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VOLUME 2
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Welcome to Volume 2 of The Mark of a Leader E-zine. We've just completed a very successful national marketing conference for Pepsi-QTG. Here is what our client had to say: "Doug Keeley and his inspiring modules on Leadership helped make our recent conference a huge success and were amongst the highest rated elements of the event. His ability to connect with our audience by motivating, illuminating, inspiring, and entertaining really helped illustrate what sets great leaders and great brands apart from the rest." Our new website is up, and features our new Overview Video. If you would like a copy of this video on CD to see more of The Mark of a Leader conference package for yourself, please email us at info@themarkofaleader.com. This month in the E-zine we feature Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop. Anita has been a leader in driving social responsibility in business, and has also inspired thousands of entrepreneurs, particularly women. We hope you enjoy the story. As always, we welcome and appreciate your feedback. Thanks for caring about leadership in a world that desperately needs more of it.
To find out more about how The Mark of a Leader will create a sensation at your next conference, please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com |
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FEATURE
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QUOTABLE QUOTES We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle DID YOU KNOW? Genghis Khan started out life as a goatherd. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's Comet came into view. When he died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again. |
ANITA RODDICK - VIGILANTE CONSUMER
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. What do you stand for? Tough question for many people and businesses to answer. If you asked the question of the world's biggest retailers, the answers would typically be pretty predictable:
How about this one: ecologically sustainable? Most people who have ever gone shopping could guess that the latter is part of the mission statement of The Body Shop. In our humble opinion, too many corporate mission statements today are hollow lists of meaningless words that cater neither to the human imagination nor the human spirit. If you're going to be a leader, you'd better have a Vision. And if you're going to have a Vision, it had better mean something. Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, understands that. In the last few decades, she has turned what began as a small shop beside a funeral parlor in Brighton into a crusade to improve the environmental and social well-being of the planet. Her original vision was simple: survival. She opened the first store as a single mother of two while her husband was off on a year long adventure. |
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QUOTABLE QUOTES Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. Bradley Miller QUOTABLE QUOTES The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not the job. Zig Ziglar |
The shop sold handmade products in urine sample bottles because she could not afford better packaging. Cost containment prompted her to ask customers to bring the bottles back for refilling, which ultimately begat a new conscience in retailing. 
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just. Her products were inspired by those she had seen being used by indigenous people around the world. Unlike most "beauty" shops, she made no promises of erasing years off a woman's face. Instead, The Body Shop offered "A two-for-one sale no other cosmetic company could ever hope to match: buy a bottle of 'natural' lotion and get social justice for free". Soon, Roddick's refusal to test products on animals changed the game of corporate responsibility. Once the product of a PR department, The Body Shop's 'profit with principle' belief defined the brand and set it apart from all other retailers. Consumers with a social and environmental conscience bought Body Shop - period. Political Awareness and Activism must be woven into the fabric of business. To do otherwise is to be not merely an ostrich, but criminally irresponsible. Anita's passion and penchant for publicity instead of advertising built the reputation, and franchising allowed the chain to grow - fast. That's all the more remarkable because Roddick was outspokenly critical of the business world for its emphasis on wealth over job creation. She denounced as shallow and unimportant the beauty and cosmetics industry that was making her rich. |
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DID YOU KNOW? J.K. Rowling was a divorced, single mother living on government assistance when she wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The fulfillment of a lifelong dream to publish a book, she wrote it longhand while her infant daughter napped. Today, less than a decade later, she is a billionaire, and an inspiration to authors everywhere to "be persistent". QUOTABLE QUOTES Don't complain about the traffic. At least you get to go home. Anonymous The ability to triumph begins with you - always. Oprah Winfrey |
No wonder people wanted to take her down. In the mid-1990s, critics savaged her for alleged hypocrisy, charging that her 'principles before profits' stance was just a marketing ploy. But Roddick fought back, and almost all of the charges proved untrue. Today, The Body Shop is over 2000 stores in 52 markets serving over 75 million customers. And whether you agree with her or not, her impact as a leader has been tremendous. Anita and her husband Gordon have moved on to a life of social and political activism. They are global leaders of the "vigilante consumerism" movement, encouraging anyone who will listen to force businesses to be socially and environmentally responsible. Not bad for a mother of two with no business experience. 
And what will be the Mark of Anita Roddick as a leader? Well, she certainly changed the conscience of 20th century retailing. And she set a benchmark for women entrepreneurs everywhere. But it is our belief that her biggest Mark has yet to be made. The emergence of the Chinese market and its billions of consumers will change the dynamics of global trade. Already, millions of Third World factory workers have become unemployed as their factories have moved to China. Barely subsisting on minimal wages, these workers' future is bleak at best. So Anita Roddick's biggest battle has probably just begun. And it's our bet that her impact on the future of global consumerism is just beginning to be felt. Based on her track record, only a fool would bet against her. If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito. |
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To find out more about how The Mark of a Leader will create a sensation at your next conference, please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com Copyright 2005 Mark of a Leader |
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