The Martha Rules — 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Build, or Manage a Business by Martha Stewart
The Martha Rules offers business strategies and advice for the new or established entrepreneur. Although not a book about beauty, I still felt it was a good book to review here on Belle IQ for the following reasons: the last Chapter is called “Make it Beautiful”; it is written by Martha Stewart, whose first foray into the workforce was as a fashion model; and I know a lot of you with an interest in beauty and style, also have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
Stewart built her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, from nothing. After completing her education, and leaving the modelling world and Wall Street behind, she started up a catering business, and eventually wrote a cookbook of her own. She is now the author of numerous best-selling books, a magazine publisher, produces her own merchandise, and has her own television and radio shows. Who better to write a business advice book than her?
In The Martha Rules, model-turned-stockbroker-turned-business mogul, Martha Stewart, offers her top 10 tips for success in business. Each chapter is devoted to one of these, examples of which include: being passionate about what you do, growing your business, managing employees, producing quality products, and risk-taking. Stewart wrote this 200-page book while she was incarcerated for lying to investigators about a stock sale — talk about making the most of a bad situation. She writes very candidly about her legal woes throughout the book, which I thought was both necessary and brave.
I identify with Martha because she started out as a model (and not because I’m worth a billion dollars on paper, you’ll be shocked to know). I’ve been working my way through various career ideas and jobs since I finished university a couple years ago and as I sort out exactly what it is I want to do — presumably something in the beauty and media industries – I’ve been looking for advice and information to help me navigate. I came across this book for $5 at Winners next to a book called Doga: Yoga for Dogs, which I passed on. I’m so glad I purchased and read The Martha Rules. It taught me numerous things about running a business that I did not know, and more significantly, I found it very motivating and inspiring.
While I don’t share Stewart’s interest in studying tree bark, eggs of exotic chickens, or the fur of Chow Chows in order to develop 600 new colours of paint, I do appreciate her passion for what she does. This passion is evident throughout the book, and she emphasizes the importance of being passionate in your field of choice: “Build your business success around something that you love — something that is inherently and endlessly interesting to you.” Her advice is this: whatever type of business you are looking to start up, be sure it is something you love because it needs to sustain your interest if you are going to run the business for any significant length of time, and especially if you want to run it happily.
Regarding how she addresses solving problems or dealing with crises in business, her general advice is sound – pick up the pieces and move forward the best way possible. However, I found a number of the examples she gives from her own business experience to be too mild: the partially burnt crusts of two Moroccan pigeon pies hardly spells business disaster to me. In fairness, though, she may have been using this not-so-disastrous example as a metaphor more than anything else (cut the pie into wedges to salvage what you can). In contrast, Stewart does make considerable reference to her legal difficulties and how this affected her company — truly a business crisis.
Because this is a blog about beauty, image, and style, I’ll give special attention to Chapter 10: Make It Beautiful. I would have liked to see this six-page chapter be much more substantial, and think this could have been easily achieved considering the vast majority of Martha’s homemaker advice and products are always delivered and created in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. For example, in her business not only does she teach viewers and readers how to prepare a meal, but also how to present it beautifully. In this chapter, she doesn’t outright state why she does this, but in a round about she alludes to the to the fact that pretty things (that also function well) make people happy. Yes, it is a fact: there are several academic studies that point to substantial evidence that something as simple as displaying fresh flowers in your home can make you happier. Not that we necessarily need an academic study to tell us that; we’ve all experienced the pleasure of looking at people, objects, art, or items in nature that are beautiful.
I felt that the most significant and important advice given in The Martha Rules is regarding quality. Stewart writes “quality should be placed at the top of your list of priorities, and it should remain there.” And “your devotion to quality will make you shine and set you apart from your competition.” More and more I am discovering that while there is a plethora of information and products out there, much is of poor quality. This inferior clutter bothers me and reminds me that good-quality products and information could, indeed, stand out in a significant way.
Other examples of noteworthy advice in this book include: not growing a business too quickly based on debt, promoting yourself as an expert, and the importance of connecting and communicating with your customers. I found the latter particularly interesting. Stewart includes the text from several letters she received from fans and customers in the book, which was a nice touch. She shares how valuable feedback from customers is, and how rewarding words of praise and encouragement are, too.
Personally, I would have liked to see a chapter on work/life balance. When Stewart writes about balance, she praises blurring the line between professional and personal life. To some extent I agree with her that this can be good: it may, after all, signal that you are truly passionate and interested in what it is you do. However, I often wonder how successful entrepreneurs balance their time between their personal and professional life, especially managing a family and business at the same time. Presumably, everyone needs boundaries between these two — how best does one go about setting, maintaining, and adapting them as necessary? I felt this was the biggest weakness of the book. Expect a call from me, Martha.
The general advice throughout is peppered with specific examples from her own business and from the businesses of her friends. The examples were not, for the most part, things I could identify with, so only broad lessons could be inferred, but were valuable nevertheless. I was left wanting even more specific advice. For example, not only do I want to be told to decide whether my business idea is affordable, but I want to know more about how to do so beyond “be realistic and frugal,” as she writes. Perhaps that kind of detail would have resulted in 10 books instead of 10 chapters, but nevertheless, I was still left wanting more details of how to go about using her advice.
Overall, I enjoyed The Martha Rules very much. It was informative, inspiring, and a quick read. Because it was written a few years ago, the hardcover version of the book retails on Amazon for less than $10 and I’ve seen it on the shelves in grocery and discount stores for even less. Well worth the small cost if you are considering starting or managing a business and need some general advice to get inspired and informed. It is a book you will want to hang on to and refer back to as you embark on your business venture. Thanks, Martha.
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