She takes chances and takes responsibility on her own terms. She knows when to throw punches and when to roll with them.
When to button up and when to let her freak flag fly. As Sophia writes, "I have three pieces of advice I want you to remember: Don't ever grow up. Don't become a bore. Don't let The Man get to you. Then let's do this. By age twenty-two, she had resigned herself to employment, but was still broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school--a job she'd taken for the health insurance.
It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Sophia's never been a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she's written GIRLBOSS for girls like her: outsiders and insiders seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers.
And of course, as soon as she was finished, he changed his mind. By law, truckers have to pull over every certain number of hours to sleep— a law that keeps them from snorting speed and staying up for days on end.
He pulled over to the side of the road, and quickly outlined the sleeping arrangements. This did not go over well with James, who made us decide: Either do what he said or get the fuck out. For the second time, we found ourselves on the side of the highway with nothing but knives, backpacks, and a flashlight.
Joanne was really tan, like a homeless woman or someone from Maui. We ran through the darkness to see what surprise we might find behind door number three. Seattle, where I spent almost as much time cutting my own hair as I did shoplifting. The guy was a Bible-thumper who went on about Jesus and smacked his dog whenever it barked. He told us that his mom was a prostitute and that his brother burned a house down at age five.
Our final chauffer was a very nice trucking dad who riffed about his wife and kids the whole way, dropping us safely in Olympia. No Time for Crime I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.
No, seriously—you can major in Madonna. Books were an easy entry point for a novice shoplifter like me. Then I packed them up, shipped them out, and had a couple hundred bucks to pay my rent. Nobody really owns anything, I thought. Unfortunately, it took a while before this happened. I was constantly adding new techniques to my repertoire. No cops, no fuss. Each time, I went in and got two sets of the most expensive oil pastels I could find. I put one in my bag and then walked up to the register to pay cash for the other one.
Then I left with two pastel sets and one receipt. When I was asked for my receipt, I acted baffled. Like I said: a special place in hell. When I finally got caught, I was living in Portland, Oregon. I was at a large chain and had made my way around the store, filling my shopping cart until it was practically overflowing with stuff, having carefully picked the security sensors off each and every item before heading out the front door.
As I pushed my cart of goodies across the parking lot to my parked car, a guy came running up and trotted beside me. I made it out of the parking lot and all the way home as I watched my outlaw lifestyle fade quickly into the distance. I was twenty years old and decided that a life of crime was not for me. I just stole from you.
Fortunately, I got off easy. The store tallied up what I had stolen and fined me, which saved me from actually getting in trouble with the law. This part of my life was probably the ultimate low. I had an alcoholic boyfriend and I frequently found myself in trashy situations like this one.
Except that it did, and it was. I packed up my shit and drove my U-Haul-renting ass back to San Francisco, determined to do something legitimate and something brilliant. Playing by the Rules. Living a comfortable life can allow you the psychic space needed to focus on other, often bigger, things, and when you treat your possessions as emblems of your hard work, they inherit a meaning that transcends the objects themselves. I knew that someday I would be thirty, and imagined that rooting through trash in search of a free bagel would likely not be so cute anymore.
In my teens I saw the world in only black and white. Now I know that most things exist in a certain gray area. Though it took a while to get here, I now call this gray area home. Eventually, I got sick of listening to my friends whine about living in poverty while refusing to get a job.
Compromise is just a part of life. There are ways to avoid this, but it generally includes eating roadkill and making tampons out of socks. I was never one for accepting convention at face value, but through plenty of trial and error I have made working hard, being polite, and being honest a choice. I choose to obey explicit rules—like, you know, paying for something before I leave the store—but the rules that society implies we follow, well, those are the rules I have the most fun breaking.
They made life seem like a big hamster wheel. I hated watching my money disappear each month when I paid the bills. I hated cleaning and doing laundry and having to stop to put gas in the car. And oh God, I hated taking out the trash. The first time I had enough savings to put my bills on auto pay it was like winning the lottery.
Renting a house in Los Angeles with a backyard and my own washing machine was like being in a really happy musical no, literally, I twirled and cried tears of joy when I moved in. Life is unwritten, like a great big experiment. Why not see how long the red string of my imaginary kite can get? And why not let it whisk me up into the sky with it when my dreams start to become reality?
I always knew I loved writing and making people laugh. I learned at a young age that people were happy when I asked them about themselves, and I listened and retained the things they told me. You can laugh about it. I think this is a constant struggle for every freelance career girl. Create boundaries and structure!
Another guy blatantly ignored what I do. He took no interest in it at all. You will never regret trying to fulfill your dream! Take pride in what you do. Be the best. Good luck. I had no idea my company was worth anything until venture capitalists started knocking on my door. I think that part of the reason Nasty Gal has been so successful is because my goals were never financial ones.
I believed in what I was doing, and fortunately other people believed in it as well. No decision was too small. My adopted political ideals had let me approach money with an elevated level of distaste. Being in a bad spot can slam them in your face. And being broke gets old, so start making smart decisions now to avoid paying for stupid ones later. And it was on one of these crazy such occasions that I managed to make a legitimate purchase and ruin my credit in one fell swoop.
Because I moved so much, I rarely had a steady address, causing bills to miss me as I jumped from state to state. This was frustrating; however, it was also a blessing in disguise.
You can only ignore this fact for so long before it returns to bite you in the ass. Like my A-cup bra did for me, it is the little things that can and will wreck your credit. Parking tickets can end up costing you thousands of dollars and court dates. Bills, sadly, are not an ignore-it-and-it-goes-away problem.
Get them before they get you: Pay up, and pay on time. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises. Sadly, doing just that is not only the norm for a lot of people, but also a signifier of success. Growing up in the suburbs, I saw it all the time: the flaunted backyard pool or new monster truck.
I had friends who were supported by their parents and I was totally envious. However, forcing me to figure out how to provide for myself was probably one of the best things my parents ever did for me.
I come from a long line of hustlers. In short, how much money they brought home was a direct result of how hard and how smart they worked. Sometimes we rented single-story houses; sometimes we owned two- story houses. No matter what, I had to get my auctions listed. Otherwise I was devoid of dinero. When Nasty Gal first opened, I had little to no overhead aside from my sweat daily , tears regularly , and blood sometimes vintage has sharp things hiding in it!
Another big no-no is increasing your spending as soon as your income increases. I have always been careful to avoid this pitfall. GIRLBOSS, when your time spent making money is significantly greater than your time spent spending money, you will be amazed at how much you can save without even really thinking about it.
If we absolutely needed something, I bought it. But as Nasty Gal hired up a storm and became a real business, we had to act like a real office. In I took my first vacation since starting the company, and went to Hawaii by myself. At the time, we were in the process of moving Nasty Gal from Emeryville to Los Angeles, and when I returned from Hawaii, in a state of semi- Nirvana after spending eleven days in paradise, I found out that someone had ordered brand-new Herman Miller Aeron chairs for the entire office.
At that point, yes, IKEA desks were totally necessary. Aeron chairs, however, were not. I happened to have a Herman Miller Aeron chair in my office. To me, it was a rite of passage. There was no way that I was going to have interns rolling around on these things! It sent the wrong message to the company to preach frugality while balling out on twelve grand worth of chairs.
In the eBay days, when vintage was selling for ten times what I paid for it, it felt like I was printing money. As much as I liked the shoes I could afford, I liked having the money more. As uneducated buyers, we bought much the same as anyone who had a small business would.
Simple, yes, but that is the philosophy that ultimately led to a really big business. The average American only saves 6. It has to be paid every month, or there are consequences. If you have direct deposit, have a portion of your paycheck automatically diverted into a savings account. No, they do not. The Art of the Ask To many people, talking about money is awkward. They think they have either too little or too much.
I had called him five minutes after submitting my application to make sure of that. So I fought. I got my money back. Lo and behold, the bus stopped, the door opened, and we climbed on. Wet with rain, we were met with faces of equal disbelief among our fellow passengers. Some people may say that I was a horrible person for haggling at a thrift store, but I was just another person trying to get by. There are ways to make the whole thing less traumatic.
The first piece of advice I can give you is to learn to separate your money from your emotions as much as you possibly can. Is it okay if we put something on the calendar? Hitting him up on Gchat is not appropriate. When you do meet to discuss it, skip the personal sob stories. This is true when it comes to buying clothes and it is true when hiring employees—sometimes it pays to spend a little more than you bargained for on real quality.
I loved this car. I paid it off in full within the next year. Last year I decided it was time to upgrade. When I went to buy the Porsche, I was ready to splurge. But me being me, I wanted to again put half down.
The dealership, however, put a kink in my well-laid plans for a financially responsible splurge. And, as it turned out, even though I was now running my own company and had enough money to put down a hefty deposit, my credit was still only mediocre. It was a WTF moment that drove home to me how screwy the credit system is. I was reminded again that the common way is not always the best way. Therefore, I paid cash for that Porsche. This time, when I got my keys, nobody got a hug.
Mine succeeded. What I hate about luck is that it implies being devoid of responsibility. It implies that success is something given to a knighted and often undeserving few.
But I do buy magic. Its floors are carpeted, its waiters tuxedoed, and its drinks strong. Chances are that you know someone who is really negative. These people are convinced that life is shit. For about the first year after the business really started to take off, I felt like a lamb being led to slaughter. But then talking about my job became my job. A sizeable part of me resented the fact that I had to choose my words carefully.
I often wondered, Was this a choice? In my book and this is my book! I am talking about visualization that works when we actually get off our asses and do stuff. How totally crazy is that? Take care of the little things— even the little things that you hate—and treat them as promises to your own future. It all goes back to the red string of my imaginary kite—if you believe something, other people will believe it, too.
A big practice in chaos magic is the use of sigils, which are abstract words or symbols you create and embed with your wishes. To create a sigil, start by writing out your desire in a single word, a couple of words, or a short sentence. I treat my Internet passwords as modern-day sigils, embedding them with wishes or promises to me, or even financial goals for the company. Hey, I never made any claims to be normal here. This kind of intention setting has worked for me.
One of the best things about life— a reason not to go blindly after one goal and one goal only—is that sometimes it will take you to something that is way cooler than anything you would have consciously set out to do in the first place.
None of these were things I ever expected to add up to something called a brand, but they contributed to all the ways in which Nasty Gal is just a little off and a little surprising. While I truly believe that you must have intentions to fulfill your dreams, I also think you have to leave room for the universe to have its way and play around a bit. You might ruin it. If you let yourself meander a bit, then the right things and the right people fall into place.
At the absolute minimum, you will affect how you feel about the outcome and that is ultimately what matters the most. If I am in a shitty mood while making dinner, the food is going to taste like crap. When you think about people, you give them power. My ex-boyfriend Gary taught me this lesson when we first started dating. She was my favorite horrible thing to talk about, and I brought her up a little too often. Why are you doing that to me? Why are you doing it to yourself? It was unlikely, as she lived in LA at the time, but she was known to lurk up north.
As soon as we walked into the bar, there she was. She saw Gary, made a beeline for him, and began to whisper in his ear as soon as she was close enough. But she just turned and looked at me with a snarl. Though I can laugh at it now—the absurdity of costumes and wigs and punches and a man in a dress breaking it up—it was a miserable Halloween and a miserable night. I conjured that bitch. I have also had to learn to rein in my negative thoughts when it comes to business competition.
Around the same time that I launched the Nasty Gal website, I had become pretty good friends with another girl who ran a vintage eBay shop. A year after I left eBay and set Nasty Gal up with a proper website, she also decided to launch her own.
When her site went live it looked really wonderful. Everything was exactly like mine. I had one phone call with her in which I told her to get some ideas of her own, and we never spoke again. I talked about it all the time while rolling my eyes and thinking about how much she sucked. Finally, I did this so much that Gary pointed out I was obsessing about her so much that I was going to make her successful. When I was about four or five, my parents threw me a birthday party.
The sight of Tootsie Rolls and Starbursts turned the other kids into screaming primates and as they immediately dove for the candy, I stood frozen. And there I stayed until the last sugar-sodden five-year-old party guest had left and I felt it was safe to emerge from my cave.
This is your brain on introversion. Common knowledge used to dictate that extroverts were outgoing and introverts were shy, and this certainly never applied to me. However, research over the last few years has been focused on how the two personality types are actually more defined by what energizes them.
Introverts and extroverts also process external stimuli via different pathways in the brain, which means that something an extrovert would find completely fun and novel—such as a bunch of kindergarteners rioting for candy—would be totally overwhelming to an introvert like me.
Being an only child meant that I naturally spent a ton of time alone. I preferred it this way and was never lonely. Yet at school this tendency to be alone made me feel weird. As a result I spent way too much time thinking about what other people thought about me, and what I could possibly do to make them like me more. Did they like my backpack? They even love adrenaline, the chemical that your brain produces in the face of fear, so they need bigger and riskier situations to produce the same natural high that an introvert gets from just having a conversation with a close friend.
Same goes for work. Over e-mail, eBay, and MySpace, I was a customer service queen— able to respond to people politely and genuinely, infusing everything with a digital smile. Rowling, to name a few , so in no way does being an introvert doom you into a life in the shadows. Nothing, for me, feels more comforting than the sound of an angry, misunderstood man. And by good, naturally, I mean bad. I have a friend who told me something recently that really resonated.
Life is about creating yourself. Strangely, I think this attitude paid off when I started the business. I constantly tweak and move on, peeling back layers of the onion as new ones arrive.
I just tried something else. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds.
And to self- subscribe. To put it plainly, I exist under a microscope. When I was living in Olympia, I snuck into a high school prom and danced with the cutest underclassmen I could find.
I dressed up like a soccer mom to steal a loaf of bread. Never in my life, though, did I ever imagine that the role that I would actually end up inhabiting was that of a CEO. Who gave this freak the keys? I refused to think of people I met through business as friends. Finally, though, I arrived at a point where I decided this was bullshit. Today, I consider Danny my peer. Sometimes I can even get him to laugh at a fart joke. Nasty Gal has been my MBA. You is who you is, so get used to it.
On Being a Freak I like being myself. Myself and nasty. As a company, Nasty Gal sits half in the fashion world and half in its own galaxy. I absolutely hate Fashion Week. It hurts me from the inside out. You are assigned a piece of bench in a too-hot or too-cold warehouse that is hard to get to because all the cabs are taken and the subway is not a choice due to your absurd-ass shoes.
If so, are they the right color? Nasty Gal is antifashion in that we encourage girls to choose what fashion means to them. The last thing the world needs is another boring person or another boring brand, so embrace all the things that make you different.
I once Instagrammed a picture of my poodle, Donna, without realizing that my phone number was visible on her tag. Once, at a meeting with my bank, they gave me a gift. Our office has consumed a whole hell of a lot of champagne, but how many bottles can you pop? I was convinced I could be a painter and did everything from intensive life drawing while worshipping Michelangelo to studying art history and painting with a passion.
I was very lucky to receive scholarships and grants for my paintings, but also a scholarship to FIT. I opened a store in and have been in business ever since. You have to be excited and passionate about your ideas to make them work. Kick ass book filled with female empowerment and girl power. What's not to love?? Forever His Baby.
G'Day L. Diktator Galau. Related articles. Review: Heart of the Storm. Register a free 1 month Trial Account. Download as many books as you like. Cancel the membership at any time if not satisfied. What makes Sophia such an icon to girls around the. You can download textbooks and business books in PDF format.
Sophia Christina Amoruso born April 20, [2] is an American businesswoman. Amoruso founded Nasty Gal, a women's fashion retailer, which went on to be named one of 'the fastest growing companies' by Inc.
0コメント