Martha Stewart: Crafter, Baker, and Empire-Maker

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Martha Stewart is the original influencer. She created a personal brand long before anyone with a phone and Instagram account could do it. Stewart's brand was not based on pre existing startup in television, movies, music or sports. She built her brand on the quality of her catering, cooking and entertaining. Everyone who uses social media for branding and promotion can learn from her and is indebted to her. To use an athletic analogy, she is the Roger Bannister of social media. Bannister is the first person who ran a mile in less than four minutes. A record that experts thought was insurmountable. After Bannister, more than a thousand other people have run a sub 4 minute mile. Once Bannister did it, other runners knew they could could do it too. The same phenomena is true with Martha Stewart. She inspired hundreds of people to build the brand with mad skills and hard work. In the spirit of Roger Bannister, this is a sub 4 minute interview. I want to show you how much can be accomplished in such a short time if you're a Martha Stewart. We cover four switching careers, pursuing perfection, judging others and leaving a legacy. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here's Martha Stewart. What did it take to make the transition from stockbroker to media mogul?

Well, it took reduced commissions, commissions started to be negotiated and I thought, ah, you know what? I'm going to try something new. I was making a lot of money as a stockbroker, but I really wanted to raise my daughter. I had a child by then. I wanted to decorate my new home, an old farmhouse in Connecticut. And I wanted to just branch out. And that's exactly what I did. Just I started my own business, a catering business, which led to the writing of books, which led to the creation of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia company.

What skills did it take? I understand why you did it, but did you have to make a total transactional relationship as a stockbroker and now you're. It's a very different world.

The skill sets were pretty much the same, believe it or not. And when you're a stockbroker, you're dealing with people's money, their appetite for growth in their financial wealth. In catering, which I then went into, you're dealing with another appetite. You were dealing with people's desire to entertain their friends and to. And to eat delicious foods. So it wasn't so different. And they were the same kind of people, actually, the same. The same people. I just transitioned from advising them on stock investments to advising them on entertaining.

My impression of you is that you're a perfectionist. And I have this question that, do you think your perfectionism caused success or did your success cause perfectionism?

One of my first television programs, my very smart nephew, pointed out that I said perfectly perfect 22 times. And that made me think, oh, I better stop talking like that, because people are going to start making more fun of me than they have already. But. But actually, I really feel that if you're going to be a teacher, you should try to do whatever you're doing as perfectly as possible. You cannot teach a math equation and have an imperfection in it, if possible. You cannot teach a chemistry formula and have something go wrong that's not good. So you can't make a recipe that's half good or will only work up to a point. It has to be perfect. So I think it started with perfectionism and ended with success.

If you were to tell me to put three names together, Snoop, Martha Stewart, and Justin Bieber, I would have told you, impossible. That's impossible. No overlap. Venn diagram. And yet it obviously happened. So what have you learned from Snoop?

Oh, I've learned a lot from Snoop. I've learned a lot about growing up in a totally different environment, that I grew up in a little town in Nutley, New Jersey, when everybody cares about education, cares about what you do every single day, and the. The life that those children led at the time of Snoops growing up in Compton, California. But I did meet his mother, and I must say, her values were pretty much the same as my mother's values. So we're not so different. And people in America are not so different from one another. It's just. It's environmental. And I think that our desires are to learn, to be good, to create. And that's what I think we learn from each other.

Think people are more similar than they are different.

I think people are a lot more similar than they are different.

What comes to mind when you think about what you want your legacy to be.

Well, I'm the daughter of two teachers and I think my business has really been teaching through the pages of our magazines, through our television programming, through through our whatever we do in terms of product development. I think I teach people how to live better and I think my legacy will be as one of group of people who really did teach a lot of good things.

So there you have it. In less than four minutes, the dynamics of switching careers, how pursuing perfection leads to success, the Zen of judging people, and why leaving the legacy of teaching is a fine goal for us all. I promised that you'd learn how to shell garlic in this episode, but couldn't fit it into the interview and meet Roger Bannister's record. So I'll tell you the foolproof, time tested Martha Stewart way to Perfectly shelled garlic cloves. Put them in a bowl and hold a plate over the bowl or use a sealable plastic container and shake as hard as you can for 30 to 45 seconds. Voila. Perfect Cloves. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. My thanks to my perfect producer, Jeff C. And my perfect promoter, Peg Fitzpatrick. Mahalo to the people at the Elevate Conference in Toronto for helping me gain access to Martha Stewart next week. Episode features Mr. Influence Social Psychologist Bob Cialgini. If you ever have to change people's minds, you cannot miss it. This is Remarkable People.