing ground for SickFit, in the same field of competition as the sports Goliaths like Nike, Adidas, and Lululemon.
Sickles got those partnerships through cold Instagram DMs.
SickFit has taken a deliberate approach to sponsorships. Despite fielding interest from 10 to 15 Olympic-bound athletes, ultimately signed just three. As the founder of an emerging brand, Sickles chose to align with athletes who, like her, were scrappy upstarts with something to prove.
Sickles is knocking on doors to get her socks into retail anchors, like Amazon. Right now, the best place to purchase a pair is at the website, sickfitofficial.com. But she says she has a number of opportunities working. The fast-growing company has posted 70% year-over-year growth.
“To see something we built from the ground up reach Olympic arenas is surreal but not surprising,” Sickles says. “When you lead with mission, the world eventually takes notice.”