Martha Stewart Research Paper

In 1976, when she started her first business as a caterer in the small town of Westport Connecticut, nobody would have been able to predict the entrepreneurial success of Martha Stewart to this day. Martha transitioned from being a model, to a stockbroker, to a small town caterer, and finally to being the proprietor of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. (MSLO), a multimedia and merchandizing company that is still thriving and expanding today. Looking back on Martha’s life from today, one can gain valuable insight into the factors that contributed to her becoming an entrepreneur. Among those contributing factors are the cultures of America and New York in the 1970s, the opportunity presented by the “Do-It-Yourself” industry, and Martha’s
In 1970s America, “social norms and laws were increasingly framed in favor of women,” and “the role of women in nuclear families took radical shift from those of earlier generations” (1970s 1). Women working outside of the household became an acceptable social norm, and the number of career fields in which women were able to work drastically increased. This new aspect of American culture contributed to Martha Stewart becoming an entrepreneur by setting up a background in which she could flourish and succeed with little resistance from social and gender norms. Although both New York City culture and American culture advanced Martha’s predisposition towards becoming an entrepreneur, the importance of culture is not able to supersede the importance personality and life experience in the case of Martha Stewart. The benefits American and New York culture added to Martha’s entrepreneurial predisposition were furthered by Martha’s personal traits and life
Independence, being defined as the “freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others” (Dictionary.com), paints an accurate portrait of Martha Stewart. Despite the innumerable amount of support, influence, and aid from others she has received, Martha has formed no sort of reliance on those fleeting sources. Martha’s independence can once again be exhibited by Martha’s very own mother “‘[hesitating] to give [Martha] any advice because [Martha] thought she knew it all’” (50). Having grown up in a home where the cliché “if you want something done, do it yourself” was a cardinal rule, and Martha became completely self-sufficient and self-reliant. After divorcing her husband and loosing several of friends in the divorce, Martha was “‘forced to seek home and comfort elsewhere’” (Allen 31), and she did just that when she removed herself to Long Island and continued with her increasingly successful enterprise.

Returning to the relevance of Martha’s personality and life experiences in slating her towards becoming an entrepreneur, Stewart’s aggressiveness, creativity, and independence offer an explanation for Martha’s founding of a business. Martha was inclined, above all other individuals, to become an entrepreneur because of a unique combination of her personal characteristics, aggression, creativity, and independence, and her life