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BLACK ENTERPRISE CROWNS OPRAH'S HARPO: Mag names it 'Company of the Year' and features mogul on June cover.
*Black Enterprise will name Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. its 2008 BE100s Company of the Year on Friday (May 16) during its Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference + Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Winfrey gives an exclusive interview to BE Editorial Director Sonia Alleyne in the upcoming June 2008 issue, due on newsstands June 3.
In the feature “Oprah Means Business,” Winfrey talks about the winning formula that has taken Harpo Inc. from a five-person production company to a 430-employee multimedia conglomerate that grossed $345 million in 2007. Today, she is one of a handful of black billionaires across the globe; her net worth estimated at $2.5 billion.
“I haven’t planned one thing—ever. I have just been led by a strong instinct, and I have made choices based on what was right for me at the time,” she says in the article.
Winfrey admits to learning some hard lessons as a result of her nontraditional approach to business. Starting with just five employees, she got along for years without management controls or development programs to grow talent as she grew the business.
Winfrey’s brand of leadership demands that nothing be taken for granted. “I don’t yell at people, I don’t mistreat people, I don’t talk down to people. So no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it,” she states emphatically. “Treating people with respect is the most important thing to me. It’s not just talk.”
The complete interview with Winfrey can be found in BE's June 2008 issue. For inclusive coverage of the largest black-owned businesses of 2008, log on to www.blackenterprise.com.
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