Girlboss refers to confident, take-charge women who pursue their own ambitions—and who aren’t beholden to anyone else.

The term #Girlboss was made popular back in 2014 by Sophia Amoruso in her best-selling autobiography, which was adapted into a television series by Netflix. Its early usage was all about empowerment and quickly became a template for marketing powerful women in almost every industry, and gave rise to a modern media brand that now reaches an audience of over 2 million across multiple channels. 

In the hands of the new CEO, Lulu Liang, Girlboss is redefining what success means. As the company’s Instagram feed explains, “Right now, there’s one standard definition of success that’s played out in our media and culture. It’s usually a young professional who grinds hard and sees revenue as the only end goal. She’s got a big following, a perfect home, wakes up at 5am, and is totally fulfilled by her job.”

If that’s your definition of success – cool – Girlboss is here to celebrate you, too.

But as Lulu Liang explains, “there are many other versions of success that are just as valid, and those stories deserve to be celebrated too.”

The company is currently in the rebuilding stages of their new ethos, Girlboss 2.0, to show women so many variations of success, that you can’t help but feel confident & empowered to define your own version of success.

See why Lulu Liang thinks the Miley Cyrus track, ‘Flowers’ is the perfect way to describe what a Girlboss is in 2023

As part of the new ethos, Lulu hopes to incorporate seven personal core values, which have accompanied her through her own remarkable career that saw her make the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021.

#1 Extreme ownership 

Extreme ownership is all about taking personal responsibility, “you can’t control the event but you can always control your reaction and impact the outcome.” 

#2 Have fun 

Lulu places a huge emphasis on enjoying your job, she believes you should take your work seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously. A lot of success in business is correlated with how much stress we can handle which is very personal, “if you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe.”

She adds, “it’s all about the journey and not the destination, it’s important to have fun along the way.”

#3 Gratitude and positivity

Lulu believes a positive mindset is crucial to success, “it’s not happiness that brings gratitude, it’s gratitude that brings us happiness. Mindset is everything and I’ve been training my mind to rephrase from ‘I have to do this’ to ‘I get to do this.’” 

A part of this process is practising daily gratitude, and Lulu says it has made her a much happier person. 

#4 Be solution orientated

In business, problems will always come up and solving them is a core part of our jobs. Lulu believes that you should always try to find a solution to problems, so you can go to your boss with the problem, and how you would approach it. “This one tactic has helped me progress much faster in my career.”

#5 Transparency and feedback

Lulu says that feedback has three components: first is giving it; second is receiving it; and third is acting on it, “as leaders, it’s our responsibility to provide feedback, clear expectations and have hard conversations. If your team is not meeting your expectations and you are not telling them this, then it is not their fault but yours.” 

She adds that everything is workable as long as you accept feedback in an open non-defensive way – and this applies to leaders too.

#6 Under promise, over deliver

Everyone has a say-do ratio: the percentage of the things you say you’ll do, that you actually end up doing. “If you’re not impeccable with your word then not only will others stop trusting you, you will stop trusting yourself. 

#7 Infinite learner 

As Isaac Asimov famously said, “You are never too old to learn more than you already know, and to become able to do more than you already can.” 

This concept is a key value to Lulu, “being an infinite learner means having a growth mindset, humility, and always working on self-improvement. Ego is the enemy, the moment you start thinking you’re the best is the moment you stop being the best.” 

Lulu says that there are few things more important that elevating women in leadership right now, and that is what we should be focusing on. The term ‘girlboss’ is down to personal preference, “if it is not empowering for you then don’t use it – simple as that. I care more about our mission than our name.”