“When faced with a business challenge, evaluate or assess the situation, gather the good things in sight, abandon the bad, clear your mind, and move on,” says Stewart.
No stranger to trouble, Stewart has managed to rebound after numerous personal and professional challenges when others might have simply crumbled under the pressure. She realized that if she were going to succeed, she would have to learn to not only accept difficulty as a fact of life, but to embrace the challenges she faced and to learn from them.
In her early days as a caterer, Stewart would often experience potentially career-breaking fiascos. While preparing a catered meal for Paul Newman and his guests, she accidentally left the main course in the oven too long and the Moroccan pie she was baking got badly burned. Without any alternative available, Stewart had to think quickly on her feet. She removed the burnt parts, cut the pie into wedges and sprinkled each with powdered sugar. They turned out to be a huge success. This was an early lesson for Stewart in making the best of a bad situation.
Down the road, Stewart’s difficulties would only multiply in severity. The now-famous legal battle that Stewart was caught up in between 2002 and 2005 would prove to be one of the most challenging experiences of both her personal and professional life. Accused of insider trading, Stewart’s name began to be smeared in the media and the stock value of her company took a nosedive. The company that she had spent a lifetime building up and that bore her name was being threatened. After three grueling years, Stewart was finally sentenced to five months in a minimum-security camp in Alderson, West Virginia, to be followed by five months of house arrest.
“I’ve gone through jail, I could have whined and cried,” she says. “I made the best of a very difficult situation.” Stewart served her time and came out of Alderson even more determined to renew her company, which had suffered during her incarceration. She began looking into deals with Mark Burnett and re-entered the world of television in full force with her revamped daily show Martha and her version of The Apprentice. She also created a new line of house wares, brought in new furniture for her set, acquired and redesigned a new magazine, and launched a radio program. “Would we have done all these things were we not forced to step back and revaluate who we were and where we wanted to go?” she asked herself. “Possibly not.”
Stewart’s company is now on the rebound, with revenues in 2005 topping $200 million, a growth of almost 12% from the previous year. When life threw her lemons, Stewart made lemonade and pie and so much more, and then she sold the recipe. “However bleak things may at first appear, if you are a good person doing things for the right reason, there is always something to grasp onto to help you carry on or start over again,” says Stewart. “There is no entrepreneur, anywhere, whose journey is without setbacks and crossroads.”
Lesson #4: Embrace Your Obstacles
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