Mass. woman's film details mothers' guidance to entrepreneurs

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 9, 2004

BY KATHLEEN YANITY
Journal Staff Writer

A mother's love is unconditional, and for many successful entrepreneurs, it is a lifeline as they navigate fledgling businesses through uncertain waters.

Lemonade Stories, a new documentary by a New England filmmaker, highlights that bond between mother and child. It explores how that relationship influenced executives such as British airline tycoon Richard Branson, rap and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, home improvement innovator and pro football owner Arthur Blank and cable television pioneer Kay Koplovitz.

Mary Mazzio, a former corporate lawyer who lives in Wellesley, Mass., wrote, produced and directed the film. She called it Lemonade Stories because in the 1950s and 1960s, a sidewalk lemonade stand was often a child's first business experience. "Back then, most moms stayed home with their children, and mom was the one who helped set up the stand," Mazzio said.

The 45-minute film describes how seven entrepreneurs were raised and the lessons they learned from their mothers. It says they were positive influences that strengthened the childrens' abilities to take risks. It shows that when no one else believed in their business ideas, the mothers did, sometimes even bailing out the children financially when they reached low points.

Branson, who heads the $5-billion Virgin Group, which includes Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Records and more than 200 other businesses, said he learned from his mother, Eve, "Never take no for an answer."

Mrs. Branson, now in her 80s, wanted to learn to fly gilders when she was a young woman, but was told she couldn't because of her sex. Not accepting that answer, she disguised herself as a man, and successfully finished training in the British Royal Air Force.

When Branson struggled to launch his first business, a loan from his mother came at a critical moment, as well as many groceries to supplement a meager diet of bread and jam, delivered to a decrepit flat he shared with friends.

Although Simmons was raised in a mostly middle-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, he said that most of the entrepreneurs he observed growing up were "drug dealers and numbers runners." But he said his mother, Evelyn, an artist, instilled in him the same confidence that she exuded. She gave him constant encouragement to pursue life as an entrepreneur, he said, and when his first business, a party promotions company, ran out of money, his mother lent him money to keep it going.

Simmons, a co-founder of Def Jam Recordings which he sold to Universal Music in 1999 for $120 million, heads the Phat Farm clothing company and several others businesses, some with his brothers Danny, and Joey, also known as "Run" of the rap group Run DMC.

Blank said that when he was fired from his job as an executive for a small chain of home improvement centers, he was uncertain of his future. He consulted his mother, Molly, a housewife who had successfully taken over her husband's pharmaceutical wholesale business at age 37 after he had died. She told her son not to worry. "She said she knew I had potential and told me that when life gave you lemons, you should make lemonade," Blank said.

Shortly after that conversation, Blank and a longtime friend used a coffee-shop napkin to devise a business plan for their vision of a hardware, lumber and garden business. They grew Home Depot from one store in 1977 to more than 1,500 locations and $50 billion in annual sales today. Blank went on to buy the Atlanta Falcons professional football team and his Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has donated more than $100 million to charity.

Koplovitz, a co-founder of the Madison Square Garden Sports cable channel, which later became USA Networks, was the nation's first female television network president. Her mother, Jane Smith, "gave me a sense that I could do anything that I set my mind to," Koplovitz said. It was wise advice for a young woman who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she added, when women had just begun to enter previously all-male bastions such as media companies. Koplovitz, who now helps women business owners attract investment capital, recently launched a new cable network, the Reality Channel.

The film also tells of Tom Scott and his mother, Jane; Billy Starr, and his mother, Betty; and 11-year-old Kelly Reinhart and her mother, Lori.

Tom Scott, along with his Brown University roommate Tom First, created Nantucket Nectars, a juice company sold to Cadbury Schweppes in 2002 for a reported $100 million. He credits his mother with creating a secure, nurturing environment for his childhood that allowed him to believe that he could take business risks as an adult.

Billy Starr, whose mother died of cancer, founded the world's largest bike-a-thon in her honor, the Pan-Mass Challenge. It has raised more than $100 million for cancer research. Starr says his mother, whose childhood was marked by familial and financial insecurity, made sure that her children lived in a stable, loving household.

Kelly Reinhart, when she was 9, invented a holster-like bag for cell phones and keys that is worn on the thigh. After selling it at several trade shows, she began to get orders for units of 100,000 or more and her company, T-Pak was formed. It was her mother who first suggested that Reinhart's father quit his job to run her company. And despite her business success, Reinhart says her mother keeps her grounded, making sure that she still lives the life of a child.

Lemonade Stories had its television debut Friday night on CNNfn, but discussions are under way for more airings, said Mazzio. The production was underwritten by Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass., where the film was first shown in April. Babson plans to show it several other times in the coming months, including during a seminar Friday, June 4 for educators of entrepreneurial studies.

Mazzio said she was inspired to make Lemonade Stories by a film she made in 2000, Apple Pie. That 90-minute movie ran on the ESPN cable television sports network and was sponsored by New Balance Footwear. It showed the impact mothers have had on successful athletes such as Shaquille O'Neal, Drew Bledsoe and Mia Hamm. In honor of Mother's Day, ESPN Classic cable network will telecast Apple Pie today at 5:30 p.m.

A full-time filmmaker since 2000, Mazzio's first film, A Hero For Daisy, was shown on ESPN that same year. It's a documentary, also underwritten by New Balance, about two-time Olympic rower Chris Ernst, an advocate for women collegiate athletes under the federal Title IX equal opportunity laws.

In 1976, Ernst led a protest against substandard women's locker room facilities at Yale University. She and fellow female rowers stripped in the athletic director's office to reveal the phrase "Title IX" in blue marker on their bodies. The action drew national attention to the provisions of the law and two weeks later, the women had a new locker room.

Mazzio, who was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic rowing team, graduated from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., and Georgetown Law School. She was a real-estate lawyer for 12 years with the Boston law firm of Brown, Rudnick, Freed and Gesmer and she spent a few days each week in the firm's Providence office.

"I went to film school on the side. I had a secret, double life," Mazzio said. And when finished with her studies, she traded in her law career to pursue a passion. "I took a leap," she said.

Since then, she has made three nationally broadcasted films.