Achieve Your Biggest #Goals With These Key Steps

Achieving your biggest goals can be unbelievably inspiring, but also downright terrifying. There’s a fear of the unknown, the danger of failure and potentially terrible decisions lurking around every corner. So, where does one even begin?

- Sakina Esufally

When then 22-year-old Sophia Amoruso set up an eBay account in 2002 selling vintage finds, she never anticipated that, in a few short years, she’d be the Founder and CEO of Nasty Gal, a multi-million-dollar online fashion retailer that was named by INC. as one of the fastest growing retailers of 2012. A creative visionary and style dynamo, Sophia was named by Forbes as one of the richest self-made women with more money than Beyoncé (no joke), found herself on Business Insider’s list of Sexiest CEOs Alive, and was hailed by mainstream media as the breath of fresh air the fashion industry had craved for so long. By all accounts, Sophia led a charmed life. She must have totally been prepared for this kind of success, right? Not so much.

Sophia started Nasty Gal to keep herself productive and earn some cash. Never in her wildest dreams did she expect the rollercoaster ride that would follow. It’s difficult to pinpoint the secret sauce of any particular success story – what made it succeed – but it’s likely that it’s because Sophia didn’t allow herself to be so daunted by a project that she didn’t even begin. Instead, she focused on baby steps: sourcing clothes, photographing them, uploading the images to eBay and writing product descriptions, then packaging and shipping items once they had been sold. Day in and day out, she focused on these small but phenomenally essential tasks, ensuring that they were carried out to perfection. And around her grew a business that carried the same core elements of product uniqueness, perfect packaging and community care, as thousands of girls flocked to the site to view the latest collection.