It's a tale of two stories. Depending on who you talk to, Sophia Amoruso is a #GRILBOSS who started the uber successful brand Nasty Gal, or she’s an entrepreneur who got in over her head and drove her company into bankruptcy. What’s the real story? Bethenny isn't going to tiptoe around this question just because it could get awkward. She goes straight to the source and asks her directly.
Plus, is contouring out of control? B's ready to rant asking the question, has the contouring craze gone too far? Bethenny settles it once and for all.
What's going on with contouring? Like, what is actually going on with contouring? I know that you take a blush brush and you go in like a figure eight motion on your face because you used to get under the cheekbones and it's darker, it kind of hides it. So it means that the cheatbone above it will come out. If you have a pronounced jaw like me, you'll do it there because it means it's gonna make it go away a little more. Um, it'll sculpt your nose and all this stuff. But like this thing, so I remember several years back when someone started putting dark makeup on my face and then smudging it in. I was like, what are you doing? It's contouring, but it was just like contouring light compared to now now everybody's drawing on their face with crayons like they're a clown. Like our face is so bad we need to like fully sculpt and give ourselves plastic surgery on the daily. Like what's what's wrong? Is something? I feel like I'm I'm doing dial up internet because I just take a brush and go around owned and I even have like a more specific brush, so I'll do the bronze are like under my cheekbone, just two because it looks like this is what the kids are doing. But literally, if you look, people are plastering their face. It's like brown makeup everywhere in crayon. And I don't understand it. I don't understand it. It's crazy. Does everyone's face need to be so sculpted and contoured? And we're looking for like Kendall weird mannequin like sculpted edges of a face. Are we supposed to look like Grace Slick and David Bowie mixed together? Like, I just don't understand why everybody's face has to be so contoured? What? What? What? What is it? Okay, just have a normal face or we only can have contoured faces. I'm just confused. What do you think about contouring? Is it that important? Am I missing something so major? I need to know what I'm missing. I'm not doing enough contouring. I know I can do more. I just bronze and I know I can do more contouring. I don't know how. And I feel left behind. I feel like I'm still on my Space and everybody else is on Instagram and and TikTok. I'm still on my Space. I still dial up Internet. I have a rotary telephone. People are gonna be contouring their vaginas. Suit literally contour your vagina, make it look more sculpted. Your vagina, you know it's it's too it's too plump. It needs to be sculpted more. You need more. There's certain areas your vagina that should be pronounced and certain they need to be hidden and highlighted to while you're at a highlight your vagina certain parts, but don't highlight other areas. I'm just not doing it right. And I just want to know if I'm alone or do I need like an anti contouring support group to join. My guest today is the founder of Nasty Gal, Sophia Amarusso. She went from working its subway at record shops even as a security guard, and built her business from the ground up. She started Nasty Gal as an Ebays shop, previously known as Nasty Gal Vintage. As the social media presence of the shop increased, the brand grew rapidly into the fashion giant we know today. Okay, so you started your business, um, Nasty Gale Vintage as what and on you were selling online? What type of clothes was eBay? I was selling? Vintage clothes on eBay okay, And how did it grow to be so huge? How big did it actually grow to? Yeah, I grewed over a hundred million dollars in revenue UM ten years um. And yeah, I started it when I was twenty two, and I don't have any business education. I had never worked in an office. I had never had a boss. The only office I've ever worked in my name has been on the lease on. I didn't have startup capital, it wasn't even a business. It was like I didn't want to work for other people. So I thought I could flip vintage on eBay, and I did, and I got really good at it, and then eventually launched my own website, um nasty Gale vintage dot com and started introducing new stuff. So I was going to trade shows and curating other people's products, and people like loved my curation, they loved the styling. You know, Nasty Gal had a very unique brand voice and the creative at the time was unique. And you know this was in two thousand, I mean it started in two thousand and seven, and so I bootstrapped it with like my eight seven Volvo, Like I paid five hundred dollars a month rent. I didn't like have loans or no one would have given me alone. Um, and I bootstrapped it from zero seventy five grand my first year to fifty one point one six and a half and then twelve and I owned a hundred percent of it, and then investors came in. So that's why I relate to that, because I had a business called Princess pesh Mi Ina in l A. And when you just said it wasn't a business, there were no words like entre a nerd or mogul. You were just selling clothing and making money pivoting. Yeah. No, I didn't know what any of that was, right, Um, but I'm so the first Now it makes a little more sense that you're saying the first year was seventy and then growing, because I was wondering, if you're doing those numbers, how were you literally doing it, meaning literally the boxes the clothing, Because people listening here want to start their own business, and you know, they might be great at baking cookies or making a salad dressing or have a good tech idea, but to pick to literally picture it, I'm trying to envision what was going on. You have evolvo. So how are you shipping things? It was before social media? How were you marketing? Like, what were you doing as a as a new business owner that didn't even know you were a business owner. You're just making money? Um? How did I figure that out? I mean I did it all in the beginning. I like every eBay seller, you know, an eBay and now Shopify and square space in these et sea in these different platforms give you the framework that you need to understand inventory and shipping and weighing and you know, managing customers and like uploading your photos and stuff that when you had a website, when you had to build an e commerce website and two thousand seven two thou eight, you were literally like skinning a site. You had a hire designer, you designed like a Photoshop file and like sliced it up and had somebody like literally engineered the entire thing. It was so much work. Um, but eb gave me like the framework of like what I needed to know to serve my customers, to keep them loyal, to market to them. Um, you know, I was able to develop my brand voice there. In terms of logistics, it's like every eBay seller has like a printer or a labeled printer, and you know, you hook it up. Now you have ship station. I think I was using USPS directly. You slap a label in a package, you take it to the post office. And then when there's too much, you know, when there was too much for me to ship, or when there was too much for me to do because the business was exploding, I first hired someone who did the things that I didn't absolutely need to do, like what is the best and highest purpose I can serve in my business? And that was the creative piece, the marketing piece, you know, the copyrighting, but not the product descriptions. I couldn't do every one of those. I didn't need to ship stuff. I was still doing all the photography, all the buying. Um, someone else steamed the clothes. Interesting, Okay, so you realized that early though, I mean, did someone mentor you and tell you that, or you just instinctively said toody to yourself, this is where I'm best used, and those are the weeds you needed somebody else. I mean, even I've had Cheryl Sandberg on here, and she's the number two to Mark Zuckerberg. She said to him, I want to do everything that you don't want to do. Mm hmm. Yeah. Eventually I had a CEO, UM, and I still had to do I think, no matter what, you have to do things that you don't want to do. It doesn't matter who you hire or who you you know, who you have under you, how amazing they are, how much you try to put yourself in a you know, in an elevated position to just deal with the things that you like. It's a job, even if you're working for yourself, even if you have support, it still ends up being a job. Um. And so yeah, from there it was like, Okay, I hired a dedicated shipping person, and I hire a dedicated you know, customer service person and a dedicated copywriter and someone to process returns. And it was like you know, ocean violation kind of nightmare. It was just like not warehouse. It was first, you know, a thousand square foot little studio in like a old shipping yard in beneath the California and then it became a seven thousand square foot warehouse in Emeryville. Actually it became a storefront in Berkeley, and then we outgrew that and then it became a warehouse in Emeryville. And we were doing all of our photography in house. Everything in house. You know, today you have these third party sticks companies that will house your inventory for you, they'll ship it for you, they'll process returns for you, you know, manage all of your inventory. And that stuff wasn't as plug and play as it is today. And so we did everything in the house, which in retrospect, I really wish we hadn't or you know, had the opportunity to, you know, kind of piecemeal out things that weren't essential to our business, um like logistics. You know, well, that's an interesting thing for business owners because many and it's about your personal bandwidth and business personality type. Because for me, I like to be a general contractor. I'm not interested in things being in the house. I'm not interested in and it can be less expensive to do that, but I don't want that headache. And um I don't think a lot of people even know that a lot of these resources exist that you can sub out a lot of things and then really focus on what you need to be focusing on. So you were kind of doing more than you needed to do, either because it didn't exist or you didn't really know how to connect those dots, right, I didn't really know what that meant, you know, And I think controlling the show, Like I just, I did not have manage people to begin with, but it just felt more fluid to have somebody there like all the time, who was an employee, who is dedicated to that business and not juggling different you know, projects. And today with business Class, it's a sizable business, but I don't. I have one employee and she's amazing, and everyone else is a contractor. Because I can talk about leadership, I can talk about management. I know a lot about it. I've worked with incredible leaders. I honestly think I'm okay. I'm just okay at it. And like I said, I want to I want to play to my best and highest um and having conversations with someone every six months about growth in the company or three months or they join and two months later they want a promotion and you lay someone off and they sue you, Like I just, I've can't deal with it anymore. And I did it for fifteen years. And you know, I love the team that I work with. I consider them my team, but they also get to go build their businesses. And now I'm a client my first employee business class was a full time employee and she left to start her own agency. I'm one of her clients, and it's it's excellent. It couldn't be better, right, I agree with you. I actually it's very It's interesting that you say that, because you can be successful at business and really not be good at many areas of business. I mean, you have to know what you don't know. And I find that the time, suck and drain of managing people is not for everyone, and even in a way that it could be something so ridiculous, like my assistants gonna laugh in front of me because I didn't know someone that was working for me. Get everyone off Veterans Day. Okay, that sounds reasonable, great, it's Veteran's Day. Then on that day only banks were closed, like my daughter was in school, and all my assistants friends were working, and I was like, why is everybody working? And they're like, I don't know. We didn't know why you gave us all Veterans Day because I didn't know, like an HR and what policy is if you're taking off, how much notice do you have to give? I'm not I'm a free spirit in that way, so some people could be bogged down and fail in business because of the weeds of those things. That don't mean you're a good or bad business person. Honestly, it's really like refreshing to relate to somebody on this topic because I have a lot of guilt over it, because you know, I didn't build a great culture at Nasty Gale, because they didn't build an intentional culture, and I didn't know what culture meant. When you hire a hundred people in a year, when you're just like shooting from the hip like a total, you know, accidental entrepreneur, it's a mess. You know, in business class, I teach like, you have to think about your culture even before you hire your first employee, because the way you two work together, it's going to be the way that it scales, the way that ten people work together. And if that's not intentional and you haven't thought about what that looks like, it's a mess. I love that you're being transparent about this, by the way, because you know, I didn't know the word culture either. The way I came up, I used to work for Linda and Jerry Bruckheimer. As one of the ten people I was an assistant for Kathy Hilton. I worked in Lauren Michael's office. My culture was the Jeffrey Katzenberg culture, which he says, if you don't if you don't want to work on Sunday, don't if you don't want to work on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday. That's the quote that got him in trouble because now we have places like Google that have work life balance. I didn't come up in work life balance. I'm fifty one years old. I came up in you fucking work your ass off, no one's counting anything, and you kill yourself and you are successful. And that's how it is. I didn't come up in the time of every single thing. I don't relate. I don't relate. I get it now, but it's kind of I have to like bolt on yes and understand like what this generation needs to just want to keep their jobs, not even be successful, but like not quit. And there's a law of criteria. And I used to think, you know, like this is how I walk like, I walk through the office with purpose. I have things to do. Everybody has things to do. And the way I used to think was like, wait, I'm paying you sometimes more than I'm being paid. Often, why aren't you walking as fast as me? Because it's not their business and they don't care as much. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And that's not that doesn't scale, that's not the spirit that inspires people. I get it. I get it. I get it. I really get it. But it's funny because I recently had a conversation. If you check in the way you check in your own relationship, like you check in with these, these are wants, these are needs, like as as a partner, this is what I want, this is what I need. You can do that with with staff too, or or also be like what paid do you want? Do you want to go to distance? Here? It's okay if you just want to work and you just want a job, because people want a job, and I'll pay you and you'll do your job and that's great. Do you want to go the distance? Do you want a career and not want us to want that? Or maybe they don't want to be in this business they want to be so I'll have those conversation. Asians and I have changed in the sense that work life balance. Not everyone wants to be texting twenty four hours a day just because I do. I kind of I'm like an elder millennial, but I've kind of become a slightly younger millennial and the way that I want to live because I have burnt out, and like I mentioned, I'm spending a lot of time in Kauai, and the way my existing business works is that I have sprints in the spring and sprints in the fall. We enroll students in business class for a period of ten days and we're doing it right now, doors clothed. We kick it off. I do one zoom call a week, and the content it's relatively kind of like self. Let I logged into the community, I talked to students, but I'm not teaching this live and killing yourself and killing myself. And then I'm like almost like months off in between, you know, as someone who is saying all of these things about how you know I used to I've evolved and kind of burnt myself out in the same way like this generation knew that Burnett existed and decided not to accept it before they burnt out and demanded it. And it's like, I guess I've paved the way for other people to see that burnout is no fun and show up at two years old and say, like, I'm not gonna kill myself for you. At the same time, when I think about growth in a company, or think about bonuses in terms of getting ahead, like you get to keep your job for doing your job. If you want to get ahead, you do have to do extra. I agree, there's a there's a happy medium between burnout and hustle. Yeah, like you have to do boring. You have to have ideas. You don't just do your job like you bring ideas, like you find solutions. You don't come to You don't just do your job. So I still am like you know, I you know, just just doing a good job doesn't meet you a bonus. The company has to make money to afford the bonus, you know. So there's stuff like that that like might seem a little more old school, but like I've just blown so much money trying to keep people happy that Yeah, they're are definitely like areas where I'm like, it's a business. This is what needs to happen. It's not show friends, it's show business. And you can have that be part of your culture too. You have to add value. You're not just here to be here and to push paper. There has to be a value add that's like anything else. It is business. So about the Benjamin's, but you don't get to rest, Yeah, exactly, So okay, so this is that's a very That's just a great different conversation that I haven't had here in an important one. I think too. And we're different ages. But you you burned out way earlier. And I do want for myself and for having around me a work life balance where I create a fun environment and there's a lot going on and it's alive. But then let's not just be working to work. Let's chill when we can chill. So you were killing yourself and you didn't know entirely what you were doing, and you were making money, and then it sounds like the ship went sideways. It sounds like a couple of things happened. The ship went sideways. You sold, and based on the numbers that it sounded like your business was making, you didn't sell for enough that much money based on what you were making. So there was either debt or this sounds like there's something. Eventually, there was debt. I mean, it's like I brought in grown ups and I was like, you know, you've had a career at that point, it was in my twenties. You've had a career for twenty five years. I'm twenty five, right, You've had a career for as long as I've been alive. You're an executive, Like, I didn't really understand management. I didn't understand that even C level executives need to be held accountable and that just because they say they're going to do they say they're going to do something, doesn't mean they're going to do it or do it on time. Because when I say I'm going to do something, I just do it. And I thought that other people held themselves accountable in that way. And that's not necessarily mean taxes or filing Like what do you mean now? I mean just like getting things done, like just completing projects, just running the show, just implementing an e ERP system in the warehouse and getting software to talk to like other software, like whenever those things are building the app, getting that out on time. You know, Um, I know I was. I don't think I was a leader who really lad an executive team to work cohesively. Um I did. People were going to get things done, But you weren't technically managing it. To you, I thought they were going to die business. I thought they diagnosed the business and go treat it um. And that's not always what happens. And um, I thought, you know, I knew what. I didn't know enough to be like, I don't really know a lot like the you know, I boothsdropped the business. I didn't have to understand the financials because it was profitable. I understood, I sell something for more than I paid for it. I don't. I reinvest some of the money in more inventory, not too much, and I don't. I just like, keep money in the bank, don't spend all the money that's business. To me, I didn't. It becomes so much more complex in reading A P and L five six years in for the first time, because I didn't really need to. Oh, I get exactly exactly the hockey. I learned really quickly, but the learning curve that I hit at one point was so steep that I just couldn't. It was like this, and I was like this, and I'm I learned so quickly, and it was just it was so much um kinda um. And so what happened, um boots trapped the company. It was on its way to twenty eight million, and after twelve million, bootstrapped to twelve million pcent of it, investors came in and plowed. They said, your company's worth fifty million dollars. That's ten times revenue for an apparel business, ten times forward facing revenue. That's not normal apparel businesses traded like two times you know, revenue. So it was a venture investment, and they priced it like it was a tech company, and you know, they would expect it to eventually become a billion dollar business. Eventually, we built it two hundred million dollars in revenue. At that point, they had invested fifty million dollars. Some of that money became mine, most of it went into the business. UM, and so I was able to sell my stock some of my stock along the way, which in retrospect, had I not done that, my life would be very different. UM built it to over hundred million in revenue. But you know, sat down with these guys again, everybody knew more than me, and I don't want to, you know, I have plenty of responsibility here, but we we're doing eight million. And then they came in and we said, okay, well, based on the growth next year, we're going to do a hundred and eight million, and we just round we literally rounded up our projections by a hundred million dollars, like on the dollar, which is just so random, and how do you like, where are we getting these numbers? We hired a hundred people, um and and it got very expensive. We rented, uh, we leased, you know, had a ten year lease on a I don't know what it sounds like a ship show hundred people and said million dollars based on twenty eight million dollars. It's insanity. It was insanity, UM. But it was hard for me to raise money after that because they had overpriced the business. So a typical like private equity guy could come in and maybe he would have valued the company at two hundred millions, but because they had paid three fifty million dollars, they didn't want to take delution or you know, in basic terms, they didn't want their stock to be worth less or to drop. So I was kind of like blocked from taking more investment that would have like funded the business to keep going or find its way to an acquisition. At the end, we had we had ventured at UM. We sales had kind of plateaued. You know, we had built a company to over a hundred million dollars UM, and there were opportunities to sell. There was an opportunity to sell in like ah years before everything ended for over four hundred million dollars there and I owned of the business. And there was a piece of paper, Like, there was a piece of paper. Here's our intent. It was out it was an outfort of clothing for urban people. Um. And that was there, and my investors said, and I'd spent a ton of time with them, I had flown to Philly, and my investors had asked for more and the deal went away. Um. So there's just like it was just like it was the highest highs and the lowest lows and the most fun and like so much drinking and so much travel and like you know, it was it was like the best experience of my life. Um. And eventually, you know, hail Mary after Hail Mary, opportunity to sell you know, cock blocking of investments, uh from like you know, potential future investors, lots of them, you know, building a city culture you know, um, layoffs. People hating that, like obviously, you know, it's like it became it just became unwieldy, and by you know, we had a We had an opportunity to either reorganize the business you know in chapter eleven and start again, and everybody's stock goes to zero. We refinance it. It is a business. It was a business with like a lot of revenue, but it was a business that was you know, bleeding cash and and had plat the revenue had plateaued. But that's very interesting for people listening, because you can have a successful business that can fail. Like you had good products, you were selling good products, you had money coming in, but you you really we're swallowing and drowning and other stuff, and that can happen to people. I mean, the last year and a half, I was a little checked out. I had removed myself as the CEO. I didn't like that job. I wanted to work more on the creative parts of the business, so I brought in someone to be the CEO for the last year and a half. I don't know how different things would have gone had I not done that, but I did do that, and then at the end, it was, um, you know again, hail Mary after hail Mary. It's hard to summarize exactly what happened, Like I don't you know. I've talked to former employees and they're like, I think it was that person who did it or you know, and I have like plenty of responsibility in it. UM. But we sold the company for twenty million dollars UM, which is which it could have written it to the zero. That sounds sold a company for twenty million dollars, but everybody's stock went to zero. Like we sold it for twenty million, but it was in bank ckruptcy, so everybody was wiped out, and that twenty million dollars went to pay pay down the deaths that we had UM and we sold it to a company called Boo Hoo, which is like a fast fashion retailer out of Manchester UM and they've kind of I mean, the clothes are super cheap, and but I feel like they've done a decent job of maintaining the spirit of the brand and it lives on and like I had a great run. You know, when you start a business and you have investors, you can't quit and you can't really be fired unless you do something they don't they want you to be there. Right as a founder, I kind of didn't want to be there and I think, of course that's reflected and probably how things wound up, um, but I have to say like, and it's sucked up. Like, but with everything that I went through, you know, exiting the business was a little bit of a relief. And you know, I don't want to say that. I don't want former Poise to hear that, but it's the truth. No, you can be on a tread I have. I have spent a lot of time streamlining things that I do because you could literally get so exhausted and please people listening who have businesses, and you may not understand every detail of these stories, but like, you can get to the point where you just don't want to do anything anymore. You literally want off the ride. You're not making rational decisions. There's real money coming in, but you want off the ride and you just want to do one off things that you make money on, get the money, and that's it. You don't want to be in the com web under to under toe. Yeah, if you start a business and you think you're going to work for yourself, but you can't, you kind of can't quit, And if you work for someone else, you can quit. If you do a project, you write a book, right, you write a TV show, you um, consult whatever you know, you're doing a parents you get paid to doing apparance, You get your money and whatever this stuff is like and busting our asses and you know, building businesses is it gave us the opportunity to be on this podcast and write books, and that built our credibility. So I don't want to dissuade anybody from doing that. But you have to understand that you can't quit, like when you have a job. You know, anytime you start something, if it works, you're you're like in it and you can you can shut it down. But often if it's working, the opportunity cost of shutting it down, um or even selling it then you work for someone else in your life is a nightmare. Like even selling your company sounds like amazing, but then you have like golden handcuffs and then you you hold into them and it's it's it's another, it's another. Nothing are easy, None of it's easy. None of it's shackled to. You have another your shackle to somebody else. I would say I wrote a book called I Stuck a Relationships, so you don't have to because I had learned so much from failures, and I feel like, you know, you have learned way more and are teaching people about failures that you've experienced. I mean, even this conversation alone is not about all the great smart things you've done and all the ways you've handled yourselves with handled yourself with perfection. It's it's it's it's undeniable. You had a great idea, you were good at executing it, you were creative, you were ahead of your time. You're good at marketing and creating a brand. But you know, you made a hell of a lot of mistakes to which I totally relate to. I've couldn't write a book called like cave or something. Yeah, you know, I mean there's a thousand metaphors between like pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered and all that we could bring up that went on in your experience. So the what's the whole bankruptcy thing? That was something that I don't know what what stage that happened, but what what did that mean? That has to do with the twenty million dollars because the company was in debt? What does the bankruptcy thing about? Okay, that was part of that of that in bankruptcy. We sold off the assets for twenty which is mostly the intellectual property. Okay, so I get that. So so now where does Netflix? Where does girl Boss coming? The book the show Netflix. That's where we are now, that discussion along the way. So Nasty Gal ended in late Um in the spring had written a book called girl Boss and it was about my story building Nasty ow Um, which was an unlikely story. It was like a very angry teenager sort an eBay store. You know. It was a year after lenin Geryl Sandbord you had mentioned book had come out, and they were like, literally the only book in the women's business section was maybe like Susie Orman, like it just wasn't there. And my story was one that for every girl who wants to open, you know, a small shop on the internet was relatable because there are so many unlikely entrepreneurs out there, and in the past it meant, you know, it meant you have to have a degree or something, and the Internet made this possible for all of us. Um. So I wrote this book called girl Boss that's spent eighteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Um became a phenomenon and a word that was in the zeit guys, that became like totally out of my control and amazing, and so the book did extremely well. You're responsible for that word, like, yeah, yeah, I didn't know. For example, it's so funny if I ordered Margarita and then they skinny Margarita, I'm like, I invented that. They're like, ha ha, I know, I actually invented that. So I've heard So we've all heard girl Boss, but we don't just like, you know, I know that Paris Hilton started That's Hot, and uh, Christian Sirianni started Fierce, but I didn't know that you started girl Okay, and I know the term and I but I didn't know that you started the term totally. Yeah, I'm responsible for that. UM And you know, Charlie Sarah got a copy of it and w me my agency at my agency put us in touch and we had a meeting and we were like, cool, let's she has a production company and we were like, great, let's do this. Let's find someone to write it, Let's find a showrunner. Found Kay Cannon who had and pitch Perfect and pitch Perfect too. Found a director Christian did Her, who was great. UM took it to Netflix and they bought it in the room and they sent it straight to um what's it called, not development like production, like they say it straight to They didn't make us do a pilot, um and yeah. And so basically there's a show on Netflix one season where there's a girl named Sophia in San Francisco starting an eBay store called Nasty Gal, working the lobby of Arts school, which was my last job, um, you know, stealing ship, which is what I did. Um. And you know, by the end of the first season, she's launched an eBay store and like sells out of everything, which you know, or she launches her website. She leaves Abay, launches her website and sells out of everything. And it's like wow, Um, so that was wild, you know, and I think I mean again, like I knew that could have gone any number of directions. The show came out four months after Nasty All fell apart, not good timing, and it was you know, in November of sixteen, was when Trump won and Hillary lost. The Women's movement started the word girl boss and a show about like an angry girl, just like a white girl, privileged white girl being like you know, angry and an unlikable character and a show called girl Boss not being an example of women in the workplace was like it was just like it was like held to a different standard. My story had changed. So here I am in seventeen four months after leaving my company, and there's a hundred thirty million people and I don't know how an hundred countries, Uh, watching a show with a person named Sophia building a company called nasty Gal when I was no longer involved. So I'm trying to move on and the whole world is cleaning out about nasty Gal and my story and it was just like. Also, in prior to the bankruptcy, my husband of a year left me and I was on the cover of Forbes, So it was like you sixteen, like cover Forbes because my stock was worth a lot m husband bailed. Uh. That was the summer company fell apart November. Netflix series came out April. Like that year was such a mind fuck. Um well, I mean it's like being back at your company again when you have fifty things coming at you and it's a ship show. Is just a different ship show. That's unbelievable. It was total whip last Wow. Yeah, yeah, that is okay. Wow, So that when did that whole storm pass and like you got to reinvent and be a new person and just like not feel all of that pretty immediately because I got up and I started a company called girl Boss, and I held a conference called the girl Boss Rally, and I did that in March actually before the Netflix series. UM, I hadn't. I raised a little bit of money UM and had a conference with five women called the girl Boss Rally. Eventually, you know, had twenty five people, built that maybe like five million in revenue of the course of a few years, and sold that at the end of twenty nineteen, right before the pandemic. So it was I had a podcast for five years called girl Boss Radio, so that was part of it. We had a newsletter. We worked with brands, so we did like large brand partnerships that lived across you know, the newsletter, my podcast. It was all kind of integrated in like the different properties that we had, including the conference and experiential or events. Was a large part of that. UM and then the pandemic happened, so I had sold the company, was still in the company pandemic happened. Reb a new brands pulled all their dollars, brands weren't sponsoring anything. That's there's people in fucking trucks in New York, you know. Um. And so the company actually sold again and I left. I was just like, I'm not starting my company over. I could have stayed, but I'm just I'm selfish enough at this point to be like, I'm not going to martyr myself and found my own company again. Like if some you know, I just as a founder, if you know, I always feel like I have to stay and I have to be I'm so passionate that like I would do anything and die and start over. And no, I'm just not. I don't do that, Like I don't do that and um. And then went on to start business Class, which is very digital, very you know, the contents digital, the community's digital. I marketed digitally, you know, UM. And I'm working directly with my audience rather than you know, I don't have investors. I bootstrapped it. I don't have stakeholders. I one employee. You know, nobody's really affected by what I do other than my end like my community. And so if they're happy and they're loving business Class, that's all that matters and so there's not this like different masters like investors and employees and you know, brand on a treadmill. You can do an event and you don't have to do one. You could do one. Engage people have a conversation or you don't have to have a conversation. You don't. You don't owe anybody anything except for what you you know, like a good relationship. Wow. What And I imagine you're sharing all of these stories with them and like it's just you know, wow. I I understand a lot of what you were saying, I mean the spirit of it and the mistakes of it and the shackles of it. And I think that the overall takeaway is that people need to understand their own business style, what they want their business culture to be, who they want to surround themselves with, and also understand that the chess cam can get complicated, Like you were talking about more and more tentacles being like wrapped around you, Like you had more doing one thing. You put one ft in front of the other, and then all of a sudden you're in some woods. Sometimes it's good to be on a journey and you end up somewhere great. Sometimes you get like stuck in the middle of a deep, dark forest and you don't know how to get out. You're swimming halfway from Cuba to Florida and you have no idea whether to keep going or to go back. You're just drowning. It happened, it can happen, and it's that's a cautionary tale for business, and I really do understand it, and people have to take their own temperatures and not get in too deep because truthfully, pigs do get fat and hogs gets watered. You get into deep and everything sounds good, and you could drown. So I think that's very different conversation than we've had on the show and super important. Honestly, an amazing story. But I wouldn't have changed anything, you know, because you know, I've I've kind of viewed my experience as an opportunity to learn about myself. So how I am as a leader, maybe the way I am in a relationship, you know, like the feedback I get, you know, from my employees, even if I don't like it, sometimes it's an opportunity for me to learn, you know, UM. And so it's just been like I wouldn't trade any of it, um, and I want I say yes to things even when I know they may not work out, like a Netflix series or you know, raising a ton of money. It probably could have sold my business for a hundred million dollars when I own a hundred percent of it, you know, and been like on the journey. And so I guess I kind of and this feels really cavalier. And maybe as I get older, I don't necessarily I'm not making decisions like this. But I've always thought, you know, if I can look back on my life and it's like an entertaining story or would make a good book or would make good content, like, I'll say yes to it. Um. But that kind of gets old. And now I'm you know, I'll be thirty eight in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about the rest of my life, and my mortality is kind of kicking in. And do I want a family? Do I want to just travel the world? Do I like I can do anything. I'm single for the first time in like a decade. I'm going on dates. No, he's taking me on I mean boyfriends, but like I've never dated, Like I've never gone on dates with strangers. And so I'm like literally a month into and four months out of relationship. But I'm like, it's just like a totally weird fresh ripe, you know, transitional time for me, And yeah, I think you should eat pray love. It's once you get entangled in having kids and being on that road and you'll have new tentacles on. You have a new master and that doesn't sound like something you like, and you do have time. I would just because you said it. Now it's out there, so I would travel the world. I would. I mean, you know, I want to take my I would love take my daughter out of school home school here and just go live in Italy for six months and make pasta like I have a free spirit vibe. And my assistants always say, you can't do that, you have to come back. You can't do that either, come back that you can't do. Eventually, I booked an airline ticket on April nine to go to Europe on a whim, so I'm going at the end of next month, and um, I don't have anything booked. But I pinned my friend who I know is like staying in like Como, and he was like, he's like actually living there and has like guest bedrooms and it's like just come like, stay here as long as you want. So, speaking of Italy, I'm just like, I'm gonna get on Riya in like Paris and see I love it to see who likes me. Yeah, hey, that's awesome. Um wow, Well what an interesting person, what an interesting conversation. I appreciate you being so transparent. I can't wait to hear what you work on next and where you end up eating and praying and loving after Italy. So I appreciate it. I can't wait to tell Andy I met you. Yeah, yeah, it's so nice to finally meet you. I liked your show, I like your spirit and your attitude, and I've always just kind of from a distance related to you in some weird way. So it's nice to meet you. Well, thank you. Nice to meet you too. If you end up in Poland, you can go visit our warehouse. But be strong because, like you know, a lot of relief works. So if you end up having to be part of your prey journey, let me know. But it was really nice to meet you, and you too, I guess rose and thorn what your rose and thorn of the whole thing was the whole experience? Your business? Yeah, your business my business. I mean, I mean the Rose is having, like the Beasts, a life that I could never have imagined, and I still do. But like that trip, that trip, just that whole trip is doesn't happen, and then Thorn just lost, you know, and out running it, starting another busin this and girl Boss and trying to stay relevant and aging, and I mean I could go on, but I think, like out running pain and loss, like I keep moving, and I'm in this time where it's like creeping in and I'm processing it and I'm learning a lot about myself and I'm gonna you know what worked, you know what worked, what got me here, won't get me there? Got it? Okay, awesome, Thank you so much. Thank you a great right by you too. So that was really interesting. Hearing about people's crazy, nontraditional journeys to success and failure is so important. And Sophia was very transparent about her mistakes and her failures. And a lot of the people on here are so may juror and have been so successful that they don't really talk about the granular details of the failures and mistakes. And for any of you who want to start a business or who have a business, I think these are such important cautionary tales. You do not know you can get caught in the web and in quicksand and as quickly as you can be successful, you can get pulled down and drown. It's more common than not. I mean, I know of brands that have been around and been the hottest thing for a couple of years, and they're doing well and they're making money and they have to expand, and then they drown. I mean, brands that are on top of the world and then something happens, like a pandemic, and then they drowned. So hearing about people's mistakes is really critical. And I just like this talk because it's so different. So that was I'm grateful for for that conversation that I'm grateful for you to have that information. So there has been controversy around words like girl boss, right, so it's art it as feminism, and then it became wait a second, why do we have to call out that it's a girl boss. I've never loved that kind of boss, bitch, boss babe, all that stuff. That's just not my brand of person. I'm just a person that's successful. It doesn't matter if I'm a man or a woman. But I do understand how women have been behind the eight ball. They've been paid less, they haven't had the same opportunities. So when someone's a girl who's a boss, they want to shout it out. And that might be a little dated now, but you can't always be current with the vernacular. I came up with a brand called skinny Girl. That is not the most popular thing in certain sections. Meaning I'm not calling my swimwear brand skinny girl. That's not what I want to be doing. Popcorn, great salad dressing, wonderful bathing suits. No, So you gotta you know EBB and flow, and the times will change, so not every term or word will be current and popular. But it's undeniable that Sophia. It took a lot of chances at a very young age. Very very interesting. I appreciate you. 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