Martha Stewart: The original lifestyle influencer

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Breakfast, I can't believe it.

Oh my god, wow.

We don't usually get this.

We don't get this kind of special treatment most of the time.

Well, I thought we should have a good bad billionaire brunch because of our billionaire today who's America's queen of blueberry muffins.

But were they handmade?

That is the question.

I made these last night.

I'll have you.

You are kidding me.

They actually look amazing.

They look pretty good.

Thank you.

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Each episode we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money.

And then we judge them.

Are they good, bad or just another billionaire?

My name is Zing Sing and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

And I'm Simon Jack.

I'm the BBC's business editor.

And what better way to kick off the very first episode of a brand new season than a celebratory good bad billionaire brunch?

Yeah, it feels great to be back, particularly if it means we get to eat muffins for breakfast.

And I am reliably informed that these blueberry muffins were cooked up by our producer Louise using a Martha Stewart recipe, Miss Perfection Herself.

And I think Martha would be very pleased to know that she opens the new series.

You know, we're delighted to be back with a brand new season at a time when our subject of billionaires has never felt more relevant or they've never been more rich.

You know, they haven't left the headlines because in the last year, the wealth of the richest people on the planet has skyrocketed higher than ever before.

So the 10 richest people saw their combined net worth grow by 500 billion dollars.

Half a trillion.

Amazing.

In one year.

Incredible.

And on this episode, we have someone we could pretty accurately call the first influencer in the world.

Somebody whom made perfection a commodity and the commodity was really herself.

Exactly.

Well I remember I lived on the other side of the Atlantic during the peak period of her influence on households both poor, rich, on every part of the socioeconomic scale.

You know, oh my gosh, you're like Martha Stewart.

It became a label for somebody who was striving and hopefully achieving perfection.

And then she had a very dramatic and unexpected fall from grace.

But on the way, she made herself a lot of of money.

In fact, she became America's first self-made female billionaire, all from selling herself.

Now, we have to give props to the Martha documentary on Netflix, which is excellent and which has provided some of the source material for this.

Yes, along with other sources.

But as we know, appearances of perfection can be deceiving, and Martha would find herself wearing something a bit different, an orange jumpsuit.

And I do like how Snoop Dogg makes an appearance in it.

Do you know Snoop Dogg?

Of course I knew Snoop Dogg.

I'm not that old.

So let's take Martha from zero to her first million.

How did she make her money?

Martha Stewart was born Martha Helen Kostyre in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1941.

Now Martha was really young when she developed a real passion for gardening.

And even though she was just small, Martha really had an aptitude for it.

She said she used to spend all day in the blazing sun weeding, cultivating, and she was one of six children in a middle-class Polish-American family.

The Costairas lived in a quaint colonial-style house in New Jersey.

Mother was a teacher, father a pharmaceutical salesman, and he actually taught all his children really early on the value of self-sufficiency.

Apart from gardening, he taught them how to trap muskrats, a bit like a rat with longer hair, and used to sell their furs.

Behind closed doors, it actually wasn't as pleasant as this all seemed.

Her dad was an alcoholic.

He was extremely demanding.

He struggled to keep a job at times.

And so their garden wasn't just a nice idea.

It was a big reason why they had food on the table at all.

Oh, by the way, Martha's dad could be really mean.

So he had this fiery temper.

He'd lash out if they got out of line.

So even though Martha is really drawn to these domestic type activities like gardening and cooking, she doesn't want to be a stay-at-home wife and mother, no siree.

Even as a teenager, she's very ambitious.

So she starts finding ways to earn money.

She does babysitting, organising kids' birthday parties, even catering for her school's football team.

Yeah, in fact, the kids she looked after even included the children of really important New York Yankee baseball players, Yogi Barra, Gail McDonald.

And when Martha was 13, she had a chance to really boost this earnings.

So she was a good-looking gal.

She got a job modeling clothes in department stores.

This paid $15 an hour on weekends.

And that money helped her family pay their bills.

So clearly, you know, she's got an aptitude for making money.

Martha then gets a chance to break out of the suburbs.

She wins a scholarship to study at a private college in Manhattan in New York.

She lived at home, but she'd stepped up her modelling and she even got a Chanel gig and was starting to appear on TV.

And actually, you can take a look at some of the old modeling shots if you Google them online.

And she's very glamorous, actually.

Very glamorous.

Got a real kind of Audrey Hepburn-esque energy, a kind of gameen figure.

Yeah, and with a slightly sort of Doris Day kind of sassiness.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

That kind of blonde, all-American look.

Yeah.

But she's clearly anxious about money, determined to secure her financial stability.

She's a full-time student, she's modelling, she's working in a department store, and she even got a job cooking for two elderly ladies.

And in the process, I discovered I could cook almost anything.

Yeah, she's got a gift, clearly.

And Martha was starting to get noticed.

One of her fellow students asked if Martha would like a date with her brother Andrew.

This student, by the way, was dropped off at campus every day in a Rolls-Royce, and Andrew was also a Yale law student.

So Martha said yes obviously.

What first attracted you to the kid who gets dropped off in a Rolls-Royce every day?

So we're in 1961, they're still at college, Andrew proposes and in true Martha's style she made her wedding dress by hand with her mother.

Now fast forward a few years and the young couple have actually graduated.

They've got a daughter, they're living in New York and Martha is actually struggling.

Her own upbringing has been practical but not warm and Martha's daughter Alexis later wrote that she had a very quote hands-off approach to child-rearing and joked that she, in her words, grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head.

So Martha is actually really eager to get back to work.

Her father-in-law was a stockbroker and helped her land a job at another small firm.

But remember, this is New York in the late 60s.

Martha later said, You saw the movie Wolf of Wall Street.

Well, I actually lived that back then.

I mean, every man on Wall Street was trying to get you, every man was trying to touch you in the cab.

We had martinis for lunch, but she was good at it.

In fact, she was making $135,000 a year, probably a million bucks today.

Wow, so she's actually making an extraordinary amount of money for someone who grew up having to essentially feed her own family from a vegetable garden.

But after seven years, she was burnt out.

She quit.

And luckily, this was actually right before the 1973 recession.

She said, By the time I left, I was a wreck.

I still liked selling, but I wanted to sell things that were fun to sell, and stocks weren't fun anymore.

So, Andrew and Martha fed up with the city, search for their dream home out in rural Connecticut, just north of New York.

And they find it, a huge, dilapidated 19th century farmhouse in a fancy neighborhood.

And this move, by the way, is a turning point for Martha.

So it's here on Turkey Hill where her image as the ultimate homemaker starts to crystallise.

And she decides, in her words, the home is really my space.

The sense of security, the sense of being able to relax within the confines of your own world.

But also don't get any trad wife ideas in your head.

Martha is not a submissive woman.

She tackles all the refurbishments from stripping paint to building extra barns on their land.

It's a mammoth project.

They expand the farm to four acres of gardens, orchards and outbuildings.

There's even a smokehouse for Martha to cure her own meats.

There's beehives, there's a vegetable patch.

You know, she's clearly taken those self-sufficiency lessons from her dad to heart.

And in the kitchen, you can walk in and you can see these shiny copper saucepans.

glimmering in the light from their hooks in the ceiling besides these bunches of drying herbs.

I mean, it really is the kind of homemaker domestic.

Sounds like heaven.

But, you know, Andrew is still working out in the city and her husband now works in publishing.

He commutes back and forth to New York.

Martha stays home to care for their daughter Alexis, fixes up their house, their gardens.

And of course, once those are finished, they want to show them off, right?

They frequently host these dinner parties for people from the city.

She started a catering business from her basement kitchen.

It was called the Uncatered Affair with a friend she'd known from her modeling days.

The concept was pretty unique at that time.

It's quite familiar now.

They'd go into a client's home, they'd take their plates and pans and whatever, their crockery, cook the food and bring everything back all set up so it looked like the host had done it all themselves.

Nothing stallbought, everything homemade, of course.

There's a lot of effort that goes into that effortless look, right?

Exactly.

And I think that's the thing that she managed to sell so well.

And, you know, the business was doing great, but Martha was taking on extra work without telling her friend and business partner.

Uh-oh.

So one day her friend overheard Martha saying to Andrew, I'm more talented.

I work harder than she does, so I deserve more.

Yeah, that's it.

Sounds a bit harsh.

It's a difficult thing, but maybe it was true.

Yeah, I mean, this Martha-centric vision comes to define her whole career because Martha is a talent.

She is the product.

Yeah, and as you said, you know, the influencer is the product, right?

And it's not a million miles away from one of our other billionaires that we talked about, Kim Kardashian.

Not quite, but clearly, it's time to go solo.

So in 1977, she founded her own business, Martha Stewart Inc., and it took off.

Before long, she was catering big events in Manhattan for 1,500 people.

She said, we tried to be a little outrageous.

We wanted to catch people's attention.

So in 1980, Martha was catering a book event for her husband's publishing company when she met...

another publisher.

Who said to her, you should publish a book.

Now, most people might have expected a simple cookbook, but not Martha.

No, she envisioned a book that would take readers from small kitchen parties for 12 people all the way to hosting at-home wedding lunches for up to 300.

And in November 1982, her book, Entertaining, was published.

It was huge, literally.

It was a big, thick book, weighs about three kilograms, six pounds.

But that wasn't the only thing that made it stand out.

It was actually packed with full-colour photographs, which obviously is pretty standard now, but was quite unusual for cookbooks back then.

And the book was an instant hit.

So within a few years, it sold 250,000 copies.

But behind the scenes, there was some controversy.

So the book actually had a ghostwriter named Elizabeth Hawes, who wasn't initially given full credit.

But despite this, Martha's success was undeniable.

She started publishing a new book every year throughout the 1980s.

And when a former colleague asked Andrew, her husband, if Martha would ever step down or slow down, Andrew famously replied, Martha is going to be as big as McDonald's and we're not giving any of it away.

As big as McDonald's.

That is quite a

question.

So, I mean, I think it's worth kind of taking a step back to understand what exactly was so irresistible about what Martha was selling.

So Martha basically wanted her readers to find joy in making things at home and making them feel extra special.

So a table arrangement, a serving platter with matching glasses, and that it was all crucially within their reach and attainable.

Yeah, but it's interesting to kind of reflect on whether this was an empowering thing for women or whether it was the opposite of that.

Because obviously she would say that I was basically shining a light on people whose hard work goes unrecognised.

Other people might have taken a differently.

What do you reckon?

I think it's interesting that she was selling the trad wife domestic goddess lifestyle while not being a very traditional wife or homemaker herself.

She's more businesswoman than homemaker, let's face it.

Yes.

And she reminds me a little bit of that steely core

of Cheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive who stepped down, who's someone who was very...

softly spoken but steely.

Now listen, we've got some blueberry muffins here which our producer has cooked according to a Martha Stewart recipe and I we haven't tried them yet but it is, they look fantastic, but appearances can be deceiving.

Because a New York Times food columnist reviewed Entertaining her book and was not impressed.

She claimed Martha's dishes were often riddled with errors, like a pasta dish that was virtually unsourced, was the quote, and another with such a level of salt it was, in her words, inedible.

To give credit where it's due to our producer, I think these blueberry muffins will be delicious.

Hey, stay tuned.

There were also, by the way, accusations that Martha was plagiarizing recipes, even from other other famous cookery authors like Julia Child and Barbara Tropp, another famous American cookbook writer.

But Barbara Tropp herself wasn't actually too bothered.

In 1990, she said, Martha acknowledged authorship in a later printing.

I don't think she had quite learned the ropes then.

But I like Martha.

I consider her the expert on food as lifestyle in contemporary America.

She's not an original cook, but she is a fabulously original packager.

of a vision, more power to her.

That's extraordinarily generous.

I bet it's really spot on, isn't it?

A fabulously original packager of a traditional vision.

Food as lifestyle.

And by this point, Martha is sort of approaching the big leagues, right?

So she understandably gives up her catering business and she's determined to influence and enter more homes than ever before.

So she decides to make her big leap to television.

In 1986, she airs her first TV special on PBS, Holiday Entertaining with Martha Stewart.

She's wearing very tasteful kind of pastel yellow jumpers and with that all-American blonde blowout.

Oh she's serving pumpkin soup from a giant pumpkin which I'm no doubt she's hollowed out herself or had one of her minions do.

I mean it really is the vision of kind of maximalist American traditional and look at this it's also littered with little adverts for food products so she's clearly now realizing that she's a very very commercial vehicle and that's kind of the point here.

Right it's almost like looking at proto-sponsored content back in the day.

Yeah.

So she's building up an empire out of this image of a perfect homemaker.

But as often, when you're getting near the top, some cracks start to appear.

The media loves to build people up, only to knock them down.

We know that.

So articles began appearing with employees saying how hard she was to work with.

A friend is quoted in her Netflix documentary saying that people felt abused by her and she is a great white shark.

You could get bit.

Now, as far as we know, Martha hasn't publicly responded, but she is widely known for being a difficult boss.

And it's around the same time she's building that empire that her marriage to Andrew starts falling apart.

She pours everything into her business.

She works tirelessly to protect her image as the flawless hostess.

But behind closed doors, she and Andrew had grown more like colleagues than partners.

Then came the final straw to break that image of perfection, right?

Yes, Martha found out that Andrew had been having an affair with shock horror, the woman who did her flower arrangements.

To add insult to injury, Martha had actually invited this woman to live on an apartment on her property while she was between homes.

So furious, Martha confronts her and kicks her out.

Yeah, Martha said she'd known about past affairs.

She'd even admitted to one of her own, but this felt different.

It felt personal, and the timing could not have been worse for this split because Martha had just released her weddings book and was touring to promote it.

And as she flew high over the clouds, Martha stared out, she says, at the vast nothingness, and wrote, I have to go to San Francisco and talk about weddings and my wonderful life.

I hope you enjoy your freedom and I hope my plane crashes.

Boy.

Wow, a flair for the dramatic, if nothing else.

So, Martha and Andrew divorced in 1990 and reportedly have never spoken since.

In fact, Andrew Stewart even got a restraining order forbidding Martha from speaking to him or his family.

He charged that she had physically grabbed him and screamed at him in public, as well as making phone calls to his family where she vilified him.

And when she was asked about the restraining order in an interview with CNN, Martha simply said he just couldn't face speaking to me.

He wanted out.

So Martha decided to throw herself into her work.

And by 1987 it's likely that she's close to becoming a millionaire but it was her next big deal that would truly send her fortune into the big leagues enter kmart which is a name you might associate with bargain shopping i would say kmart is the asda of america you know no frills kind of you know basics what have you right until she arrives of course yeah of course and in 1980s kmart was in trouble so kmart's new chief exec decides to make some big changes he wanted to shake off the sort of polyester palace image and give the chain a bit of a facelift.

So he started hiring celebrities to promote different departments.

He had the golfer Fuzzy Zella for sporting goods.

He had Charlie's Angels Jacqueline Smith in the fashion aisle.

And what Martha and Kmart's CEO understood was the power of the personal brand.

So they realized that by using celebrities to flog products, they could make customers feel like they were buying into a slice of that celebrity's life.

So, you know, you might not have Martha's time or energy to throw an elegant dinner party for 70 or so close friends.

But now now you can buy her table mats and make your dining table look a little bit more like hers.

He was a smart guy, foresaw how important celebrities and influence would be on promoting and generating sales.

And it's said that when he first met Martha, he was charmed by her poise and expertise.

But he wasn't a fan of her broken fingernails and callous knuckles.

And he did eventually accept them as signs of her hard work, but he did ask her to hide them in the TV ads.

So her five-year deal with Kmart as a consultant for their homeware's division was signed in 1987.

It gives her $200,000 a year plus another $90,000 for personal appearances.

But actually the association with a budget store didn't sit well with everyone.

In fact, Martha was a member of a country club and the club asked her to leave because of her ties to Kmart.

I mean, wow, that is...

That is hilarious.

That is class snobbery at its point.

Unbelievable.

Still, she wasn't backing down.

When she appeared on the David Letterman show, she defended her Kmart deal, saying, everybody who shops at Kmart and there are 77 million people a month, they want beautiful things too.

And I'm trying to get really gorgeous things into the store.

I guess you could compare it to Rihanna, another of our billionaires, and her Fenty line.

So when Fenty was launched, it was kind of seen as a premium product, but now you can walk into a high street pharmacy chain like Boots in the UK and purchase Fenty.

So there's an argument to say that by Fenty going into something like that, it's tarnishing its brand image.

But actually, I think the sales are probably worth it.

Anyway, it worked.

The deal ended up being worth $5 million over over five years.

By the early 90s, Martha Stewart is officially a millionaire.

But we always say on the show that it takes a long time to get from a million to a billion, or certainly a lot of effort.

So, how does Martha take her first million to the billions?

In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two.

What if you could have all three at the same time?

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How is it faster?

OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second.

Cheaper?

OCI costs up to 50% less for computing, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.

Better?

In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds.

This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads.

Right now with zero commitment, try OCI for free.

Head to oracle.com/slash strategic.

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So Martha Stewart is well on her way to total domination of the American lifestyle market.

She'd already built a household name, but she wasn't done yet.

Like most of our billionaires, there's always more in the tank.

There's always more to keep going.

And in 1990, Martha launches Martha Stewart Living, a monthly magazine in partnership with the magazine publishers who put out Time.

And at the time women's magazines about cooking and home living were actually losing readers very fast but Martha Stewart Living bucked the trend.

That was huge in America

but she remembers when she pitched the idea to Time's male executives they didn't quite get it.

She explained that living was something that could be done again and again.

Living was limitless.

And hearing that one of the executives said, if you really mean that, maybe this is a good idea.

Well, I mean, it turned out to be more than just a good idea.

It was an instant hit.

The magazine's circulation skyrocketed.

It reached 2 million subscribers in just five years making it one of the fastest growing magazines of its time in America.

Martha didn't stop at print so two years after launching her magazine in 1993 the weekly Martha Stewart Living TV show was released but time her publisher started worrying that the TV show would draw people away from the magazine.

But Martha didn't see it as a problem so she starts to hatch a plan to buy back Martha Stewart Living from the Time publishers.

Now this reminds me very much of another R billionaires, Oprah Winfrey, who basically got the rights to her own show.

You own the actual title.

That's when you start making big money.

Yeah, and it's actually a really savvy move from her.

So reports of the price that she paid to get that back varied.

So it ranges from $53 million to $85 million, but Martha and her business partner made it happen.

So by February 1997, Martha had full control of her magazine and her company.

And she organised it a bit like a solar system.

Martha at the center, of course, she was the sun.

Everything else in her empire revolved around her.

And actually, days after Martha takes full control of her magazine and her company, she spoke to the press and she said she was eager to do a public offering in the next three to five years.

That's when you basically sell shares in your company to the public on the New York Stock Exchange or the London Stock Exchange.

It basically means that you then become a public company.

Yeah, and it was literally them buying shares in Martha, wasn't it?

Yeah, the prospectus claimed Martha Stewart brought in $180 million in revenue in 1998.

Martha herself took home $4 million.

And the money raised from this public offering, the IPO, was meant to help expand the business online.

But when it came to the IPO, Martha had a unique challenge.

So clearly the business was doing well, but its success was intrinsically linked to her and no one else.

And that kind of dependence on a single figure makes investors very hesitant.

Yeah, if I'm buying shares in Martha Stewart, what happens if she gets hit by a bus tomorrow?

And it's a real sign of just how important Martha was that they valued her in $67 million.

So she's on the up and up.

What can possibly go wrong?

Well, the real threat to Martha's plans didn't turn out to be getting hit by a bus.

It was scandal.

And it came in the form of an unauthorized biography by someone called Jerry Oppenheimer.

So his book, Martha Stewart, Just Deserts.

Spelled with a double S.

You're right, of course.

A very good pun.

The unauthorized biography, just so you know, and that was in the title as well.

It painted Martha as someone who was cruel to workers.

It claimed she once stabbed her brother with a pencil as a child.

Who hasn't done that?

I think I've stabbed all my three brothers with a pencil.

I mean,

is that something you'd like to admit on air?

Well, I'm sure your three brothers will be thrilled to know that you finally admitted to being the Martha Stewart of the family.

And it also claimed that Martha spoke condescendingly to immigrant gardeners and gay waiters.

And it also claimed Martha was deceitful about using her stuff to achieve her image of perfection.

But even though the Oppenheimer book claimed to have interviewed over 400 people, it was widely panned as being unbalanced.

Yeah, Martha's publicists unsurprisingly dismissed the book saying the author's a man who's been sued for libel previously.

He's noted for negative unauthorized biographies.

This is his journalistic style.

He seems to be following his usual pattern.

Then there's a spoof booklet published called Is Martha Stewart Living?

which I think is hilarious and the parody included articles like making water from scratch.

I mean, it's so funny because this criticism really mirrors something that's being lobbed at the current generation of trad wife influencers.

People like Nara Smith, who's a TikTok content creator, is famed for making things from scratch.

She makes cereal from scratch for her children.

And yet, people have been parodying her in exactly the same way.

Now, none of this actually helped Martha's reputation as she pushed forward with her IPO plans.

But eventually the news cycle moved on and Martha was about to become a very rich woman indeed.

Okay, here's the moment.

It's Tuesday, October the 19th, 1999.

There's a crisp New York air filling the streets of Manhattan.

Martha Stewart steps out, smartly dressed in a long black coat.

She's buzzing with excitement, posing for the press in front of those grand stone columns of the New York Stock Exchange.

It's the day of Martha Stewart's IPO.

And inside the stock exchange, the energy is absolutely electric.

So Martha strides confidently onto the bustling stock exchange floor.

Traders are everywhere shouting over each other.

But Martha has brought her own kind of order.

So in true Martha Stewart living fashion, she's serving freshly squeezed orange juice and brioche to the traders.

That's such a great touch.

I can picture the scene perfectly.

Exactly.

And then Martha Stewart Stewart climbs the stairs to a platform where she'll get to watch the public offering unfold.

And of course, she's decorated that too.

So there's ornamental squash all along the railings, which is a nod to the autumnal season.

She surveys the chaos below, the stockbrokers, the screens, the buzz.

It's her moment.

And then finally, the bell rings.

The stock goes live.

It opens at $18 a share.

She raises a wooden gavel high above her head and brings it down once, twice, three times.

Trading is officially open.

Applause erupts all around the trading floor.

And all eyes are on the ticker as it starts climbing.

Brokers in Martha Stewart branded living caps are shaking hands, slapping backs and congratulating her.

The stock skyrockets.

Remember, it starts at $18 a share.

It goes up to $38 a share.

That's a $20 jump from the opening price.

This is a great result.

She's getting richer by the minute.

She can't contain herself.

She screams.

High fives, a colleague.

Jumps up and down.

A rare burst of emotion from usually polished, composed, reserved Martha Stewart, and with that jump, she's cemented her place in history.

That's right.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is now a publicly traded company and she, she's America's first self-made female billionaire.

Martha's 34.1 million shares in her company put her net worth at an astonishing $1.2 billion.

It's also astonishing that it takes till 1999 for a woman to be the first self-made female billionaire.

So this is really groundbreaking.

And it all happens in a matter of seconds, which is the other incredibly dramatic thing about it.

This is when basically you cash out.

You have what's called a liquidity event.

That is financial code for you make tons of money instantly.

I mean, what a dramatic moment.

So Martha Stewart made the Forbes billionaire list for the very first time.

They estimated her wealth at an even $1 billion off the IPO.

On that same day in an interview, Martha reflected on this milestone.

She said, to be rewarded in this very generous fashion is quite astonishing.

We've made a brand out of a living person, something that hasn't been done very often.

Yeah, that's quite interesting, her talking about almost herself in the third person there.

We've made the Royal We.

The Royal We.

We've made a brand out of a living person, me.

And this IPO bought her more than wealth, it bought her financial credibility.

She was invited to join the board of the New York Stock Exchange and the makeup company Revlon.

And as she put it, people took me seriously after the IPO.

So here she is, Martha Stewart, now officially a billionaire at the age of 58.

But remember that old warning about building a company around the image of one person that investors were so wary about?

Now that Martha's company is public, her success depends on her reputation more than ever.

And that reputation is about to face its biggest test yet.

Is it ever?

So it's 2004.

We're in a large courtroom with wood-paneled walls.

The atmosphere is pretty tense.

Two heavy wooden desks sit opposite the judge.

Behind one of them, the prosecution.

Behind the other, the defence.

At the defence table sits Martha Stewart.

She's stony-faced, composed as ever, next to her lawyer.

The courtroom stands as the jury members file in.

They've reached a decision.

The judge reads the verdict.

Defendant Martha Stewart.

Guilty.

Martha's face falls.

There's a loud thud, a gasp.

Her daughter has fainted in shock at the news.

The sentence, five months in prison.

But how did it come to this?

How did the queen of domesticity end up in a courtroom fighting to defend her innocence and ultimately failing?

Let's go back.

Because just a few years earlier, Martha was riding high after the success of her IPO.

But in 2001, she received a seemingly innocuous call from her stockbroker.

He advised her to sell 4,000 shares in a biotechnology company called ImClone.

Now, the timing was suspicious.

One day later the Food and Drug Administration, the regulator, refused to review IMClone's cancer drug Urbitux, sending their stock plummeting.

Basically drug companies, they spend billions, hundreds of millions on developing drugs and then you've got to submit it to the regulator to see whether it gets passed or not.

If it gets passed, you're in business.

If it doesn't, you've just wasted hundreds of millions of dollars.

And in this case, the FDA refused to review their cancer drug and therefore their stock plummeted.

So, conveniently, having sold her shares the day before, she had dodged a loss of over $45,000.

Well, alarm bells should be ringing in your head right now because this is where it gets interesting.

So, Sam Waxaw, the CEO of Imclode, was a close friend of Martha Stewart.

He'd even dated her daughter Alexis at one point.

And there were rumours he dated Martha too, but she denied it, saying he was more like a member of the family.

And by the way, they just so happened to share that exact same broker.

And the day before the FDA rejected Imclone's cancer drug, Waxall instructed the broker to sell shares on behalf of his daughter.

Phone records show that Bakanovic called Martha's office shortly after Waxhall's daughter sold her stock.

And 10 minutes later, Martha's shares were sold too.

I have to say, this is really dumb.

For $45,000, if you're a multi-multi-millionaire, what a terrible, terrible thing.

It's water off a duck's back, right?

Exactly, because six months later, Waxall was arrested for insider trading.

That insider trading means you're selling stocks because you know something that the rest of the market doesn't do.

You're not allowed to do that.

You have to have a fair market where everyone's got the same information.

He pleaded guilty, and then Martha got that call.

Her lawyers infirmed her that the U.S.

attorney wanted to question her about her stock sale, too.

When she met with attorneys from the SEC, Martha and Bakanovic claimed they'd made a standing agreement to sell if the stock dipped below $60.

So basically, you know, if the stock ever does this, just sell, just go ahead and do it.

So, no tip-offs involved, nothing shady.

And Martha released a statement denying any wrongdoing.

But the scandal followed Martha everywhere.

Her company, which was built around that image, really suffered and the stock tanked.

She dropped off Forbes billionaire list.

In the end, Martha wasn't charged with insider trading, which is the more serious offence.

Instead, the charges were obstruction of justice and lying to investigator.

As US attorney James Comey put it, this case is about lying, lying to the FBI, lying to the SEC, lying to investors.

And both Martha and Bukanovic pleaded not guilty.

Still, Martha stepped down as CEO and chairwoman of her company, although she stayed on as chief creative officer.

During the trial, an assistant had testified that Martha had altered a phone log about Bukanovic's message on IMClone stock, then quickly told the assistant to change it back.

That testimony was pretty damning.

But not everyone saw the verdict as fair.

Many believed the punishment was too harsh for a $45,000 trade.

Even Martha herself later said, I was a trophy.

The first female billionaire in America.

They got her.

Yeah, and by the end of it all, Martha's company value had dropped by a third.

She lost a quarter of her net worth.

And the press, as you could imagine, had a field day.

Tabloids tore her apart.

They dug up every morsel of dirt they could find.

There were claims of binge drinking, messy relationships.

The narrative became clear.

It was time to take down Miss Perfect.

And there's one moment that has stuck with everyone.

It's a now infamous appearance on The Early Show.

It's excruciating.

It is absolutely painful to watch.

And Martha Stewart is in this bright studio kitchen.

She's wearing a crisp powder pink shirt.

She's got the cutting board in front of her and she is laser focused on making a salad.

And as the host, who is, by the way, standing right next to her, explains why Martha is making headlines for all the wrong reasons, you can hear the sound of her knife hitting the board, chop, chop, chop.

And Martha barely looks up.

She doesn't want to answer any questions about her innocence or her guilt.

after all.

She just wants to focus and make that salad.

It's really amazing because there she is like with stony face face, chop, chop, chop, chop, tense as anything.

One wonders whether her PR people knew this was going to happen.

To place a sharp object into someone's hand.

Yeah, it's really very tense.

I felt for the potential safety of the TV show host as she pressed on with her question.

But the big question is, how would this homemaking queen fare behind bars?

You can just imagine the scene.

Under the cover of darkness, Martha Stewart, the ultimate homemaker, is driven to her new residence, the glamorous Elderson Federal Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.

And obviously the press is already there.

Flash bulbs are punctuating the night as the car pulls up.

This low-security women's prison even has a fitting nickname.

It's called Camp Cupcake.

I'm kidding.

I know.

It's rumored to be an easier ride than most, which I think is the basis for its name.

But Martha soon discovers life inside is no picnic.

So she's ordered to strip for a physical exam.

You have to squat, you've got to cough.

She later writes in her diary about feeling humiliated by this process.

And her her new home is a drab Spartan cell with a squeaky old metal bunk bed.

Now if you've seen the show Orange is the Neil Black, the character of Judy King, who is a celebrity chef turned inmate at the women's prison, is said to be partly based on Martha.

Partly, you think?

I mean I think there was some heavy inspiration lifting.

But even while inside Martha's influence was undeniable.

Her company stock price actually rose during her time in prison, perhaps driven by optimism about, listen, there's going to be a press fuorori when she actually gets out and people are probably looking forward to that.

By the time she left, she actually regained her billionaire status.

That's not bad.

And in March 2005, Martha walked free.

Draped over her shoulders was a poncho knitted by a fellow inmate.

So clearly, she was a little bit more.

Isn't that nice?

Isn't that nice?

So let's have a listen to Martha reflecting on her time inside as a jailbird.

I looked at it as an extended vacation, actually.

A time to contemplate about other things, create new ideas.

It was, you know, extremely personally personally difficult, don't get me wrong, but it was also just like

a time off.

Unsurprising that a billionaire would find being in prison to be more like paid time off.

But there was a real stealiness there, wasn't there, in her voice?

Do you know what I mean?

There was a kind of, right, okay, moving on.

And her attempts to rebuild after prison, they were actually initially pretty rocky.

She had a low-rated spin-off of The Apprentice, a daytime talk show with celebrities.

It failed to capture audiences.

And Martha's magazine, that sort of bedrock of the empire, also starts to struggle.

But something pretty weird is about to happen, something that would transform Martha's cultural relevance and make her iconic all over again.

So it's 2015 and Martha Stewart is feeling a little down on her luck.

So the opportunities are drying up post-prison.

The American public seems to be forgetting her.

And then she gets an unusual request.

Her publicist says, look, this isn't exactly your usual thing, but you've been invited to appear on Justin Bieber's roast.

Are you interested?

What is a roast?

So, it is not where you stuff a turkey and put it in an oven.

Not Martha Stewart style.

Not Martha Stewart style.

I think it is so American to take something that is so fundamentally British, taking the mick out of each other, and to turn it into a TV show.

But that is exactly what a roast is.

It's a televised kind of ceremony where celebrities and comedians get together and kind of make jokes about each other, usually quite brutally mean and cruel, but with a, you know, a comedic intention.

Okay, so this is Justin Bieber's roast.

It's 2015.

He's 21.

He's in his bad boy era phase.

His PR team don't know what to do.

They're at six and seven.

So they're banking on a little public humiliation, the roast you've just described, to get Justin back to being Pop's kind of squeaky, clean boy wonder, a little bit, you know, kind of absolved through teasing.

Yeah, we're self-aware enough to know where we've gone wrong, in other words.

Yeah, and the day of the roast arrives.

Martha Stewart walks confidently onto the stage, smiling.

She's wearing a long black coat, leather trousers, quite the contrast to her fellow roasters who are Kevin Hart, the comedian, Luda Chris, the rap artist, and basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.

Yeah, she's definitely the odd one out there.

So the room is packed with celebrities and it has the vibe of an awards show.

But the thing about a roast is that it's not just Justin Bieber in the line of fire.

So Martha, along with the rest of the panel, is also fair game.

They go for low-hanging fruit, her age, her prison stint, and Martha kind of handles it all with grace.

She's laughing along, and then it's her turn.

She takes the mic and she kind of stuns the room.

America's favorite homemaker, it turns out, is absolutely filthily funny.

She's completely unafraid and unintimidated.

At one point, she even teaches Justin how to make his own shank, which is a homemade knife, for when, in her words, you inevitably end up in prison.

And by the end, the audience is on their feet.

They give her a standing ovation.

Martha Stewart is back.

Or rather, a new Martha Stewart is born.

She's unpredictable.

She's edgy.

People can't get enough.

But that night, something else happens.

Martha spends seven hours sitting next to Snoop Dog.

And the most unexpected friendship blossoms.

And Martha said he lit blunt after blunt marijuana joint.

And I was just getting higher and higher.

But after the roast, they're booked together for game shows, talk shows, as the ultimate odd couple.

And Snoop even said in an interview, in that moment, I knew I wanted to be alongside this lady for the rest of my life.

In a platonic way, I'm assuming.

What an unlikely couple, Snoop Dogg Dogg and Martha Stewart, but the partnership pays off.

Yes, in 2016 they launched Martha and Snoop's potluck dinner party on VH1.

I could imagine the TV executive saying I've got the perfect idea.

Once you secure the talent everything falls into place

and it is a hit.

It spawns a spin-off and a loyal fan base.

Yeah.

And I think this is actually quite a clever partnership, right?

Yeah.

So, you know, Snoop Dogg has a very different audience to Martha Stewart's audience.

So presumably by combining powers, they could combine audiences.

Do you think so?

I can't see a lot of, you know, the Martha Stewart fans in the country club suddenly going out to buy a Snoop dog album.

Well, you never know.

Martha Stewart proved that she could handle her own against a bunch of rappers and comedians.

So maybe the ladies at the country club are more formidable than we think.

Yeah, anyway, the pair become a viral sensation again in 2024 at the Paris Olympics when Snoop, America's unofficial mascot, attended the dressage event with Martha by his side.

The two showed up in matching.

riding outfits showing that this unlikely Joey knows exactly how to keep the whole world watching.

But let's get back to her business empire.

Now in 2015 Martha sells her home and lifestyle company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for $353 million which is around £223 million

to a clothing brand management firm named Sequential Brands.

Martha stayed on as a key shareholder and chief creative officer.

So I mean this is interesting right because in a way she's had the big comeback but she's kind of retreating from the business side of things.

Why do you think that is?

Well I think that she's very lucky in a way to offload Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for $353 million to somebody else.

I don't know if I would buy a property where the person who it is entirely identified with is not going to be connected with it very much anymore.

So I think also that the means of communication with our audiences are beginning to change for sure by 2015.

It's much more online, it's much more Instagram, it's TikTok videos.

No, they're not picking up Martha Stewart Living magazine anymore.

Yeah, but anyway, let's fast forward to 2023.

She's still making headlines, this time as Sports Illustrated's oldest ever swimsuit cover model at the age of 81.

If you're not familiar with Sports Illustrated, it's a sporting magazine which controversially, once a year, has a swimsuit edition.

It has morphed and gone with the times a little bit, and this I think is an example of that.

Yep, so she was the oldest ever swimsuit cover model.

And last year, Martha grabbed attention again when Netflix released a documentary about her life directed by R.J.

Cutler.

Martha herself wasn't that thrilled.

She liked the first half, but she criticised the film, saying it made her look like a lonely old lady and spent too much time focusing on a court case and prison sentence.

That's journalism, I'm afraid, Martha, because Cutler defended the documentary, saying it's a movie, not a Wikipedia page.

I'm not surprised it's hard for her to see some aspects of it.

Now, at 83, Martha might not be a billionaire anymore.

Her current net worth sits at $400 million,

but she seems to be relishing her new role as a kind of sexy insta-famous grandmother with Snoop by her side.

I mean what more could she ask for in your 80s?

I mean Martha Stewart was never cool and now she is.

I know it's quite the turnaround isn't it?

So we now have to look back at all of that and what a story it's been and decide whether we think they are good, bad or just another billionaire.

And we've got a few categories here with wealth, villainy, giving back and power.

So we'll start with her wealth and entry level, I would say.

Yeah, she's well, and she's not even a billionaire anymore.

She's not even a billionaire anymore.

Yeah, but I mean, it peaked at $2 billion.

Her current net worth is around $400.

I mean, she came from not a lot.

Yeah, but remember, she was a Wall Street broker as well.

She went to a private school in Manhattan.

She was making $135,000 a year in her 20s.

But looking at her now, she enjoys a pretty flashy lifestyle.

She's got a real estate portfolio worth millions.

Her primary residence is a 156-acre farm in Bedford, New York.

And she enjoys summering at her 63-acre estate in Seal Harbour, Maine.

She also has two houses in New York City.

Oh, yeah.

And don't forget she also likes to use private jets.

So she likes to splash the cash.

I think that wealth, when we judge it, is about more than just numbers.

It is, as we said, how far from rags to riches have you come.

Also, how much you enjoy.

And also, let's face it, her lifestyle is her product.

You'd want to walk into the Martha Stewart Christmas dinner, wouldn't you?

So I'm going to say for wealth, I'm going to give her a four.

Oh, I would actually score her a little bit higher and say that she's a five out of ten for me.

Okay.

Also, because I think, yes, it is really interesting that she's selling this aspirational idea of kind of luxury and wealth and, you know, fruit overspilling and overhanging off the table.

But it's not blingy.

It's not, it's not sort of, you know, it's not having your hairstylist flown out at $20,000 or taking, you know, a chef around with you and all that kind of stuff.

It's, She manages to maintain still a slightly,

yes, it's luxurious.

Yes, it's very comfortable.

But it's also that kind of slightly homespun feel about it.

Does she hang on to that?

I don't know.

I think the times have really moved on in the sense that now when I look at Martha Stewart arrangements or photos from her books, to me, it screams rich.

And I think maybe that's because as the decades wore on, minimalism became more of a thing.

Yeah.

But let's talk about villainy.

There are quite a lot of reports of Stuart's rudeness, curtness to people, but there are few public lawsuits above her husband's restraining order and, of course, her criminal case.

My perception is this is a very ambitious, very driven woman, doesn't tolerate people getting in her way.

I can easily believe her being curt and rude to people.

We knew the way she basically talked about her former business partner.

She may have been right about that, but she didn't pull any punches.

She nicked other people's ideas, which she eventually confessed to.

You know, there's definitely a not a mean streak, but a steely streak.

A ruthless streak, maybe.

Yeah, ruthless streak.

I think it actually comes across when you watch the videos of The Roast.

Yeah.

Because it's almost like that power of curtness and borderline rudeness comes across with a kind of glint of humor in her eye.

Well, listen, she's a convicted criminal.

Yes.

So we've got to bear that in mind.

So she can't be under five.

Yeah.

But also,

I kind of agree with the people who said, you know, $45,000 is kind of small fry.

Is it?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think that's a good idea.

I'm a billionaire.

To my mind, it's like if I was her and I'm worth hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, and someone said, you can save $45,000 by selling your shares tomorrow.

Sorry, but your instincts should rise there.

You know, whether she knew that it was inside information or not, you know, she was convicted of sort of obstructing lying to the law authorities.

So, and I think it, in a way, you could say it doesn't matter how much money it's for, whether it's for four billion or $40,000.

It's the same, it's the same principle.

The quantum is irrelevant.

It's the principle that counts.

There is also the argument that she did create this aspirational image of a homemaker lifestyle and probably caused a lot of people, mainly women, to feel like they were under pressure to be as much of a domestic goddess.

Yeah.

But you're not doing life right unless you're living the Martha Stewart life.

And is she empowering to women or is she not?

She maintains that I made people value things that get done which are not generally valued.

And therefore I put homemakers and gave them the status that they deserve.

Yeah, it's an interesting argument.

I feel like if you're centering making your own jam when you don't really need to, I mean, that isn't celebrating homemakers.

That's essentially saying, oh, you who wants to take shortcuts and buy buy the supermarket jam, you're inadequate.

You should be making these things from scratch.

Tricky one.

I'm going to give her

for villainy.

I mean, let's face it, we've had drug dealers and arms dealers, so we can't go into that very high ones.

I'm going to give her a six for villainy.

Yeah, I'm going to give her, I think I'm going to give her a six too.

Okay.

Giving back.

What have they done to give back philanthropy, that kind of stuff?

Well, in 2006, she donated $5 million to found the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital.

But there are not many other recent reports of large donations.

No, I think she scores quite lowly on this.

Yeah, and also, there's something about founding something named after yourself.

I mean, what's wrong with these people?

I know, especially at a hospital and calling it the Martha Stewart Living Centre.

It's a little bit tacky.

And also, it's an advert too, right?

You know, it's not just philanthropy.

I'm going to give her a one.

Yeah, I'm going to give her a one as well.

I mean, if that's the most recent thing that we can find, and that was in 2006, she definitely is not scoring high.

Now, this is an interesting category: power, power and legacy.

Now, often we say, could this person ring up the president of the United States?

Could this person influence an election?

And you get high marks for that.

Now, she couldn't do that, not a great influence politically.

She endorsed Carmela Harris, and then she flip-flopped and said, once Trump won, she said, Now there is a true entrepreneur in the White House.

Yeah, interesting way to cover your backs.

The writer Joan Didion actually said of her that the dreams and fears into which Martha Stewart taps are not of feminine domesticity, but of female power, of the woman who sits down at the table with the men and still in her apron walks away with the chips, which I think is a really great way to do it.

Joan Didian's brilliant to that sort of thing, isn't she?

I mean, you remember her on Wall Street, stock soaring, becoming the first self-made billionaire.

And she's doing it while serving brioche and orange juice to the stockbrokers.

It's quite amazing.

I think in terms of influence

on American lifestyles, it's hard to think of anyone more important than her.

Yeah, she certainly is the proto-Nigella.

Yeah.

I think power is the wrong word for this, but influence, massive.

So how would you score her?

She became almost like a kind of noun, you know, you're a Martha Stewart, whatever.

I'm going to give her a seven.

I would say because of what she's done for our understanding of how a personal brand can make you big money, I would actually give her an eight out of ten because I don't actually think that before Martha Stewart, there was someone who made this much money out of just being a personal brand, out of selling that lifestyle, besides maybe Oprah.

It's her and Martha Stewart, really, who are the original influencers.

They are the original influencers.

Okay, seven from me, eight from you, and then we've got to decide whether she's good or bad.

Maybe we should taste one of these muffins in front of us first before we cast it.

Yeah, I agree actually.

Shall we have a shall we have it?

Let's okay.

This is made by the fair hand of our producer, Louise.

But guided by the mind of Martha Stewart.

It's really nice.

Okay, here we go.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Moist, blueberries, bursting with flavour.

Yeah.

Brown.

Soup, not too sweet.

Just perfect.

This is a very good muffin.

On the basis of that, I'm going to say that Martha Stewart is a good billionaire.

Well, I'm not so easily swayed by that.

I'm easily bought.

I will say she is just another billionaire because, you know, there's good parts and bad parts to her biography.

And I think for many women, she was probably an inspiration.

But for just as many women, she was probably a bit of a demon on their shoulder telling them that they needed to do better.

Yeah I'm not serious.

I'm going to say also that she's just another billionaire.

She made some big mistakes and she was probably a bit sharp elbowed in her business practices but who isn't?

Who makes that much money?

So I'm going to say she's just another billionaire.

But we can however recommend her blueberry muffin recipe.

So next episode.

We've got the man who reinvented the wheel sort of and who hoovered up the competition by beating Hoover itself.

Yeah, he invented the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner.

A product you didn't know you needed, but became a worldwide success.

And he made billions from it.

Join us for Good Bad Billionaire when we discuss James Dyson, how he sucked up lots of cash.

Thanks for joining us.

You've been listening to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

This episode was produced by Louise Morris.

Our researcher is Tamzin Curry and our editor Paul Smith.

Our script editor is Sarah Joyner.

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