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I would recommend Sophia Amoruso’s #Girlboss to anyone — not because it’s a how-to guide for starting your own business, but because it’s a primer in living fearlessly, and that’s a lot harder to come by.
Throughout the book — which is part memoir, part career manifesto, as Amoruso dishes on how she turned an ebay store into a $28 million clothing company — it becomes clear that she treats obstacles as opportunities. “No” isn’t the end; it’s a jumping off point to find a more creative solution, whether that means hiring friends as models and paying them in cheeseburgers, so her clothing stood out from all of the bland shots of dresses on hangers and mannequins, or buying and selling in small batches so she never took on debt, because her credit score was too low for lenders.
Though she doesn’t explicitly state it, Amoruso seems to live by the motto: There’s always another way.
She relentlessly pursues what she wants and she isn’t afraid of showing that she wants it, or doggedly going after that goal, no matter how many times she’s rejected. As she puts it:
“You don’t get what you don’t ask for.”
Before she launched Nasty Gal, that meant she applied for jobs by submitting her resume directly to the hiring manager. If he or she wasn’t there, she’d follow up with a phone call. It didn’t matter how small the position; she showed that there was no place else she’d rather be and nothing else she’d rather do than work for that company, and as a result, she usually got the job. Aloof isn’t cute in the business world.
A lot of us get tripped up after that first follow-up: We don’t want to be obnoxious, so we say no before the other person has a chance to respond. The manager doesn’t call back, even though your cover letter was flawless, so that must mean she isn’t interested (when in reality, there are 496 emails clogging her inbox, and your follow-up would’ve pushed your resume to the top, putting it back on her radar).
The biggest area where this seems to trip us up, as Amoruso mentions, is when it comes to money. We shy away from talking about it, out of fear of how we’ll be perceived, and it can keep us from getting that refund, bonus or raise. She describes a time she submitted an application for an apartment, only to call five minutes later to halt the process and avoid a credit check — and have the landlord insist on keeping her credit-check fee anyway. She writes:
“So I fought. On the phone, something came over me. My voice got low and threatening and I growled, ‘Fifty dollars means a lot more to me than it does to you, and I have allllll the time in the world to get it back.’ I meant it and he knew it, seeing that I was unemployed.”
Sometimes, you have to scrub off that nice veneer and go after what you want — even if it means growling at someone who’s trying to take advantage of you. Sure, that scammy landlord may find you less likeable, and there’s certainly a time and place for being polite versus pushy, but the big thing, for me, was Amoruso’s take-charge drumbeat. With each page, anecdote and misadventure, she seemed to shout: You’re in control of your life, so act like it.
Get the whole story on Amoruso’s life, Nasty Gal empire and grifter past (really) in her book, #Girlboss.
This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday.
There is also a netflix series by the same name about her.