Entry #1 Neon Gurl Notebook: CEO Diary
I’ve been thinking a lot about what has always drawn me toward entrepreneurship, and lately I keep returning to a strange thought: maybe it was in my blood long before I had language for it.
I sometimes imagine my great-grandmother, whom I never met, whispering that to me. She left our family 140 acres. A woman who did that had to possess some kind of audacity, some instinct to stake a claim. Maybe that instinct runs deeper than we realize.
I think about my grandfathers too. Family legend has one was a loan shark. The other, I grew up hearing, was the gangster of all gangsters. Myth and memory tend to tangle in families, but what always stayed with me was the energy behind those stories, risk, nerve, survival, ambition. A willingness to go after something.
And maybe that’s why some of my favorite films have never really been about polite success, but obsession. There Will Be Blood is my favorite film of all time because it strips ambition down to its rawest form. It’s brutal about the lengths someone will go for business, for power, for the dream. I’ve always loved Goodfellas and Casino for similar reasons.
And I know this may sound wild for a first post, but I’ve started to believe all entrepreneurs have to have a little gangster in them.
I don’t mean criminal. I mean conviction.
You’re staking your claim. Your name. Often your own money. And you’re willing to go the distance.
That’s pretty damn gangster.
People romanticize entrepreneurship now as mood boards, founder aesthetics, and morning routines. But building something from nothing has always felt closer to frontier energy to me. Go west energy. Take territory energy. Bet on yourself energy.
That’s different.
My ex-boyfriend out of college didn’t believe in my Neon Gurl idea at the time, but he was a hustler by every definition, and he taught me something I have never forgotten: how to turn one dollar into a thousand. That lesson stayed.
I’ve carried it while building this company and turning one idea into what is becoming dozens of revenue streams. That, too, is a kind of hustle.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the overlap between gangster capitalism and entrepreneurship. During prohibition, underground economies often moved faster than formal ones. Risk-takers built fortunes in the shadows before markets caught up. There’s something provocative in that history, not because business should be ruthless, but because creation often requires an edge.
A fierceness. A refusal.
I think people misunderstand this, especially when women embody it.
Women are often expected to be soft, agreeable, and endlessly gracious. And I am soft in many ways. But I’ve learned very quickly there is little room for docility in building a company, not if you want it to survive.
Entrepreneurship asks for a grit people often mistake for savagery.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot watching the response to Emma Grede this past week. People called her ruthless. Dismissive. Maybe. Or maybe they were witnessing the steel required to build.
I admire women who carry that steel.
And maybe this is where the rougher side of my mind comes in.
Because yes, I was a straight-A student. And yes, when I’m starting a new project, I still put on Jeezy, Plies, or Young Dolph.
Because sometimes ambition needs a soundtrack. Sometimes you need energy that reminds you to go harder.
Gurls can be tough too.
And while we don’t need to bear arms or hide from the police to build huge companies anymore, I still think every formidable entrepreneur has a little outlaw in them. Every multimillionaire and billionaire I’ve studied seems to carry some version of that fierceness, a willingness to walk away from anything that threatens the dream and protect what they’re building at all costs.
That isn’t cruelty. That’s conviction. And I think there’s a difference.
Maybe that’s part of why I’m starting this column.
I needed a place to put thoughts I haven’t always had a home for. Thoughts about ambition. About risk. About the psychology of building. About why the people who create empires often seem to carry a little rebel energy in them.
And I wanted a place to write while building neongurl.com , the media company I love deeply.
To share what I’m learning. How I’m thinking. And maybe reveal parts of the why I haven’t talked about before.
If some of these reflections help one woman bet on herself harder, take a bigger risk, or protect her dream more fiercely, then this notebook has already done something worthwhile.
Because maybe entrepreneurship isn’t just about building companies.
Maybe it’s about staking a claim on your own life.
And that might be the most gangster thing of all.
