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JIMINY SELF-HELP HANDBOOK   15



























                                             Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, Giorgio Armani
                                                    Source: Wikipedia.org

               Her first job as a teenager was working at  a local grocery store. Her speaking skills earned her a
               scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she majored in speech and drama. At the age of 17,
               she attracted the attention of a local black radio station, where Oprah impressed the managers with
               her passion and oration. Later, Oprah landed better gigs in leading radio stations and eventually on TV.
               Not  pleased  to  work  for  someone  else,  Oprah  Winfrey  steadily  grew  her  brand  and  her  empire,
               founding  Harpo  Studios  (that's  "Oprah"  spelled  backwards),  a  multimedia  company,  in  1988.  The
               company,  through  ad  revenue  and  other  revenue  streams,  has  steadily  grown  to  over  12,500
               employees. She co-founded Oxygen Media, another media company that attracts millions of annual
               television viewers.  Today (2020), Winfrey, a TV personality turned entrepreneur, has a net worth of
               $2.6 billion.

               The case of the Italian Giorgio Armani (1934), one of the most famous fashion designers in the world
               and successful entrepreneur is also worth to be mentioned. Armani was born in Piacenza, Italy to
               humble parents and he initially wanted to become a doctor. He enrolled in the Department of Medicine
               at the University of Milan, but after three years, in 1953, he left and joined the army. He eventually
               decided to look for a different career path and found a job as a window dresser at a department store
               in Milan in 1957. In the late 1960s, Armani met Sergio Galeotti, an architectural draftsman, which
               marked the beginning of a personal and professional relationship that lasted for many years. In fact,
               Galeotti inspired Armani to open his own design office. He succeeded as a freelance designer in the
               1970s, and was motivated to create a label of his own. In 1975 Giorgio Armani founded his very own
               company named Giorgio Armani S.p.A, in Milan. He opened a United States branch located in New
               York in 1978 and his current net worth is $8.1 Billion.

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               As Armani himself has stated in an interview  “I became a designer without knowing how to draw,
               and now I am becoming an entrepreneur, gaining experience as I go along. Remember, I grew up in a
               small, agricultural provincial town (Piacenza) and I brought with me the farmer's sixth sense about how


               17   Notizie  Italiane  (2001),  “Giorgio  Armani:  A  designer  turns  entrepreneur,  available  online
               https://ambtelaviv.esteri.it/resource/2007/03/13149_f_amb61NI14ottobre2001.pdf
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