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Hi everyone and happy Sunday,

I am currently obsessed with Anna Wintour’s biography by Amy Odell. For those who don’t know, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988 and the inspiration behind ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with Meril Streep, is imo the most powerful figure in fashion and publishing with personal brand value way beyond Vogue and Condé Nast. Whether or not you care about fashion and glamorous magazines, there’s a lot to learn from Anna’s leadership and apply those lessons to entrepreneurial endeavors in virtually every industry:

1. Own your vision

   Despite growing up in the upper class British society, Anna Wintour has never gone to college. Why? Because since the age of 15 Anna knew that she wanted to be the editor-in-chief of Vogue and looked at every single education or job opportunity through the lens of either it would propel her to her next, better job, that would get her closer to achieving her mission. Anna’s is so fabulous ‘as head chieftess of the fashion world’s bible’ that it’s hard to imagine that to get to where she is today, she had her setbacks including being fired from Harper’s Bazaar US for her innovative ‘too sexual’ shoots.

2. Develop your personal brand

   Anna had spent more than half her life developing a personal brand-the signature English-bobbed hairstyle, the sunglasses, the polished designer wardrobe, Manolo Blanhnik heels paired with incredible work ethics, extreme decisiveness, conciseness and directness. ‘She’s not loud and she’s not theatrical. She’s always commanded the room…. just sitting on the sofa, you never didn’t notice her.’

   On a deeper level, the power of her personal brand comes from her ability to communicate with multiple constituents: creatives who work in fashion and business people that command advertisement budgets. ‘Though editorial excellence was always important and intangible success metric for her at Vogue, she also knew that she had to make the magazine popular with advertisers and keep her bosses happy. If she didn’t sell magazines and her magazines didn’t sell ads, she could loose her job.’

3. Build relationships you need to succeed in business

   Grace Mirabella, who was informed of her own firing from the position of Vogue's editor-in-chief in 1988 when the gossip columnist Liz Smith announced it on a New York television newscast, had a big problem that Anna didn’t have: a nearly nonexistent relationships with Si Newhouse, the longtime chairman of Condé Nast and owner of Vogue, who had a big reputation for abrupt and brutal firings of even the highest profile editors. Anna knew that in order to get the position she wanted the most she had to be in Newhouse’s ear as a singular voice and authority on Vogue and that’s what she did

4. Be decisive 

   If I were to distill one trait that helped Ana to raise to the top (and again its based of the book and numerous articles and interviews I’ve read) that would be decisiveness. Ana was not afraid to make bold decisions that challenged status quo and she makes those decisions quickly. With Anna, people say, ‘You get two minutes, the second is a courtesy.’ Fast reversible decisions although most always imperfect, are a serious competitive advantage

5.  Build community

   The best way to build community is to give back. Over the course of her career, Ana gave back a lot: not only she helped lay the groundwork for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which, after years of industry lip service, provides the first practical support for young talent, but also raised millions of dollars for various AIDS funds, supporting the fight against disease then identified with gay men, huge contribution to the fashion industry that employs many gay men

6. Make high standards non-negotiable

   Something Anna has done repeatedly over the course of her career is killing the story without explanation. It didn’t matter that they had cast some notable model or high-profile photographer. Anna knew that killing the stories was necessary to let people know that you had standards, regarding both the final outcome and what happened on set. Killing a story let the victim know who had the power, and what they should do next time if they wanted to see their work in the magazine

7. Defy conventional wisdom

   In 1989, Anna’s first years as Vogue editor-in-chief, she made a remarkable decision to put Madonna on the cover. Today it seems like a no brainer but back in 1989, Madonna was ‘more controversial than she’d ever been. Her single ‘Like a Prayer’, which had come out that March, concerned the spiritual ecstasy of sex, and its music video featured burning crosses and romantic love with a Black saint. A month after its release, Pepsi canceled its Madonna commercial because of objections from religious groups.’ Radical step for a magazine whose brand was strongly associated with classic icons like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. In Anna’s own words:

   ‘The fact that that very nice man that I sat next to on the plane thought that it would be completely wrong to put Madonna on the cover and completely out of keeping with the tradition of Vogue being this very classically correct publication pushed me to break the rules and had people talking about us in a way that was culturally relevant, important, and controversial, all of which you need to do from time to time…’

   Her instinct paid off. When the Madonna issue came out, it sold 200,000 more copies than the previous May issue edited by Mirabella

Thanks for reading,

Olga