Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of Sophia Amoruso by Evie Nagy for Fast Company magazine, to read the complete interview, check out other resources, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

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“The first thing I ever sold online was stolen,” admits Sophia Amoruso, who in seven years went from having a string of dead-end jobs to being CEO of Nasty Gal, the online clothing retailer with an impossibly cool rep and $100 million–plus in revenue.

In 2006, while working the security desk at an art school, Amoruso opened an eBay store to sell vintage clothes, after noticing that similar stores were friending girls like her on Myspace. Directionless as she was at the time, she had an eye for style, photography, and thrift stores, and knew she could make cast-off pieces look irresistible by using her cute friends as models. The brand she built, named Nasty Gal after funk singer Betty Davis’s 1975 album, earned such a following that it spun off to its own site and, in 2012, attracted nearly $50 million in backing from Index Ventures. In addition to vintage, Nasty Gal now sells daring designer pieces as well as its own exclusive line.

Without a college degree or prior business experience, Amoruso, 29, made Nasty Gal profitable from day one because she had the instincts, discipline, and confidence to focus on the successful and ditch what didn’t work. She has now collected those lessons in #GIRLBOSS, her recently published book by Portfolio/Putnam, detailing the good (and terrible) choices that got her where she is today. The book is aimed at the young women who buy her clothes, and, despite the title, is much less about running a company than about taking charge of your own life.

The world of online retail is so crowded. Did you see a big opening when you started Nasty Gal?

I was never trained. I never thought, “Oh, here’s the big opportunity!” Now I’m in a place where I have that big opportunity, but only because I’ve built this thing from small pockets of opportunity that I followed. It was very iterative, I guess. If one thing worked, I did more of it. If it didn’t work, I didn’t beat my head against the wall to make something happen. It all centered around what my customers were responding to.

Would I have ever started a website selling vintage clothing and just hoped people would show up at my URL? No. EBay gave me the framework to discover I was an e-commerce entrepreneur. I touched everything, from shipping to logistics. E-commerce means that anyone can have an online store, but it’s become a much more crowded space. Being as early as I was is a big advantage. Lots of people are going to sell clothes online. But not a lot of people have built a brand, a living, breathing brand that people feel like they’re part of.

You write about the grueling process of digging through old vintage clothing when you were starting out. How did you have the patience for that? And how did you know when you found the right thing?

It was fun for me. It was like finding a penny on the street. At a certain point, I could hold something up on a hanger and know exactly how it would look on a girl, how I could style it, and how it related to what’s going on in fashion today. It became a treasure hunt.

And for me, it was finding my future. Being able to turn something that has no inherent value, like a vintage blouse, into something that some girl feels is total gold–and is willing to pay the price of gold for–just felt really great.

Nothing will teach you more about perceived value than taking something with literally no value and selling it in the auction format. It teaches you the beauty and power of presentation, and how you can make magic out of nothing.

You’ve tapped into a young, female culture that can’t get enough of your stuff. As you get a little bit older–and richer–how do you stay connected to that?

It gets harder less because of the way my life is changing than due to the fact that I’m not managing all the social media. I’m not on the phone or in the email inbox all the time, which is where I learned the most.

We have a really talented team of buyers. My first employee, Christina, is now the buying director. She’s been with me for five and a half years. One of my best friends is running social media. That’s the kind of team that keeps Nasty Gal relevant. And aesthetically and culturally, I feel like I’ll never lose that youthful spirit.

Let’s talk about the book. Who’s it for?

I have something like 70,000 Instagram followers beating down my door every day for a job, like, “Oh, my God, I wanna model for you, I wanna intern for you.” They say, “Oh, my god, you had shitty jobs too. That makes me hopeful.” Or I meet women at conferences who tell me, “I have a 20-year-old daughter who’s totally flailing, but you give me hope for my child.”

As Nasty Gal grows, I want to reinforce what’s at the core of our success and tell my story on my own terms, to come out and say, “Hey, the first thing I ever sold online was stolen.” I’m not glamorizing that lifestyle, but you know: Don’t make my mistakes, or go make your own mistakes–it’s okay.

Look, I was dumb. Half the people in this office wouldn’t have taken me seriously seven years ago. To my surprise and everyone else’s, I’ve come out the other side more self-aware, self-critical, and able to appreciate what I have.

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Here’s a direct link to the complete article.

Evie Nagy is a Staff Writer at FastCompany.com, newly based in the Bay Area after almost a decade in New York, writing features and news with a focus on Fast Company’s Most Creative People. She was previously an editor at Billboard and Rolling Stone, and has written about music, business and culture for a variety of publications. She’s also writing a book about Devo and co-hosts a podcast about comic books.