Biz Innovators Personal Use Ebook With Audio

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Is the name Sophia Amoruso new to you? She is the founder and owner of Nasty Gal, which was named one of the fastest growing companies in 2012. Her Nasty Gal company sells clothing, shoes and accessories for young women.

Sophia has a target customer in mind for all of her products. She describes her customer as a woman who is:

In her lote teens or eorly-mid-twenties and super body-confident. She knows how to dress for her shape and isn't afraid of wearing makeup and short skirts and being sexy. She's into fashion but her taste doesn't just apply to what she wears: It applies to food, interior design, and travel. She wants to have awesome experiences and be the best-dressed girl around — without spending an arm and a leg.

Having such a defined customer in mind is just one of the reasons the Nasty Gal Company is still growing by leaps and bounds.

Sophia Amoruso is young, she was born in April of 1984 in San Diego. She began her fashion career at the age of 22 by running an eBay store that was called Nasty Gal Vintage. She sold vintage designer clothing. At that time she run the entire company alone. She would source vintage clothing from various places such as local secondhand stores and from the Salvation Army. One such item was a Chanel jacket that she bought for $8 and ended up selling it for $1,000.

In 2008 she was kicked off eBay so she decide to launch as a retail website called Nasty Gal. The name can be attributed to the Betty Davis album of 1975.

Sophia was able to develop a great following of young women on social media. This helped her company quickly grow. She went from $223,000 in 2008 to just under $23 million by 2011. In 2013 she was named to Inc. Magazine under 30 list. The following year Sophia released her book #GirlBoss.

Sophia managed to build her following by using Myspace to connect with other young women. She quickly built up a following of 60,000 followers on there.

After opening her online retail store Sophia hired her first employee, Christina Ferruci - who is now her Nasty Gal's Buying Director. As the company grew Sophia had to move into a warehouse space, which she did in Berkeley, CA. The warehouse was outgrown rapidly and another move ensued to Emeryville, CA.

The Nasty Gal headquarters is now located in Los Angeles, CA. Sophia always talks about the importance of how she incorporated social media into her business. In 2012 Nasty Gal employed 110 people and had opened another distribution center in Kentucky.

Who doesn't recognize the name Mark Cuban? He is well known for being the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and for his appearances on Shark Tank. In 2011 he authored an e-book "How to Win at the Sport of Business". Inside this book he talks about his experiences in business and in sport.

Mark started business at an early age, just 12 years old he was selling garbage bags. His goal was to buy a really expensive pair of basketball shoes.

He enrolled in university in what would have been his high school senior year. In 1981 he graduated from the Kelley School of Business with a B.S. in Business Administration.

Mark had lots of jobs including working in a pub, giving disco lessons and ended up in Dallas in 1982 where he became a bartender. He went on to become a salesperson for Your Business Software, which was one of the first PC software retailers in the Dallas area.

He made great business relations with his customers at Your Business Software who helped support his own company MicroSolutions. This company began as a software reseller. It eventually led to developments in technology which we know as Carbon Copy, CompuServe and Lotus Notes. In 1990 he sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe for $6 million.

Mark still loved basketball and in 1995 he and Todd Wagner started a new company Audionet. This company combined several interests including college basketball and webcasting. In 1998 Audionet became Broadcast.com. By the following year this company had grown to 330 employees with a revenue of $13.5 million in their second quarter. In 1999 Yahoo brought them out for $5.7 billion of Yahoo stock.

It was in 2000 that Mark Cuban purchased the NBA Dallas Mavericks for a reported $285 million. Under his ownership the Mavericks went on to win 69% of

their games during every season. In ten years they reached the playoffs nine times.

Mark is proving to be a heated owner and has been fined many times for his outbursts. Reports suggest that he has been fined at least $1.5 million for 13 infringements.

He definitely enjoys sports and has had discussions with owning other sporting franchises such as the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Texas Rangers. Both deals never went through.

Less well known is the fact that Mark Cuban started the Fallen Patriot Fund. This was set up to help military families who lost a family member, and for personnel who were injured during the Iraq War. Mark personally matched the first $1 million with funds from his own Foundation.

Marissa Mayer is the current President and CEO of Yahoo and has held that position since being appointed in 2012. Before that time she was a key spokesperson for Google. In 2013 Fortune named Marissa eighth on their list of most powerful business women in America.

Let's look at who Marissa is and how she achieved her current status.

Marissa Mayer was born in Wausau, Wisconsin. Her mother was an art teacher and her father an environmental engineer. Her grandfather was mayor of Jackson, Wisconsin for 32 years.

At school Marissa was shy and took a liking to chemistry, biology, calculus and biology. She was an active student and took part in many after school activities. She was chosen to represent her state at the National Youth Science Camp after graduating high school.

Marissa had every intention of becoming a pediatric neurosurgeon and took pre-med classes at Stanford. She changed to symbolic systems shortly afterwards. While at Stanford she taught a class in symbolic systems which was well received. So much so that she was asked to teach another class over the summer. She would graduate from Stanford with Honors.

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