I opened my first office when I was barely thirty. For two decades, I've been
'The Boss'. I have seldom worked "hard", or "long hours" - not at that endeavor, anyway. I had plenty of time for two hours of exercise, gardening, working on our homes, lots of time with the kids, social climbing, twice-a-day romps with my husband, organic Vegetarian cooking, and, most important, managing active investment of money coming in from my business and my husband's business.
But that's to be expected, considering that my degrees qualify me to run large organizations, and that I've been a business 'insider' since before I hit puberty.
I picked the right friends
(at Seventeen, a group of hungry, rapacious young aristocrats, who'd grown up poor and ridiculed - an atypical group, at that podunk university for poor kids - a group intent upon getting and keeping lots of money), picked the right husband
(a pitifully ugly boy, who, once his hair grew long, and once he'd been lifting weights for a year, turned out to be not just brilliant, but also spectacular), picked the right names for us
(We changed our names both before AND after marriage, in order to erase all ties with our scummy pasts), and picked the right religion(s).
I delegated our family's aesthetics to our Decorator
(by my side, since we were penniless seventeen-year-olds), delegated PR/Ads/Spin/Graphics to a friend who dropped out of Economics and became a Graphic Designer/Ad agency Owner. Bit-by-bit, I delegated almost every quotidian aspect of my business and private lives, to others.
But that may be as much a product of genetic predisposition as it is a product of my training. My
'Real Daddy', whom I never knew, helmed a
'parallel power structure' reaching into several states. He drove his Imperial around the countryside, checking on 'bidnis'. Like me, he became
'The Boss' rather early. And my Russian Great-grandfather
(who'd pass by, on occasion, and impregnate my Great-grandmother with genetically-blessed-but-illegitimate offspring) worked his way up from peddling, to found one of the larger enterprises in the Southeast. I never knew him. And I hear that his legitimate descendants live in fear of
our ever attempting contact or dropping their names. Nor did I know any of my two generations of uncles, who'd hit puberty and run-off, to become
"The Boss", in Chattanooga and Atlanta and Anderson
(SC), and Asheville.
"It" runs in the family.
And
"It" - seems to be common among narcissists. I'm not
"a bad one". But I'm as narcissistic and machiavellian as one would expect, considering what others see as my
"nightmarish" childhood. I didn't experience growing up as being all that bad. But then, I carried a big stick, and hid big sticks all around my 'world', in case my enemies stole my big stick
(which they frequently did...). Having to think many steps ahead, seems to have enhanced my planning ability. I compulsively develop backup upon backup upon backup. And I have a very common narcissistic trait: the ability to appear as a hard worker, when one is actually capitalizing on the work of others.
Then, there's PACKAGING. Early in our marriage, while we were still working odd jobs on campus, I found a source for fine clothing, at
Pennies-on-the-Dollar. Most Mississippians were scornful, in '83, of anything not by Polo, Sperry, or Duckhead. So, I only had real competition from Black Debutantes from Chicago
(who've become permanent family friends), for the Fendi, Pucci, Burberry, and Armani, at the old, original, long-gone Steinmart Saks Sales. Dishwater Blond Fratrats & Suzies smirked at my 'weird' finds. But that was OK. Let them laugh: I read
Town & Country, and knew the value of things those little conformists considered 'strange'. I dressed my husband and myself, buying thousands of dollars worth of
'Tutto Fatto in Italia', for seventy five or a hundred bucks, during grueling six-hour
grubbing & grabbing marathons. Back on campus, DH & I & our friends, out-dressed everybody in the county. Later, I developed New York and LA eBay sources, for the clothing of dead billionaires.
Clothing that had belonged to the wealthiest inhabitants of Old Westbury and Rancho Santa Fe, made its way to posh little Madison, Mississippi (
http://www.city-data.com/forum/attac...cvs-ii-022.jpg), and onto our backs. This was while I was becoming the 'Boss Lady', and DH was founding his own companies.
WE LOOKED THE PART. I cannot stress, enough, that it is helpful to
look the part. And it's best if you can look the part, WITHOUT actually spending ten thousand Dollars for every outfit in your business wardrobe. That leaves money for investing. It leaves money for expanding. It leaves money for building the solid net worth which lenders want to see, before they lend.
Everyone in our original
'pod' of friends, is
'The Boss' of something. Some, like my Decorator, do little but work
(and exercise). Others, like me, flit between investments and more active ventures. But none of us have any real interests, beyond wealth, status, the wealth and status of posterity, and sex. We have no other values. These are our values. The men do not hunt. The men do not care about sports. And none of us girls are capable of the sort of cooking, or the sort of 'connectedness' which seem to be so effortless for
'normal' females. We cook
"Fast, Cheap & Healthy", while our
normal counterpartsspend all day
"making it good". Other women talk gynecology and emotions. We talk money. So do our husbands.
I can't tell you about other people. This is my world.
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