Martha Stewart’s road to absolution happened way before she even stepped foot in prison. Speaking with Fortune, she said that not one person in her team encouraged her to plead guilty and serve time, but she followed her gut and did it anyway as she believed it would help not only her reputation but her business, too. “My life is my business. My business is my life,” she declared. “I’ve said that a thousand times. I had to do it because I knew it would change things — jigger a change — in the company.”
It would be an understatement to say that her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, took financial hits when she went to prison. While they had inked multiple deals, including new books, how-to DVDs, and even a “The Apprentice” spinoff, the company bled money to the tune of tens of millions. Still, public confidence in Stewart never wavered because she built an ever-reliable brand. Loyalty was instrumental in her company’s rise from the ashes. “Our partners never left us, and our beloved consumers never left us,” she told Oprah in an interview. “They are the readers of the magazine, the users of our recipes, the wonderful people who buy our products, who look for the good in the brand. And the brand is strong.”
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It also helped that Stewart was confident in her abilities from the get-go. “My customers believed in me, I believed in me,” she shared with Entertainment Tonight. “When you’re OK, you’re OK.”
