Girl Boss – Photo credit: amazon.com
I finally read “Girlboss” by Nasty Gal’s ex-CEO Sophia Amoruso (she stepped down this past January, yet will remain active in the company she founded as executive chairman). Yes, the book is not a novelty, but with two toddlers and a non-existing dishwasher, you learn to celebrate small victories, like getting through anything, especially a book…
I was glad to read Girlboss after most of the mostly positive noise around it had subsided a bit. I finished it during a flight to a mini-vacation in the Dominican Republic, just in time to get me off my ass, out of a temporary funk and into some new determination territory. The book is un-pretentious, refreshingly honest, and so candid it makes you want to share your most intimate secrets with the author over a glass (or bottle) of Sauvignon blanc.
While it details in hilarious episodes Ms. Amoruso’s journey from middle-class kid to introvert anarchist (yup) and finally ground-breaking, magic-producing, no-nonsense girl boss, what this book really succeeds in doing is giving you hope, unabashed, get-off-your-couch-and-do-something kind of hope, with a side of funny, edifying quotes you’ll want to paste on all your social media walls. Things like ” It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds“, or ” Money looks better in the bank than on your feet” (oh boy, how that spoke to me), or my introverted self favorite, “in no way does being an introvert doom you into a life of shadows“.
Sophia Amoruso is that introverted girlfriend who won’t come to parties with you (because dealing with people is not exactly her thing), but with whom you will recreate the world through endless conversations, exciting experiences and even meaningful silences. It’s that girlfriend nobody else gets (and even finds a bit weird), but you, the dreamer, the entrepreneur, you, the girl boss at heart, you get her. She inspires you, she lights that quiet fire within you, she gets you off your funky couch into Possibility Land, all in a very real, very funny way.
And that’s why this easy-to-read, no-nonsense book about life, fear, success, failure, money, work, and finding yourself in the midst of it all, may just be the one book you will keep on picking up off your bookshelf over and over again (or pulling up on your Kindle, sorry I’m old-fashioned), long after you’ve forgotten all about the conventional work and life wisdom advice your mama gave you…
A must-read, at any age, any time, any life station…
The Corporate Sis.
