Business Wisdom From Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey opened up to Black Enterprise in the June issue to talk about lessons learned during her years in business.

Winfrey who has build a $2.5 billion empire said she is her guided by instinct. She says none of her business ventures have come out of forethought. "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."

Winfrey admits to learning some hard lessons as a result of her nontraditional approach to business. Starting with just five employees, she got along for years without management controls or development programs to grow talent as she grew the 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. “And now you have people managing people who were never managers before.”

Winfrey said she does not mistreat her employees, "I don't yell at people, I don't mistreat people. I don't talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it."

Winfrey also told Black Enterprise editorial director Sonia Alleyne, "In her 22 years of business, she remembers canceling only three meetings due to dire situations."

She also said money is not what she thinks about when judging a new venture. "I don't care about money, It throws people off all the time in business meetings. They start shuffling papers."

According to Winfrey, Harpo is very Google like in providing it's employees with office amenities. "There is a cafe on premises as well as Club Harpo, a workout facility, and the Spa at Harpo."

She said, "there's no life for the Oprah show, because there is no Oprah show without me; but there is, certainly, for the brand--absolutely. That is why I wanted to create OWN [Oprah Winfrey Network]. And OWN was a vision that I had in 1992. Wrote in my journal...One day I'm going to create my own network. And I think it should be called OWN. Those initials just work out: O-W-N.

So when the Oxygen team came along, I literally thought, Gee, I thought it was supposed to be called OWN. And I am very much connected to my spiritual self, so I said Jesus, I thought it was supposed to be called OWN. Am I getting my OX's and my OW's confused? And I went along with the Oxygen plan, because 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 you not be part of it? How are you going to do that?"

Winfrey said investing in Oxygen Network was not the right decision for her because it was driven by ego. "It was an ego decision and not a spirit decision, which is how I make all of my decisions. The only decisions that get me into trouble are ego decisions."

Black Enterprise magazine named Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. its 2008 BE100s Company of the Year.