You know POPSUGAR. But do you know the woman behind POPSUGAR or how she started her thriving media empire? In her Her Conference 2017 keynote, Lisa Sugar, the founder and president of POPSUGAR, explained that it all began with a love of Matt Damon and blue purses.
Lisa spent her twenties working crappy jobs and didn’t have any concrete career plans. She knew she wanted to go back to what she loved. Some of her favorite things? Friends, Dawson’s Creek, Sweet Valley High, beauty products, blue purses and Matt Damon. “So I was trying to figure out, ‘What do I do with my love for Matt Damon and blue purses?’” she said.
Her husband, a serial entrepreneur who dropped out of college to start J.Crew’s website, built her a site and taught her code. Lisa was still working full-time at an ad agency at the time, so she would write during her lunch break or any other morsel of free time she could find. Once the site exploded, Lisa’s husband, Brian, encouraged her to take the risk and quit her job; within a week, she found out she was pregnant with their first daughter.
In its first year, POPSUGAR had a million readers and was well on its way to becoming the giant we now know it as. Today, Lisa lives by these rules: do more of what you love, surround yourself with an all-star team and work hard, play nice.
If it leads to success like Lisa’s, I think we can all get on board with those rules.