Your challenge as a #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention. I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you begin to see it, you’ll need sunglasses to combat the glare. 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. These words were not invented for an incremental life. “Success” and “failure” serve a world that is black-and-white. And as I said before, it’s all just kinda gray. This may sound sad, or boring, but it’s actually quite empowering. It’s not the prescription that many books may suggest exists, but it allows you to self-prescribe. And to self-subscribe.
You Belong Wherever You Want to Belong
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
—Oscar Wilde
There’s a certain freedom to being an outsider. You do what you want, say what you want, and move on when you’ve worn out your welcome. In the past seven years, I’ve gone from being a nobody with no job and no insurance to someone who is seen as a leader and a role model. I was once told by a big-shot CEO that if I’m in an elevator with employees and chat with one but not the others, it signifies to everyone that the person I spoke to is more important than the others. To put it plainly, I exist under a microscope.
It’s been rough getting used to the fact that what I say matters, whether it is good or bad, and holy shit, people actually want to talk to me. When we have our all-hands meetings, I am required to stand in front of two hundred people and talk about everything that’s happening within the business while simultaneously seeming like I didn’t have a bad morning and also possess every answer to the company’s problems. I’ve asked myself, Who am I to hold all of these other people captive while I blather and make bad jokes? Oh shit, I’m the boss, that’s who. Some people become CEOs for this exact reason—because they like to be in the spotlight—but it doesn’t come naturally to me, and I don’t know that it ever will. I no longer expect anyone to throw a rotten tomato at me and yell, “Off the stage, freak!” but the whole thing is still pretty surreal.
I’ve played with a lot of different lifestyles and identities. When I was living in Olympia, I snuck into a high school prom and danced with the cutest underclassmen I could find. I dressed up like a soccer mom to steal a loaf of bread. Never in my life, though, did I ever imagine that the role that I would actually end up inhabiting was that of a CEO. I felt like a fraud for a long time, as if there were no way in hell I was qualified. Who gave this freak the keys? I thought to myself, wondering if, and when, I’d ever be found out. I refused to think of people I met through business as friends. My real friends were weirdos from San Francisco who were broke, loved obscure elf metal, and celebrated 6/6/06 with me like it was Christmas. I kept telling myself that Danny, my investor, wasn’t my friend, even though we had great conversations over dinner and I loved his wife. I thought that people like Danny couldn’t be my real friends, because they were from this pedigreed world of MBAs and real careers, whereas I was just an interloper in a Black Sabbath T-shirt.
Finally, though, I arrived at a point where I decided this was bullshit. I stopped feeling as if I didn’t belong anywhere, and realized that I belonged anywhere I wanted to be—whether that was a boardroom, business class, or on stage at a Women’s Wear Daily CEO Summit. Today, I consider Danny my peer. Sometimes I can even get him to laugh at a fart joke.
Nasty Gal has been my MBA. I’ve learned to not be shy about stopping someone in the middle of a presentation to ask him to please clarify something because I don’t know what he’s talking about. If I still don’t get it, I’ll tell him so and ask him to explain it again. Sometimes I can practically hear the eyes rolling around the room—but given that I’m making decisions that involve so much money and so many people, I can’t afford to pretend to know what’s up. When you run a company the size of mine, you’re not the only one who ends up paying for your mistakes. I could act like a CEO or I could really be a CEO, which means doing whatever I need to do (including asking obvious questions) to make the best decision for my company. No matter where you are in life, you’ll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be. You is who you is, so get used to it.
On Being a Freak
I like being myself. Myself and nasty.
—Aldous Huxley
When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too. As a company, Nasty Gal sits half in the fashion world and half in its own galaxy. I’ve never felt that more acutely than when I go to New York Fashion Week. I absolutely hate Fashion Week. It hurts me from the inside out. Let me break down Fashion Week for you, and I apologize if I am shattering your dreams of glamour and sophistication.
You are assigned a piece of bench in a too-hot or too-cold warehouse that is hard to get to because all the cabs are taken and the subway is not a choice due to your absurd-ass shoes. The piece of bench assigned to you is not even as wide as your butt, and someone is probably sitting on it. You are forced to either act like an asshole and confront that someone and tell him or her to move, or you go and put your butt down in someone else’s assigned piece of bench, at which point that person will be forced to act like an asshole and come along and tell you to move. At this point, you couldn’t care less about the clothes that you’re about to see; you wish you were back in your hotel room eating glutinous pancakes and wearing sweats.
I’m not a blogger, I’m not an editor, and my company doesn’t buy luxury brands, so even though I’ve been written about on Style.com and in such magazines as Elle, whenever I go to a fashion party I feel like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, when she shows up to the Halloween party in a nightgown and buck teeth while everyone else is wearing lingerie and bunny ears. All of a sudden I revert to being an insecure thirteen-year-old, wondering if I’m wearing the right brand of shoes, and are they the right season? If so, are they the right color? Barf. It’s a high school outfit contest, and I’d rather be working.
Nasty Gal is antifashion in that we encourage girls to choose what fashion means to them. We aren’t just following, and neither are our customers. I’m getting more and more comfortable with one foot in the fashion world and one foot out. As I’ve gotten to know more people in the fashion industry, it’s been refreshing to realize that a lot of them respect me because, as an outsider, I have a unique point of view.
Had I tried to fit in, Nasty Gal would have crashed and burned a long time ago. The last thing the world needs is another boring person or another boring brand, so embrace all the things that make you different. Alter your clothes all you want, but don’t you dare alter your inner freak—she’s got your back as much as I do.
Getting What You Want Even When You No Longer Want It
Far and away, the hardest thing for me to get used to about Nasty Gal’s meteoric rise is that my own profile has risen with it. For years I prided myself on being anonymous, an expert at the art of avoiding human interaction. But today I could be walking along picking my nose, grabbing my boyfriend’s butt, or trying on lip gloss in Sephora when suddenly someone sidles up to me and says, “You know, I really love Nasty Gal.”
There’s no way around it: The success of Nasty Gal means that my life has permanently changed. I’ve been tagged on Twitter by people who saw me going through airport security, running down a mountain in Big Sur, and sitting in the driveway of my own house. I’ve had people I don’t know come up to me at parties and introduce themselves by saying, “Hey, I heard we’re neighbors!” They’re thrilled, but I’m thinking, Who are you and how do you know where I live?
I once Instagrammed a picture of my poodle, Donna, without realizing that my phone number was visi
ble on her tag. When I started to get calls and texts from strangers, I was forced into changing the number that I’d had for years.
Once, at a meeting with my bank, they gave me a gift. It was a book called Silent Safety: Best Practices for Protecting the Affluent. The book had chapters with titles such as “Yacht Security” and “Surviving a Hostage Situation.” I thought it was absurd, until it began to terrify me. Holy shit, is this the way I’m supposed to live my life now?
I’m not complaining—this is all just stuff that I’m still getting used to. For example, it’s weird to go through life being congratulated on a daily basis. In a single year, I had a profile in Forbes, was on the cover of Entrepreneur, listed on CNNMoney’s 40 Under 40, Inc.com’s 30 Under 30, and named by Inc. magazine as the fastest-growing retailer in the country. Our office has consumed a whole hell of a lot of champagne, but how many bottles can you pop? Remember, #GIRLBOSS: It’s not cool to get drunk on your own success.
PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:
Norma Kamali, Fashion Designer and Entrepreneur
When I was young, I was so smart and was sure I could do anything. I was convinced I could be a painter and did everything from intensive life drawing while worshipping Michelangelo to studying art history and painting with a passion. My mother convinced me that painting may not be the best way to earn a living and pay rent.
I was very lucky to receive scholarships and grants for my paintings, but also a scholarship to FIT. There I studied fashion illustration and found my way into design after traveling to London in the 1960s. I opened a store in 1967 and have been in business ever since.
I learned early on the motto “Know thyself.” I think if you have a unique point of view and stay relevant and authentic, you will make an impression. You have to be excited and passionate about your ideas to make them work. Chances are it will take twenty of those good ideas before one sticks and has a chance to become real, but a good idea is only good if there is a well-thought-out plan to make it a reality.
The most important thing to do is to take risks. The risks are where breakthroughs happen, and big shifts take you to new places and create opportunities. They can be really scary and intimidating, but that means it is taking you out of your comfort zone.
All designers look at life through a creative lens and are inclined to create their brand of beauty in their everyday lives. I am happy to say it brings me joy and I love doing it for others as well. I prefer to be creative first and famous last.
My mother told me when I was eleven years old, “Learn how to take care of yourself so that the man you marry is the man you choose to be with and not just the man who will take care of you.” Women have an opportunity now to change the world. We are all aware of the movement toward women becoming a significant force in the chance for real dynamic change. When things aren’t working so well, like now, it becomes a disruptive time.
My advice would be to dream and never stop dreaming. Making my dreams come true has always inspired me to work hard. One dream is never enough, and your dream can be molded and finessed along the way to become relevant and successful.
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On Hiring, Staying Employed, and Firing
I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.
—Estée Lauder
It’s a huge testament to Nasty Gal that so many people want to work there. I’m incredibly proud of the team that I’ve hired. You would be hard-pressed to find a harder-working, more creative bunch of freaks anywhere in the world.
In my relatively short career, I’ve hired and been hired multiple times, fired and been fired a few times, and stayed employed once (yay, Nasty Gal!). That qualifies me to give advice on all three.
On Hiring
I was always able to get a job—although keeping it was sometimes a different story. Even when I applied for a minimum wage job at the outlet mall, I handed in a résumé with my application, and that résumé always had an objective neatly typed out at the top, such as “To procure a sales position at a respected retail establishment.” If I dropped an application off and wasn’t able to speak with the manager in person, I always followed up with a phone call, or dropped by again to annoy the establishment into remembering me. I hit the manager with everything that I had, convincing him or her that I wanted nothing more in the world than a chance to spend my afternoons helping old ladies slide their feet into a pair of orthopedic pumps.
And that’s my first rule of hiring: Although playing hard to get might be cute in the dating world, it won’t fly with potential employers. They don’t have time to court you, so you had better romance the hell out of them. Competition is stiff—particularly in a tight job market and tough economy—so unless you can sweep someone off his or her feet, unemployed you will stay. Ideally, you’ll be applying for a job that you genuinely think is interesting and exciting. If you’re not, #GIRLBOSS, then fake it till you make it.
The Necessary Evil: Cover Letters
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
—Leonardo da Vinci
I love cover letters. Yes, they’re painful to write—and trust me, often painful to read—but a cover letter is your first opportunity to make an impression on your future boss. As an employer, when I go through hundreds of applications from people who all have very similar-sounding education and experience, cover letters are the only glimpse I have into a person’s personality. Cover letters separate the #GIRLBOSSes from the girls. That said, few people seem to know how to make a cover letter sing. It’s incredible how low the bar is, so you’re in luck! I’m about to help you navigate the weird, unnatural world of putting your best foot forward in a few paragraphs.
Cover Letter Mistake #1: The cover letter is all about what you want. Nasty Gal gets so many cover letters that detail a “passion for fashion” and then proceed to talk about how this job will help the applicant pursue her interests, gain more experience, and explore new avenues.
If a cover letter starts out like this, I usually end up reading the first couple of sentences before hitting the delete button. Why? Because I don’t care about what a job will do for you and your personal development. I know that sounds harsh, but I don’t know you, so the fact that you want to work for my company does not automatically mean that I have an interest in helping you grow your career. I have a business that is growing by the day, so I want to know what you can do for me. It’s as simple as that.
Cover Letter Mistake #2: Your cover letter basically says that nothing you’ve ever done is even remotely applicable to the job you’re applying for. When we posted a job for a copywriter a while back, I remember reading an application from someone who had graduated with an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, one of the most prestigious writing programs in the country. This is what stood out the most to me about her résumé, but it wasn’t even mentioned in her cover letter. A cover letter can connect the dots between where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re trying to go.
Unless you spell out what that is in your cover letter, your potential employer may never know. If you’re light on extracurricular activities coming out of college because you had to work forty hours a week to pay for it, then by all means make sure that it’s obvious. Someone who shows evidence of financial responsibility and work ethic can be just as impressive, if not more so, than someone who was president of the Bowling Society or secretary of the Wine Tasting Club. Even if you’re applying to work at a bowling alley that serves only wine. (Okay, maybe not then.)
Cover Letter Mistake #3: You give so-called constructive criticism—without being asked. When I’m interviewing people, I’ll often ask what they think Nasty Gal could be doing better, and I am genuinely interested to hear what they have to say. But detailing the ways that you think a company needs to improve in a cover letter is like meet
ing someone for the first time and telling her that you think she’d be so much cuter if she lost just five pounds. It’s distasteful. You would be surprised to learn how often people think that dedicating their entire cover letter to detailing Nasty Gal’s flaws is a good idea. It’s not. I always want to write these people back and say, “Opinions are like assholes; everybody’s got one.” But I don’t, because I’m a #GIRLBOSS so I keep it professional-ish.
Cover Letter Mistake #4: Either you didn’t take the time to read it, or you just really, really can’t write. In Jason Fried’s book Rework, he writes that one of the smartest investments a business can make is in hiring great writers, and I completely agree. No matter what you are hired to do, you will be infinitely better off if you are able to clearly communicate your ideas. We can’t all be Shakespeare, but spend some time on your cover letter and have someone else look it over to make sure it reads well. If it looks like you don’t care about your cover letter and rushed through it, then I’m going to assume that you will be just as careless in your work.
On that note, another piece of advice: Spell-check exists for a reason; use it, but don’t rely on it. If you don’t know the difference between “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” you’re in bad shape. We’re lucky enough in the United States to get by with only having to know one language, so nail the one we’ve got! If I have to read another e-mail that begins with “I’ve followed Naty Gal since the eBay days,” I will throw myself out the window. As we are only on the third floor, that means that I will have to deal with a really gnarly sprained ankle and it will be all your nonthinking, non-spell-checking fault.
#GIRLBOSS Page 9
