Media mogul Oprah Winfrey announced her daytime talk show would end after a historic 25-year run. Back in June 2008, BLACK ENTERPRISE Careers/Lifestyle Director Sonia Alleyne sat down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with Winfrey to discuss her extraordinary business empire and how she became the world’s most influential African American entrepreneur.
In June 2008, black enterprise named Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. Its be100s Company of the Year. On the heels of this honor, Winfrey gave an exclusive interview to black enterprise Editorial Director Sonia Alleyne. In the exclusive cover feature, “Oprah Means Business,” she discusses her business beginnings, mistakes, lessons learned, and her defining philosophy. She talks about the winning formula that has taken Harpo Inc. from a five-person production company to a 430-employee multimedia conglomerate that grossed $340 million in 2008 (No. 14 on the be Industrial/Service 100 list). Today, Winfrey is one of a handful of black billionaires across the globe; her net worth estimated at $2.5 billion.
Winfrey, who had planed to unveil the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2009, asserts that divine inspiration, not strategic planning, is the key to her company’s success: “I haven’t planned one thing—ever. I have just been led by a strong instinct, and I have made choices based on what was right for me at the time.” And her business lessons were learned on the job. Winfrey got along for years without management controls or development programs to grow talent as she grew her business. “For too long, I operated this business like a family. After a while, you can’t see everybody; you can’t talk to everybody,” she says.
Over the years, Winfrey has also learned another vital lesson—that she is her own best counsel. When veteran TV executive Geraldine Laybourne decided to start the Oxygen cable network for women, she courted Winfrey as an investor. “My lawyer at the time and lots of other people around me said, ‘How are you going to let there be a woman’s network and not be a part of it?’” Winfrey recalls. The network struggled with programming and branding, and Winfrey eventually reduced Harpo’s commitment. “It was an ego decision and not a spirit decision, which is how I make all my decisions,” she says. “The only decisions that get me in trouble are ego decisions.”
Winfrey promises that OWN will be more expansive than anything she’s ever developed. “My intention is for it to live beyond me, for it to be a living network of possibilities for people in their own lives,” she explains. “To be able to say that my life was used in service, to help people come to their highest potential—I would do it even if my name wasn’t attached to it.”
The complete exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey can be found HERE on www.BlackEnterprisise.com.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.