These challenges didn’t inhibit Sophia’s innovative spirit, however. “Mostly, I was impatient and had a bad attitude toward authority.” For a while, doctors thought Sophia had Tourette’s Syndrome, but they later determined she was living with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and depression. “I wasn’t a particularly happy kid,” she later told a reporter. But as a child, Sophia was anything but confident. In Sophia’s teens, her mother Dena Kouremetis emerged as an advice columnist who specialized in raising successful, confident daughters. Her family attended the Greek Orthodox church, and both her parents worked traditional jobs to support themselves and their daughters. Sophia Amoruso was born on Apto middle-class parents in San Diego, CA. Or as she puts it, “Each time you show up to work and work hard and do your best at everything you can do, you’re planting seeds for a life that you can only hope will grow beyond your wildest dreams.” Sophia Amoruso, the entrepreneurial former CEO of Nasty Gal & founder of GIRLBOSS, knows all about starting small and growing into greatness. And all of a sudden, everyone’s buzzing about their “overnight success.” Then after about ten years of incremental additions to their seedling idea, they get a break-though.

They add a little snap to what they’re doing. Those entrepreneurs begin with the germ of an idea, a hobby that becomes side hustle, or a series of odd jobs that somehow coalesce into a company. At least, the ones in the most inspiring business stories don’t begin that way. Most entrepreneurs don’t start with a string of high-powered connections and money to burn.

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