Females have a greater amount brain dedicated to speech and language. If a man and women suffer damage to this area the women would have less impairment as she has more brain dedicated to language. It’s a female advantage.
Female children speak earlier, long words and sentences, learn words at a faster rate, and the speak more quickly.
Women also have a ‘thicker’ Callopous Callosom. It connects the left and right hemispheres of the Brain. A women’s Callopous Callosom is like a 6 lane superhighway compared to a males country lane. It's a Female advantage.
This makes the women much more pre-adapted to emotional issues (think Oprah). Oprah simply took advantage of her female advantage.
“By birth the brains are visibly different with a structure called the corpus callosom in particular being larger in the female. This arch of white matter connects the two hemispheres of the brain, one largely emotional and the other more rational. This may be the legacy of thousands of years of hunter gatherer existence. This larger connection allows the girl to feel and think or speak at the same time. In boys, however, the reduced connection allows any highly emotional state to suppress the rational thinking processes. Girls are able to multi-task, thinking about and doing more than one thing at a time. For example ironing, watching T.V. and holding a phone conversation all together. The male brain is not suited to this, being more singleminded. Another physiological difference between boy and girl is the size of the heart. The male heart is larger and more powerful, enabling the hunter to use more speed and strength. It also pumps faster, particularly in emotionally charged situations. Emotion is linked to hormonic activity in the bloodstream. Adrenalin is sent to the muscles for example. Boys are able to respond very quickly, with flight or fight, to such chemical messengers, and when the need for them is over can rid the bloodstream of them more quickly. If you combine this information with the suppression of rational processes including language centres it follows that you cannot reason with a boy when emotionally charged, but once the situation is over a boy will calm down quickly. Girls on the other hand are able to harbour emotional feelings for much longer and are far more prone to sulking. Thus a boy can be told off, and ten minutes later be your best friend again, wheras a girl is a different story! There is a sense in which we are all both male and female, there are no definite polar ends to masculinity and femininity but as we grow we develop male or female traits to different extents.”
http://website.lineone.net/~rupert.kirby/rrr/boysachi.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum
Women fair well in commercial areas that rely on areas requiring language and speech.
In evolution females needed language for communicating about gathering with other females and communicating and teaching the children. So female have a biological advantage in entrepreneurship with regards to speech and language.
Dorothy Stimson Bulitt 1892-1989
HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/DOROTHY_STIMSON_BULLITT
Martha Stewart 1941-
HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/MARTHA_STEWART
Oprah 1954-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey
Dorothy Stimson Bullitt
1892 - 1989
In the middle of a muddy field outside their home, a one armed Lumber Jack, placed his daughter on a pony. Every time she fell off, her father put her back on. The little girl of course was Dorothy Stimson. Her father’s life long lesson to her was to ‘learn how to overcome one’s limitations’.
As a 10 year old child, CD Stimson’s right arm became infected after tearing it open on some barbed wire. Despite his mother’s monumental efforts she couldn’t keep him from swimming and doing what all the normal things boys do. The injury became infected and the arm had to be chopped off. His mother insisted that he was treated the same as all his siblings. That included chopping fire wood. His left arm became so powerful he was able to rescue a boy from drowning in a pond. His methods were old school. To learn to swim CD tied a rope around Dorothy’s waist and threw her into the sea from his boat. She became a very able swimmer.
Charles Douglas Stimson was an entrepreneur, a man full of beans, with a great sense of humour. But in business he was straight laced and severe. During the closing of a deal his opposite number, knowing CD’s character, started to play with him by suggesting the very large cheque written in his favour should exclude the 42 cents at the end. With this, the indignant CD, immediately got to his feet and bade them farewell until they were ready to complete the deal as originally agreed. They did the deal.
CD Stimson’s reputation for integrity would grow and build him a great reputation as a loyal reliable and dependable business partner. This in turn helped him build a fortune. He made his money initially in the lumber business. His father had an idea to send all his sons out into the various regions of America’s great outdoors to look after great tracts of timber land he had acquired. This created a network of reliable contacts across North America. During the Klondike gold rush the cost of wood shot up and the sons did well.
CD Stimson branched out into property in downtown Seattle and LA. Stimson broke the trusts and when he did join he held them to ransom before eventually breaking them. Movers and shakers sought him as a partner for their big deals because of his straightforwardness.
Years later Dorothy would reflect on the great joy she felt as she watched her father and his three brothers, all of whom were independently rich, sit for hours, debating, resolving and cementing business deals. This passive learning would become critical for her own survival in later life.
By the time Dorothy was 8 years old CD Stimson had moved his family, which would include brother Thomas abd sister Emma, into a mansion in upscale Seattle. Her upbringing was one of privilege. Dorothy’s mother, Harriett, a former music teacher, who the Seattle Symphony Society and a children’s orthopaedic hospital. Her daughter inherited her sense of duty and her love of classical music. At home, typically for the children of the rich, Dorothy practiced the piano. But it was her love of horses that would provide a glimpse into her future. CD Stimson provided his daughter with horses. Dorothy’s response was to become an accomplished equestrian. She became use to coaxing strong male stallions over hurdles they previously balked at. Unbeknown to her, she would spend much of her life doing the same with high-powered men.
When Dorothy left school in 1908, she was voted most popular student. However, her diary revealed she was a very self-conscious girl, unhappy with herself and desperate to get away from her over controlling mother. Her problem was not untypical. So in 1923 she and two of her closest friends who also wanted to ‘escape’ decided to move to the big city and bright lights of New York City.
One of the chief reasons the girls chose New York was so they could attend concerts and the opera. Dorothy attended singing classes and given the next door apartment was empty she and her flat mate Marjory would knock themselves out bellowing songs accompanied by the piano.
Dorothy had an eye on the entertainment business and contemplated open a craft shop. But it all gave way to the social calendar, attending the fashionable get-togethers of the rich and well to do.
In the lives of the upper classes the social calendar was an important component. Events provided opportunities to find a fitting husband or wife, from a suitable family. By the time she was in her mid twenties many of her friends were married to well to do husbands, from establishment families and had already settled down. Dorothy wasn’t desperate for love and quite suspicious of the motives of her many admirers.
Love at First Sight
The weddings were coming at Dorothy so thick and fast she confided to her diary “I’ll be the last leaf”. It was whilst working for the Red Cross that she was asked help plan the wedding of her friend Dee not long after Marjory’s wedding announcement. The best man was too busy and the replacement had to be picked up for the rehearsals and dinner afterwards.
Dorothy had two other friends in her car who rushed out looking for the stand -in. When they eventually found him he followed them out of the house. He was tall, slim, with high forehead accentuated by a receding hair line, and a gladiatorial chin. In Dorothy’s words “this is a man the likes of which I have never seen before. He was the finest looking piece of man I had ever seen.” His name was Alexander Scott Bullitt.
Bullitt’s was from a prominent Kentucky family, with impeccable credentials. He was a lawyer, educated at Princeton. Both mother and father were esteemed lawyers. His ancestors were settlers who crossed the wild frontiers of the Appalachian Mountains into the territory of Kentury. This was prior to the American hero Daniel Boone, credited with the trail that opened up the territory to Europeans in the late 16th century. Scott’s ancestors also fought alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War.
A story told to Dorothy allowed her to understand the character of the man she was so smitten with. It featured Scott being spotted at the top of a building that housed old retired women one day. People on the ground noticed this young man on the roof looking straight up at the sky. As he moved around looking up a crowd began to form believing him to be a ‘jumper’. The fire brigade was called about the suicidal young man on the roof. As the chief raced upstairs he passed Scott on the way down. The two knew each other and Scott asked the fire chief where’s fire? The chief explained there was no fire but a crazy man on the roof looking to jump. Scott explained he was that crazy man. Typically, he was looking in on his mother’s friend, a resident. He had a great interest in cloud formations and had come up onto the roof to quietly look at the sky.
Dorothy married Scott Bullitt, 15 years her senior in 1918 and set up house in Scott’s home town of Louisville. Dorothy however would never come to terms with domesticity having always relied on servants. To address the smooth running of the house she employed who ever she needed to get the job done and coordinated the effort.
It was a difficult period for all. America was embroiled in WWI. Scott enlisted in the army rising through the ranks. At the end of the war he was among a gaggle of lawyers appointed to the Judge Advocates Office to address the backlog of court-martial cases. Scott’s ambitions, however, did not lay in the law but in politics. Scott was a staunch segregationist. And certainly did not believe in the mixing of the races. But he was progressive. He took Dorothy down to the black district of Louisville. Scott demonstrated to Dorothy the shocking living conditions of the black community there. It made Dorothy realise that Scott’s party, the Democrats, were the only party vaguely interested in addressing abject poverty in America. It was the beginning of what would be a life long association with the Democratic Party and fighting for the underdog.
In 1922 CD Stimson bought his daughter and her husband a beautiful house set in six acres of gorgeous scenery. His fortune, which was up for grabs, caused tensions between Thomas and Scott which threatened to boil over. Coping with the war years was difficult and the challenge of family life provided no respite for Dorothy. Brother Thomas angered his father by undertaking to bring up his kids as Catholics. Scott’s suggestion to name their son, born in 1919, after the boy’s maternal grandfather, pleased the old man greatly. Thomas then resigned from the presidency of his father’s company after failing to carry the board in pursuit of a more aggressive approach to business.
Dorothy fell pregnant again in 1920 whilst working for the Red Cross. She got caught up in the flu pandemic (Spanish Flu) of 1918-1920, which killed over 50 million people worldwide, 7 times more than the casualties of WWI.
It was a, and still is the deadliest natural disaster in human history. Dorothy and the baby just about survived. The child was named Dorothy Pricilla. Pricilla, after her paternal grandmother. This eased the developing tensions between the families. Soon to follow was the third child Harriett, named after her maternal grandmother. The hope clearly being that the ‘even spread of names’ would placate the two families. CD Stimson’s money produced its own peculiar set of family problems and Dorothy’s post natal depression did not help matters any.
As tensions over his fortune mounted CD Stimson decided to get ahead of the problem. In 1928 the mogul called a meeting and drew up a list of all his assets and gave it a value. He then asked Thomas and Dorothy to pick out what they wanted, which amounted to half the total value. When the same two assets were chosen CD would alter the value of it by increasing it, the idea being this would reduce what else could be added to their list. They went backward and forward time and time again. Eventually the assets were apportioned and two separate companies were formed and Dorothy and Scott were untangled financially.
The following year CD Stimson died. Dorothy’s father represented the cornerstone of her life and now he was gone. Two months later the value of the family assets plummeted. From October 1929, to June 1932, Wall Street loss 85 percent of its value ushering in The Great Depression. In 1931 Thomas was dead in a field having broken his neck after crashing his open-cockpit bi-plane. If that wasn’t enough, a year later Dorothy became a widow. At 53 years of age Scott was struck down by liver cancer, leaving his young wife to look after their three small children, during the most shocking economic upheaval in modern history. All the powerful stallions of business and leadership in her world had been removed by death and at a time they were most needed.
The properties Dorothy had inherited were commercial buildings, relying upon commercial rents. Businesses were being wiped-out overnight and the economy was a wreck. Companies who were previously good payers suddenly began defaulting, paid late or simply moved out. To cope with it all Dorothy hired a lawyer to advise her on the way forward. She also approached her cousin Walter Douglas, who managed the “1411 Building” her father had built in the prestigious commercial district of Seattle, with a view to managing the business. He refused. But his words to her echoed in her mind “you're going to have to work”!
The widow was a novice, she thought to herself she knew nothing about business. The difficulties women faced in business during these times were unimaginable. Just to retain guardianship over her children the courts required a $10,000 bond. It was the Depression and few people were in a position to sign a bond worth a quarter of a million in today’s money. Eventually the wife of a lawyer she had approached sympathised with her plight and signed the bond.
The 1411 was one source of income but it was heavily mortgaged. When the banks called her in she didn't have a clue what to tell them. The building had just been opened , still unfinished and the first mortgae payment had yet to be made. They questioned her as to how soon she intended to address the mortgage in these difficult times. The building wasp ractically empty. Those that took leases originally were cleared out by the crash and businesses were not preopared to commit to long term leases. Jnow one knew what was going top be the situation long term. In many respects it look like the end of the American civilisation. Men were jumping out of windows onto the pavement below or going home and quietly killing themselves.
With no one prepared to run the Stimson Reality Company for her there was only one thing for it. She cut her hair, got rid of the black clothing she wore to mourn her husband and went out to work. This time it was not for charity, but in order to protect herself and her family. It was a first. Dressed elegantly, but unthreatening to avoid raising male hackles, she made her way to the 15 storey, Georgian office 1141 building, to work.
From her window she would look down and watch the shuffling breadlines and long winding queues of depositors outside the banks. Not too far from these miserable scenes were the Hoovervilles, makeshift camps, made up of cardboard ‘dwellings’.
America had produced some successful female entrepreneurs such as Madame CJ Walker, Helena Rubinstein and her arch rival Elizabeth Arden. But these women were in cosmetics, an industry a sympathetic to women executives. Dorothy Stimson Bullitt had been dragged kicking and screaming into a man’s world – the commercial property industry. She inherited The Olympic Hotel, the Coliseum Theatre a major share in General Insurance and the Metropolitan Building Company, all under the umbrella of the Stimson Realty Company.
Both Arden and Rubinstein were contemporaries of Dorothy during the depression. But they did well throughout the bleak period. In 1928 Rubinstein sold her American arm of the business to the now defunct business to Lehman Brothers for over $7 million (nearly $70 million in 2010). Just after the Great Depression she bought it back for less than $1 million and restored it to its former glory.
In 1929 Elizabeth Arden turned down an offer of $15 million ($135 million in today’s money) for her business. She cruised through the Great Depression, even turning down $25 million (around $300 million today) just after it had ended.
Dorothy’s customers were companies paying money to do business. Arden and Rubinstein’s businesses were driven by individual female’s buying small ticket items to look good. In the middle of the Great Depression sales of cosmetics and alcohol did not suffer greatly. Whatever allowed people to look or feel good - sold.
Companies were going bust at a rate of knots. Among them were Dorothy’s tenants and as her problems grew her invitations to social events diminished. Those who did not move out of her properties to downscale or as a result of collapse, began paying rents late, others took advantages of clauses to end their tenancies.
The Stimson’s were a very wealthy and influential family. Many of the large companies situated in Seattle had them as owners, board members or influential executives. Often you would find these large companies were shareholders in one another’s business forming interlocking ownership. Whilst learning to read balance sheets, Dorothy had to deal with men who had the inside track on her trying to take advantage of predicament. Cousin Walter (who left her to the wolves) ran a building next door, owned by the Metropolitan building company. As soon as some of their leases were up she’d find them newly moved into her cousin’s building. “Walter Douglas was a stinker of the first order. When father had been president of the Metropolitan building company, they had been no funny business; but with Father Gone, Douglas began taking tenants out of our building into his… Then, and this took the cake, one morning I went in … and there were no doors on the elevator, which always had nice, bronze doors. I called Walter Douglas and asked where are the doors? He replied that he thought the elevators would move a little faster without them. That was nonsense.. I was very angry… the doors was back by noon. She was being treated terribly tenants acting as spies reporting back to competitors but she fought my words.
Dorothy was considered dropping the Metropolitan (and cousin Walter) as the managing agent of her building. She was advised it was suicide like going up against Goliath. When it was explained to her ‘they’ll murder you’ her reply was “they're doing it now”. She had nothing to lose the Metropolitan was in the process of dismantling her business. She grabbed the reins of the business and her own fate.
She lost the income from land leased to a theatre company. Though, after the company went bankrupt they handed Dorothy the building they had built on the land. The lost income was restored after a Hollywood based company took out a new lease. Their point man was so struck by Dorothy’s openness. They became such great friends, he guided her as to how to negotiate and the deal with his company!
Dorothy inherited land used for logging in the Cascades. The land came to her grandfather courteously of the Klondike gold rush in Alaska. During this period America was going through yet another financial panic causing widespread unemployment. Large swathes of the American populous were doing whatever they could join the gold rush.
The impact of a gold rush on business is far reaching. Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump travelled the famous Chilkoot Trail, through the Coast Mountains to Bennett in British Columbia participating in the Alaska Gold Rush in Klondike. So too did Bill Gates’ great grandfather. He arrived in the booming city port of Seattle from Pennsylvania in the 1880s. Gates then followed the gold rush to Alaska. But rather than participate directly in prospecting, these two entrepreneurs serviced the prospectors.
Dorothy’s grandfather inherited his land in the Cascades as a result of a man needing some ‘quick cash’ so he could obtain some supplies and a dog and make his way to the Klondike. He gave granddad a deed as security for a loan. The borrower won the deed gambling and never made it back. As a result Dorothy ended up with massive of acres of beautiful woodland in the untamed American outback. This land now supplemented the falling income from her commercial rental income.
The big transport anchor tenants tried to intimidate her into lowering their rents. Although inexperienced in business she instinctively knew how to handle large powerful stallions (teams of men). She managed to hold them off the banks, keep the transport companies steady and used their tenancy to secure the mortgage. She also maintained the solid relationship between her company and their prestigious flagship tenant, Merrill Lynch.
Every business problem Dorothy was met with she would ask herself what would father do? She began the fight-back by bringing her own building’s management in house. She headhunted one of the Metropolitan’s key personnel (fighting fire with fire) and told him to give the tenants anything they wanted so long as they maintain paying their rent maintaining their leases - whatever it took.
Despite her fight for survival during the Wall Street Crash, Dorothy never abandoned her charity work. Scott Bullitt was a prominent member of the Democratic Party was also a friend of politician Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was nominated to run for the Democrats in the race for the U.S. presidency in 1932. Had Scott lived he was to be included in Roosevelt’s cabinet. Despite Dorothy’s developing and genuine interest in politics she refused an offer from the president to be a delegate in lieu of her husband. She did accept other appointments such as commissioner for the establishment of administration for emergency unemployment relief that directly benefitted the poor.
During her business battles Dorothy maintained her commitment to helping the unfortunate. She maintained a close relationship with the president’s wife Eleanor. Whilst the president and his wife were visiting Dorothy’s home town of Seattle. Desperate to bring to their attention the scourge of Polio, Dorothy persuaded the couple to visit a hospital which she supported. The hospital was full of victims of the disease.
Widespread polio epidemics appeared in the United States. By 1910, most of the world had a ‘sorrow story’ to tell with Polio as its villain. Epidemics became a frequent event, especially during the summer months. These left thousands of adults and children paralyzed whilst the “Great Race” for a vaccine gathered pace.
After 7 years of battling Dorothy eventually emerged from the ashes with a healthy profitable business. Along the way the entrepreneur had wangled property deals taking advantage of the depressed prices. Alongside property was insurance. Dorothy made a bundle as the threat of a Japanese attack loomed producing an opportunity to sell insurance to the owners of large prime commercial real estate in California. The fear was the Japs could attack the east coast’s commercial districts. The US government eventually stepped in to underwrite any business losses due to attack. Dorothy had made a bundle by the time the window had been shut.
Dorothy had become an Amazonian hunter of opportunity. Her style was coaxing, a mix of charm, intuition, patience and emotional intelligence. She found a place in upstate Washington. As far as she was concerned it was among the most beautiful places she had ever come across.
The town had lost its main money earner when the local mill closed down. Times were hard and banks and creditors were foreclosing on debtors. Dorothy was picking up deals by the dozen. Her strategy was to obtain patch works of land in the hope of obtaining enough parcels to join them all together in one large spread.
One guy’s spread was being forced sold by order of the tax office. He was a law unto himself and owed money to everyone in town. He had chased a tax collector off his place with a baseball bat. Dorothy desperately wanted his land and needed to find and tackle him.
She spotted the evasive landowner in the local store and engaged him by talking about soup. Dorothy then mentioned her like to buy the land he owned, “it’s not for sale” he barked. She got him reminiscing about his ‘back in the day’ adventures at the North Pole. He took her for a ride around the land in his beaten up truck. By the time she had finished with him she had the deeds and he had a deposit. She would eventually amass hundreds of acres of land in the region for her family alongside prime real estate in downtown Seattle and Los Angeles.
In 1922 the great inventor Thomas Edison said “The radio craze will die out in time.” He was clearly wrong. Dorothy would help see to it. Boating and shipping were early adopters of radio. Dorothy’s cousin had a fancy boat all fitted out with radio transmitter and receiver. He kept on at to her get involved in the new technology. As a result Dorothy began paying more and more attention to this new source of entertainment and communications. She listened more attentively to the broadcast and realised it was generally crappy. She thought good music on the radio would be the next big thing. She decided to bypass AM radio and look into FM which was cutting edge technology and not in general use.
Her idea was to put a small team together and concentrate on broadcasting high quality music in FM going up against big players like OD Fisher who were AM broadcasters. She filed for a license in 1940 but America’s entry into the world war raging in Europe caused licensing to be suspended. She bided her time and in 1946 she got the license and went about building her radio station and company.
She didn’t stop there. The next big thing was television. In 1949, Dorothy bought an 8 month-old television station. She put a group of investors together with 40% interest raising $700,000 from them. The enterprise was called KING-TV (KING was her radio call-sign). The company continued to expand buying up several stations throughout the USA, becoming a major force in US broadcasting with a reputation for vigorous investigative journalism coupled to high quality.
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Dorothy had not only saved the Stimson family fortune from the ravages of the Wall Street Crash but she expanded it. In 1959 Seattle named her the city’s “First Citizen”. In 1961 she stepped down from the presidency of KING in favour of her son Charles Stimson Bullitt. The decades to follow would see her showered with accolades and doctorates in recognitions of her entrepreneurship and her immense civic work. She was now a living legend.
When Dorothy died in the summer of 1989, aged 97, the business she built was worth $400m. On her deathbed she tried to speak but was unable to. Her children surrounded her bed and knew exactly what she was trying to say - she loved them. Her children made sure she knew they understood.
Born into a white, upper class, wealthy family she reached out and made a difference to all. Her daughter would say she had many cherished friends from all races, countries, and classes.
From 1929 Dorothy’s life was one great and amazing rollercoaster. The property business she succeeded in was hard-fought, the broadcast business she succeeded in was also hard-fought. From pottering around helping charities, being a full-time wife and mother, to a becoming a leviathan in the media industry, Dorothy Stimson battled hard. She harnessed all the ‘stallions’ from her past present and her future to drive through all the adversity she was confronted with. She also used them to take advantage of opportunities brought about by adversity.
Elizabeth Arden
1878 – 1966
“Isn’t it amazing what a woman can do with a little bit of ambition?”
Looking Good
The women who created a world of glamour was a farmer’s daughter. Christened Florence Nightingale Graham, she lived in Ontario, Canada. Florence’s maternal forebears were well off. Her father William was an entrepreneur of modest origins, operated a market garden, and was viewed by his in-laws as unworthy of Florence’s mother, Susan. The young couple decided to elope to Canada from their native Britain to get married.
Florence was the third of four siblings living with her family in the countryside. Young Florence enjoyed country life at first. Looking after the horses was one of her many joys. She would often accompany her father to market, where she observed his pushy sales technique. As a child Florence learned that good looks sell products. She charmed the money out of the pockets of passers-by, perched strategically by her father. But the enemy of the age – tuberculosis – interrupted her young life, seizing her mother. Florence was merely an infant of six years old when Susan passed away. Tuberculosis targeted the poor and the weak. The hard work on the farm, lack of cash and the stress on the body whilst carrying four children in a rural environment took its toll.
Florence’s father tried different things to make money, including the rearing racehorses, but nothing work. It was exactly what Florence’s grandparents had predicted. As a teenager, Florence attempted to emulate her namesake by entering the nursing profession. She soon gave up settling for a position as a dental assistant, a stenographer and eventually a clerk. But for Florence being poor was not an option. She had plans and ambitions.
Escaping From Small Town Life
Florence often created potions that she believed would improve women’s looks. She tried experimenting in her father’s kitchen, often forcing the rest of the family to retreat from the house to avoid being stifled by the stench of obnoxious gases. She ached to get ahead and knew she had to get out of Canada to do so. She decided to move to New York. At the age of 24, Florence took the plunge and left for the big city. Her dad feared the worst. She would be alone and unmarried in a wild gangster-ridden city. But he was powerless to stop her.
She got a job working for E.R. Squibb Pharmaceutical Company as a book-keeper, but ended up spending much of her time studying in their lab. Her big break came in the form of a post as a beautician at Eleanor Adair’s parlour. She battered Adair into submission for a chance to become a treatment attendant, and clients loved the nice girl from Canada. Florence was now exactly where she wanted to be for now.
Strategic Alliance
It wasn’t long before Florence came to the attention of Elizabeth Hubbard, a woman cut from the same cloth and with the same entrepreneurial ambitions. The two women recognised that by forming an alliance they could both make progress. Hubbard had the products and Florence had the touch. They opened a beauty parlour on Fifth Avenue, the centre of the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, in 1909.
The alliance between the two feisty women was to be short-lived. After a series of fiery arguments, they parted company. Florence managed to gain the upper hand. She used her attractiveness to charm the landlord into letting the property to her and not Hubbard, funded by $6,000 ($100,000) that she raised from her brother and an admirer.
Florence used the money to remodel the premises in bright pink. The colour became her signature; gone was the name “parlour” and in came the word “salon”. Florence was big on imagery and marketing, and ‘salon’ was chic. Florence altered her name and the name of the business to Elizabeth Arden. ‘Arden’ came from Tennyson’s biographical poem, Enoch Arden. Florence also added ‘Mrs’ to her new name, aware that Western society regarded single women in business as suspicious. Her target was white women; her unapologetic, unadulterated, quest was for money, and selling beauty was the means.
The Suffragette Movement
Florence’s management techniques were straight from the school of Genghis Khan. It was all about the message. Products had to have classical-sounding names, evoking tales of mythological beauty and the promise of fresh-scented youth. Arden appealed to women approaching their sell-by dates. She gave new hope to plain Janes and those on the wane, all of whom were convinced they could transform themselves if they bought a jar of Florence’s balm. Things moved ahead swiftly and went so well that within six months Florence’s investors had their money back.
The key to the allure of the Elizabeth Arden brand was the movie business. Florence’s secret vice – watching the disreputable nickelodeons – was about to pay dividends. Entrepreneurs like MGM movie mogul Louis Mayer were bringing glamour to the masses in the form of movie stars such as Oscar-nominee Lillian Gish, star of Birth of a Nation. It was actresses like this who set the standard for ordinary women to aspire to. The Elizabeth Arden company capitalised on the opportunity, becoming the first cosmetics brand to advertise in cinemas.
Women were on the rise and Florence had every intention of her company rising with them. In 1912, she signed up as a member of the Suffragette movement, taking part in the big march on Washington on 6th May of that year.
Florence never underestimated the power of publicity. She travelled the whole country with her ballet troupe, who wore the seven colours of her new range of lipsticks. Up until then women had a very narrow choice: one colour which came in three shades (light, medium or dark). The white American female was actually under pressure to remain plain in some respects. The fire-and-brimstone brigade portrayed make-up as the devil’s work. Arden was planning to free women from the tyranny of mediocrity and get rich doing it. As her advertisements said: “Every woman has a right to be beautiful.”
After an inspirational trip to France, Florence introduced modern eye make-up to North America, along with the concept of the makeover. Upon her return from later trips to Paris in 1914 and 1915, she linked up with chemist Fabian Swanson, to produce a “face cream that was light and fluffy like whipped cream”; it was called ‘Venetian Cream Amoretta’. She asked him to throw in a lotion in to go with it and with that a successful collaboration was born. Arden would come up with the most fanciful ideas for a product and her recruit, Swanson, mixed them. What Arden also mixed was the fact that the product was made in New York, but had an Italian name and was marketed as a famous French formula. However, her marketing message was as smooth as her cream.
Mrs. Elizabeth Arden married banker Mr. Thomas J. Lewis that year. They had met previously when she applied for a loan and he turned her down. The poor unwary man was in for a lot more than he bargained for. A new branch was opened in Washington DC and she expanded the Fifth Avenue salon to seven storeys. Elizabeth had to get her banker husband involved to handle the books after being trounced by the taxman for neglecting her accounts. But the taxman is only a problem when you’re making money and Florence was certainly doing that. She now had a thousand workers in salons worldwide, as she competed with the likes of Helena Rubenstein and Dorothy Gray. Arden was the first European-American woman to build a brand using her name. She once claimed, “There are only three American names that are known in every corner of the globe: Singer sewing machines, Coca Cola and Elizabeth Arden.”
Florence was driven by her aversion to poverty, and a desperate desire to avoid the humiliation of dying broke due to some poverty-related illness. During 1920 the Elizabeth Arden range made its debut in Paris. This was quickly followed by salons in Berlin, Cannes, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Toronto. In 1929 Florence turned down an offer of $15 million ($135 million) for the business. She breezed through the Great Depression of 1929 (women still wanted to look good, even in bad times). A few years later she turned down a $25 million ($300 million) offer.
Her rural retreat, bought in 1931, became a racehorse business, in emulation of her father’s dreams. Racehorses cost her money at first but she had a Kentucky Derby winner in 1947. Earnings topped out at $600,000 ($5,500,000) in 1943. It’s not surprising that the horses did well, as the treatment they received was unprecedented: before and after training, they were given massages with expensive Elizabeth Arden creams and oils.
Hell to Live With But Generous
Elizabeth Arden’s strength of character made her hard to live with. She personally hired and fired, and she hated criticism. A couple of typical quotes summed her up: “I don’t want them [staff] to love me, I want them to fear me” and “Standards should be set by me and not imposed on me.”
No one was safe. In 1934, hubby got the boot. By 1938, Florence was the top-earning woman in the country. She spread her wings in 1941, marrying a Russian prince, and in 1943 expanded into clothing. Clothing went well, but the Prince got the elbow after less than 13 months. Four years later she made the cover of Time magazine.
Elizabeth Arden suffered a fatal heart attack in 1966. Surprisingly, in fact quite astonishingly, she left a substantial amount of her $40 million ($183 million) fortune to be divided among her staff – the very people whom she’d ruled with an iron fist to induce fear. She had over one hundred salons spread across the globe.
OPRAH WINFREY 1954 -
“I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being."
During 1861 to 1865, America fought a civil war. Eleven, mainly Southern, states seceded from the ‘United States,’ forming the Confederate States of America (the CSA). In 1865 veterans of the defeated Confederate Army formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and for two hundred years the Klan committed thousands of murderous atrocities against the former slaves and their descendants in the Deep South. The legacy of slavery would severely dampen the fortunes of the black populous socially, economically and politically.
The US Government passed The Civil Rights Act of 1871, designed to protect African Americans from the abuse dished out by the Klan. That year Sanford Elias Winfrey was born in Mississippi (a KKK strong hold), the son of former slaves.
He was the great-grandfather of a child destined to become the most influential woman in America. She would also be critically instrumental in the election of America’s first black President. Her name was of course Oprah Winfrey.
The Power of Television
To begin with, Sanford’s great-granddaughter would become a spiritual icon, to ‘white’ America, often referred to as the “The Church of O”. Whoever she sneezed on would catch a cold. During an interview in 1996 about mad cow disease Oprah Winfrey stuttered the now infamous words: “It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!” The price of beef immediately plummeted.
In 2003 American cable television network, VH1 ranked Oprah third in a vote on the greatest pop culture icon of all time. Only Superman and Elvis were able to beat her! Life magazine called her “America’s most powerful woman” and in 2005 she was voted 9th in a poll on The Greatest Americans of all time.
In 2003, Forbes International listed Oprah as the first black billionaire and the first black female billionaire in global history. Since then she has more than doubled her wealth, making her America’s richest self-made female entrepreneur, hands-down. A 2007 Gallup poll concluded that 73% of American adults held a sympathetic opinion of Oprah. She has ranked time and again among the World’s most admired women.
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born in Mississippi, in a town called Kosciusko, in 1954: the same year technology allowed television broadcasting to go national in the USA .
When Oprah was born her mother Vernita Lee was still only a teenager living in poverty in rural Mississippi, a state with a reputation for oppression against its black citizens.
There was a mix-up with Oprah’s name. The world’s most influential woman’s name was supposed to be Orpah after the biblical character (sister in law of Ruth), but ‘Oprah’ had a ring to it and stuck.
Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee never married and split-up when Oprah – their only child together – was a toddler. Vernon found out he was the father when he received a news clipping announcing the birth in the post, together with a request for baby clothes.
Just after the birth of her child Vernita departed from Milwaukee leaving baby Oprah with her mother, Hattie Mae Bullock. Hattie and her family lived on a scrap of land a few acres in size. All members of the family had to pull their weight as soon as they were old enough.
First Audience
There were chickens and pigs to raise and they worked hard producing their own food. No plumbing meant a constant flow of water required to be brought into the house. Bare foot little Oprah would take on this responsibility. Under the tutelage of her grandmother Oprah gained her love of reading. Hattie’s little grandchild began her speaking career when she started reciting the Bible to the congregation at the United Mississippi Baptist Church on Sundays aged three.
Oprah would play with the animals on the land “playacting” in front them as they formed her audience. She would interview her doll, formed from corncob, which she would perch on a fence. Performances in front of family and grandma’s friends only served to reinforce the little girl’s sense of confidence in front of the public.
Oprah would later highlight “[People] would say to my grandmother, “Hattie Mae, this child sure can talk. She is the talkingest child.” At the age of three she was performing memorised sermons in church. At five the ‘talkative’ child wrote a note to her kindergarten teacher on her first day. Her teacher instantly moved her to first grade after reading the note which Oprah had written insisting she really should be in the grade above because she could already write and knew long words like elephant and hippopotamus. Shortly after the first move up she was moved up again.
Ready For the World at Six
Though Grandma’s tough regime was needlessly punishing, Oprah declared: “I am what I am because of my grandmother; my strength, my sense of reasoning, everything. All that was set by the time I was six.” When Grandma became ill Oprah’s upbringing was again disrupted. She sent off to a boarding-house to live with her mother and aunt (her mother’s half-sister, Patricia) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The neighbourhood was a ghetto and the environment dangerous. Oprah would often spend time collecting, naming and feeding the cockroaches!
Often reliant on welfare, Vernita would frequently leave Oprah and her young brothers and sisters alone with an elder cousin to mind them whilst she worked. The first time Oprah was raped was on one such occasion. The perpetrator was her 19 year-old cousin. Nine year-old Oprah was given some ice cream in exchange for her silence.
Sometime later she would suffer the same indignity at the hands of another family member. This time it was an uncle. And this time it would not be once or twice, but on-going. Despite the abuse, the intelligent young girl thrived in school and at the age of 13 was awarded an educational scholarship. Alas family disruption was never too far away. Oprah became unruly and promiscuous. It was enough to push her mother to exasperation.
One day Oprah, who wore butterfly-rimmed glasses, asked Mum if she could get some specs that were less embarrassing. The answer was no. Inventive Oprah cooked up a scheme. She broke the glasses, turned the place upside down and then called the police! When they arrived she lay there faking amnesia telling them she remembered nothing other than her glasses falling off after being hit in the head by an intruder.
Abuse
Narrowly escaping a detention centre, the rebellious 14 year-old was despatched off to her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon, a former soldier, had a very different attitude to education and discipline to Vernita. Oprah arrived pregnant at her father’s home. The baby boy tragically died at only a couple of weeks old. Her father ensured that his daughter’s life was reconstructed. His clever little girl’s education became his priority.
Vernon lived with his wife Zelma. The couple were unable to have children so Oprah was very much welcomed. For the first time in her life Oprah had her very own room. Then, not long after entering Wharton Elementary School, she was moved up a grade. Her growing love of books was augmented by frequent visits to the library accompanied by Vernon and Zelma. With curfews and other new rules like five new words per day having to be learned (or no dinner), a book a week to be read and reported on, her grades kept at an ‘A’ minimum, she excelled. She was even paid to speak on one occasion, earning herself $500.
Oprah’s topsy-turvy life continued after visiting her mother in Milwaukee. She decided to stay with Mum, who had since had another child in the overcrowded apartment. However, being labelled “gifted” was enough to help her deal with all the difficulties she faced living with her mother in Milwaukee.
Segregated Schools
Oprah came to the attention of teacher Gene Abrams whilst attending Lincoln Middle School in Milwaukee. Abrams organised the precocious young student’s transfer from Lincoln to Nicolet High School (an all white affair) in Glendale, Wisconsin. Only 14 years earlier the US Supreme Court had adjudged segregated schools unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Oprah was Nicolet’s only black student, making her an immediate celebrity.
America was in the midst of a great emotional outpouring. It was around this time the great talk show host, Donohue, took a mike, impromptu, into an American audience on camera. From then on Americans have been pouring out their hearts and private affairs on national television. It was also at this time two iconic figures in the pursuit of equal rights, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, were murdered. America was coming together and expressing their loves, fears and desires. Times were changing, and Oprah was a beneficiary. Reflecting on her school days she said: “In 1968 it was real hip to know a black person, so I was very popular.”
In 1969 Maya Angelou published her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which in many ways echoed Oprah’s early life. The book tells of how three year-old Maya and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother. It ends with Maya’s pregnancy aged 17. Oprah would later say: “I read it over and over, I had never before read a book that validated my own existence” (the two women would each go on to become icons in their own right and great friends with one another). The book gave Oprah perspective.
Vernon’s hard work and focus paid off when Oprah became an honours student gaining entrance to Tennessee State University on a full scholarship to study Speech Communications and Performing Arts. It was the result of her success in a speaking competition.
University was the perfect place for the talented performer who was so at ease in front of a crowd. She became President of the student council, and involved herself with the debating and drama clubs. She even won an invitation to the White House Conference on Youth in 1971. She was also crowned Miss Black Nashville and Miss Tennessee. This was in addition to being crowned Miss Fire Prevention after being chosen to represent them in a beauty pageant. After a local radio interview she was then given a part-time job as an afternoon news reader.
TV Debut
A station manager from a company affiliated to CBS, a major TV network, heard her and thought she sounded great – and he wanted her for television. Oprah was shocked, surprised and overawed by the offer, and kept turning it down again and again. Oprah did what she would do throughout her career: she sought advice from a trusted friend. She was told she was crazy and that’s why she had been studying so hard at university – to get jobs like the one being offered to her. Oprah accepted the job. By the time she was 19 she was the first black co-anchor of an evening news programme in Nashville and still studying at university. She was now making more money part-time than her father was full time.
Oprah moved swiftly through the ranks of various TV companies her obvious talent landing her better and better spots on various news programmes. The move-up was not without its challenges. WJZ in Baltimore hired her (aged 22) to co-anchor the morning news programme. The older white co-host wasn’t pleased with the station’s idea to pair him up with some black, southern, small town, female, upstart. There were complaints about her nose her hair and all sorts. WJZ sent her off to have her hair straightened by a stylist inexperienced in ‘black hair’ and he left her bald as a coot.
Oprah was eventually transferred to a morning talk show called People Are Talking and she was a sensation. WLS-TV in Chicago viewed an audition tape of Oprah and wanted her. But as always commercial success was dogged by personal challenges. Oprah was smoking cocaine: something she would later reveal as one of the hardest things she’s ever had to speak publicly about. It wasn’t so much the drug she was addicted to but the guy she was dating who was smoking it.
Chicago
Aged 29, Oprah moved to Chicago becoming the A.M. Chicago anchor in January 1984 with a salary of $200,000 a year. Their ratings were in the basement before she took over. Oprah brought the magic, shifting its focus to issues of controversy. She immediately took the ratings through the roof. A year later the show was renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Famed music and TV producer Quincy Jones is in town (Chicago) doing some business and turns on the TV in his room. Flipping through the channels he spots Oprah. The chat show host exudes all the qualities he envisages for a character called Sophia in an upcoming project he’s involved with.
The Color Purple
Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg were working on a film based on Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Spielberg was in a Chicago hotel room when he turned on the TV in his room and spotted Oprah. The chat show host exuded all the qualities he envisaged for the character of Sophia. Oprah was cast in the role which, like Maya Angelou’s novel, had some parallels with her early life. It was a hit and Oprah was nominated for an Academy Award.
When King World and ABC came calling for the syndication rights to her TV show, Oprah hit the big time. She sought advice from an associate over dinner. The associate did the maths and recommended she go with King World. She did, and they took the show to nearly 150 cities. Soon after the deal was done Oprah was running around her apartment screaming and hollering waving a cheque for a million dollars above her head. Oprah would eventually own 25% of King World with options to buy more. This lead her to becoming a billionaire. The deal was a first for debut syndication.
After The Color Purple’s staggering success The Oprah Winfrey Show went into the stratosphere. Oprah, with earnings of around $31 million, became the TV industry’s highest paid performer in 1987. Her ratings blew the competition away and she was showered with accolades and awards.
In Full Control
Oprah seized the entrepreneurial reins in 1986, forming her very own production company and naming it Harpo Studios (‘Harpo’ being ‘Oprah’ spelt backwards). By 1988 Harpo was able to wrestle ownership of The Oprah Winfrey Show, making her the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. Within a year the company was earning nearly $56m, of which Oprah’s cut was believed to be $30m. As always, though, Oprah was experiencing turmoil in her personal life. Her brother Jeffery Lee sadly died that year of AIDS.
Behind the scenes Oprah and her team were furiously doing deals sponsored by the success of the product The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah consolidated her position in the market by buying up shares in various TV stations. Her purpose built studio was so large it required a whole block.
The company grew into to conglomerate of media related businesses now named Harpo Inc., with Oprah owning 90%. The balance was owned by entertainment lawyer Jeff Jacobs, who represented Oprah during her A.M. Chicago days. Oprah now began the super-leveraging of her name and brand whilst maintaining full control of it. Forbes magazine described her as “a vertically integrated entertainment powerhouse.”
The media mogul developed Harpo Films into what is now Harpo’s largest division. The film division produces motion pictures and TV films. She also bought the screen rights to various books and purchased the massive Eccentric restaurant in Chicago.
Failure
In April 2000 O Magazine arrived on the newsstands after partnering with Hearst Magazines, It quickly went from being a bi-monthly to a monthly out stripping many of its established industry titles. The initial 850,000 copies were quickly followed by further 500,000. Fortune Magazine referred to the launch of “O” as the most successful start-up ever in the industry. But the great entrepreneur, who became a legend by learning from her mistakes, also made some mistakes in business. Her O At Home spin-off magazine failed to take off and folded soon after launch.
Oprah formed an interactive cable company Oxygen Media, Inc., in 1998 with partners executive Geraldine Laybourne (formerly of Nickelodeon) Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach. The channel concentrates on Oprah’s core audience – women. The brand has been extended to both women’s and men’s clothing via her ecommerce site Oprahstore.com.
In 2006, a $55 million contract was signed with XM Satellite Radio to create a new radio channel, Oprah Radio. In January 2011 Oprah and Disney plan to launch OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network a speciality channel replacing the flagging Discovery Health Channel. Oprah will be the chairwoman with editorial control.
Oprah employs 250 people involved in numerous profitable businesses and is thought to be behind the largest property deal done by a private individual ever. Her contributions to charities are endless, and genuinely worldwide. She’s noted as show-business’ biggest donator to charity in America and is listed among the top 50 most generous philanthropists.
Phoenix
Oprah was born poor, and painfully disadvantaged, in the Deep South state of Mississippi, the epicentre of prejudicial America. She was raped, sexually abused and neglected. But she seized whatever opportunities she could. As a woman living in a ‘man’s world’, she turned negativity into positivity. She monetised her brand, became a billionaire, and now uses her wealth to reach out and help those most vulnerable in society across the globe. As Patricia Sellers of Fortune Magazine and Chair of Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, put it: “Oprah’s life is the essence of her brand and willingness to open up about it on daytime TV helped win the enduring trust of her audience.”
The legacy of slavery spread across America like a glacier stunting the progress of African Americans. But when the racial climate changed the glacier thawed and gaps appeared, representing fleeting opportunities for the nimble, the gifted and the lucky to get through. Sanford Winfrey could never imagine what fortunes changing America would produce for his great-granddaughter and others. Oprah’s own suffering combined with her talent and her resourcefulness provided her with the means to help America heal itself in many ways. Her reward in so doing so would be substantial.
Oprah’s show has always campaigned on behalf of the most vulnerable. Her great wealth now simply extends the process.
George Mair’s book Oprah – The Real Deal was helpful in providing some of the details featured in this story. So too was Ilene Cooper’s book Close Up – Oprah.
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