August 12, 2019 • 34 mins
We all know her as an iconic television host, actor and producer, but Oprah Winfrey came from a difficult background and overcame many hardships to achieve success.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Oprah Winfrey is a
name that is synonymous with success. But before she made
the talk show and media industry her own, and before
she gave out the cars like candy, she had a
rocky mountain of this fortune to overcome a traumatic childhood.
(00:27):
Some missteps along her career path, and some big gambles
may have occasionally knocked her down, but never out. This
is Oprah on the Brink. So, Hi, I'm Jonathan Strickland
(00:56):
and I'm Aerial Casting, and this episode comes to us
courtesy of a super fans suggestion. Yeah, thank you Jonathan
Strickland for listening. And yeah, so I I when we
first started talking about this show and we were talking
about companies, I also wanted to make sure that we
focused on people, entrepreneurs, various folks in business who have
(01:19):
really incredible stories, and Oprah's is definitely one of those. Yeah,
so much so that she's been ast to give talks
on it, and write books about it and and give
life advice from it. I do want to say, uh,
She's had some break moments throughout, but most of them
were actually starting off with her brink moment, which is
her childhood. I also want to warn listeners, uh, much
(01:43):
like Uber Hilton, there there is some adult material in
this episode. Yeah, there's some. There's some trigger warnings. There's
a lot of very dark stuff that happened in her past,
I mean as dark as it gets, really, and we
want to make sure you guys are aware of that
before we jump into it. We don't want to blindside. Yeah,
if you're listening with your kids, you may want to change,
(02:05):
change to the Lego episode. But it is something that
Oprah has talked about openly, which is phenomenal. It's such
an incredibly difficult subject to tackle and um and she
of course has done it with incredible poise and empathy,
as has been the hallmark of her work throughout her career.
(02:25):
So we are going to make sure that we were
going to talk about it, We're going to try and
treat it as respectfully as possible, because it does really
tell us a lot about Oprah as a person, someone
who is able to overcome a childhood that I think
for a lot of people would have been the start
to a really ugly descent. Yes, yes, just something that
(02:48):
would plague them throughout their adulthood as well. And it's
really inspiring again because it's not that it didn't affect her.
It's not that she didn't struggle. She just always out
the other side. Bet. Yeah. So this is one of
those also a brink story where we're not talking about
something crashing and burning, but rather going to heights that
(03:11):
were unimagined. Yes, so we're going to start, and we're
going to start by saying that Oprah was born in Mississippi.
In we're saying that because it's true. She once described
her birth as the result of and I quote a
one day fling under an oak tree in the quote,
But really what she means there is her parents were
very young. Her father was twenty, her mother was eighteen.
(03:33):
I think from that description of a one day fling,
you can imagine that this was not a planned pregnancy. No,
they weren't married. They never married. They broke up right
after her birth. Now, she was a very smart child,
and she loved reading and she loved public speaking, both
thanks to her grandmother who saw those talents in her
and encouraged them from the age super young age of two. Yeah.
(03:56):
So she would start reading books with Oprah and then
she'd take her to church to talk in front of
the car agregation. I could just imagine Oprah age two,
standing in front of the congregation, thing unaccustomed as I
am the public speaking. She was so smart that when
she requested of her school to skip kindergarten because she
was past that, they agreed. Yeah, they said that, yeah,
you are already at reading at a first grade level,
(04:17):
and then first grade was no challenge, and she would
also get to skip second grade. Yes, so she skipped
two grades early, early on, like she was clearly going
to be the youngest person in her class, but was
so eager to learn that that didn't slower down at all. Yeah. Now,
despite all of these good things, as we said, her
(04:40):
childhood was full of of hurdles. She was living in poverty,
her family was often unwelfare. She went to live with
her mother after her grandmother passed passed away. She bounced
around States living with her mother and her father, and
her mom was working at a maid as a time
and had another honor and was struggling to make ends
(05:01):
meet and didn't really have time to spend with Oprah
or her stepsister. Uh So, then Oprah got sent to
live with her dad for a while and that was good. Yeah, yeah,
but it was I mean it was it was not
a stable experience for a child to have, was kind
of moving around. Despite that, she was still excelling in
(05:24):
many ways. She won five dollars a prize money for
giving a speech at the tender age of seven years old.
That's pretty awesome. After that, after third grade, I heard, uh,
I read conflicting reports. So some said that she visited
her mom. She was sent to visit her mom in
(05:45):
the summer after school and decided to stay there. And
some reports say that her mom kind of demanded her back. Uh.
And I don't know which is true, but regardless to say,
she went to go live with her mom again. Now
here's where we're getting into our first major trigger warning moment,
because when Oprah was just nine years old, she was
(06:05):
sexually abused by her cousin. And as it turned out,
that was not the only time that would happen to her.
She would suffer abuse from other friends of the family,
actually people who were friends with her mom and family. Yeah,
and it was or family members. Yeah. And so that
(06:28):
was I can't even begin to process how traumatic it was.
And as we said she couldn't really talk with her mom.
Her mom was too busy, she didn't feel comfortable bringing
the subject up. These people were close with her mother. Yeah,
this was a source of deep shame for her, and
it wasn't something that she felt she could talk to
(06:48):
anyone about. Yeah. Now, despite that, one of her teachers
at the time, I saw how much she loved reading
and helped her get transferred to an all white high school,
which had its own stead of struggles obviously. Yeah. Yeah,
and Oprah just obviously was dealing with a whole lot
(07:08):
and started acting out. I think anybody who didn't feel
like they had a venue in which they could work
through these problems would act out. Well. Yeah, so she's
she's been the victim of abuse and then is going
to a prestigious school where she's the only person of
color in the school. Yeah. It's again, like I can't
(07:30):
even It just makes her story all the more remarkable
that she faced that and came out the other side. Yeah. Yeah,
but during this time, she started stealing, dating older men, uh,
running away from home, and her mom looked at all
this behavior and instead of saying how can I help
(07:51):
sent her to live back with her dad. But her
dad was it turned out to be the perfect person
to take over from there, because he ended up giving
her structure and discipline and still love and support too.
So it wasn't like she suddenly went to an abusive,
like fairytale villain father figure. He would. He genuinely loved
(08:15):
her and supported her, but also gave her that structure
that she really needed, and she began to two. She
really valued that. Yeah. Despite that, Yeah, there was something
else that was a huge problem. Yes, at fourteen, she
found out she was pregnant as apparently actually the result
(08:37):
of one of those cases of abuse. Yes, and she
hid this from her parents for most of her pregnancy,
some reports say seven months. One one report I read
said that she didn't even tell her dad until she
went into labor. Yeah, that this was something she was
so deeply ashamed of, again not having had any you know,
control in the matter, but feeling like somehow she was
(09:00):
to blame for it. She felt like she could not
come forward. And she gave birth to a boy, and
he sadly passed away not too long after that in
the hospital. He did not survive. But despite this, and
I'm sure there was a morning period. Oh no, I
(09:23):
mean she so. I I don't know if I could
talk about this without crying. Um. In a later interview,
she was in Australia and they actually asked her did
she ever consider naming the boy? And she said that
she hadn't at the time, but later when she was
(09:43):
talking with someone, they brought this up, and so she
decided to name her child. Uh and his name was Canan.
Oh wow, yeah, gosh, now I'm crying. Well, we're both softies.
I mean, this is again a very emotional story. It is, um.
But here's here's the thing though, after this, she yeah,
(10:06):
she didn't let it stop her. And and this is
the turning point for all of the wonderful things in
her life and all of the growth that she has seen,
and all of the amazing contributions she's given to society.
And we will talk about that, but first we're going
to take a quick break and dry our eyes. So,
(10:28):
as we said before the break, while we were getting
all weepy, uh, Obrah had a lot on her plate
emotionally speaking. Right, she had the death of her son,
which clearly was going to be an enormous impact on
her life. But she also had this stable uh influence
(10:49):
on her with her father, and she was able to
come back after this terrible experience and and really apply
herself in her school work. And she credits her father
for that, for all of his support. Yeah, she joined,
she got on the honor roll. She became the president
of her school student council. She won a college scholarship
(11:13):
in an oratory contest. She attended the White House Conference
on Youth in nine, and she was asked to represent
a local radio station in a misfire prevention pageant, which
she won. Yeah, this is where I learned that there's
a misfire prevention pageant. She also would spend some time
getting some valuable work experience that taught her that she
(11:37):
did not like it. She worked at a grocery store
her father worked in the barbershop next door, and she
says that the experience was terrible, largely because she was
told not to talk to customers. And if there's one
thing that we've learned about Oprah already before we even
get into her incredible success in her career, she loves
talking to people. Yes, yes, And also, oh my mom
(12:02):
worked for a while as a as a grocery store cashier,
and her favorite part of the job was talking to people.
So and I know when I go to the store,
and now, some people don't like being talked to, but
I love it. So Yeah, some people who are behind
you sometimes get a little bit. I get that. So
she didn't. She clearly needed to be in a in
(12:22):
a world where she was going to be talking with people,
not prevented from doing so. Yes, But luckily that was
right around the corner. She got a part time job
reading news for the same radio station that she had. Um,
and she got that job while she was still in
high school. And she graduated high school. You're early, No
(12:43):
big surprise there. Um. And she started in college and
she was majoring in communications, and she was pretty active
outside of her school work too. Yeah. She won Miss
Black Tennessee and Miss Tennessee and kept her job throughout college.
And they moved her from radio news anchor to TV
(13:05):
news anchor, so she went from being a voice on
the radio to actually having a presence on television news. Yeah.
When when she was nineteen, she actually turned the job
down twice and one of her teacher said, no, this
is what people go to college for to get jobs
like this. Take the job. She was saying, well, if
I take this job, I'm going to have to drop
out of college because I can't maintain a college, you know,
(13:29):
career as well, and also taking a television And it
is kind of funny because it shows one how much
she values education, the fact that she had turned the
job down twice. But it's also funny because when you
have your professor saying, why are you going to college?
It's so you can get a job, right, Well, this
(13:49):
is the job you're meant for, and they're offering it
to you now, so you can actually bypass the rest
of the college party and get the job. That's actually
something that I'm seeing more and more. That's why a
lot of people are going to trade schools nowadays, because
a college degree doesn't necessarily mean a job, and in
some fields like programming or I experience can mean more
(14:11):
than that college degree. Sure, yeah, because technology changes so quickly.
At this point, I would like to go back to
college just for the experience of learning, because I love
it so much too, but without without the goal of
you know, this is so that I can land a
job once I get out. If I could go back
to college without having to write essays, I would be
so happy you kind of do it every week for
(14:34):
this show. I know, so I don't need to do
that in college. Let's get back to Oprah. So she
decides she will take this job, which was landbreaking, right,
This was this was an incredible thing because she would
become Nashville's first African American female news co anchor and
the youngest one. On top of yeah, yeah, Well, in
(14:55):
seventy six, she switched stations and states and started working
at an ABC of afiliate in Maryland. She had been
working for a CBS affiliate and she was there also
as a news anchor, and the studio said, this is great,
We're gonna We're gonna push her arrival to the show
to broaden our viewership. But that was just the public face. Yeah,
(15:19):
so they were trying to leverage her to get more viewers,
a more diverse group of viewers in the Maryland area.
But at the same time, there were issues going on
behind the scenes, a lot of the stuff that you
would suspect, you know, things like you had various types
of harassment based on the fact that she is black,
(15:41):
she's a woman. Yeah, that's also that she would tend
to come across as being too empathetic or sympathetic on camera.
According to the other producers and news anchors, that that
she was getting too emotionally involved in the stories, and
the prevailing view was that news anchors needed to maintain
(16:02):
kind of an emotional distance from the stories they were covering.
I mean, over thought it was a bad fit herself
because she she felt like she was exploiting the people
she was talking to when she was interviewing them and
discussing their trauma and their tragedy. Can you tell me
what it felt like when your husband that kind of stuff.
So maybe it was a boon when after seven months
(16:24):
they demoted her for lack of objectivity telling although they shouldn't,
they shouldn't have said that she was unfit for television news.
That's that's a little mean. Yeah, So she wasn't a
good fit for their version of TV news. And so
it turns out like this is one of the stories
that everyone points to, like Oprah herself got fired before
(16:46):
she found her great success. Fired is probably too strong
a word, but they were trying to find a better
fit for her, and so that fit ended up being
a move to a morning talk show. Rather than a
news show. Yeah. It was called People Are Talking, and
she was hired as a co host to interview celebrities
and she loved it. Yeah. She would stay on with
(17:09):
that show for almost a decade, eight years. Yeah. Yeah,
And other people loved her so much that she was
offered her a show in Chicago called AM Chicago, her
own show. Yes, so she would no longer be a
co host featured on a show. She actually was the
key person. It was her show, and and it turns
(17:31):
out that people liked it. Yeah. In less than a year,
it became the most popular talk show in the city. Yeah.
So it turns out that the traits that had made
her quote unquote unfit to be a news anchor were
exactly the ones that audiences were connecting with on her
talk show, which admittedly different format. Right, you're not you're
not relating the news in a talk show format. But
(17:54):
Oprah would address her guests with sort of an openness
and empathy that became her trademark throughout her career. And
she wasn't tied down to having to be sort of
this emotionless objective personality on the news. And looking at
her career and looking at the twenty five years she
had the Oprah Winfrey Show, which we'll get into in
(18:14):
a second, she still talked with people about trauma. She
still talked with them about tragedy, but she was able
to do so in a way that sympathize. Yeah, it
almost came across as being a therapeutic experience as opposed
to like, this terrible thing happened to you tell us
all about it so that we can get ratings. And
(18:35):
so by the end of her first year and in
Chicago under this show, uh, she she had made a
pretty penny, Yes, around thirty million dollars. That's a lot.
That's a lot of money. Yeah, And they changed the
name of the show smartly to the Oprah Winfrey Show,
and thus history is made. And so it remained a
(18:58):
regional show or a couple of years, yes, until eighty six,
when the show at Nationals. She arranged that she would
own the show at that point. Very wise. So this
is also another hallmark of Oprah's success is not just
that she had great drive and she was so like
(19:20):
she just loved talking to people so much, but that
she had and still does have incredible business instincts and
and acumen yeah, and you know, she started her own
production company around this time, Harbro Productions, being Oprah backwards.
And during all this she was in the color Purple
(19:42):
and got nominated for an Academy Award. Not coming from
an acting background, although she has done plenty of it, yes, well, yes,
since then especially, but you know, she wasn't She wasn't
coming from the world of theater or the world of
the silver screen. You know, she was known for her
news and talk show work, but not like not like acting,
(20:06):
which is a different skill set, but she clearly was
quite good at that as well. Yes, So over the
course of the show's years, she had lots of topics.
She had some really impressive interviews. She had one with
Michael Jackson, which was an incredibly hard interview to land
because he didn't like talking with people, and uh and others. Um.
(20:30):
And she even won more than one Daytime Emmy Awards,
quite a few actually, and so skip ahead, like we could,
if we went year by year, it would just be
and she continued to totally kill it. So by the
middle of the nineties she was worth three hundred forty
five million dollars and was was cited as being the
(20:53):
most wealthy woman, the richest woman in the entertainment industry. Yes,
and throughout the nineties and two thousands she continue you
to act. She wrote best selling books and diet books.
She started a woman focused production company, Oxygen Media. She
started a website, a book club, which has been so
(21:14):
I know tons of authors. We both know tons of authors,
and we know how how big a boost it is
to be featured on oprah winfrees book Club. To get that,
because she's such a trusted name that when people saw
her talking about a book, they would go out and
buy copies of that book. It was almost a guarantee
(21:35):
to get on the best seller list. Yes, that that
book club has also grown to astronomical heights. Yeah. She's
also started many charities, the Angel Network, which she's donated
millions of dollars too and has it has also raised
millions of dollars. She started the oprah Winfree Foundation and
the oprah Winfree Operating Foundation. Also uh she worked to
(21:58):
have the National Child Protection passed and this act, which
some people called the Oprah Bill um created a nationwide
database of convicted child abusers as a way to help
kids to keep them from going through the same thing
she went through as a kid. Yeah. Yeah, it was
the whole idea of protecting children. And by the two thousand's, Uh,
(22:22):
this is gonna sound like a brink moment, Oprah was
no longer a millionaire. But it wasn't a bring moment
like that because she was a freaking that I like it.
It was very convincing, uh. And she went back to
her original roots in her career line, not by opening
(22:42):
a grocery store, but by starting a radio channel on
XM Radio. And she also launched the The Oprah Magazine
periodical that year and that's where everything stopped, right. No, No.
By two thousand and three, her book club became the
largest in the world, critically acclaimed, and in two thousand five,
(23:03):
she made number one on the Forbes Power Celebrity List.
And we're not quite done with Oprah just yet because
there's so many more accomplishments to talk about, but we'll
do that right after we take this quick break. Okay,
So Oprah dominated in the talk show scene, Like there
(23:26):
are certain names that you can rattle off for talk
shows like Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Lake, Monto Monto, Williams, Heraldo Rivera. Yeah, ye,
Jerry Springer. But but, but she was the most popular,
and she was the one who was not like a
lot of those talk show hosts, not all of them,
(23:48):
but Jerry Springer certainly were known for almost a circus
like kind of atmosphere, like it felt like it was
playing to the lowest common denominator, and Obrah was more
about trying to connect with an audience on a more genuine,
sincere level. Yes, that was her goal. Whether she accomplished
it all the time or not is a matter of debate.
(24:10):
I would say that the person who I think most
kind of emulated her her approach and talk shows might
be Ellen de Generous maybe, which is who replaced her
in two thousand and eleven, when Oprah retired after five
seasons of The Oprah Winfree Show. Yeah. So she had
been incredibly successful, but she felt that it was time
(24:31):
to step back and do some other stuff. Yes, but
she was really nice about it. I wouldn't call the
succession planning so much as allowing people a grieving period.
She warned viewers that she would be leaving the show
two years early, two years early in two thousand nine. Yeah,
so it wasn't like one day you go to the
Oprah win Free taping and she's just like, oh, so,
(24:52):
by the way, I'm done, And the last episode bombshell
she gave She gave people plenty of warning. This is
also that those two years were also when we saw
some of the most extravagant giveaways during her her show.
That's like you get a car and you get a
car that that whole thing came from that era as well. Yeah,
but it wasn't the end for Oprah. Obviously, She's still
(25:14):
doing things things. She started her own TV network called Own,
the Oprah Winfrey Network in partnership with my old employer,
Discovery Media. Yes, it was as a couple of owners
ago when How Stuff Works was part of Discovery Media,
and I remember seeing that we were also part of
(25:36):
the same family as Own and thinking, does this mean
I get to meet Oprah? It did not. Yes, Well,
Discovery Media invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this company,
and over did too. At this time, she was worth
three billion dollars, I want to say three billion dollars
and the goal of the network was to be full
(25:58):
of meaningful, mindful and creative pro gramming. Now, it was
not a mega blockbuster hit the gate. No, the first
year had really poor ratings and programming that just didn't
do great. They were doing a lot of one offs
and documentaries and and and heartfelt pieces, but they didn't
really have series that people could invest in and watch
(26:20):
for seasons. Yeah, where you'd go and tune in episode
after episode. Yeah. So in the second year, staff was
changed up. They brought in experts from Oprah's production team,
they brought in Discovery Media experts, and then Oprah herself
became more hands on. Um some stuff says that she
(26:41):
just didn't know how to run a network per se
at the beginning of it. There were there were some
holes in knowledge there. Well, I mean, I would imagine,
like anything, if you're going into a brand new thing,
there's gonna be a you know, a learning curve that
you're gonna have to hit, and owning a network seems
like it's a steep curve. Yes. And they spent a
(27:03):
lot more money on the channel by the end of
the turnaround, about five million, and they partnered with Tyler
Perry to bring in those series that people would tune
in for and watch, and by mid two twelve, ratings
were on the rise. And they were looking hoping to
be cash positive by mid two and so this was
(27:23):
something actually that ended up being a bit of a
blow to Oprah just because it didn't come easily. Yeah,
as she had not not to say that, you know,
everything has to come easily to her for it to
be satisfying. But it was new to her to have
an experience where she was tackling something and it didn't
go as well as she had planned right off the bat. Yeah,
(27:45):
it said that. It made her her question her confidence
and even sent her into a bit of a depression.
But as you see, she worked to make this Instead
of saying, well, this didn't work, it's a bad idea,
she worked to make the network successful and she came
out of her depression and she launched back into the
Forbes list of most Powerful celebrities in two thousand and two.
(28:07):
Fift she would buy up ten of wait Watchers in
a partnership with the company, and she also became one
of the spokespeople for White Watchers. And she also had
her own forty two million dollar custom jen and multiple
homes in multiple places, including one in Georgia where we record,
(28:29):
and she even has a street named after her I
have not been invited over to our house yet. Considering
that I didn't ever get a chance to meet her
when we were both part of Discovery, I think is
a massive oversight on her part. I'm so sorry. It's fine,
it's fine, I'm fine. Anyhow. Uh. In two thousand eighteen,
(28:49):
Open received a Lifetime Golden Globe Award Lifetime achievement, and
she then in vested in a chain of restaurants. What yeah,
healthy healthy food restaurants, just to expand outside of just media.
Oh yeah, you know, because you don't want to. I mean,
(29:11):
you're three billion dollars. You don't want to just rust.
I mean you're invested in weight Watchers, You're invested. You've
written books about eating healthy and living healthy, so you're
invested in in healthy options. I get the feeling that
this is coming from a genuine place too. It's not
not just like here's an opportunity to make money, but
here's an opportunity to promote a lifestyle that can help people. Yes.
(29:33):
Also in June two eighteen, she signed a deal to
create content for Apple Now starting this year. The year
of nineteen, her worth had dropped a bit. She was
down to two point six billion dollars, So I guess
you know things are tight. I mean it's still not
too shabby. No, not at all, not at all. So
(29:54):
here's some some lessons that Arials put together based upon
what we've learned of Oprah and her life. Yeah, I
think we covered a lot of them, just saying that, Yeah,
if if at first you don't succeed, try try again.
But also it's important to realize what you're calling is
and work for it. So if you find something you
(30:14):
truly love, work towards that. It's not always going to
be easy. Yeah, you're not necessarily guaranteed to succeed right away.
You're not even guaranteed to succeed at all. You can
work very hard and not succeed. But if it's if
it's pursuing something you truly love, then it is often
worth the effort, even if the in destination isn't what
(30:36):
you had planned, what you had in mind. Yeah, and
I think that's good advice because, uh, you know, she's
saying like, hard work is part of it, Being passionate
about what you want to do is another part of it,
and being realistic is a third part. And you have
to keep all those things in balance. Also, it's important
to realize when it's time to move on to the
(30:57):
next thing. We've talked about so many companies where they
keep trying to reinvent their own wheel. You know, they
have a success, and instead of finding the next success,
they just keep trying to revitalize. Yeah, let's let's put
it out but in a different color. It's gonna it's
gonna revitalize the entire company. Yeah. And so I think
(31:17):
Oprah actually took this from Michael Jackson from an interview
someone was talking about Michael Jackson where they said he
saw the success of Thriller and he spent the rest
of his life chasing that phenomenon. And she didn't want
to spend the rest of her life chasing the phenomenon
of the Oprah Winfrey Show. So she realized it was
time to move on to something else, a new and
exciting And she had a passage in a in her
(31:41):
book The Seeds that You Particularly Liked. Yes, she said,
your life is not static. Every decision, every setback, or triumph,
is an opportunity to identify the seeds of truth that
make you the wondrous human being that you are. It's
pretty good, pretty good. Yeah. I was like, I can't,
I can't. This is her life lesson. I can't say
(32:01):
it better than her. Yeah, So we definitely wanted to
to cover Oprah because of her remarkable achievements and her
amazing story like just where she came from and where
she ended up and um and I think you know
that kind of story, it's very inspiring. I hope that
other people for generations find it inspiring and find it
(32:25):
a way to kind of fuel their own efforts to
achieving equal maybe different, but equal amazing heights and whatever
they chase, and will be sure to be you know,
we'll we'll cover other individuals like we've done. We've did
with Conrad Hilton and now with Oprah Winfrey, but we'll
we'll likely cover some other folks too, you know. Obviously,
(32:47):
I think at some point we'll have to talk about
Steve Jobs, because he's so synonymous with technology and success
and and his story is also remarkable. I mean, you're
talking about a person who founded a company, got kicked
out of the company, came back to the company, and
turned it around. Um, not by himself, but that's kind
of how the narrative goes. But if there are other
people in business or just other businesses that you would
(33:10):
love us to cover in the brain. You know, these
stories of incredible triumph or incredible failure that you think
are valuable and people need to know more about. You
should send us an email and let us know what
those are. So what's the email address, Ariel? Well, the
email address is feedback at the Brink Podcast dot Show,
and Ariel reads all of them. I do, and then
(33:33):
she tells me about them, and then I respond to
all of them. Yes, Ariel actually is very good at this,
and that's one of the many reasons why I'm so
thankful to have her as my co host. Seriously, you guys,
your emails are like the best part of my day
other than recording to Jonathan. Of course, you're so sweet,
So keep sending those emails because she only gets to
record with me like once a week, so it's the
(33:55):
only thing that's sustaining her people, That's what I'm saying. Also,
you can go to our website that's the Brink Podcast
dot Show that you're going to find an archive of
all of our past episodes as well as links to
information about us, and you can go check that out.
It's pretty cool, especially if you want to make sure
that whatever suggestion you have hasn't already been covered by us.
(34:16):
Off the show. And that's it for this week. I
have been Jonathan Strickland and I've been aerial casting. Business
on the Brink is a production of I Heart Radio
and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(34:36):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Oprah Winfrey is a
name that is synonymous with success. But before she made
the talk show and media industry her own, and before
she gave out the cars like candy, she had a
rocky mountain of this fortune to overcome a traumatic childhood.
(00:27):
Some missteps along her career path, and some big gambles
may have occasionally knocked her down, but never out. This
is Oprah on the Brink. So, Hi, I'm Jonathan Strickland
(00:56):
and I'm Aerial Casting, and this episode comes to us
courtesy of a super fans suggestion. Yeah, thank you Jonathan
Strickland for listening. And yeah, so I I when we
first started talking about this show and we were talking
about companies, I also wanted to make sure that we
focused on people, entrepreneurs, various folks in business who have
(01:19):
really incredible stories, and Oprah's is definitely one of those. Yeah,
so much so that she's been ast to give talks
on it, and write books about it and and give
life advice from it. I do want to say, uh,
She's had some break moments throughout, but most of them
were actually starting off with her brink moment, which is
her childhood. I also want to warn listeners, uh, much
(01:43):
like Uber Hilton, there there is some adult material in
this episode. Yeah, there's some. There's some trigger warnings. There's
a lot of very dark stuff that happened in her past,
I mean as dark as it gets, really, and we
want to make sure you guys are aware of that
before we jump into it. We don't want to blindside. Yeah,
if you're listening with your kids, you may want to change,
(02:05):
change to the Lego episode. But it is something that
Oprah has talked about openly, which is phenomenal. It's such
an incredibly difficult subject to tackle and um and she
of course has done it with incredible poise and empathy,
as has been the hallmark of her work throughout her career.
(02:25):
So we are going to make sure that we were
going to talk about it, We're going to try and
treat it as respectfully as possible, because it does really
tell us a lot about Oprah as a person, someone
who is able to overcome a childhood that I think
for a lot of people would have been the start
to a really ugly descent. Yes, yes, just something that
(02:48):
would plague them throughout their adulthood as well. And it's
really inspiring again because it's not that it didn't affect her.
It's not that she didn't struggle. She just always out
the other side. Bet. Yeah. So this is one of
those also a brink story where we're not talking about
something crashing and burning, but rather going to heights that
(03:11):
were unimagined. Yes, so we're going to start, and we're
going to start by saying that Oprah was born in Mississippi.
In we're saying that because it's true. She once described
her birth as the result of and I quote a
one day fling under an oak tree in the quote,
But really what she means there is her parents were
very young. Her father was twenty, her mother was eighteen.
(03:33):
I think from that description of a one day fling,
you can imagine that this was not a planned pregnancy. No,
they weren't married. They never married. They broke up right
after her birth. Now, she was a very smart child,
and she loved reading and she loved public speaking, both
thanks to her grandmother who saw those talents in her
and encouraged them from the age super young age of two. Yeah.
(03:56):
So she would start reading books with Oprah and then
she'd take her to church to talk in front of
the car agregation. I could just imagine Oprah age two,
standing in front of the congregation, thing unaccustomed as I
am the public speaking. She was so smart that when
she requested of her school to skip kindergarten because she
was past that, they agreed. Yeah, they said that, yeah,
you are already at reading at a first grade level,
(04:17):
and then first grade was no challenge, and she would
also get to skip second grade. Yes, so she skipped
two grades early, early on, like she was clearly going
to be the youngest person in her class, but was
so eager to learn that that didn't slower down at all. Yeah. Now,
despite all of these good things, as we said, her
(04:40):
childhood was full of of hurdles. She was living in poverty,
her family was often unwelfare. She went to live with
her mother after her grandmother passed passed away. She bounced
around States living with her mother and her father, and
her mom was working at a maid as a time
and had another honor and was struggling to make ends
(05:01):
meet and didn't really have time to spend with Oprah
or her stepsister. Uh So, then Oprah got sent to
live with her dad for a while and that was good. Yeah, yeah,
but it was I mean it was it was not
a stable experience for a child to have, was kind
of moving around. Despite that, she was still excelling in
(05:24):
many ways. She won five dollars a prize money for
giving a speech at the tender age of seven years old.
That's pretty awesome. After that, after third grade, I heard, uh,
I read conflicting reports. So some said that she visited
her mom. She was sent to visit her mom in
(05:45):
the summer after school and decided to stay there. And
some reports say that her mom kind of demanded her back. Uh.
And I don't know which is true, but regardless to say,
she went to go live with her mom again. Now
here's where we're getting into our first major trigger warning moment,
because when Oprah was just nine years old, she was
(06:05):
sexually abused by her cousin. And as it turned out,
that was not the only time that would happen to her.
She would suffer abuse from other friends of the family,
actually people who were friends with her mom and family. Yeah,
and it was or family members. Yeah. And so that
(06:28):
was I can't even begin to process how traumatic it was.
And as we said she couldn't really talk with her mom.
Her mom was too busy, she didn't feel comfortable bringing
the subject up. These people were close with her mother. Yeah,
this was a source of deep shame for her, and
it wasn't something that she felt she could talk to
(06:48):
anyone about. Yeah. Now, despite that, one of her teachers
at the time, I saw how much she loved reading
and helped her get transferred to an all white high school,
which had its own stead of struggles obviously. Yeah. Yeah,
and Oprah just obviously was dealing with a whole lot
(07:08):
and started acting out. I think anybody who didn't feel
like they had a venue in which they could work
through these problems would act out. Well. Yeah, so she's
she's been the victim of abuse and then is going
to a prestigious school where she's the only person of
color in the school. Yeah. It's again, like I can't
(07:30):
even It just makes her story all the more remarkable
that she faced that and came out the other side. Yeah. Yeah,
but during this time, she started stealing, dating older men, uh,
running away from home, and her mom looked at all
this behavior and instead of saying how can I help
(07:51):
sent her to live back with her dad. But her
dad was it turned out to be the perfect person
to take over from there, because he ended up giving
her structure and discipline and still love and support too.
So it wasn't like she suddenly went to an abusive,
like fairytale villain father figure. He would. He genuinely loved
(08:15):
her and supported her, but also gave her that structure
that she really needed, and she began to two. She
really valued that. Yeah. Despite that, Yeah, there was something
else that was a huge problem. Yes, at fourteen, she
found out she was pregnant as apparently actually the result
(08:37):
of one of those cases of abuse. Yes, and she
hid this from her parents for most of her pregnancy,
some reports say seven months. One one report I read
said that she didn't even tell her dad until she
went into labor. Yeah, that this was something she was
so deeply ashamed of, again not having had any you know,
control in the matter, but feeling like somehow she was
(09:00):
to blame for it. She felt like she could not
come forward. And she gave birth to a boy, and
he sadly passed away not too long after that in
the hospital. He did not survive. But despite this, and
I'm sure there was a morning period. Oh no, I
(09:23):
mean she so. I I don't know if I could
talk about this without crying. Um. In a later interview,
she was in Australia and they actually asked her did
she ever consider naming the boy? And she said that
she hadn't at the time, but later when she was
(09:43):
talking with someone, they brought this up, and so she
decided to name her child. Uh and his name was Canan.
Oh wow, yeah, gosh, now I'm crying. Well, we're both softies.
I mean, this is again a very emotional story. It is, um.
But here's here's the thing though, after this, she yeah,
(10:06):
she didn't let it stop her. And and this is
the turning point for all of the wonderful things in
her life and all of the growth that she has seen,
and all of the amazing contributions she's given to society.
And we will talk about that, but first we're going
to take a quick break and dry our eyes. So,
(10:28):
as we said before the break, while we were getting
all weepy, uh, Obrah had a lot on her plate
emotionally speaking. Right, she had the death of her son,
which clearly was going to be an enormous impact on
her life. But she also had this stable uh influence
(10:49):
on her with her father, and she was able to
come back after this terrible experience and and really apply
herself in her school work. And she credits her father
for that, for all of his support. Yeah, she joined,
she got on the honor roll. She became the president
of her school student council. She won a college scholarship
(11:13):
in an oratory contest. She attended the White House Conference
on Youth in nine, and she was asked to represent
a local radio station in a misfire prevention pageant, which
she won. Yeah, this is where I learned that there's
a misfire prevention pageant. She also would spend some time
getting some valuable work experience that taught her that she
(11:37):
did not like it. She worked at a grocery store
her father worked in the barbershop next door, and she
says that the experience was terrible, largely because she was
told not to talk to customers. And if there's one
thing that we've learned about Oprah already before we even
get into her incredible success in her career, she loves
talking to people. Yes, yes, And also, oh my mom
(12:02):
worked for a while as a as a grocery store cashier,
and her favorite part of the job was talking to people.
So and I know when I go to the store,
and now, some people don't like being talked to, but
I love it. So Yeah, some people who are behind
you sometimes get a little bit. I get that. So
she didn't. She clearly needed to be in a in
(12:22):
a world where she was going to be talking with people,
not prevented from doing so. Yes, But luckily that was
right around the corner. She got a part time job
reading news for the same radio station that she had. Um,
and she got that job while she was still in
high school. And she graduated high school. You're early, No
(12:43):
big surprise there. Um. And she started in college and
she was majoring in communications, and she was pretty active
outside of her school work too. Yeah. She won Miss
Black Tennessee and Miss Tennessee and kept her job throughout college.
And they moved her from radio news anchor to TV
(13:05):
news anchor, so she went from being a voice on
the radio to actually having a presence on television news. Yeah.
When when she was nineteen, she actually turned the job
down twice and one of her teacher said, no, this
is what people go to college for to get jobs
like this. Take the job. She was saying, well, if
I take this job, I'm going to have to drop
out of college because I can't maintain a college, you know,
(13:29):
career as well, and also taking a television And it
is kind of funny because it shows one how much
she values education, the fact that she had turned the
job down twice. But it's also funny because when you
have your professor saying, why are you going to college?
It's so you can get a job, right, Well, this
(13:49):
is the job you're meant for, and they're offering it
to you now, so you can actually bypass the rest
of the college party and get the job. That's actually
something that I'm seeing more and more. That's why a
lot of people are going to trade schools nowadays, because
a college degree doesn't necessarily mean a job, and in
some fields like programming or I experience can mean more
(14:11):
than that college degree. Sure, yeah, because technology changes so quickly.
At this point, I would like to go back to
college just for the experience of learning, because I love
it so much too, but without without the goal of
you know, this is so that I can land a
job once I get out. If I could go back
to college without having to write essays, I would be
so happy you kind of do it every week for
(14:34):
this show. I know, so I don't need to do
that in college. Let's get back to Oprah. So she
decides she will take this job, which was landbreaking, right,
This was this was an incredible thing because she would
become Nashville's first African American female news co anchor and
the youngest one. On top of yeah, yeah, Well, in
(14:55):
seventy six, she switched stations and states and started working
at an ABC of afiliate in Maryland. She had been
working for a CBS affiliate and she was there also
as a news anchor, and the studio said, this is great,
We're gonna We're gonna push her arrival to the show
to broaden our viewership. But that was just the public face. Yeah,
(15:19):
so they were trying to leverage her to get more viewers,
a more diverse group of viewers in the Maryland area.
But at the same time, there were issues going on
behind the scenes, a lot of the stuff that you
would suspect, you know, things like you had various types
of harassment based on the fact that she is black,
(15:41):
she's a woman. Yeah, that's also that she would tend
to come across as being too empathetic or sympathetic on camera.
According to the other producers and news anchors, that that
she was getting too emotionally involved in the stories, and
the prevailing view was that news anchors needed to maintain
(16:02):
kind of an emotional distance from the stories they were covering.
I mean, over thought it was a bad fit herself
because she she felt like she was exploiting the people
she was talking to when she was interviewing them and
discussing their trauma and their tragedy. Can you tell me
what it felt like when your husband that kind of stuff.
So maybe it was a boon when after seven months
(16:24):
they demoted her for lack of objectivity telling although they shouldn't,
they shouldn't have said that she was unfit for television news.
That's that's a little mean. Yeah, So she wasn't a
good fit for their version of TV news. And so
it turns out like this is one of the stories
that everyone points to, like Oprah herself got fired before
(16:46):
she found her great success. Fired is probably too strong
a word, but they were trying to find a better
fit for her, and so that fit ended up being
a move to a morning talk show. Rather than a
news show. Yeah. It was called People Are Talking, and
she was hired as a co host to interview celebrities
and she loved it. Yeah. She would stay on with
(17:09):
that show for almost a decade, eight years. Yeah. Yeah,
And other people loved her so much that she was
offered her a show in Chicago called AM Chicago, her
own show. Yes, so she would no longer be a
co host featured on a show. She actually was the
key person. It was her show, and and it turns
(17:31):
out that people liked it. Yeah. In less than a year,
it became the most popular talk show in the city. Yeah.
So it turns out that the traits that had made
her quote unquote unfit to be a news anchor were
exactly the ones that audiences were connecting with on her
talk show, which admittedly different format. Right, you're not you're
not relating the news in a talk show format. But
(17:54):
Oprah would address her guests with sort of an openness
and empathy that became her trademark throughout her career. And
she wasn't tied down to having to be sort of
this emotionless objective personality on the news. And looking at
her career and looking at the twenty five years she
had the Oprah Winfrey Show, which we'll get into in
(18:14):
a second, she still talked with people about trauma. She
still talked with them about tragedy, but she was able
to do so in a way that sympathize. Yeah, it
almost came across as being a therapeutic experience as opposed
to like, this terrible thing happened to you tell us
all about it so that we can get ratings. And
(18:35):
so by the end of her first year and in
Chicago under this show, uh, she she had made a
pretty penny, Yes, around thirty million dollars. That's a lot.
That's a lot of money. Yeah, And they changed the
name of the show smartly to the Oprah Winfrey Show,
and thus history is made. And so it remained a
(18:58):
regional show or a couple of years, yes, until eighty six,
when the show at Nationals. She arranged that she would
own the show at that point. Very wise. So this
is also another hallmark of Oprah's success is not just
that she had great drive and she was so like
(19:20):
she just loved talking to people so much, but that
she had and still does have incredible business instincts and
and acumen yeah, and you know, she started her own
production company around this time, Harbro Productions, being Oprah backwards.
And during all this she was in the color Purple
(19:42):
and got nominated for an Academy Award. Not coming from
an acting background, although she has done plenty of it, yes, well, yes,
since then especially, but you know, she wasn't She wasn't
coming from the world of theater or the world of
the silver screen. You know, she was known for her
news and talk show work, but not like not like acting,
(20:06):
which is a different skill set, but she clearly was
quite good at that as well. Yes, So over the
course of the show's years, she had lots of topics.
She had some really impressive interviews. She had one with
Michael Jackson, which was an incredibly hard interview to land
because he didn't like talking with people, and uh and others. Um.
(20:30):
And she even won more than one Daytime Emmy Awards,
quite a few actually, and so skip ahead, like we could,
if we went year by year, it would just be
and she continued to totally kill it. So by the
middle of the nineties she was worth three hundred forty
five million dollars and was was cited as being the
(20:53):
most wealthy woman, the richest woman in the entertainment industry. Yes,
and throughout the nineties and two thousands she continue you
to act. She wrote best selling books and diet books.
She started a woman focused production company, Oxygen Media. She
started a website, a book club, which has been so
(21:14):
I know tons of authors. We both know tons of authors,
and we know how how big a boost it is
to be featured on oprah winfrees book Club. To get that,
because she's such a trusted name that when people saw
her talking about a book, they would go out and
buy copies of that book. It was almost a guarantee
(21:35):
to get on the best seller list. Yes, that that
book club has also grown to astronomical heights. Yeah. She's
also started many charities, the Angel Network, which she's donated
millions of dollars too and has it has also raised
millions of dollars. She started the oprah Winfree Foundation and
the oprah Winfree Operating Foundation. Also uh she worked to
(21:58):
have the National Child Protection passed and this act, which
some people called the Oprah Bill um created a nationwide
database of convicted child abusers as a way to help
kids to keep them from going through the same thing
she went through as a kid. Yeah. Yeah, it was
the whole idea of protecting children. And by the two thousand's, Uh,
(22:22):
this is gonna sound like a brink moment, Oprah was
no longer a millionaire. But it wasn't a bring moment
like that because she was a freaking that I like it.
It was very convincing, uh. And she went back to
her original roots in her career line, not by opening
(22:42):
a grocery store, but by starting a radio channel on
XM Radio. And she also launched the The Oprah Magazine
periodical that year and that's where everything stopped, right. No, No.
By two thousand and three, her book club became the
largest in the world, critically acclaimed, and in two thousand five,
(23:03):
she made number one on the Forbes Power Celebrity List.
And we're not quite done with Oprah just yet because
there's so many more accomplishments to talk about, but we'll
do that right after we take this quick break. Okay,
So Oprah dominated in the talk show scene, Like there
(23:26):
are certain names that you can rattle off for talk
shows like Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Lake, Monto Monto, Williams, Heraldo Rivera. Yeah, ye,
Jerry Springer. But but, but she was the most popular,
and she was the one who was not like a
lot of those talk show hosts, not all of them,
(23:48):
but Jerry Springer certainly were known for almost a circus
like kind of atmosphere, like it felt like it was
playing to the lowest common denominator, and Obrah was more
about trying to connect with an audience on a more genuine,
sincere level. Yes, that was her goal. Whether she accomplished
it all the time or not is a matter of debate.
(24:10):
I would say that the person who I think most
kind of emulated her her approach and talk shows might
be Ellen de Generous maybe, which is who replaced her
in two thousand and eleven, when Oprah retired after five
seasons of The Oprah Winfree Show. Yeah. So she had
been incredibly successful, but she felt that it was time
(24:31):
to step back and do some other stuff. Yes, but
she was really nice about it. I wouldn't call the
succession planning so much as allowing people a grieving period.
She warned viewers that she would be leaving the show
two years early, two years early in two thousand nine. Yeah,
so it wasn't like one day you go to the
Oprah win Free taping and she's just like, oh, so,
(24:52):
by the way, I'm done, And the last episode bombshell
she gave She gave people plenty of warning. This is
also that those two years were also when we saw
some of the most extravagant giveaways during her her show.
That's like you get a car and you get a
car that that whole thing came from that era as well. Yeah,
but it wasn't the end for Oprah. Obviously, She's still
(25:14):
doing things things. She started her own TV network called Own,
the Oprah Winfrey Network in partnership with my old employer,
Discovery Media. Yes, it was as a couple of owners
ago when How Stuff Works was part of Discovery Media,
and I remember seeing that we were also part of
(25:36):
the same family as Own and thinking, does this mean
I get to meet Oprah? It did not. Yes, Well,
Discovery Media invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this company,
and over did too. At this time, she was worth
three billion dollars, I want to say three billion dollars
and the goal of the network was to be full
(25:58):
of meaningful, mindful and creative pro gramming. Now, it was
not a mega blockbuster hit the gate. No, the first
year had really poor ratings and programming that just didn't
do great. They were doing a lot of one offs
and documentaries and and and heartfelt pieces, but they didn't
really have series that people could invest in and watch
(26:20):
for seasons. Yeah, where you'd go and tune in episode
after episode. Yeah. So in the second year, staff was
changed up. They brought in experts from Oprah's production team,
they brought in Discovery Media experts, and then Oprah herself
became more hands on. Um some stuff says that she
(26:41):
just didn't know how to run a network per se
at the beginning of it. There were there were some
holes in knowledge there. Well, I mean, I would imagine,
like anything, if you're going into a brand new thing,
there's gonna be a you know, a learning curve that
you're gonna have to hit, and owning a network seems
like it's a steep curve. Yes. And they spent a
(27:03):
lot more money on the channel by the end of
the turnaround, about five million, and they partnered with Tyler
Perry to bring in those series that people would tune
in for and watch, and by mid two twelve, ratings
were on the rise. And they were looking hoping to
be cash positive by mid two and so this was
(27:23):
something actually that ended up being a bit of a
blow to Oprah just because it didn't come easily. Yeah,
as she had not not to say that, you know,
everything has to come easily to her for it to
be satisfying. But it was new to her to have
an experience where she was tackling something and it didn't
go as well as she had planned right off the bat. Yeah,
(27:45):
it said that. It made her her question her confidence
and even sent her into a bit of a depression.
But as you see, she worked to make this Instead
of saying, well, this didn't work, it's a bad idea,
she worked to make the network successful and she came
out of her depression and she launched back into the
Forbes list of most Powerful celebrities in two thousand and two.
(28:07):
Fift she would buy up ten of wait Watchers in
a partnership with the company, and she also became one
of the spokespeople for White Watchers. And she also had
her own forty two million dollar custom jen and multiple
homes in multiple places, including one in Georgia where we record,
(28:29):
and she even has a street named after her I
have not been invited over to our house yet. Considering
that I didn't ever get a chance to meet her
when we were both part of Discovery, I think is
a massive oversight on her part. I'm so sorry. It's fine,
it's fine, I'm fine. Anyhow. Uh. In two thousand eighteen,
(28:49):
Open received a Lifetime Golden Globe Award Lifetime achievement, and
she then in vested in a chain of restaurants. What yeah,
healthy healthy food restaurants, just to expand outside of just media.
Oh yeah, you know, because you don't want to. I mean,
(29:11):
you're three billion dollars. You don't want to just rust.
I mean you're invested in weight Watchers, You're invested. You've
written books about eating healthy and living healthy, so you're
invested in in healthy options. I get the feeling that
this is coming from a genuine place too. It's not
not just like here's an opportunity to make money, but
here's an opportunity to promote a lifestyle that can help people. Yes.
(29:33):
Also in June two eighteen, she signed a deal to
create content for Apple Now starting this year. The year
of nineteen, her worth had dropped a bit. She was
down to two point six billion dollars, So I guess
you know things are tight. I mean it's still not
too shabby. No, not at all, not at all. So
(29:54):
here's some some lessons that Arials put together based upon
what we've learned of Oprah and her life. Yeah, I
think we covered a lot of them, just saying that, Yeah,
if if at first you don't succeed, try try again.
But also it's important to realize what you're calling is
and work for it. So if you find something you
(30:14):
truly love, work towards that. It's not always going to
be easy. Yeah, you're not necessarily guaranteed to succeed right away.
You're not even guaranteed to succeed at all. You can
work very hard and not succeed. But if it's if
it's pursuing something you truly love, then it is often
worth the effort, even if the in destination isn't what
(30:36):
you had planned, what you had in mind. Yeah, and
I think that's good advice because, uh, you know, she's
saying like, hard work is part of it, Being passionate
about what you want to do is another part of it,
and being realistic is a third part. And you have
to keep all those things in balance. Also, it's important
to realize when it's time to move on to the
(30:57):
next thing. We've talked about so many companies where they
keep trying to reinvent their own wheel. You know, they
have a success, and instead of finding the next success,
they just keep trying to revitalize. Yeah, let's let's put
it out but in a different color. It's gonna it's
gonna revitalize the entire company. Yeah. And so I think
(31:17):
Oprah actually took this from Michael Jackson from an interview
someone was talking about Michael Jackson where they said he
saw the success of Thriller and he spent the rest
of his life chasing that phenomenon. And she didn't want
to spend the rest of her life chasing the phenomenon
of the Oprah Winfrey Show. So she realized it was
time to move on to something else, a new and
exciting And she had a passage in a in her
(31:41):
book The Seeds that You Particularly Liked. Yes, she said,
your life is not static. Every decision, every setback, or triumph,
is an opportunity to identify the seeds of truth that
make you the wondrous human being that you are. It's
pretty good, pretty good. Yeah. I was like, I can't,
I can't. This is her life lesson. I can't say
(32:01):
it better than her. Yeah, So we definitely wanted to
to cover Oprah because of her remarkable achievements and her
amazing story like just where she came from and where
she ended up and um and I think you know
that kind of story, it's very inspiring. I hope that
other people for generations find it inspiring and find it
(32:25):
a way to kind of fuel their own efforts to
achieving equal maybe different, but equal amazing heights and whatever
they chase, and will be sure to be you know,
we'll we'll cover other individuals like we've done. We've did
with Conrad Hilton and now with Oprah Winfrey, but we'll
we'll likely cover some other folks too, you know. Obviously,
(32:47):
I think at some point we'll have to talk about
Steve Jobs, because he's so synonymous with technology and success
and and his story is also remarkable. I mean, you're
talking about a person who founded a company, got kicked
out of the company, came back to the company, and
turned it around. Um, not by himself, but that's kind
of how the narrative goes. But if there are other
people in business or just other businesses that you would
(33:10):
love us to cover in the brain. You know, these
stories of incredible triumph or incredible failure that you think
are valuable and people need to know more about. You
should send us an email and let us know what
those are. So what's the email address, Ariel? Well, the
email address is feedback at the Brink Podcast dot Show,
and Ariel reads all of them. I do, and then
(33:33):
she tells me about them, and then I respond to
all of them. Yes, Ariel actually is very good at this,
and that's one of the many reasons why I'm so
thankful to have her as my co host. Seriously, you guys,
your emails are like the best part of my day
other than recording to Jonathan. Of course, you're so sweet,
So keep sending those emails because she only gets to
record with me like once a week, so it's the
(33:55):
only thing that's sustaining her people, That's what I'm saying. Also,
you can go to our website that's the Brink Podcast
dot Show that you're going to find an archive of
all of our past episodes as well as links to
information about us, and you can go check that out.
It's pretty cool, especially if you want to make sure
that whatever suggestion you have hasn't already been covered by us.
(34:16):
Off the show. And that's it for this week. I
have been Jonathan Strickland and I've been aerial casting. Business
on the Brink is a production of I Heart Radio
and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(34:36):
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Business on the Brink News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Ariel Kristen Kasten
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