This lady presented us with a valuable invention using simple tools and materials in her kitchen, but she was fired from her work, then turned into a millionaire, so what is the secret of her invention and how did she succeed in creating her fortune?
Betty Claire McMurray was born on March 23, 1924, in Dallas, Texas, to a father who was a manager of the auto supply station, and a housewife mother.
Betty spent her childhood in San Antonio, where she studied at Alamo Heights High School, then married Warren Nesmith in 1941, before he went to fight in World War II, and while her husband was at war, she gave birth to her only child. Michael, who later became a guitarist and artist.
After the war, the husband returned, but they separated in 1946, to find herself alone and with a child. Her dream from childhood was to become an artist, so she spent her spare time drawing and coloring, and she did not wish to work as a secretary, but after her little legacy from her father was exhausted, she was forced To learn shorthand and typing, she was able to find a job as a secretary at the Bank of Texas Trust in 1951, and due to her efficiency, she was quickly promoted to become executive secretary to the chairman of the board of directors.
The period after World War II had witnessed a rapid spread of typewriters, and although it enabled typists to write faster, there was a big problem, when writing errors occurred, so they had no choice but to rewrite entire pages, and that was the most. Disturbed by her and her co-secretaries.
She was proud of her work, but the writing errors, which was possible with speed, were forcing her to rewrite, which was consuming a long time, and deprived her of spending time with her young son, so she began to think about an artistic trick to correct writing errors, and she remembered that artists do not erase their mistakes. Rather, they paint on them, and usually resort to drawing on clothes and fabrics to hide their defects, so I thought: Why can't we do something like that?
And one day in the summer of 1951, she returned to her kitchen, and there she mixed some hot water with paint a suitable color for the paper, put it all in a bottle, and took a delicate watercolor brush with her to the office, and began to use this mixture to correct mistakes, and a long time passed. , Without her manager noticing that, and when her friends, the secretaries knew about that questioner, they asked her to supply them with bottles of it, so she returned to her kitchen, and packed the liquid into green bottles, and wrote on it the error remover (Mistake Out), and gradually all the secretaries of the building in which she was working, knew. And they started using it, and I gave it to them for free for a long time.
From her home, Graham founded the "Bug Remover" company, later called the Liquid Paper Company, and turned her kitchen into a laboratory, to mix and improve the product, so she experimented with changing the ratio of ingredients, water temperature, mixing time, type of paint, and consulted a chemistry teacher who was studying For her son, until she succeeded in reaching the ideal mixture, and in 1958, she obtained a patent and a trademark for what she called "liquid paper". Her son, "Michael" and some of his friends, worked in bottling and preparing bottles for sale. The press coverage contributed to its spread, increasing its sales. It made about 100 packages a month, but it didn't make a lot of money, despite long hours at night and on weekends.
One day in 1958, her manager discovered a mistake. She did not succeed in fixing it, so he fired her from work. Perhaps that was good luck for her. Finally, she had enough time to take care of her company, which began to grow, so she contracted with a number of part-time workers And the product began to spread inside and outside the United States, and sales increased, prompting her to appoint permanent employees, and in 1962, she married Robert Graham, to help her run the company, but they divorced in 1975.
In 1968, that is, 17 years after the use of the debugger, the company was large enough to move to a private headquarters in "Dallas", and the new headquarters included a factory that works with automatic devices, and 19 workers were employed, and upon her request, the building was attached to a library and a care center. Children, the company’s capital at that time reached one million dollars, and this year alone it sold one million bottles of liquid paper.
The company thrived, and by 1975, the product was sold in 30 countries around the world, and the company moved to a bigger place, increasing its production to 500 bottles per minute, and the following year, the company produced 500 million packages, and spent a million dollars on ads alone, and it reached a net Her 1976 earnings are $ 1.5 million.
Graham founded her company on a special social philosophy. She believed that money was not a solution to any problem, and that it was only a means. It provided workers with a comfortable and appropriate work environment, encouraged them to participate in decision-making, provided all possible support to the library and nursery, and provided permanent assistance to women. Breadwinners.
At the end of 1979, the company was sold to the "Gillette" group of companies for $ 47.5 million. Later, Graham expressed her regret at this decision, saying, "If it would not do so, it would have ensured the continuation of the company on the same culture upon which it was based."
Graham used part of her wealth to set up two institutions, one to provide support, advice, shelter, training opportunities and scholarships for women, especially female breadwinners, and the other to sponsor the arts. The two institutions still exist today, providing support for women, and arts for the public free of charge.
No one helped her. She relied on herself all her life, and had to do everything by herself, and she was "a feminist who wanted freedom for herself and everyone," as she described herself.
On May 12, 1980, Betty Graham passed away at the age of 56, after she taught us how to correct our mistakes.