Successful Business Women Part 1: Oprah Winfrey

There are plenty of successful business people out there. But sometimes it’s nice to hear a story about someone similar to you, or who have been in a worse place than you, just to give yourself extra validation that yes, success beyond helping someone else (your boss) achieve their dreams and goals is absolutely achievable! In this series, we’ll be talking about some of the greatest successful business women of today and sharing their struggles before they achieved the great work we know them for.

Oprah Winfrey

Media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, philanthropist

A true rags to riches story, Oprah was born in poverty to a single teenage mother. Living the first years of her life with her grandmother, often wearing potato sacks for clothes, grandma taught her to read before she was three. Oprah has given credit to her influence, saying she gave her a positive sense of herself and encouraged her to speak in public ever since she could talk.

Pain to Success

After moving to Milwaukee with her mother and eventually running away from home, she was molested various times and became pregnant at age 14 (the baby died prematurely). Later on, her mother sent Oprah to live in Tennessee with a man she calls her father who was strict but encouraging and made her education a priority. Earning honors, excelling in a speech club, and later winning Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, she attracted the attention of a local radio station and landed a job working the evening radio show while still in high school. She was so good she was moved to a daytime talk show and went on to boost a Chicago station from number three to number one. After that, she started her own “female-owned business” – a production company – and continued to build on her success and popularity.

This is obviously barely a snapshot of Oprah’s life, but bottom line: no one gave her anything. She created herself. No excuses, no whining, no laziness. Pure drive, determination, and a belief in herself that was more powerful than the extreme environment she found herself in for the vast majority of the most impressionable years of her life.

You Have The Power

While some people blame their environments for being the way they are, and for “suffering” the way they suffer, Oprah used these harsh experiences to learn, grow stronger, and become the amazing influence she is today for people all around the world. This isn’t even mentioning all the lives she’s been able to save and help monetarily along the way because of her success (one year raising over $7 million for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa, not including her own donation and creation of a $40 million girls academy).

With a past like this, and all the privileges many of us have today, it seems like it should be utterly simple, and our duty to achieve greatness at such a high level, and even higher. The world we live in would transform very quickly.

If you are aware of the great things you can accomplish in your lifetime, and are perhaps already working on them, but need a little push financially to get the ball rolling, like a small business loan, line of credit, or merchant cash advance, please contact WCM today and we’ll be very happy to help you out!

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Richard Bransonbusiness success with Worldwide Capital Management