The Rise Of Original Influencer Martha Stewart

Before YouTubers and Instagram influencers, there was Martha Stewart. She has been changing culture for nearly 50 years, publishing cookbooks, creating Emmy-winning TV shows, and writing blogs on a range of lifestyle topics.

The new Netflix documentary Martha, directed by R.J. Cutler, explores Martha's 80 years of life, spanning generations of her personal and professional life.

Martha Stewart popularized beautifully photographed cookbooks, of which she has written nearly 100, and was one of the first celebrities to create a whole lifestyle brand around her name. She was one of the first people to make luxurious homeware accessible by making it available at affordable prices in big-box stores.

Without Martha, we might not be able to open our phones and learn how to cook, style ourselves, or dress our homes, and people may not be finding international success offering lifestyle tips to their followers.

Martha Stewart Was An Early Workaholic

Martha Stewart had a fantastic work ethic from a young age. As a preteen, she started babysitting for 50 cents per hour. In a Harper's Bazaar profile, she explained that she worked out that once she put the kids she babysat to bed, she could do her homework and still get paid. In high school, she modeled to help raise funds.

"My neighbor, a beautiful ballerina, was modeling for Stuart Models, and she had a contract," Stewart told PEOPLE's Ana Calderone. "Her parents said to me, 'Martha, you're so pretty. You should be modeling also.' So I did."

In the 2013 PBS documentary Makers, as reported by L'Officiel, Martha Stewart opened up about spending her teens and 20's as a model. She revealed she “got enough modeling jobs at $50 an hour—which was a lot of money at that time.” In an episode of The Martha Stewart Show, she explained she worked with Chanel one summer, back when Coco Chanel was still there.

I played married parts when I was 16 years old. I was so skinny and so perfect for modeling, but I didn't know that I was beautiful. That was my only problem.

She attended Barnard College, where she studied European and architectural history. Her dreams of being an architect changed when her father-in-law encouraged her to become a stockbroker. Martha spent seven years on Wall Street as a stockbroker, the only woman working at the firm.

As a pioneering woman in a male-dominated industry, she learned how to compartmentalize misogyny and “brush them away." Stewart told Harper's Bazaar that her time in modeling and finance taught her how to navigate men's bad behavior. "You had to keep your cool and just do your thing, and brush them away."

How Martha Stewart's Family Life Helped Create An Empire

Martha married Andy Stewart when she was just 19 years old. In 1971, she, Andy, and their five-year-old daughter Alexis decided to move out of the city and to Connecticut. “I was living two very distinctly different lives,” Stewart told Harper's Bazaar. “And the life of the homemaker was more interesting to me than the life on Wall Street.” Andy had been a Yale Law student before becoming a publisher of art books.

Giving up her New York Wall Street career wasn't all that easy. "I had a very successful career in the stock market, and I sometimes regret not staying in that business, because becoming an investment banker would’ve been pretty fabulous," she told PEOPLE in November 2020. "But I was lured to the home."

• It was in Connecticut that Martha quit her role as a stockbroker and started her own catering business in 1976.
• When catering a lavish 1,200-person party for one of her husband's publishing events, she was given the opportunity to pitch the idea of her first book.
• This pitch became Entertaining, a cookbook that was released in 1982.
• She believes the book, which included beautiful images and stories alongside recipes, became the template for “every single cookbook” available today.

The book was a huge success and launched Martha Stewart's career as a celebrated homemaker. It was filled with tips on how to host parties, entertain guests, and create the perfect menu. As reported in PEOPLE, she released a cookbook nearly every year until she launched her media empire in the 1990s.

In 1997, Stewart consolidated her magazine, TV show, and merchandising ventures into Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. She took the company public in 1999 and became the first female self-made billionaire in the U.S.

Martha admits becoming a self-made female billionaire wasn't easy, and she faced opposition. "Even my own lawyers were negative about the possibility of success. I remember one lawyer sending me an orchid, saying, 'Oh, you did it. Wow. What a surprise.' What a piece of garbage that guy is."

She believes that she paved the way for other women to build companies. "I think I had a good part in that, without being an overt feminist."

Success came at a price, with Martha claiming she worked "28 hours a day and [made] commitments for 56." This, she believes, cost her marriage to Andy, whom she divorced in 1990. However, her Netflix documentary reveals that both cheated throughout their marriage.

"I had to sacrifice a marriage because of the lure of the great job, the fabulous workplace," she told CNN. "But, I don't regret it at all, because what I've done is something bigger and better than just one marriage.

How Martha Stewart Regained Her Empire After Scandals

In 2004, Martha Stewart served five months in prison after being found guilty on charges including conspiracy and obstruction of justice. She got in trouble when she sold her stake in ImClone Systems, a biopharmaceutical company. After selling almost 4,000 shares, the stock dropped the following day.

As reported by PEOPLE, she maintained she had no insider information, but federal prosecutors felt differently.

Luckily, her loyal fans backed her among the negative press and were waiting for her to leave prison. Martha wrote a book and debuted two new television shows within less than a year of her release from prison in March 2005.

• The Martha Stewart Show, a daytime talk show, ran from 2005 to 2012 and won Martha three Daytime Emmy Awards.
• Her second show, a spin-off of Donald Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, only lasted one season.

Since leaving prison, she has published 43 more books, developed a line of CBD products, and sold her multimedia empire, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, for $353 million in 2015, according to Forbes.

Upon her release, Martha told Oprah that the company was doing well. "That the rebuilding process that had to take place, not only for me but for all my devoted employees and colleagues, has all taken place, and we are recovered."

These days, Martha mostly wants to move past this time in her life and not be defined by the experience.

You can stream Martha now on Netflix.