DORÉ

I met Sophia Amoroso at the offices of her new company, Girlboss. I had always been intrigued by her personality, her creativity, and obviously that crazy success ride she’s been on. Building Nasty Gal, this huge company from absolutely nothing but creativity and perfectionism, making a name for herself, and then having to stomach the company filing for bankrucpty in an incredibly public way… It takes a lot to come back from that.

And she did, with her new adventure, Girlboss, a community of amazing women who are defining success on their own terms.

I’ve loved how raw and real she is. It’s something that always touches me in other women. Listening to our conversation, you’ll probably agree that it was time we met.

[podcast_episode episode=”260150″ ]

On leaving home at seventeen…
It wasn’t scary. Staying home was kind of scary. I just felt really trapped. I felt like I was ready to start living my life much earlier than the world was set up for me to. Not that I was a responsible adult at seventeen when I moved out or even for the few years after that. I don’t even know that I am now.

On being a lazy public speaker…
I’ve spoken at a bazillion events, but I only do Q&As because I’m lazy and I don’t like doing homework and I don’t really prepare. Talking for thirty or forty five minutes without another set of eyeballs that you’re actually speaking at is really unnatural. I’ve had a few coaches, but I still haven’t nailed it. I can’t give a speech. And so I’m going on this immersive four day thing and hopefully on the tail end of it, I’ll be able to talk for forty five minutes. There are certain things that I want to be good at that I have to take time to be good at.

On hitting low points in life…
I found myself arrested for shoplifting, dating an alcoholic, with a court date for my arrest on the same day I went to get an abortion. That was a moment when I was like this is so trashy, I don’t belong here. I had to have the women’s clinic send a note to the court to tell them why I couldn’t be there. I think they felt so bad for me, they just dismissed it. Oh, and I was stripping, so that was a really low point, at about 20 years old.

On always loving vintage…
My mom tried to take me to the mall and was horrified that I wanted to wear used clothes. She worked so hard for me to have things, and I was like, “No mom, I want to wear this brown paisley piece of shit that’s like polyester.” I’ve always always loved vintage clothing and kind of digging for and unearthing things. I like being the first to something.

On finding your talents…
It’s tough being in your early twenties and beyond and asking yourself what is my talent. This whole world is built on the idea that we’re all supposed to understand what our talent is or our passion is before you even start applying to colleges. For someone who seemed to have such low standards given what I just described, I actually had huge ambitions. Not like financially, I wanted to be a photographer. In high school I though I wanted to be a filmmaker. You don’t know how to find these things. Do they find you, do you find them, do you have to find it in school?

On having money…
The best thing about having money is being generous. I’m not naturally super generous. I’m like, “I worked for that, or no…that’s my cookie, or whatever.” And being like no sweat, you know, is a really cool thing. Being able to help your parents is a really cool thing. But, it’s not really that rewarding. It’s kind of like a lobotomy. I think if you don’t stay curious, having money can make your brain kind of melt a little bit. You don’t have to think about as many things.

On getting back up…
I’m still in this awesome phase of my life where people still care about what I’m doing, but I’ve totally accepted that 10 years from now that might not be the case. That’s why I’m working really, really hard and why I got up as soon as Nasty Gal fell. There are finite periods of time when you can capture opportunities in your career and in your life and I’m trying to do that and not take it for granted and be grateful for it.

On lessons learned…
With Girlboss Media, which is what I’m doing now, it is so amazing to be on my second company after having lived out the things I didn’t even know I was making decisions about, just by not doing them or not communicating something or not resolving with employees or whatever, starting early with intention with this company feels really good. I know what the team needs to be successful and it’s my number one job to provide that for them and remove the roadblocks and to improve the process and make sure people are communicating and feel like they have autonomy in their roles and have the tools they need to make decisions without everything going through me.

On the moment Nasty Gal crashed…
We filed for Chapter 11 the day Donald Trump was elected. I was in Australia, and it had been a series of Hail Marys that fell through. It’s hard to talk about without talking about everyone who was involved and everyone’s role in it, and I had a huge responsibility as part of it. It wasn’t something that I didn’t see coming from a very long ways away. I cried, and I felt relief. It was almost eleven years of my life. It was my entire twenties. I was really proud of what I had built. I tried really fucking hard. I felt trapped in my own business at a certain point. I mean it’s devastating. It’s devastating that there were vendors affected by it, you know, people you owe money to. Our employees were obviously affected by it.

On redefining success for women…
So there’s about eleven of us here in LA. We are, gosh, we’re redefining success for women—with them. We’re not choosing the definition, it’s individual to everybody. And that incorporates work and money, but also wellness and our personal lives, and our friendships, our relationships and our health. We’re creating content around that, building community, and creating experiences.