Sophia Amoruso: Lessons Learned from Building a $300 Million Business

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Sophia Amoruso, Founder and CEO of Girlboss

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Sophia Amoruso: Like a Girlboss

The ecommerce icon talks about the tumultuous story of Nasty Gal, what Girlboss really means, and her new entrepreneurial adventure.

Her startup story is practically legend by now. Sophia Amoruso was a community college dropout, splitting time between making Subway sandwiches and shoplifting, before she made it big selling vintage clothing on eBay.

In 2006, at just 22, Amoruso used her unique eye for fashion and a little moxie to get in on the ground floor of the ecommerce boom. She soon found herself at the helm of online fashion giant Nasty Gal, which at its peak was pulling in nearly $100 million in annual sales, with more than 100 employees working under Amoruso. She quickly became a rising star in the startup world, with the New York Times calling her the Cinderella of tech.

In 2014, Amoruso published #Girlboss, in which she recounts her experiences building Nasty Gal, and offers entrepreneurial advice to women interested in taking their careers into their own hands. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for a solid 20 weeks, sending the hashtag #girlboss ricocheting across social media. In 2016, Netflix announced plans to adapt the book into a scripted comedy, executive produced by Amoruso and Charlize Theron. In November of that same year, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy.

The events in those first 10 years of Amoruso’s career include more highs and lows than most entrepreneurs will experience in their lifetimes. It’s the kind of rollercoaster ride fit for a television show, or at least another memoir.

“I learned so much. That’s a book I need to write, and when that happens, I’ll have taken the time to fully reflect on the last decade on my life,” Amoruso told Foundr. “Holy shit.”

But life and entrepreneurship don’t wrap up in neat, 13-episodes packages, and neither has Amoruso’s career. The Girlboss brand is going strong, and now at 33, she’s taking lessons from her first company and her memoir, and building them into a new business—Girlboss Media.

‘An Unexpected, Overnight Success’

Amoruso is right at the beginning of an exciting new chapter in her career, but the incredible story of Nasty Gal still looms large, less than a year since she stepped down as executive chairwoman. Business wisdom of the day advises us to fail, and fail big. Sophia Amoruso can certainly check that one off her list.

But before Nasty Gal ran out of fuel, it was white hot, boasting the kind of growth and brand adoration most startups can only dream of.

“It was just this unexpected, overnight success,” Amoruso says. “I worked really hard, but it was also an early time for ecommerce.”

Good timing aside, Amoruso had a razor-sharp eye for style, undeniably cool branding, and a story and attitude that were irresistible, which all translated to a passionate customer base. By 2011, the company’s sales had grown 11,200 percent from just three years earlier.

“I bootstrapped it from a few hundred bucks in my bank account to $28 million in revenue before I talked to investors. How I did that, looking back on that, it seems impossible, now that I’m actually trying to start a business.”

But that growth and the expectations that followed took a toll on the company. “We injected $50 million into the company five years after it was founded, which was a real shock to the system.”

The 2014 release of her book had secured Amoruso’s place as an entrepreneurial rock star, which would prove both an advantage and a burden on the company as the spotlight intensified on the company’s struggles, which included layoffs and legal troubles.

“Because I’m a public female founder, everything I do is put under a microscope in a way. I’m happy to be a guinea pig for generations of female entrepreneurs after me, but it definitely can be distracting and can feel a bit unfair.”

Much ink has been spilled about the ultimate cause of Nasty Gal’s demise, but in a way it’s a dramatic version of a common startup story—a meteoric rise, a burst of investment, and not enough lasting sales to scale up. The company would file Chapter 11 in 2016 and sell to British retailer Boohoo not long after.

The Genesis of Girlboss

Today, Amoruso’s work has nothing to do with vintage clothing or even ecommerce. Instead, it’s all about building on the trajectory she started when she published #Girlboss. As Nasty Gal’s story was unfolding, Amoruso’s personal brand, and the philosophy she wanted to get across to other young entrepreneurs, was also taking shape.

“I wanted to share my story and all of the things I did before I started the company, where I really flailed and made a lot of mistakes, to show girls like me who might find themselves in business, might want to start a business, or may have stumbled into a business, that there really is no single way of coming into it,” she says.

Source: Flickr

“There’s no one type of person who is an entrepreneur, and there’s no specific education you need to have to become one.”

For Amoruso, the ultimate message behind the Girlboss brand is a collective reframing of what success means, and not allowing others to set that definition for us.

The book drew a huge following, and during her book tours in 2014 and 2015, Amoruso noticed that many of the women coming to her events were eager to exchange business cards with each other. “Our audience very much wants to connect with one another—to learn from one another and be inspired by one another,” she says.

That realization inspired her to launch Girlboss Media, which aims to empower the next generation of female entrepreneurs in the arts, design, fashion, and music industries, through digital content, a podcast, a financial grants program, and in person educational events called Girlboss Rallies. In the process, she hopes to inspire her audience to become the bosses of their own lives and define success on their own terms.

The company’s advisory board includes women at the tops of their fields—such as Beth Comstock (Vice Chair of GE), Rachel Shechtman (founder of STORY), and Alyssa Mastromonaco (COO of VICE Media and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Obama), and Girlboss Rallies feature similarly high-powered speakers. But the audience they’re trying to reach is deliberately made up of women in the earlier stages of entrepreneurship.

“There are a lot of publications and events for women that are just like the women on the stage [at our events],“ says Amoruso, citing Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit as an example. “People at these events already have incredible access.”

In contrast, Girlboss Rallies bring speakers of that caliber to an audience that isn’t going to spend $5,000 to attend a conference. “It’s a new conversation to be had for the girl in her 20s, who’s very much in the middle of building what is her career.”

A New Kind of Girlboss

When Foundr spoke with Amoruso, she was calling from a live-work space in a residential building in Los Angeles, headquarters of Girlboss Media, which she currently shares with four other staff. They’d held their first Girlboss Rally not long ago and were in the process of ramping up the amount of content they produce.

Source: Flickr

The new business is still in its very early stages, and Amoruso is understated in describing future plans. It’s clear she’s picked up many lessons from her first decade of entrepreneurship. For starters, she’s embraced growing thoughtfully and organically. “Have high aspirations, but have a really good plan on how you’re going to get there.”

With Nasty Gal, they were growing so fast that they were just “pulling numbers out of the sky” when making projections. It’s far better to take things step by step, and check in periodically on your progress. These days, Amoruso’s not interested in raising much funding, either.

“If we do take investment, it’ll be much more slowly and with a lot more understanding of what I’m doing than I did when I was 26 years old, rubbing two sticks together,” she says.

She’s also big on focus. “Be good at one thing at a time; don’t try to do everything at once,” she says. “It’s great to be super ambitious, but you can be over-ambitious to the point of distracting yourself and your company. If you’re that type of person, you have to take a hard look in the mirror and make sure you’re not doing that to your [team], because it can really frustrate your progress.”

Part of this focus should be on creating a great company culture early on. “If you don’t tell a culture how to be, or influence a team on how to work together, it can be a very difficult situation for everybody,” she says. In particular, she emphasizes the importance of uniting the team around a shared vision so that nobody is left “wondering what it is that you’re doing together.”

She also has some advice for those going into ecommerce, an industry that has changed radically since she dove in back in 2006. It’s such a packed space, and it’s so easy to create an ecommerce store, that it takes a lot more to come out of the gate strong than it used to.

“Today, it’s very, very competitive, and every startup has a fully baked brand strategy … before they even open their Instagram account. So it’s a very different world, and you have to be a bit more buttoned up today then maybe when you could just throw stuff up on the internet and cross your fingers.”

Like every entrepreneurial journey, Amoruso’s career continues to evolve. For example, she’s still learning how to be a great boss, on top of being a Girlboss.

“I’m a leader in progress,” she says. “I’m a leader who’s a lot more deliberate in my leadership than I have been in the past. And that is very much through trial and error, but also through having some great advisors and coaches along the way.

“I’d say I’m nowhere near being the level of leader that I’d like to be, and I feel so lucky to be able to start over in some ways with a small team, and build a culture from day one, intentionally.”

And for all the scrutiny she’s experienced in her astonishing story, Amoruso still tries to live by her own philosophy and define her own success, trying to avoid the trap of letting others define it for you.

“Don’t compare yourself to other people. You have to be your best.”

Source: Flickr

Sophia Amoruso’s Tips for Stand-Out Branding

Emphasize purpose. “Everything you do should have … a purpose.” Invest a significant amount of time deciding what your brand is, what it stands for, why your company exists, and why people will love your product(s) or service(s) before you go to market.
Design a product or service that is inherently shareable. “If it’s a physical product, make it something that people want to share a photo of or could see themselves wearing. If it’s an experience, build something that people want to take photos of or interact with and talk about.”
Be memorable. “Be unique and make something that is gonna stick in people’s heads. You want to leave a mark very quickly, you have to stand out, and you have to be clear on what it is that you’re trying to say.”
Prioritize customer service. “Under-promise and over-deliver. Always keep your promise to the customer. Be who you are and do what you say you’re gonna do. You can lose a lot of trust if that’s not the case.”

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Key Takeaways

Amoruso’s guide to creating a brand that leaves a mark on customers and investors alike
Key lessons learned from the rise and fall of a nine-figure business
Customer services mistakes that can kill any business
How to create products that are inherently sharable and immediately recognizable

Full Transcript of the Podcast with Sophia Amoruso

Nathan: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Foundr podcast. My name is Nathan Chan, and I am coming to you live from hometown homegrown, Melbourne, Australia. And I am the CEO of Foundr magazine and also the host of the Foundr podcast where we interview some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation and hear their stories, but most importantly, understand their lessons and get their experience that they can share, so you can learn from their mistakes. And you can essentially level-up very, very fast because that’s one of the best things you can do, is just learn from other people’s lessons and not make the mistakes that they’ve learnt.

So, let’s talk about today’s guest, Sophia Amoruso. I was really pumped to share this one with you guys. I’m really excited to have her on the show and also feature on the front cover of the magazine. So, Sophia is the founder of a company called Nasty Gal, and you know, she’s been in the media a lot. She was at one point one of the youngest, richest, females in America, and then for a series of events, unfortunately, learning a lot of hard lessons, her company had to file for bankruptcy and they were sold. And essentially, what happened next was she created this awesome brand on the side anyways because she wrote this book called “Girlboss” and it’s just an absolute phenomenon, amazing brand, an amazing movement that she’d created while she was working on Nasty Gal and now she’s just super focused on Girlboss, and we talk about, you know, lessons learnt, all things that she wished she had have done, all things that, you know, she would have changed going forward, and all the things that she’s up to with Girlboss and building that as a media company now. And a very, very interesting conversation, I really enjoyed this one. I know you guys are going to as well. If you are enjoying these episodes, please do take the time to leave us a review, it helps more than you can imagine. And also, as I’ve been saying over the last few episodes, please do let your friends know. I know that you’re an entrepreneur, or an aspiring entrepreneur, or a novice entrepreneur, or an experienced founder, and I know you must have other friends that are founders, so please do recommend this show, these episodes, anything that really hits home for you. The more that you help spread the word, the more we can grow our movement of just really showing people what it takes to build and grow a successful business with real content, real experiences, real stories. No more hyped listicles or rubbish like that. All right guys, that’s it from me, now let’s jump into the show.

So, the first question that I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job?

Sophia: How did I get my job? Let’s see. The only decent job I ever had, I guess I had made for myself. So, I wrote a book called “Girlboss,” and then started a podcast called Girlboss Radio and decided to start a company called Girlboss Media and in the sort of journey through I was doing that I made a job for myself.

Nathan: Awesome. And, like, how did that book come about?

Sophia: I had started a company called Nasty Gal when I was 22 years old, in 2006, as an eBay store, and it was just this unexpected kind of overnight success. I mean I worked really hard,but it was also like an early time for e-commerce, and you know, I let eBay launch the whole website. I wrote a whole book about that. But as someone who was an unlikely entrepreneur, someone who is a community college dropout, I never thought I would be a business person, I found out that I really actually enjoyed business. And so, Girlboss was, you know, I wanted to share my story and all of the things I did before I started the company where I really flailed and made a lot of mistakes, and to show girls like me, who might find themselves in business, might wanna start a business, or may have stumbled into a business, that there really is no like one single way of coming into it, and that there’s no one type of person who is an entrepreneur, and there’s no specific education you need to have to become one.
Nathan: Hmm, awesome. Yeah, look, I’ve read the book, my girlfriend’s read the book. I love your story. It’s a crazy story that you’ve been on. I’m really curious because I have a lot of female founder friends and, you know, the connotation Girlboss is being thrown around a lot now. You’ve started a movement, so, can you tell me your mission and why with the media company that you’ve now spun out of the book.

Sophia: So, Girlboss is, you know, she’s the boss of her own life. So, it’s not just about being the boss of other people, it’s not just about, you know, it’s not a literal term. Girlboss is someone who’s in charge of her life and who’s defining success for herself. So, you know historically, I think success was defined for all of the rest of us by a few people, and we all kind of looked in that direction and aspired to that. And as someone who at, you know, a point in my career has filled that archetype, like, you know, know from experience that it’s really no different than being in the middle of building something, you know being in the top of it. So, Girlboss is a brand, a media, you know, a media brand, really just a conversation that we’re starting around reframing success together but for every one of our leaders or guests at our conferences to think for themselves and to define for themselves what success is.

Nathan: So, can you tell me, just some stories, because I think our audience might find this interesting. Because as I’ve said, I’ve got many female founder friends, I’ve heard some crazy stories. Like, what is the difference between, you know, and I don’t wanna go all feminist versus…I don’t want to go to feminism, but I’m just really curious. Would you be able to share some stories, like, how different is it being a female founder or a female, you know, trying to build a successful business or life?

Sophia: I never really thought there was much of a difference, and that, you know, and there’s a bit of a privilege in being able to say that. I was also an only child that was kind of raised like a boy in some ways, and I just never really, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what entrepreneurship was. I didn’t know venture capitalists when I started my business. I think if I had known more, I would have, you know, that could have, like, been a hindrance to what I did. So, being naive is sometimes a really great thing. In terms of being a woman, female entrepreneur, it’s like, I don’t wanna say phenomenon, but it’s something that’s become a lot more popular for women. And you know, it gives you flexibility but it also is a very demanding thing in your life. So, but what I have learned as a, I guess, “female entrepreneur” is that there’s less of us so there’s less of us to point at. Women media might be looking for someone to scrutinize. Everything that I’ve done over the course of my career in any other company is often like, you know, the course of doing business, and never really is heard about again, and because I’m a public female founder, everything that I do is put under a microscope, in a way. You know, I’m happy to be a guinea pig for generations that are female entrepreneurs after me, but it definitely can be distracting and sometimes feel a bit unfair.

Nathan: So, can you talk to us around your strategies around building this media company? What’s the business model look like? Do you know that yet or are you still working it out, or…I know you had that event, it looked like a real success.

Sophia: Yes. So, we had a conference in March with 500 women and 50 speakers, and just the founder of Instagram was the one kind of male speaker and then, you know, 25 female CEOs, some amazing creatives. And it was just like a day with a lot of incredible energy and really great content and lessons from women who, you know, are career women but also women who have started businesses. Probably, I mean, honestly the conversation was very little, I think, around necessarily being a woman. I think that it’s kind of an inherent part of the conversation. So, what I learned on my book tour, you know, I did the first one in 2014 and then the paperback in 2015, these girls would come to the book event and they’d exchange business cards. And some of them have businesses, some of them don’t, but they all have business cards, and our audience very much want to connect with one another, to learn from one another, to be inspired by one another, and you know, to learn from and be inspired by women who are doing things, you know,just a few steps ahead of where they’ll soon be. There is a lot of publications and events for women that are just like the women on the stage, so, “Fortune’s Most Powerful Women” or you know, “AOL’s Makers.” The people that attend those events already have incredible access. The Girlboss Rally has speakers from events like that brought to an audience who can’t spend $5000 to attend a conference, or won’t because it’s just not a smart thing to do. Yes, it’s a new conversation to be had, or you know, the girl in her 20s who’s very much in the middle of building what is her career.

Nathan: Gotcha. So, do you guys think that you’ll do events at scale? I’m just really curious around your thought process, around, you know, the motivation business model.

Sophia: Yeah. Well, we’ll be doing another event in New York later this year. How large it’s scaled, I really don’t know. It’s something that, as you know, you really want to test before you go all in for anything. So, you know, events and experiential ways of being with our audience and having conversations is very much a place where our content will live, but we’re also publishing content multiple times daily on girlboss.com. And beyond that, it’s really, you know, I’m sitting here with four girls, in a, like a live-work space in a residential building, so it’s very, very, it’s very early. There’s not, you know, a whole lot more to see than that.

Nathan: Gotcha. I see, and one thing I’m curious about is the brand. I’m seeing a common theme like when you created Nasty Gal, it was really cool edgy, funky branding. Now, this whole Girlboss movement and the media company that you’re building, it’s really cool. What could our audience share from you from branding, which I think is really, really strong. Do you have a rulebook, or you know, three things, or something that you could share?

Sophia: Gosh, yeah. You know, be memorable, be unique, and make something that is gonna stick in people’s heads. You wanna leave a mark very quickly, and you have to stand out, and you have to be clear on what it is that you’re trying to say. And you know, design a product or service that is inherently shareable. So, if it’s a physical product, make it something that, you know, people want to share a photograph of, or that people wanna take a photo of themselves wearing as it’s a, you know, an experience. Build something that people want to take photos of or interact with and talk about. I think it’s just like, everything you do should have, one, a purpose to exist, but also a reason for people to find themselves in the middle of it and wanna share it with other people because that’s the best marketing.

Nathan: I see, and how do you plan to grow the Girlboss brand?

Sophia: It’s just, you know, really organically. You know, we’re publishing twice as much content as we were a few weeks ago, which is two stories a day. And you know, just that little change has dramatically increased our traffic numbers. So, I have an amazing tiny team here, I’m hiring a couple executives to help me, you know, plan for the future, but really just doing what we do best, learning as we go, not building too fast, because I’ve definitely done that before, and measuring everything that we do.

Nathan: Gotcha, and are you guys, funded? Do you plan on raising VC or are you gonna stay bootstrapped for a long time? What are your thoughts on that model?

Sophia: I’m not really sure. You know, I don’t wanna raise a lot of money. I’ve done that before and, you know, with Nasty Gal, I bootstrapped it from a hundred bucks in my bank account to $28 million in revenue before I talked to investors. How I did that, I mean looking back on that, it’s like it seems impossible now that I’m actually trying to start a business. But we injected $50 million into that company, you know, five years after it was founded, which was a real shock to the system. So, I think if we do take investment, it will be much more slowly and with a lot more understanding of what I’m doing than I did when I was 26 years old rubbing two sticks together.

Nathan: Yeah, Gotcha. For anyone that’s running an e-commerce brand trying to grow it, thoughts, advice, that can help them, from your experience, to grow it?

Sophia: E-commerce is such a different world than it was when I started Nasty Gal, and I have to say that it is a very exciting thing that it has physical inventory for the first time after a decade. I mean, I would say, just know your number, understand your inventory level. Inventories, you know, can strangle a business. And have something that’s really differentiated because there’s just so much. There’s so many fashion websites and, you know, it’s so easy to start an e-commerce business now. So, really spend some time on the back end, you know, deciding what your brand is, what your brand stands for, what it looks like, why you exist, what is your product, why are people gonna love it, before you even go into market. I think, you know, in 2006, you can show up and just be like, here I have some stuff, and people would be like, “Oh awesome, there’s not that much stuff to buy on the internet.” And today, it’s very, very competitive, and every startup has you know, a fully baked brand strategy created before they even, like, open their Instagram account. So, it’s a very different world and you have to be a bit more buttoned up.

Nathan: Yeah, I see. And, do you think it’s more product or marketing? What do you think is more important?

Sophia: I think it always has to start with your product, but if your product is a commodity, it’s something that’s not the only one like it, your marketing becomes just as important. Even though if you, I mean, ideally, you have a very differentiated product and something that people wanna share, and you’re the only place to go to for it. If that’s not the case, you have to augment what you’re doing with how you present it and how you talk about it. So, I’d say, depending on what you’re doing, that can be a sliding scale.

Nathan: Would you be so kind to share some lessons, like your greatest lessons that you’ve learned as an entrepreneur so far, that you could pass down to our audience? Some things that you might have done differently? Would you change anything? What do you wish you learnt?

Sophia: Yeah, I mean, I wish, you know, grow thoughtfully, you know, have high aspirations, but have a really good plan on how you’re gonna get there. You know, I think we grew so fast that we were like pulling numbers out of the sky at one point just deciding what next year’s revenues would be, which you have to always do to some extent when you don’t have a lot of history in your company, but under promise and over deliver, and always keep your promise to the customer. I mean, that’s just number one. Be who you say you are and do what you say you’re gonna do. You can lose a lot of trust if that’s not the case.

Nathan: One thing I keep hearing from you is patience. That’s one thing one of my mentors shared with me. He said to me that it takes 7 to 10 years to build something of true worth and significance anyway, he says to me, Nathan, be patient. And this is someone that, you know, runs one of the largest companies in Australia. And I keep hearing that from you. Do you think that millennials and people that are of our generation, you know, I’m 30, I think you’re probably a similar age, they want it now, faster, can’t wait?

Sophia: Yeah, it’s true, and I am still very much that way, and I’ve learned over time, you know, be good at one thing at a time. Don’t try to do everything at once. You can’t be great at everything all at once. You wanna master things in phases, and you know, focus is your friend. You know, it’s so great to be super ambitious, but you can be over-ambitious to the point of distracting yourself and your company. And if you’re that type of person, you have to really take a hard look in the mirror and make sure that you’re not doing that to your people and to your business because it can really frustrate your team and it can derail your progress.

Nathan: We have to work towards wrapping up, but let’s just quickly talk about leadership. What kind of leader are you?

Sophia: I’m a leader in progress. Gosh, you know. It’s like, I think I used to be a very different kind of leader. I’m a leader who’s a lot more deliberate in my leadership than I have been in the past, and that is very much through trial and error, but also through having some great advisors and coaches along the way. I’d say I’m nowhere near being like the level of leader that I’d like to be, and I feel so lucky to be able to start over in some ways, with a small team, and build a culture from day one intentionally, which I never thought about when I was 22 years old, which I think very few people probably would. Because if you don’t tell a culture how it should be or, you know, influence a team on how to work together, it can be a very difficult situation for everybody. It’s really the thing. I’d say I’m an optimistic leader who has a lot to learn and who cares a lot.

Nathan: So, do you think with your previous company, what could have you done differently as a leader?

Sophia: I think, with leadership, you know, you learn certain things, like, sometimes you have to say things over and over again for it to really settle into the culture, you know. It’s not the same as having a conversation with somebody, like, outside of work where you say something once and you just assume that it was heard. There’s a lot of like trust and verifying, and also, you know, evangelizing what it is that you’re doing over and over and over again. Not letting people wonder what it is that you’re building together, and even if you say it once, you can’t expect that it was heard, something that takes a lot of repetition. I’d say I would have hired a different kind of person. Being at our early team, I mean the team at Nasty Gal was amazing, you know, I think I, at 22, hired people that I wanted to hang out with to a certain extent, whereas with this company, I love hanging out with my team but I’m hiring the best people for the job first and foremost, and it’s been, all love in here. What else? I have, I mean that’s like a book I need to write when that happens, I’ll have taken the time to fully reflect on the last decade of my life.

Nathan: Sophia: Yeah, you can come back on.

Sophia: That whole, holy shit, yeah, just call me when I’ve had the time to think about it.

Nathan: Okay, all good. So look, it’s all good. So, final question, because I found it interesting that you said, in the early days when you started Nasty Gal, you hired people that you wanted to hang out with, and that’s something that Tony Hsieh of Zappos is a big proponent of. He says, you know, you hire people that would want to have a beer with. So, now you would hire the best talent, then the person that you wanna have like a beer with and hang out with or party with or you could be a friend or… What’s your thoughts on that? Do you wanna be friends with your staff?

Sophia: Obviously, you wanna enjoy the people that you work with, so I hire people that I enjoy being around, but I don’t hire people to, like, be my party buddy. You know, it’s like the job is first so loyalty is to the company first for everybody on the team, because when the loyalty becomes to, you know…I’ve seen what, you know, people become…I mean I want people out here to be friends, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a point of no return where relationships within a company can become more important to people than, like, the task at hand, and that can be a very challenging thing to manage. So, I definitely hire people that I wanna spend time with, obviously, I’m sitting at a table with five people right now, but I’m not hiring, like, my buddies or people because, you know, I like their shoes or something, you know? It’s like, the kind of person that I thought was my kind of person was very different when I was 22 than at, you know, I’ll be 33 in three weeks. You learn to evaluate people on a different set of criteria. You recruit more and work more with different types of people.

Nathan: Awesome. So, last question before we wrap up, well, two last questions. One, best piece of advice that you would give to our audience of novice stage aspiring founders, some of them will be super experienced, best piece of advice that you could give, you know, greatest lesson you’ve ever learned as an entrepreneur and founder, and then the last one is the best place that people could find you and your work.

Sophia: Best piece of advice, just don’t compare yourself. You know, I like to say don’t compare your hustle to their highlight reel. Like, don’t compare yourself to other people. You have to be, like, your best. And where can you find me? Girlboss.com, @girlboss and @sophiaamoruso.

Nathan: Awesome. Well look, thank you so much for your time Sophia, it was a great conversation.

Nathan: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I’m really excited about this.