How This Former Secretary Built A Multimillion-Dollar Corporation (Without Any Capital)

As women advance in the workforce, it’s surprising how some things remain the same. Today is National Administrative Professionals Day, commemorating the important work of executive assistants and office professionals, the tireless people who make sure the organizational trains run on time. While that contemporary role might involve managing calendars and virtual meetings instead of fetching coffee, one thing remains timeless: the profession is almost entirely occupied by women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2018, secretaries and administrative professionals account for some 2 million jobs and 94% of those jobs are held by women. It was a profession that used to be a reliable path to the middle class, as noted by Heather Long in the Washington Post last year. For a variety of reasons - technology changes, increased access to education or better professional opportunities - the profession is on the decline.

But for decades, being part of a secretarial pool was an important employment option for millions of women. Long before the delete key, typing and correspondence was a vital portion of the work, first with mechanical typewriters and then electronic ones. That technological shift (and the ensuing increase in typographical errors) became a source of inspiration for a new product in the 1950s. The secretary that invented this product was, by many accounts, a bad typist but an extraordinary entrepreneur. That secretary was Elizabeth Clair McMurray Nesmith Graham, the inventor of Liquid Paper and founder and CEO of the Liquid Paper Corporation.

With no background in chemical engineering, but guided by her side hustle of painting and graphic design, Bette Graham created the first correctional paint to fix document typos. “She was a tool-maker and highly motivated to help working women,” said Michael Nesmith, her son. As much as she wanted to help her kindred secretaries, Nesmith also noted that she, as a single mother and creative person, was equally motivated to find ways to empower working women. “She could see women who were at the highest places as executive assistants, but they didn’t have decision making power. That rankled her to no end,” Nesmith said to me over the phone. Bette would go on to perfect her product and build a fortune around it, eventually creating foundations that did help empower working women.

Bette’s original product was called Mistake Out, which she formed a company around in 1956. The product took a few different forms, but was some variation of small bottle or pen with the signature correction fluid. Over the next twenty five years, Bette and others grew the small start-up through traditional sales to distributors and promotion within the office product industry. Mistake Out became Liquid Paper. The growing venture operated first out of her garage, then a small storage unit in her backyard and eventually, in 1965, in a four room single family home.

By 1968, the LPC had become a multimillion-dollar organization, breaking ground on a huge business and manufacturing facility in Dallas, Texas. LPC scaled internationally and eventually opened offices and manufacturing plants in Canada, England, Belgium and Australia. Prior to being bought by Gillette in 1979 for $48.5 million (roughly $190 million in 2020), LPC exported their products to 31 countries and employed some 300 people, according to their internal newsletter. Bette steadfastly maintained a 49% stake in the company, even as the company grew.

Building a company of this magnitude alone would have been remarkable, but Nesmith shared with me a conversation he had with Bette’s staff after she passed away in 1980. “I remember talking to her accountant, and he looked at me and said, ‘You know, this company should never have existed. She built it out of nothing. Literally nothing,’” Nesmith remembered. “She built the company with no cash, and just supported us with her secretary job for years. I think she might have gotten a $600 loan from a family member at some point. But really, that was it,” he said. The numbers tell that story of measured growth, too.

As told by Bette in a 1977 speech she gave to the New Enterprise Club at Harvard Business School, LPC had an annualized ROI of 40% in 1975 and an annual advertising budget of $1.5 million (or $4.5 million in 2020.) LPC exhibited extraordinary growth in the first ten years, and by 1965, LPC sold some 133,000 bottles of product, with annual recurring sales soaring. LPC’s sales zenith was an increase by 137% in 1967. By 1970, the increase in sales stabilized at 34%, annually. By 1977, the corporation was shipping tens of millions of units. LPC had arrived as a global product that enjoyed nearly all of its market share.

All of this growth happened without any outside investment. Bette was strongly against “growing fast on other people’s money,” as she said in that same 1977 speech. “I did not believe in outside short term borrowing to grow. It has grown one step at a time and by avoiding short cuts. It has grown by increasing productivity and by stretching capabilities to meet the demand,” she said. She applied that high standard to building an inclusive organization and taking care of and supporting employees, too.

In the mid-70s, well before Zappos adopted a holocracy model, Bette was innovating with organizational structure. “Our organizational chart — a circle — reflects our belief that each employee can develop his full usefulness in an atmosphere that encourages open communication and support of individual talent,” Bette said. For a time, LPC also had not one CEO but a council of three executives who comprised the Office of the President. Anyone in the organization — no matter their role — could be appointed and included in committees that made decisions for the whole organization. This structure was a part of LPC’s culture of high ethical standards, which Bette developed in 1968. She called her vision the Statement of Policy.

LPC also developed an expanded set of employee benefits that were highly uncommon for the time. “When I started Liquid Paper Corporation, I had a deep desire to build a company based on ethical values — a commitment to serve the interests of our customers above all and to encourage the cultural, educational and spiritual development of our employees,” Bette said. LPC established an employee-owned credit union and a retirement program that contributed 15% into the fund, where the employee could contribute up to an additional 15% of their pre-tax earnings. Bette also established an onsite child care center for working parents, meant to help LPC employees but open to any working parent who wanted to enroll their child. There was also a program that reimbursed 75% of tuition or fees that any employees spent on continuing education.

These remarkable employee benefits were further memorialized in the 1980 movie 9to5, about three secretaries that took over their company. That was intentional. LPC had arranged for Liquid Paper to have product placement in the movie and also suggested that they mention these employee programs in the movie to promote better business practice.

LPC also boasted full implementation of affirmative action polices in the late 1970s with a racially integrated staff. They had accommodation for differently-abled people, including employees who used wheelchairs and a program for blind employees. There was also focused emphasis on advancing women and black staff into senior roles. This included positions in management and sales, not just operations.

I often wonder what Bette would make of today’s corporations, particularly in this time of a global pandemic. In an employee newsletter published after her death, she is quoted as saying “The true value in business is never the dollar, but in the benefit that it brings to humankind. Money does not solve problems. It is a tool,” she said. I wonder if we will have the courage to fully implement the type of ethical business practices she made real, some 40 years ago.

Bette created a corporate culture that fully embraced diversity, inclusion and belonging, and she showed us that it could be extremely profitable to do so.

Archival materials are from the University of North Texas Special Collection, with special thanks to Morgan Davis Gieringer and her staff.