717. Who Was Madam C.J. Walker?

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the way the world works. So we love a good entrepreneur here at The Tuttle Twins. And if you don't have this book, please pick it up. It's The Tuttle Twins Guide to the Inspiring Entrepreneurs. And we are going to talk about one of those entrepreneurs today. And she's a real fun one because I had not heard of her before reading the book. And I always like that because there's so many great entrepreneurs. But a few of them we hear about all the time, like we know them because they're big names. But I had

never heard of Madam C.J. Walker before. And so this was really fun for me to get to know a little bit about her. So she was a self made millionaire. But even cooler than that, she was also the first black female self made millionaire. So she is just making all sorts of strides at a time in history when not a lot of women were and not a lot of black people were either. So it was a time when it was, it was still right after civil war. And so it's a little contentious. You have, you know, things like Jim Crow laws and all that going on. But here you have a woman who was able to succeed.

And it's just such a good story. There are certain components, certain ingredients of entrepreneur stories that really inspire us. And one of those is when we hear people who came from nothing, right? And they raise themselves up to to be something. And that doesn't mean that if you were handed something, if you grew up with money that that makes you any less incredible if you come up with something great, no. But we love, I think it's ingrained in, I think it's ingrained in the human psyche. But I think especially in America, because we have this, you know, big emphasis on the

American dream on this country being a place where you can come and it doesn't matter if you're poor or rich or where you come from, you can be something. And that is what I think CJ Walker just really exemplifies. So obviously she as I lead into that, you're probably guess she did not come from money. She didn't have any, you know, big safety net that would have helped her if she failed at this business venture. And she had no connections. But she went on to be successful. So Madam CJ Walker was actually born Sarah Breedlove. And she was born in 1867, which is a really interesting

time in American history, because slavery had just been abolished. And in fact, she is the first child in her family to be born outside of slavery. So she's the first free child born in her family. Both her parents worked on plantations in Louisiana. I say worked on, let me, let me rephrase that they were slaves on a plantation in Louisiana before the slaves were freed. So she is, she's, it's got to be a really big deal to her parents. Imagine that that this is, this is their first child who will never have to endure any part of slavery. So this is a big deal for them.

Now her life is obviously going to be filled with, with hardship, because just because the, the slaves are free does not mean their life suddenly get really, really great. No, there's, there's a lot going on in the world at this time. And to make that worse, both her parents are going to get yellow fever and die. So she's going to become an orphan. She had to move in with her older sister and her husband and the husband was very, very cruel to her. So she got married at just 14 years old to escape her sister's house. She wanted to get away from, from that environment.

So she's going to get married. And then by her twenties, she was widowed with a very young child. And she was just working as like a washer woman. She was doing what she could to help her, her child to provide for herself. So this is a story where most people, it would, it would just end there. This is what she'd have to do. Life is hard. And you know, you do what you can to get by. But she was not content to, to sit by and let that be her, her destiny. And so she changed that. Now, what is another key ingredient of a good entrepreneur? It's solving problems. That is,

at the core of entrepreneurs, that is what they do. They're problem solvers. But there's different kinds of problems, right? There's problems that are there that we all know about. And then there's problems that we didn't even know we needed solved. And when I think of that, I think of like the iPhone. We didn't know that we needed a computer in our, the fit in the palm of our hands that could do everything for us. And now if you took it away from us, my goodness, we would have a problem that would need to be solved. So there's two kinds, right? Now, when it comes to Madam C.J. Walker,

she was noticing something that was happening with black women in America. And that's that they were suffering from extreme hair loss and from a lot of distress on the scalp, stress with their hair. Now, that might sound weird. Why was that happening? Well, there was a few things. One, the stress of the time that that does have a huge impact on your hair, there was a lot going on. But also there was, there was a poor diets, there was disease, there was, you know, there was, there was a, when you're just getting out of slavery, you are starting from scratch. And so

they couldn't afford the luxuries that other people had. And then you had one of the biggest problems of all, and that's that hair products at the time were catered for white women's hair, which was different. It had different needs. So there was no market for, for black women's hair. And this is huge, because again, they're, they're going through a lot of, of, you know, hair loss and just horrible things with their hair. So what does she do? She comes around and she says, wait a second, why, why can't we fix this? Can I fix this? Is there a way we can solve this problem?

So she became a hair product salesman. And I want to make sure I read this company right. So she became a hair product salesman for Annie Turnbow, Pope, Pope, poor. See, it sounds like a alliteration. Like you feel like I'm gonna have a tongue twister. So let's try this again. The company was Annie Turnbow, Pope's poor out company. And what she did there is she learned sales, she learned marketing, she learned how to build customer trust. So she is learning how to run her own business while working for somebody else's. So she is noticing that there are things

that other companies were missing, right? And this was even at this company, she's realizing that they're missing out on what's going on with with the women's needs in the black female market. And so she's thinking like, okay, why are we all catering only to these white companies when, when, you know, I have all these friends, I know what they're going through. And so she saw an opportunity. And again, this is entrepreneurship. All right, so she has $1.50 in her pocket. And let me tell you, even though that was worth a lot more back then, that is not a lot of money,

but she had a plant or she had a dream. I don't even think she had a real solid plan, but she had a dream, she had something she was working towards. She packs up her daughter and she moves to Denver. And she gets married there. She marries a man named Charles Joseph Walker. And this is when she took the name Madam CJ Walker. And she begins developing her own hair products. And guess what? They worked and they were great. And her hair, she tried it on herself, her hair started regrowing. And so she's thinking, all right, I have this product now. I know

works. I did this, you know, research and development on my own here. I'm going to start taking this product to other Black women because I know that they need it. And so she started writing as, she started catering to that market through newspapers that she knew had a big Black readership. And from there, a new entrepreneur was born. And it's what I love about this is she didn't ask anybody for permission. She didn't, you know, ask the government for help. She didn't, she didn't ask anybody if she should do this. She just saw a, a hole in the marketplace. She saw a gap and she

seized it. And she, she made something happen. So at this point, it is 1910. And then we have Madam CJ Walker, she moves her business to Indianapolis. And she starts Madam CJ Walker Hair Cultress Union of America. And this isn't just a company where she's again selling. She's actually training other women now. She's training them to have sale to have sales experience, giving them the confidence they need, teaching them entrepreneurship, and how to open up their own shops. And this is huge. Again, because they're, you know, this is post slavery. So the Black communities just

getting started on their own, but also women are, women are starting to have a bigger role in the workforce, women of, of all colors and all nationalities and all heritage. So this is, this is a really big deal. And she's giving this invaluable lesson, this education really to, to other Black women to help them be as successful as she is. And I love this, she called them and people used to call them also her beauty evangelists. So I think that's a fun name. And so at some point, I think when her business was peaking, she was training like 40,000 women. And for, for her money wasn't the end goal.

But again, I always like to make sure you guys know that money can be your end goal. That's fine. But for her, it wasn't for her, you know, it was this philanthropic is the word we say, which is like helping other people. And for her, obviously, it was helping Black women not only solve their hair problems, but become successful, confident business women. She also built a YMCA for Indianapolis. She restored Frederick Douglass's home. She paid for that to happen. She was really big in investing in education institutions in her community. And so for her, it wasn't just finding success and being

financially stable, which was great and independent, which also happened. But for her, it was also just helping and giving back to her community without anyone asking her to, without the government taking our money and telling her where she what they were going to do with it. And so this is huge. This is a wonderful thing. Another big thing, you know, I mentioned how she didn't ask anyone for permission. And that is a big key factor for the entrepreneurs that we know and love. And it's this sense that they're not waiting on the world to change. They're just doing it.

They're changing it. And this permissionless innovation, permissionless innovation, as I like to call it, is so important because we wouldn't have these incredible entrepreneurs without it, which is why, you know, today we get so concerned when government has all this red tape, all these barriers that keep businesses, new businesses from opening, because they're taking away that permissionless innovation. When you have to ask the government for permission for a license to do this or a permit, then you don't get to do it. And then you're missing out on that opportunity.

And as we know, the government doesn't create opportunities. The government doesn't create these solutions to problems. That's these individual entrepreneurs like Madam C.J. Walker, who's just an incredible person. And if you want to read about more inspiring entrepreneurs, pick up the Tuttle Twins Guide to Inspiring Entrepreneurs. There are so many good ones in here, guys. We will wrap it up there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I'll talk to you later.