Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's a more purpose driven platform. Like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
Speaker 1: really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Atlantia. We're getting so close to summer,
Speaker 1: which means you're in slave list. It's getting warm with that.
Speaker 1: I bought um, but we are getting so close um
Speaker 1: to can and all the exciting things that happened the
Speaker 1: industry to celebrate creativity. And there's so much going on
Speaker 1: right now outside of like the industry kind of like
Speaker 1: same old events. There's events that are happening that are
Speaker 1: getting a lot of buzz, and we actually someone in
Speaker 1: today to talk to them about it. Yeah, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to have a discussion with the founder of girl Boss,
Speaker 1: Sophia m Arosso on the heels of her l a
Speaker 1: girl Boss rally last week, right, and I think you
Speaker 1: know you bring up a great point that so many brands,
Speaker 1: and I think we've heard it over and over again
Speaker 1: on this show, UM are asking for a looking for
Speaker 1: UM the opportunities to create, experience and engage communities in
Speaker 1: the real world. And Sophia has tapped a nerve with
Speaker 1: a segment that is seemingly very difficult to reach, and
Speaker 1: that's young eighteen four, maybe thirty four women, the largest
Speaker 1: buying power in the world or soon will. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: also I think what she's figured out that somehow many
Speaker 1: people have missed is that this is a group that's
Speaker 1: hungry for information UM, that wants hands on training, that
Speaker 1: wants to hear from people or I should say practitioners
Speaker 1: who are in the mix of developing businesses, have success
Speaker 1: stories and are willing to impart knowledge UM so that
Speaker 1: they can follow in their footsteps. I think what she's
Speaker 1: tapping into, to your point, she's tapping into a like
Speaker 1: a life blood, a bit right of females all over
Speaker 1: the world, all over the world. This isn't about behavior.
Speaker 1: This isn't about you know, you buy your boots from here,
Speaker 1: you this from there, you're that from there. This is
Speaker 1: about desire. This is about women wanting to own something
Speaker 1: of their own, women wanting to be independent, and that's
Speaker 1: just that's like basic life, right, And I think when
Speaker 1: you hear her story, right, so she is very openly
Speaker 1: going to talk to us about her first company, Nasty Gal,
Speaker 1: filing for chapter eleven, and then sort of moving into
Speaker 1: this media world that sort of fell into her lap
Speaker 1: in Netflix wanting to create a show on the heels
Speaker 1: of that, which might not have been the best timing
Speaker 1: and this show was a flop, And she's very open
Speaker 1: about talking about that transition and then sort of filling
Speaker 1: the white space, which is I think is a very
Speaker 1: interesting way of describing how Girl Boss Media was then founded.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you I lot creating it, right,
Speaker 1: that's finding it and filling it. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of preconceived notions about what she was building and who
Speaker 1: she was, just having read the story through the press,
Speaker 1: and I got the opportunity to meet her and was
Speaker 1: very quickly taken aback by the thoughtfulness and the accountability
Speaker 1: and the responsibility to understand um the empire that she
Speaker 1: had created, the lessons that she learned from it, and
Speaker 1: her willingness and drive. And I think she talks a
Speaker 1: lot about this in the interview to sort of keep going.
Speaker 1: And then I went to the Girl Boss rally in
Speaker 1: New York City and I've been you know, in this industry,
Speaker 1: we go to a lot of conferences, a lot of
Speaker 1: events that media companies put on, and you can almost
Speaker 1: sort of predict the ebb and flow the energy based
Speaker 1: on who's speaking programming. You can actually predict the programming
Speaker 1: right a great point, And there was an energy before
Speaker 1: you even sat in your seat and watching UM. The
Speaker 1: programming is excellent and I think you know her ability
Speaker 1: to draw from different industries UM and not sort of
Speaker 1: program for what people UM have come to expect, but
Speaker 1: programming for things that people need and want and want.
Speaker 1: Aside from all that, the people that were just sitting
Speaker 1: in the audience, and you could see like people were
Speaker 1: not on their phone other than to be what I
Speaker 1: assume they're taking notes or tweeting, because the level of
Speaker 1: attention that it was commanding, and the conversations that were
Speaker 1: so real and authentic and from this place of this
Speaker 1: is a personal experience, not a list of pr points UM.
Speaker 1: And then the conversations that then spilled out into the
Speaker 1: hallways and over the lunches and sort of these networking
Speaker 1: spaces that she created. I mean it was electric. Well,
Speaker 1: it's so funny that you're saying that about about the rally,
Speaker 1: because I think that there are a couple of brands
Speaker 1: that are starting to tap into this and they're not
Speaker 1: selling people. They're not selling consumers them they're selling consumers themselves.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? And holy fuck, Holy fuck, that's
Speaker 1: a big deal from a brand standpoint, and even you're
Speaker 1: enabling them, you're enabling tools to realize the thing that thereafter. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Glossier is doing it as just female beauty, right, and
Speaker 1: that's how they've like to totally positioned themselves. And I
Speaker 1: think what Sophia's hit on is this deafening silence almost right,
Speaker 1: it's actually profound about getting to the female desire to
Speaker 1: be successful, and it's not pandering, and it's not selling
Speaker 1: them a product, and it's not selling them something and
Speaker 1: it's not selling them an ad unit. It's actually selling
Speaker 1: them the ability to be better. Yeah. I love that.
Speaker 1: And the brands that integrate into the rally are not
Speaker 1: there to give you a swag bag. They're there too,
Speaker 1: although they do have great swags, do have great swagbags,
Speaker 1: but that's not that's not the thing, right, that's not
Speaker 1: the focus. Like bumble biz. That the integration of the
Speaker 1: New York rally where they hired glam Squad to come
Speaker 1: in and do you know, makeovers to get your head
Speaker 1: shot done for your LinkedIn profile. This is a utility.
Speaker 1: Like if I'm a if I'm a budding business entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: I need a head shot. And by the way, head
Speaker 1: shots aren't cheap. So now whatever ticket I've paid for
Speaker 1: this rally has afforded me the head shot that I needed,
Speaker 1: my deck or my pr or my whatever collateral and
Speaker 1: like that sort of value exchange, Like she's filling the space,
Speaker 1: and she's filling a need, and she's coming at it
Speaker 1: from a place of I'm listening to you. I have
Speaker 1: a roll a deex deep of people who can help you.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, I am you. So we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. So we're back in the studio. Go
Speaker 1: with a cross country phone call to the girl boss herself, Sophia. So, Sophia, yeah, Sophia,
Speaker 1: you are like girl Boss extraordinaire literally literally defining what
Speaker 1: the future of badass media publishing for women looks like.
Speaker 1: But obviously that's not how you started. Can you give
Speaker 1: us some background on one of my favorite lines that
Speaker 1: you always talk about, This is the second business you founded. Basically,
Speaker 1: this is the second brand I've created, but the first
Speaker 1: I've created on purpose. So my first business was called
Speaker 1: nasty Gal. I started it when I was twenty two.
Speaker 1: It was vintage clothing, and then it exploded because I
Speaker 1: just like used my wits and didn't spend money and
Speaker 1: figured it out and figured out what people liked and
Speaker 1: figured out how to write about it and take photos
Speaker 1: and style and buy and all the things that create
Speaker 1: a brand, and a brand isn't media, but the conversation
Speaker 1: that a brand creates, the feeling of emotional connection, all
Speaker 1: of those things are the voice really was half of
Speaker 1: Nasty Gal's success in my opinion, and being able, you know,
Speaker 1: to have a business now where the voice is the
Speaker 1: product is like the most fun business ever because I
Speaker 1: don't have to have a warehouse in Kentucky with you know,
Speaker 1: five with the heat, ten year lease and five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand square feet, which is probably a bad idea. So
Speaker 1: you've obviously you've pivoted from um sort of a comb
Speaker 1: fashion extraordinaire, and as a result, of sort of the
Speaker 1: first the ending of that brand, and obviously it's been
Speaker 1: well documented that it kind of ended in a way
Speaker 1: that I'm sure it wasn't the ideal, But you've you
Speaker 1: pivoted and you sort of landed in this opportunity or
Speaker 1: this white space that you clearly at some point recognized
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to re emerge and launch girl Boss Media.
Speaker 1: What was that white space? Was there in a ha moment?
Speaker 1: Was there a gradual build? How did you make the
Speaker 1: pivot and why? Yeah, So, for those of you that
Speaker 1: don't know, Nasty Gale filed for chapter eleven at the
Speaker 1: end of sixteen, and at that point it had been
Speaker 1: ten years of my career. It had been I mean,
Speaker 1: I used to say my entire youth, but I think
Speaker 1: he is not an age. But it was a long
Speaker 1: time and so I was as as awful as it
Speaker 1: sounds to say, I was ready to move on. And
Speaker 1: the book girl Boss had been written three years prior
Speaker 1: to that happening. It's been four years now since I
Speaker 1: wrote Girl Boss, And during that time, the community just
Speaker 1: really started to grow it naturally, the word became part
Speaker 1: of the night guist. It wasn't always attributed back to me,
Speaker 1: but that word wasn't used before I wrote that book,
Speaker 1: and you know, started my own podcast, girl Boss Radio,
Speaker 1: which we still have today. Uh. And then right after
Speaker 1: I left Nasty Gal, Netflix was about to blast the
Speaker 1: name girl Boss with the Lifted series based on my
Speaker 1: book based on my life, totally strange, with a character
Speaker 1: Sophia building a business at two years old called Nasty Gal.
Speaker 1: So here I am trying to restart my career when
Speaker 1: like million people are seeing this story of who I
Speaker 1: was ten years ago streamed into their homes. It was
Speaker 1: a really strange time. But I also understand the power
Speaker 1: of striking when the iron's hot, and that there are
Speaker 1: windows of opportunity that opened and closed. If there's one
Speaker 1: thing I learned from my agent at w ME, it's
Speaker 1: that uh. And I saw that this this wall, this wave,
Speaker 1: this massive tsunami of Netflix was coming, and holy sh it,
Speaker 1: I better build something to catch the wave of awareness
Speaker 1: that was about to happen for girl Boss. And so
Speaker 1: I got up and by March of four months later,
Speaker 1: was hosting our first conference with five women called the
Speaker 1: girl Boss Rally. And I just kept going and the
Speaker 1: white face was I like to think the white space
Speaker 1: was created by our community while I was, you know, solving,
Speaker 1: trying to solve my last company's problems, and I'm we're
Speaker 1: just meeting her there, Like we didn't create it. There,
Speaker 1: They've created it, the communities created, and we're just we're
Speaker 1: just showing up now. So I think there are a
Speaker 1: couple of really interesting things. One, you talk about restarting
Speaker 1: these the word restarting your career. Did it Did you
Speaker 1: actually feel like you were restarting your career because in
Speaker 1: an interesting way, your brand really grew up and Nasty
Speaker 1: Gal kind of went away. Yeah, sunset it and you
Speaker 1: kind of became the sun. Did you feel at that
Speaker 1: point that you were actually really restarting your career? Was
Speaker 1: it just I wasn't sure. I knew I had to
Speaker 1: be brave and keep going even though there was still
Speaker 1: like really, you know, the show got really bad reviews.
Speaker 1: I was someone who had been like publicly sued and
Speaker 1: like had you know, there were reports of top exit
Speaker 1: culture and all these things that happened. We have no
Speaker 1: idea what you're doing at twenty two years old and
Speaker 1: start a company and wind up ten years later like
Speaker 1: Inheriting all the dumb decisions or not, just like non
Speaker 1: decisions you had made um and I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: like there's nothing to rebound from. I knew that I
Speaker 1: felt like I was damaged goods. I wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: I was like bankable as like talent. I thought about
Speaker 1: going to talent route, like why would I ever employ
Speaker 1: people again? I could just go do a bunch of
Speaker 1: brand deals as an influencer and go be like a
Speaker 1: talking head or have a non scripted show or be
Speaker 1: my own like Mariam News or something like that. But
Speaker 1: the thing is, she's Greek. She's Greek. But you can't
Speaker 1: exit being talent. Once you become talent, your talent for
Speaker 1: the rest of your career. And that's never Like I
Speaker 1: love writing books, and I love being behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: and I'm learning how to be upfront on a stage
Speaker 1: and all these things we do twicee your conference, But
Speaker 1: that's not the life that I want. And I also
Speaker 1: understand the value what what's created when you build a
Speaker 1: business that has enterprice value where it's not about necessarily
Speaker 1: all the profit that's falling to the bottom line. It's
Speaker 1: about the value of the business that ultimately will hopefully
Speaker 1: create value for a lot of shareholders, possibly a larger
Speaker 1: company someday, most of all, value for the audience. There's
Speaker 1: no way we would be doing this conference if it
Speaker 1: were like some kind of white label thing that an
Speaker 1: agency had put together. Yeah, totally. So you're so you're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, profitable for investors, and I vividly
Speaker 1: recall you kind of hitting the pavement um this past
Speaker 1: winter as you were kind of on the hunt to
Speaker 1: raise around Can you talk about what that was like
Speaker 1: in the restart or the comeback or the emergence and
Speaker 1: you know, the pivot that you made to media companies.
Speaker 1: I think you were in the first people that like
Speaker 1: brought to light how difficult it is to me to
Speaker 1: raise money as a media company, let alone sort of
Speaker 1: the reputation or sort of background that you were coming
Speaker 1: to the able with. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 1: You know, I raised forty million dollars in twelve into
Speaker 1: Nasty Gal when I owned a hundred percent of the company,
Speaker 1: and the valuation after that was three d and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. And when I did that, I had built
Speaker 1: this profitable company to thirty million dollars, just literally bootstrapping
Speaker 1: it with like no credit cards, no no debt, no
Speaker 1: prior investors, and it was kind of this freak thing.
Speaker 1: And adventure capitalists showed up and they were like, Holy
Speaker 1: sh it, this thing. That's when we went from one
Speaker 1: to six and a half to twenty eight million dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue in two years. And I didn't have to
Speaker 1: have a plan for the future. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: have a pitch. I showed up and I had never
Speaker 1: built a deck before. When they pumped forty million dollars
Speaker 1: into my company, it's a kind of like scary thing
Speaker 1: to do. So this process has been really different. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean there was no process. M I didn't have
Speaker 1: to ask, and now I'm asking. I'm saying girl Boss
Speaker 1: is a thing. Look, there's brand equity here, but as
Speaker 1: a business, it's brand new U. Um. But I have
Speaker 1: a lot to build off of. I have a rolodex
Speaker 1: that's like miles deep. I have a community of women
Speaker 1: that's only growing. And the mission of girl Boss is
Speaker 1: even more relevant today than it was yesterday. This is
Speaker 1: something that people need. But when I started having those
Speaker 1: conversations in early twenties seventeen, just months after my last
Speaker 1: company had face planted, I didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: talk about what we were doing. I was like, we'll
Speaker 1: have a subscription box called girl Box. Like I was
Speaker 1: really just kind of like, Okay, what could this be?
Speaker 1: We could do all these different things. Is it about
Speaker 1: merchant licensing? Is it about creating content? How much about
Speaker 1: creating content? Is it? How big can like an ad
Speaker 1: or brand business be? And you know, it was always
Speaker 1: media to some extent, because the book was a piece
Speaker 1: of media. The podcast is media. The Netflix series is
Speaker 1: a media, and so girl Boss already existed in the
Speaker 1: media landscape. But more than that, girl Boss is a brand.
Speaker 1: And you know, Jonah had to create tasty to be
Speaker 1: a brand and to go transact in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different directions. And that's what we're starting with. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really valuable. And initially I called the company
Speaker 1: girl Boss Media because because there was already a show
Speaker 1: called girl Boss and I wanted to differentiate it. But
Speaker 1: the word media was really limiting. And we're not media,
Speaker 1: like we create content, but we're not selling like impressions
Speaker 1: or page views, or we're not really doing media deals.
Speaker 1: We're doing partnerships um and some pretty large partnerships. And
Speaker 1: Google's or largest client. We're working with the best brands
Speaker 1: in the world, but it's to solve a different problem
Speaker 1: than than like why relatively anonymous reach. But the future
Speaker 1: looks less like a media company and more like a
Speaker 1: place that a lot of people can go and be
Speaker 1: safe and learn and meet one another on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So talk more about the community, because I think at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, like you said, the community
Speaker 1: actually created themselves versus a media come any coming in
Speaker 1: and trying to create audience. Like, what what is the difference? Um,
Speaker 1: We're in a world where these platforms and these and
Speaker 1: these publishers are just so agnostic. They're creating content. They're
Speaker 1: pupping out stuff about pop culture, news, more news, more news,
Speaker 1: and then there they may kind of like slather on
Speaker 1: a layer of meaning because it's trendy. And for us,
Speaker 1: that's where we come from. And I think not about
Speaker 1: competition by what content is being created or where revenue
Speaker 1: is being generated. Yes, will always be competing on some
Speaker 1: level with anybody who does deal with brands of any kind,
Speaker 1: But we are competing with anyone who's users coming to
Speaker 1: them for the same reason as ours as ours. I
Speaker 1: think about it by the motivation of the people that
Speaker 1: are coming to you, because that's the way that you
Speaker 1: can create programs, whether they're sponsored or not sponsored, that
Speaker 1: create value um, that are natural role that aren't jerry
Speaker 1: rigging some conversation into a place where people don't want
Speaker 1: to have it um and so our growth coming to
Speaker 1: us for really actionable advice, real talk mostly about working
Speaker 1: money in a in a world where you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of white guys invented Forbes magazine and put themselves
Speaker 1: on the cover, Like what does success look like for
Speaker 1: this new generation of women who have access to all
Speaker 1: the tools, who are starting businesses, who are entrepreneurial even
Speaker 1: if they're not entrepreneurs yet they liked percent of our
Speaker 1: audience wants to own a business at some point when
Speaker 1: we pulled them. And just like I have eBay, now
Speaker 1: we have squarespace, et s, Shopify, uh, Gusto, quick books,
Speaker 1: you know, fresh books, like every last possible thing to
Speaker 1: run nimbly a small company with the professionality I guess
Speaker 1: of a of someone who's been there before. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of categories like financial services and technology who don't
Speaker 1: have a place to go naturally to have the conversations
Speaker 1: that they're having, whether it's chromebooks and we have women
Speaker 1: learning how to build a P and L at our
Speaker 1: conference in sheets and learning how to create a presentation
Speaker 1: in Google slides, or a conversation about finance that we
Speaker 1: do with quick books like these are conversations that our
Speaker 1: audiences coming to us for we want to have anyway,
Speaker 1: and is a natural conversation for our partners to be
Speaker 1: having with them. So it's like it's a win win win.
Speaker 1: And when things are that aligned, it's just like it's
Speaker 1: just it just feels like this guy's the limit. What
Speaker 1: you just described is you're actually creating school, the b
Speaker 1: school for the next generation of women UM, and you're
Speaker 1: bringing in partners that are providing utility and services that
Speaker 1: in typical business school you only read about UM and
Speaker 1: you might go out and obviously have working experience to
Speaker 1: kind of experiment with, but you're actually putting people in
Speaker 1: real life stitues to kind of develop that UM practice
Speaker 1: on the spot. We didn't leave business school and think
Speaker 1: there's a white space here and then like play deck together.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's happened very naturally and and
Speaker 1: the time is right, and you know, brands are worried
Speaker 1: about brand safety, and users are skeptical of the platforms.
Speaker 1: People don't know whether to believe the content that they're seeing.
Speaker 1: And you know, there was a piece in Fortune today about,
Speaker 1: you know, world where platforms are stumbling when women are
Speaker 1: creating their own social communities. That's in some way what
Speaker 1: our future looks like, and it feels good to be
Speaker 1: on trend. I guess when you talk about that future,
Speaker 1: my head like automatically goes to a group of small
Speaker 1: businesses that are hanging off of girl Boss. You know,
Speaker 1: do you see do you see this future like of
Speaker 1: investing in women and actually creating products and services that
Speaker 1: are coming from the community directly? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: whoever create things on behalf of our community. I want
Speaker 1: to be the vehicle for them to discover themselves, learn
Speaker 1: about their businesses and other people, and maybe have a
Speaker 1: platform with some kind eventually. I mean eventually eventually, and
Speaker 1: who knows if I'll have time while I'm running this business,
Speaker 1: certainly not right now. Like, investing seems really fun, and
Speaker 1: I've done a tiny tiny bit of it, I advise
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it takes time if you if
Speaker 1: you really care, it takes time, so talk about like
Speaker 1: why now right, So obviously you've the Iron tot. You
Speaker 1: just talked about being on trend. I think it started
Speaker 1: with the book, And as far as being on trend,
Speaker 1: it's it's convenient, but it's not why we're doing this.
Speaker 1: Like the book happened four years ago in a time
Speaker 1: where I took for granted that everybody understood what feminism
Speaker 1: meant in the world was like fine, and Obama was
Speaker 1: president and then like everything kind of flipped. And I'm
Speaker 1: embarrassed to have ever felt that way, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I was alone in that It's it's about time
Speaker 1: to build Girl Boss because it was something I like
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to do even and could only really
Speaker 1: do the podcast while I was still in my fashion company.
Speaker 1: And four years ago we ceded this conversation that went
Speaker 1: into every bookstore and every airport in the country and
Speaker 1: spent twenty weeks on the York Times best seller list
Speaker 1: and sold half a million copies. Not to like brag,
Speaker 1: but that's where, you know, that's where it began, and
Speaker 1: it's been marinating for four years. It's been marinating women
Speaker 1: have I can't tell you how many women have come
Speaker 1: up to me and said, you're the reason I quit
Speaker 1: my job and started a business. You know, I used
Speaker 1: this metaphor at the rally when I kicked the day off.
Speaker 1: Um and I know you guys will noticed scene. But
Speaker 1: in Indiana Jones when he's going after the Holy Grail,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this chasm that he can't jump over
Speaker 1: and he has to trust that there's a bridge there
Speaker 1: and kind of like stepped out basically to like what
Speaker 1: could be certain death and there's a bridge. That's my
Speaker 1: favorite scene. It's the best. It's my favorite scene, truly,
Speaker 1: my friend, it's always you know, as a kid, like
Speaker 1: you get goose bumps. You're like, yeah, I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe. It's the it's the leap of faith literally,
Speaker 1: And that's like if you're not doing that every day,
Speaker 1: like are you alive? Like that's how do you do that?
Speaker 1: How do you do it every day? Because it's it's
Speaker 1: it is hard, it's not it's not easy. How do
Speaker 1: you think about it? I guess the first like part
Speaker 1: of my life was pretty entertaining and it wrote a
Speaker 1: good book and now I'm like, fun, I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to write a follow up to that. It better
Speaker 1: be entertaining, and so whether it's like letting Forbes put
Speaker 1: me on the cover even though like I know my
Speaker 1: company is like troubled, just because it's going to be
Speaker 1: like a crazier like whiplash to go bankrupt six months later,
Speaker 1: which wasn't the plan, and I did not know what's happening.
Speaker 1: I say yes to things that seem like kind of
Speaker 1: bonkers and maybe you're responsible, and when you say yes
Speaker 1: to things like you never know what could happen. I
Speaker 1: met Ted Sarandos at a c e ES dinner when
Speaker 1: I was running a fashion company. I have no idea
Speaker 1: why I was invited, and then years later like sold
Speaker 1: him a story about my life, and it's because we
Speaker 1: had a relationship, and you just you don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen when you say yes. I don't see
Speaker 1: you yes to anything a lot anymore. It's like no
Speaker 1: business dinners, please, But um, I still see yes, do
Speaker 1: a lot of ship. We had Jen Rubio in the
Speaker 1: studio this week. One of the things she said that
Speaker 1: was so clear in terms of how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to be a founder. We asked her, you know what
Speaker 1: kind of advice she has, and the first thing she
Speaker 1: said was this is hard work, and like, yes, it's
Speaker 1: a really cool thing to want to be a founder,
Speaker 1: and yes, go for it, but like, no, this ain't
Speaker 1: no joke. Like you talked about being twenty two doing
Speaker 1: all the photography, you're doing, all the merchandise thing, you're doing,
Speaker 1: all this, this, this, this, and this. Has any of
Speaker 1: that stopped. I mean, the work kind of keeps going, right.
Speaker 1: This company is really different. I think running a company
Speaker 1: for the second time is really different from doing it
Speaker 1: the first time. And there's so many decisions. I couldn't
Speaker 1: undo the culture, I couldn't undo the leadership that I
Speaker 1: just couldn't implument because I had already set so much
Speaker 1: into motion that even if I had tried to do
Speaker 1: it tactically, even just psychically, it wasn't it couldn't be done.
Speaker 1: And to be kind of like walk through the value
Speaker 1: of death and now be out in this like beautiful
Speaker 1: bucolic clearing and be able to like start over and
Speaker 1: hire the right talent and and coach them and be
Speaker 1: like a manager and a leader and lead from the
Speaker 1: front and be visible to my team and working a
Speaker 1: shad a shared desk instead of hiding in the back
Speaker 1: in an office and not delegating, you know, proselytizing the
Speaker 1: future of the company to the team to another executive
Speaker 1: under me, which I always did. I was like hiding
Speaker 1: in the corner, even as like I know, I'm very
Speaker 1: like forceful with how I speak, and I'm like on
Speaker 1: the cover of book and I'm look like I know
Speaker 1: what's up. Like when it comes to like talking in
Speaker 1: front of a group of people who's like livelihoods are
Speaker 1: on the line, it's scary because they take it really seriously.
Speaker 1: And I used to really like cower from that, and
Speaker 1: now it's not like I'm like running face first into it.
Speaker 1: But it's like people model the behavior that they see
Speaker 1: when people don't see like the founders invested or can
Speaker 1: articulate the bit of the future clearly, like it's caused
Speaker 1: for alarm. Um. If you don't try to shape a
Speaker 1: culture intentionally, it will just become something unintentional and it's
Speaker 1: way more work to undo that. And one low performer
Speaker 1: will bring the whole team's average down and make people
Speaker 1: think like, oh this is okay, Well I guess I'll
Speaker 1: work like that. And so I'm just so vigilant, especially
Speaker 1: running a company called girl Boss because if we better
Speaker 1: like get it right, that we that we do it
Speaker 1: right this time. As you were attacking, I kept saying,
Speaker 1: over and over my head, do it right the second time?
Speaker 1: Is that better than doing it wrong the whole fucking time.
Speaker 1: I'm the next my name and my met next book.
Speaker 1: There you go. I think the culture that you've created
Speaker 1: and what you just described internally has absolutely manifested at
Speaker 1: the experiential um event that you just hosted in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: at your third girl bus rallies at right third and
Speaker 1: it just having been at the second one and sort
Speaker 1: of experiencing the community and the brands that got on
Speaker 1: board and watching your speaker lineup and then seeing the
Speaker 1: fire you brought in l A. This time, it was
Speaker 1: like everywhere, you know, if someone's going to fly across
Speaker 1: the world, because we had nineteen countries fly across the
Speaker 1: world for this event, you better have a lot for
Speaker 1: them to do in a given day. And so at
Speaker 1: this event, we had Google a bazaar with Google called
Speaker 1: Google's with Google Small Banks Team was like eighteen small
Speaker 1: woman owned businesses where our community could shop. We had
Speaker 1: a whole room of programming and workshop all day long
Speaker 1: with with chromebooks. We had another room, the main room
Speaker 1: we call the baller room, which is like the ballroom
Speaker 1: but like for ballers, and then hustle hall, and a
Speaker 1: hustle I think is a pretty overused word, so we
Speaker 1: might need to change that. But hustle hall is like
Speaker 1: the the seating is like around. There's like a stage
Speaker 1: in the center, kind of like a talk show, and
Speaker 1: everyone sits kind of like around this circle. And we
Speaker 1: had you know, my divorce attorney gave a Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Laura Walser like Johnny Depp's lady and like everybody's lady,
Speaker 1: like the divorce attorney like, oh yeah, we follow celebrity rags,
Speaker 1: we know. Oh yeah, they call her the disso queen um.
Speaker 1: But she for dissolving marriages? Is that what it is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. That was good. I didn't put that together anyway.
Speaker 1: I know, Um, I heard it on TMZ when they
Speaker 1: leaked my divurse um. But yes, she gave a talk
Speaker 1: on negotiation, and I don't know who better to give
Speaker 1: a talk on a thing. Yeah it's fun, thank you.
Speaker 1: So what what do you think that you've figured out
Speaker 1: about this millennial um female group? You throw out a
Speaker 1: bunch of very big names um in the marketing world
Speaker 1: who are obviously partnering with you to reach your audience.
Speaker 1: And they have options right like they can do events
Speaker 1: with Conde and Hurst, and they're choosing to invest in you.
Speaker 1: When you think about brands, do you think that brands
Speaker 1: Sophia like get you and they get the community you're building,
Speaker 1: or they just looking at saying there's this really interesting
Speaker 1: thing happening over here and I just want to attach
Speaker 1: myself to it. Try it, We'll try it. I think
Speaker 1: it depends on the marketer. I mean, I think all
Speaker 1: of our partners really get it. But I think there's
Speaker 1: more money going into innovation dollars. Brands are actually spending
Speaker 1: money to market themselves as employer, like as employers who
Speaker 1: want to hire women, want to hire for diversity, because
Speaker 1: everyone's sitting around like scratching their heads and it's not
Speaker 1: just telling them, hey, we hire for diversity. Like it
Speaker 1: also is a matter of you know, changing companies from
Speaker 1: the inside in some way that will attract and retain
Speaker 1: millennials because like, we are entrepreneurial, and even if we
Speaker 1: never want to start our own company the way someone
Speaker 1: of of our generation wants to work like is often
Speaker 1: pretty different and they require a lot of autonomy, and
Speaker 1: they care more about the quality of life in ways
Speaker 1: that like I'm just figuring out that I just started
Speaker 1: caring about because I used to be the person who
Speaker 1: was like, if you're not walking faster than me, then
Speaker 1: why am I paying you? You know, And like I
Speaker 1: think that's like a very like old person's way of
Speaker 1: of working. And I've finally been like, oh, it's so
Speaker 1: much easier working from home on Fridays. Wow, I really
Speaker 1: enjoy this um which we do, which our team does.
Speaker 1: Does Girl Boss exist without you? Is there a future
Speaker 1: of All Boss if Sophia is not a part of it. Yeah, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: It's not mine. It's not about me. It's about every
Speaker 1: woman that is taking her life in her own hands,
Speaker 1: asking herself tough, tough questions, asking the world around her
Speaker 1: tough questions. Is making unpopular decisions about where she's taking
Speaker 1: her life, or if she is making popular decisions, she's
Speaker 1: doing it because it just happens to correlate with what's
Speaker 1: conventional at that time. I can't build enterprise value if
Speaker 1: this is like the Sophia show, Like this is not
Speaker 1: a vanity project, like this is something that I it's
Speaker 1: a real business that I want to create a lot
Speaker 1: of value for a lot of women, But it's not.
Speaker 1: It's also not something that like I'm building to be
Speaker 1: reliant on me. So it's funny because I love Goop.
Speaker 1: I was an early Goop reader. I love Gwyneth Paltrow.
Speaker 1: Um when her and bred Pitt had like the same haircut,
Speaker 1: I was obsessed and I had black Greek hair and
Speaker 1: I could never get that hair. But I don't connect
Speaker 1: with Gwyneth Paltrow the same way I connect with you.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to me because you represent the every
Speaker 1: woman can period, like full fucking stop. That could be
Speaker 1: a new techline for you and that maybe that's the
Speaker 1: title of your book, like full fucking Stop. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a really interesting that you've tapped into
Speaker 1: this kind of every woman Like while you are personality
Speaker 1: um and a very specific you've got a very specific
Speaker 1: brand like me looking on the outside, you are kind
Speaker 1: of this ubiquitous person this icon of I can. Nobody
Speaker 1: makes big changes in their life that are big risks
Speaker 1: that are personal to them, that aren't like their decisions.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe Girl Boss or I have exposed you
Speaker 1: to like thinking outside of like the world that you
Speaker 1: grew up in or what your parents want from me
Speaker 1: you or you know that you can change gears in
Speaker 1: your career or you know, get started later, whatever that
Speaker 1: may be. But like it's not about me. I think
Speaker 1: everybody wants someone to give credit to or look up
Speaker 1: to or worship, and that's very much a part of
Speaker 1: our culture. Um. And it's not like I didn't put
Speaker 1: myself on the cover of a book, like I'm aware
Speaker 1: of like what I've done. Um. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like I take I take responsibility very seriously because people
Speaker 1: say things like that. But I also like don't go
Speaker 1: home thinking like, you know, wow, I think, wow, what
Speaker 1: we're doing is going to be massive, and I'm so
Speaker 1: inspired and most of all, like it is blood letting
Speaker 1: to have anybody on my team say this is the
Speaker 1: best job I've ever had. And I've heard that now
Speaker 1: and um get what I've been through. Um, there's like
Speaker 1: nothing more meaningful than creating a place where people can
Speaker 1: say that. So do you think everyone actually has the
Speaker 1: capacity to see the bridge or have the faith and
Speaker 1: actually do it? Do you actually think like all of
Speaker 1: these eight hundred people that are coming to your conference.
Speaker 1: Do you think if they actually want to do it,
Speaker 1: that they have the capacity and capability to actually have
Speaker 1: the faith and walk across. Yeah, because I think that's
Speaker 1: what life party is. People just don't realize it, Like
Speaker 1: that's what you're doing every day. Like that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you graduate college and you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: doing next. What happens when you find out that you're
Speaker 1: wrong in an argument that you're like so sure you're right,
Speaker 1: and like there's small examples of that all the time,
Speaker 1: whether or not everybody can be you know, I think
Speaker 1: we do have to be careful of like entrepreneurs being
Speaker 1: like the new rock stars. I think that entrepreneurship and
Speaker 1: being entrepreneurial as a popular thing is awesome and it's
Speaker 1: going to change the whole the way of the world works,
Speaker 1: or at least our country in the future. But I
Speaker 1: think everybody has like, hopefully the wits to do that,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, they probably won't try. And even
Speaker 1: if they blow it there, if they were willing to
Speaker 1: do it, they're probably the kind of person that hopefully
Speaker 1: watching somebody like me go bankrupt and then figure it
Speaker 1: out like I don't know, they can stop and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just another thing moving on, Like yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: I think the small thing example is actually kind of brilliant.
Speaker 1: What comes next and how should brands be integrating in
Speaker 1: that world? Yeah, I mean, I think the last year
Speaker 1: has been a lot of experimentation and a lot of
Speaker 1: custom programs um and lower lower margins because we're still
Speaker 1: kind of feeling around in the dark in some way,
Speaker 1: but we're not feeling around in the dark about is
Speaker 1: the conversation that we have with our audience. We have
Speaker 1: some quote unquote turn key products, but it's not like
Speaker 1: you know, slapping a banner and expecting you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of breach that you can get from Glamour magazine. Right,
Speaker 1: We consider ourselves a partner and innovating with the brands
Speaker 1: that we work with and in shepherding a really important
Speaker 1: conversation to an underserved audience who are increasingly vocal, increasingly important,
Speaker 1: and really hard to access. The future looks like a
Speaker 1: lot of things. So we have a podcast network. We
Speaker 1: just did our first custom podcast with Sephora called lip Stories.
Speaker 1: It was the first for Sephora to do a fully
Speaker 1: owned series and first for us, and we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of conversations happening around podcasts. Was
Speaker 1: just super exciting just audio. I think it's really interesting
Speaker 1: more of the rallies, bigger rallies, different opportunities to kind
Speaker 1: of connect with within the rally and create more things
Speaker 1: for this audience to do and stay energized and curious
Speaker 1: on you know, during the times that or we're out
Speaker 1: there in the real world with her. And then you know,
Speaker 1: our platform, so girl boss dot com did just go
Speaker 1: through a relaunch. It's really beautiful. Add products are totally
Speaker 1: customed and that's going to evolve a lot over time.
Speaker 1: And then this this platform that I'm building that I
Speaker 1: think eventually will um hopefully make our current publishing experience
Speaker 1: completely obsolete. And that's going to be a place where
Speaker 1: she's going to ask an answer questions, find like minded women,
Speaker 1: find work, find people to work for them, UM, meet
Speaker 1: people locally, and like all the things, just all the
Speaker 1: things she wants to do UM and like hopefully a
Speaker 1: very beautiful, simple environment that's a safe place for her,
Speaker 1: where the content is created by us or curated by us,
Speaker 1: and a place that has a very kind of zero
Speaker 1: tell policy for for nonsense. So with that, Sophia, we
Speaker 1: like to play a game killed by d I Y.
Speaker 1: What would you kill? Um? What would you buy? And
Speaker 1: what would you do yourself? Not girl Boss killed by
Speaker 1: d I Y? Like want one of each of those? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I'd kill poverty, I'd buy a private plane, and I
Speaker 1: d I Y my own vegetable garden. Those are hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I've been like staring at like, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: let's go to home deeper this weekend. We're like no. So,
Speaker 1: if people want to find you to pitch you their
Speaker 1: ideas to help you further shape the girl Boss community,
Speaker 1: tell you how much they love you. Where can they
Speaker 1: find you? If you have a question for girl Boss,
Speaker 1: it's info a girl boss dot com. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to reach me directly for business opportunities, it's s
Speaker 1: at girls dot com. And if you want to partner
Speaker 1: with us, it's Allison with one L at girl Lost
Speaker 1: dot com. Sophia, thank you, thank you. You are the
Speaker 1: ultimate girl Boss and we can't wait to see you
Speaker 1: in the same state soon. Well, thank you for calling in.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. I'm all
Speaker 1: wrapped up like Indiana Jones, now you're running over the bridge.
Speaker 1: I'm running over the bridge. Was that inspiring? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just every time I talked to her, I'm just always
Speaker 1: so impressed. And I always love hearing the restart story
Speaker 1: because it's it's a constant reminder that despite the odds,
Speaker 1: despite public perception, despite you know, the challenges that exist
Speaker 1: in just building a business, let alone being a woman
Speaker 1: who filed for Chapter eleven as a twenty two year
Speaker 1: old founder and kept going and multimillionaire and and still
Speaker 1: found a way to say fuck it, like there's a
Speaker 1: bigger purpose, there's a community that needs this, and like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my blinders on and go for it.
Speaker 1: That focus is just it's so impressive. One of the
Speaker 1: things that she didn't say explicitly, but it was very clear,
Speaker 1: is that she capitalized on every asset she had, every
Speaker 1: asset she had. That that is something that brands aren't
Speaker 1: even doing. That's something individuals aren't doing. What do you
Speaker 1: have coming your way that you're not capitalizing? What do
Speaker 1: you have that the community needs? And there's a white
Speaker 1: space war and go fill it? Go fill You don't
Speaker 1: always need to create it. Sometimes you just need to
Speaker 1: feel it or you need it. Let them create it,
Speaker 1: but let them. On that note, thank you to all
Speaker 1: of our friends and family at Panoply, Matt Turk, Andy Bower's,
Speaker 1: Laura Morris atlantea hustle it. We'll be back in two weeks.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure are pains all roun