Not Quite Her Plan

Andrea Jung decided to take a training manager job at Bloomingdale. She believed the experience would help her when she would eventually take up law. As it turned out she found her talent in marketing. After some company changes she became an executive vice president at Neiman Marcus.  Seeking new challenges she joined Avon Products, Inc. in 1993 as a consultant.

The company was not doing well at the time and Avon’s top executive liked what Jung was doing and in 1994 hired her as president of product marketing group in the U.S.   While keeping traditional brands she also introduced new ones which proved successful.  She was also instrumental in improving the marketing image of Avon. 

To make a long story short, in 1999, she became the first female CEO of Avon in its long 116 year history. She then basically turned around what seemed like an old struggling company and even gave it a more global presence. A good part of the company’s revenue now comes from abroad and it has about 6.5 million sales representatives all over the world.

Recently, it was announced that after 12 years as CEO, the company is now searching for her replacement. It’s said that this is based on her recommendation to give the company new focus. She will stay as chairman for the next two years and help with the CEO search as well as assist with the strategic vision of the company. The company’s stock had dropped 45% and there have been charges that Avon was involved in bribing foreign officials.

Her leaving is also not quite as she planned. Nevertheless she has made her mark at Avon, and in the corporate world.

“Have Fun And The Money Will Come”

That’s the business philosophy of Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur, who through his venture capital organization Virgin has over 300 branded companies all over the world. As you probably know Virgin is part of the name in practically any business venture, be it Virgin Books, Virgin Media, Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic Airways, etc.  Virgin being a well recognized brand name gives any new business he establishes a head street with name recall.

At the early age of 16, Branson already showed his business side when he put up a student magazine and began making a profit out of the venture.  He then started a mail order record company which later on became Virgin Records.  From his success in recording new businesses emerged, an airline company, a railway company, a soft drink company, travel companies, hotels, and the list keeps growing.

He often positions himself as upstart against the giants, like when he started his airline company offering an alternative to traditional airline companies.  This same approach he used when launching his soft drink company. What is obviously part of his business strategy is to get as much media mileage as possible when launching of any of his business ventures.

Like Donald Trump he enjoys media attention and is himself a brand name. Unlike Donald who only has Trump, he has himself and Virgin as two recognizable names; a stroke of genius there.

An avid adventurer, he has crossed the Atlantic with the fastest time in a speed boat, crashing on his first attempt. Not contented he crossed the Atlantic on a hot air balloon almost dying in the process.  He works hard and plays hard.

Knighted in 1999 for “services to entrepreneurship”, he just keeps going. His interest in space led to the creation of Virgin Galactic. He now wants to explore the deepest part of the oceans. Naturally this has led to a new venture, Virgin Oceanic.

With his long hair and beard he seems to belong more to a rock band than in the corporate board room. It’s not all about inspiration, he does crunch his numbers.  Virgin Management Ltd provides the managerial backbone to all his ventures with Virgin Group being his holding company.

He is truly living his business philosophy.

You Don’t Have To Be

There are many stories of entrepreneurs raking in millions or billions for their inventions, products or services that they brought to the market.  There are some who are worth billions and have made significant marks in their field without necessarily being the inventor or founder of a company. They were simply good at managing the company.

Take the case of Eric Schmidt. At the onset he didn’t have anything to do with Google.  He was brought in to bring some sort of stability and management skill to a company that was basically being run by two geniuses who were good but needed some help by a more business seasoned professional.

Before joining Google in 2001 as CEO, Schmidt already had outstanding credentials.  His academic background reveals his technological grounding with an electrical engineering degree from Princeton as well as a Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley.  Career wise he was Sun Microsystems, Inc.’s chief technology officer and later on Novell’s chairman and CEO.

In a decade, what was once a start-up company became a behemoth under Schmidt’s stewardship.  This shows his above average managerial skills as well as his understanding of the technology involved.  Google has grown so large that it now gets entangled in anti-trust investigations.

He relinquished his CEO position in 2011 and remains as Google’s Executive Chairman. With an estimated net worth of $6.2 billion as of  2011, Schmidt is a very rich man and holds influential positions in other organizations.

This shows that you may not have started it all but you can make huge and lasting contributions as a great executive.

Arianna Huffington’s New World

While many have dreams of making it big in the internet world, we are inspired by those who actually do. This reinforces the belief that it actually works and it can happen to us, too. Take the case of Arianna Huffington.  In 2005 she started the Huffington Post which is all in the internet unlike other news organizations that started out in print media and then entered the digital world of the internet.

She succeeded and let’s face it; one good gauge of success is in terms of dollar value. In 2011 or just six years after starting her website, AOL bought her company for a cool $315 million  most of it in cash. Not only that, her influence actually expanded since aside from remaining the head had chief editor of the Huffington Post, other AOL media entities are now under the Huffington Post, giving her a combined audience of 240 million around the world. Forbes magazine ranks her as the 31^st most women in the world for 2011.

This was not an overnight success story. Arianna was born on 1950, in Greece and took up her college degree in Cambridge, England. She had hosting stints with the BBC, was an article writer, authored 13 books, and even tried her hand running for California governor in 2003.

She was Arianna Stasinopoúlou until she married Michael Huffington in 1986. She helped campaign for her husband who won as a Republican congressman for California in 1992. He lost his bid to become a U.S. senator in 1994. The couple divorced in 1997 and have two daughters.

As you can see, before launching her Huffington Post website she already had some degree of media and political credentials. Her views were right-wing for a good part of her adult life but the Huffington Post is known as a left-leaning media outfit.

Her life is not a fairytale. She has faced plagiarism charges, and recently faced a lawsuit claiming that the unpaid contributors to her website should have a share in the multi-million dollar sale. Nevertheless, what she had done is proven that there is truly a new world out there in the internet, where you can give out news and information, and profit from it as well.