subj
old skoolers will remember white out!
Picture this: you're a single mom in 1951 Texas. Your son needs food. Your job depends on perfect typing. And you're making mistakes.
Bette Nesmith Graham knew this nightmare all too well. She'd sit at her secretary desk, fingers flying across the typewriter keys, trying to keep up with the demands of a busy Dallas office. But here's the thing about typewriters in 1951 – there was no delete key. No backspace. One tiny mistake meant starting the entire page over.
And Bette was making a lot of mistakes.
Some days, she'd retype the same letter five times just to get it right. The pressure was crushing.
But instead of giving up, Bette started thinking.
She'd watch the painters working on the office windows. When they made mistakes, they didn't scrape off all the paint and start over. They simply painted over the error with a thin layer of matching paint.
"Why can't I do that with typing?" she wondered.
That evening, Bette went home and opened her blender. She mixed white tempera paint with water, stirring until she got the consistency just right. The next morning, she smuggled a small bottle and a tiny brush in her purse.
The white paint covered her errors perfectly. She could type right over it once it dried. For the first time, she turned in a perfect letter.
Her secret didn't stay hidden long. Other secretaries noticed Bette's suddenly flawless work. They begged her to share her trick. Soon, she was mixing batches every night, filling tiny bottles for her coworkers.
But success wasn't smooth. The men in suits – the executives, the investors, the know-it-alls – they laughed at her. A secretary thinking she could invent something? A woman trying to start a business? Ridiculous.
She kept her day job but started selling Mistake Out from her house. Orders trickled in more and more.. She had to recruit her son Michael and his friends to help. .
The formula kept improving. She switched to a better paint base. She created different shades for different paper colors. She designed better brushes. Every complaint became a chance to make it better.
By the 1960s, demand exploded. Offices across America were discovering this miracle correction fluid. Bette moved production into a proper building. She hired employees. She trademarked the name "Liquid Paper."
The same executives who had mocked her were now trying to buy her company.
Bette wasn't interested. This was her baby. For nearly thirty years, she built her empire. She fought patent battles.
Then in 1979, something incredible happened. The Gillette Corporation offered her $47.5 million for Liquid Paper.
But Bette's real legacy wasn't the money. It was the message she sent to every woman who'd ever been told her ideas didn't matter. Every single mom who'd ever felt overwhelmed. Every person who'd ever had a simple solution to an everyday problem but was too scared to try.
She proved that the best innovations come from real people solving real problems with whatever they have at hand.
Bette Nesmith Graham knew this nightmare all too well. She'd sit at her secretary desk, fingers flying across the typewriter keys, trying to keep up with the demands of a busy Dallas office. But here's the thing about typewriters in 1951 – there was no delete key. No backspace. One tiny mistake meant starting the entire page over.
And Bette was making a lot of mistakes.
Some days, she'd retype the same letter five times just to get it right. The pressure was crushing.
But instead of giving up, Bette started thinking.
She'd watch the painters working on the office windows. When they made mistakes, they didn't scrape off all the paint and start over. They simply painted over the error with a thin layer of matching paint.
"Why can't I do that with typing?" she wondered.
That evening, Bette went home and opened her blender. She mixed white tempera paint with water, stirring until she got the consistency just right. The next morning, she smuggled a small bottle and a tiny brush in her purse.
The white paint covered her errors perfectly. She could type right over it once it dried. For the first time, she turned in a perfect letter.
Her secret didn't stay hidden long. Other secretaries noticed Bette's suddenly flawless work. They begged her to share her trick. Soon, she was mixing batches every night, filling tiny bottles for her coworkers.
But success wasn't smooth. The men in suits – the executives, the investors, the know-it-alls – they laughed at her. A secretary thinking she could invent something? A woman trying to start a business? Ridiculous.
She kept her day job but started selling Mistake Out from her house. Orders trickled in more and more.. She had to recruit her son Michael and his friends to help. .
The formula kept improving. She switched to a better paint base. She created different shades for different paper colors. She designed better brushes. Every complaint became a chance to make it better.
By the 1960s, demand exploded. Offices across America were discovering this miracle correction fluid. Bette moved production into a proper building. She hired employees. She trademarked the name "Liquid Paper."
The same executives who had mocked her were now trying to buy her company.
Bette wasn't interested. This was her baby. For nearly thirty years, she built her empire. She fought patent battles.
Then in 1979, something incredible happened. The Gillette Corporation offered her $47.5 million for Liquid Paper.
But Bette's real legacy wasn't the money. It was the message she sent to every woman who'd ever been told her ideas didn't matter. Every single mom who'd ever felt overwhelmed. Every person who'd ever had a simple solution to an everyday problem but was too scared to try.
She proved that the best innovations come from real people solving real problems with whatever they have at hand.
subj
I read the book "Hit Makers" and now I feel dumb 🤦♂️
My entire career, I believed that going viral was a chain reaction - one person shares to two, two share to four, and so on.
Nope.
Derek Thompson reverse-engineered viral stuff. Almost every time, one huge account made it "go viral".
❌ Your post doesn't go from 10 → 100 → 1,000 → 100,000 shares.
✅ It actually goes from 10 → MrBeast shares it → 100,000.
That's it.
What we call "viral" is just "broadcast"
This is why your amazing post gets 47 likes while mediocre stuff explodes. It's not about quality. It's about who shares it.
One repost from the right person > everything else 💯
Nope.
Derek Thompson reverse-engineered viral stuff. Almost every time, one huge account made it "go viral".
❌ Your post doesn't go from 10 → 100 → 1,000 → 100,000 shares.
✅ It actually goes from 10 → MrBeast shares it → 100,000.
That's it.
What we call "viral" is just "broadcast"
This is why your amazing post gets 47 likes while mediocre stuff explodes. It's not about quality. It's about who shares it.
One repost from the right person > everything else 💯
express, not stress