Billionaire! How the Ultra-Rich Built Their Fortunes through Good and Evil
And What You Can Learn from Them
Now Available from Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle editions!
Buy Now from Amazon.com

All along, her ability might have boiled down to spin. The same skills that made her a hit with America's women, the ability to create the illusion of opulence, might have been the same ability that made successes of the self-promoting contract with Kmart, the magazine deal with Time-Warner, and the TV show that launched in 75% of the national market. She renovated her blue-collar past with the same touch that took her Turkey Hill farmhouse from fixer-upper to suburban dream.

Martha Stewart - Media, Furnishings

Just how does someone rise from modest finances to a billionaire simply by promoting her expertise in centerpieces and desserts? In the quest to understand how people get rich, the curiosity known as Martha Stewart is of particular interest. Part of the explanation is that Stewart never really was a billionaire. Like Bill Gates who never could have liquidated his entire net worth, it is impossible for Stewart to separate herself from the company for which she is the product.

Some might consider this a petty technicality but it became a threatening reality when Stewart was jailed. The same media-obsessed system that created her financial success threatened to destroy it. With charges some argued were motivated more by an over-zealous prosecutor in a post-Enron environment than by any real sense of justice, there was a genuine fear that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia would be of little value. When the jail sentence took away her freedom, the resulting drop in stock also took away her billionaire status.

Martha Stewart, paper billionaire, was created by irrational market valuation. Stock values are supposed to be based on estimates of the company's earnings. The principal product of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was a person, and her appeal was subject to the whim of public tastes. Besides the obvious threat of an untimely death, there was always a possibility she could lose her appeal.

Whereas other companies can survive changing markets by launching new product lines, MSLO was tied to just one. All CEOs must plan for succession. Unlike Walt Disney's company, which was well position to continue without its very public founder, the future of MSLO without Stewart was unclear.

So if she was never really a billionaire, does it matter? She still had a phenomenal amount of money. I'll never be able to speak for her but I do know one thing about people and money: no matter how much you have, there's always the sense it isn't quite enough. A billionaire having their net worth cut in half probably feels the same as a millionaire having their net worth cut in half.

Whether her wealth was real or on paper, how one of America's best-known personalities achieved tremendous financial success proves that the paths to wealth are many and varied.

Buy Billionaire Now from Amazon.com
Wealthonomics - Pittenger