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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.
17
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