Disclaimer: This post mentions almost nothing about Dolly Parton's music or acting career. It is entirely a business-led article.

Question(s) for you: Do you think Dolly Parton is a genius? Did you know she did so much in the world of business? Who is your own business hero?

You heard it right. My #1 business hero is Dolly Parton. The lady you may know for her voice, songwriting, acting, Nashville, and her boobs. Admit it, you were thinking it. She is also a solid-gold, bona fide, true, absolute genius. And not for what you may be thinking.

When I say genius, I include her in the same kind of realms as Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, Steve Jobs, Charles Dickens, and Warren Buffet. Scoff if you must, but I happen to know that my opinion is shared by some of the world's elite minds and 'think tanks'.

She is one of the most incredible people to have walked the earth in the past 200 years, and one of just a few living geniuses. If you don't know why I would think this, then you are in for an amazing treat. If you already know why she is a brilliant person, businessperson, and innovator, then you'll be nodding your head at present.

Against all odds

If you want to triumph over adversity. If you want to learn how to beat bullying. If you want to learn how to overcome poverty, including no electricity and no running water. If you want to learn how to succeed in a male dominated world. If you want to learn how to earn your way to success, then Parton should be someone that you study in great detail.

Straight to business...

I could have made this article much longer by discussing her early days and music career. But, this article's purpose is to educate those that don't know what a great human being, businessperson, and philanthropist she is. What a great leader she is. What an inspiration she is to all humans.

The reasons why Dolly is my business hero...

My list includes Dolly's personality traits, business successes, and charitable efforts you may not know about. It will stay away from her considerable artistic talents as much as possible, so the uninitiated can see her greatness with clarity.

But, think about this for a moment. She is such a great business leader that her business successes alone mean that I am largely choosing to not write in this article about the fact that she has sold over 100 MILLION records, written over 5,000 songs, been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Tonys and Grammys (and won many). Someone who has appeared in major Hollywood movies, hosted her own TV shows, was a child star, written hugely successful songs for herself and others worth millions in royalties per year. Those things alone mean she is one of the most successful people of any kind of the past 100 years. But somehow, let's leave those to one side and let me show you some of her business and philanthropic endeavours.

In no order, whatsoever. (PLEASE do not skip items below as you will miss some truly astonishing achievements).

#1 She's a master of disarming. Dolly doesn't take herself too seriously (publicly), which is a brilliant part of her strategy. She has used this to great effect throughout her career, with many people underestimating her on her way to the top. She has used this skill time and time again for favourable business results. She is a Jedi master of what is called, 'signaling theory'.

"All these years, the people have thought the joke’s been on me but the joke has been on the public … I know exactly what I’m doing and I can change it at any time."

#2 Relatability. She has so many talents (innate and learned), yet has stayed true to herself, and has had the same best friend since school. Because of things like this, she is relatable to so many people from so many walks of life. She travels on the same tour buses as her tour members, for example. Being relatable to almost any audience - whether stadium or boardroom - only fuels success in business.

"Tell me I have to be somewhere, and I'll be there 20 minutes early and stay there longer than anybody else. You hold up a lot of people if you're not on time."

#3 Dollywood. I know that you may know about her theme park, Dollywood. But did you know that it has received the most prestigious international award possible (Applause Award), just the same as Disney and Universal Studios has? This is NOT a tiny theme park for 'country folk'. This is an internationally acclaimed theme park that employs thousands of local people and makes significant tax revenues for the local economy. By 2025, it will generate $131m in state and local tax revenues per year. That is JUST THE TAX!!!!!

#4 Dollywood (again). Most don't know that there's a 'second' Dollywood theme park, called Dollywood Splash Country Waterpark. Once again, scratch out the thought in your mind that Dollywood is a wood-built, 'Smallsville' theme park for local folk. The catchment area for Dollywood is a 500-mile radius - which helps it to be recession-proof in times of national financial struggles.

#5 Dollywood (again!). There is also a 300-room resort close to Dollywood called DreamMore Resort, owned by Dolly. She knows how to attract people to a venue and then keep them spending with her other ventures. Walt Disney is rightly lauded for his innovations in this area, yet Dolly gets very little recognition for similar ideas and feats.

"You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try."

#6 Her expectations and demands. Parton is one of the most demanding business owners in the world. She makes no apologies about it. Many people would simply buckle at working closely with her, even now she is in her 70s. She works at 200% and expects only 200% in return. It is my opinion that 200% effort is very little to pay for working for such an inspiring, visionary leader.

"Did you ever notice that there are a whole lot of people that do things just well enough to get by? But caring is striving for perfection. It’s about how you look. It’s about how you prepare and how you keep your commitments. Now, the very first movie I was ever in was called 9 to 5 … I wanted to be prepared, that was new territory for me. I think I overdid it because I memorized the entire script. … When I got there to do the movie, everybody thought that was the funniest thing they had ever heard of. And I was too dumb to be embarrassed, certainly after they started missing their lines …"

#7 Imagination Library. You may have heard about this. You may think it's sweet, or cute, because of how some of the press have portrayed it. But read this number out loud...she has given over ONE HUNDRED MILLION books to children of the world since 1995. That's 100,000,000! Every month, over one million children improve their literacy because of this amazing woman's vision - and several innovations behind the scenes for this to be done at such scale.

#8 Stampede. Relatively unknown internationally, Stampede is a dinner attraction venue (in two locations), that is the most successful of its kind in the world with over $30m in revenue every year. She has since followed this up with Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show in Myrtle Beach. Think Disney-esque entertainment of swashbuckling pirates or dancing and horse shows while you eat in a stadium-like environment. Hugely popular and successful.

"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."

#9 'Owning the chain'. Dolly realised as a young woman, after some naive business deals, that she needed to own her own record label, her own tour buses, and so many parts of what made up her earlier career costs. She was a true innovator in this area, yet other musicians get much credit for doing so much less than Dolly achieved.

#10 Principles and gut instinct. Parton must have one of the best 'gut instincts' in business to have made many of the decisions she has made in her career. This includes turning down Elvis Presley in regards to publishing rights over a song you will know very well, when everyone else around her advised her to do so. Her principles would not let Elvis take credit for work that she knew was hers. Also, at the time of building Dollywood, her advisors and market researchers all advised her to do things totally differently, and maybe not at all, but her gut instinct (i.e. genius) saw that this was not the case, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues ever since. She sacked them all and did it her own way.

"I’m not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know that I’m not dumb. I also know I’m not blonde."

#11 Generosity. As you have read from other items in this list, she is an extremely generous person, from the community that she helps to support, to children all over the world. A great story about her generosity goes like this. Her former singing partner, Porter Wagoner, who had worked to almost bankrupt her in her early years when she left the duo (even though she had more than fulfilled her obligations), had fallen on hard times in his later years. Dolly worked out what his part of royalties would be from their recordings (even though she owned them in full by this time), and paid them to him, even though she didn't have to do this at all. Not only abundantly generous, but forgiving, too.

#12 Amazing longevity and energy. In 2015, she was still the highest paid singer in the world (male or female) at $96,000,000. Not bad for someone at 69 years old (in 2015, she is 72 at the time of writing), and this number continues to increase. She has also been married for over 50 years, proving that she sticks to the task at hand!

#13 Takes ownership of every decision she makes. She never blames anyone else for decisions she has made, which is a trait of many successful leaders of course.

#14 She will not be bullied into silence and will always say what she feels is right. She has defended several causes in her time that she believes in, even if it goes against the grain of religious and political leaders, especially those in her home state. She has openly called people that dismiss gay rights as 'sinners'.

"I usually try not to give advice. Information, yes. Advice, no."

#15 The 'My People Fund'. Dolly provided $1,000 per month for six months to almost one thousand families that had seen their homes destroyed by wildfires in Tennessee. Not only that, instead of a final payment of $1,000, she made this $5,000! A further £3m was given to the Mountain Tough Recovery Team that helped the residents rebuild their lives.

#16 Takes things in her stride. She has received several death threats including those from the Ku Klux Klan, which she largely ignores, carrying on with her mission to raise money in the Dollywood Foundation, helping those less fortunate than herself.

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

#17 She's a perpetual innovator. Perhaps her strongest assets, ahem, are her constant reading/learning, and her tenacity. These two bedfellows are very good ways to create an innovative mindset, and force innovative behaviours. You can see this in everything she does. She rarely stays in one place, in one mindset. She knows that her kindness is a power that has helped propel her in various directions, creating great cash flow. She knows that constantly using that cash flow to create more and more business opportunities such as additions to her theme park empire, or buying her music catalogue, or buying the catering company that provides food at stadiums she performs at, are ways to feed the loop of success. She's innovated in ways that millions have drooled over people like Steve Jobs for, yet received little credit. She's built empires from scratch, which is impossible without a strong mind for innovating, creating new ways to do things or get around existing obstacles.

Summary

The woman is my all-time hero. There are people we label 'genius', whether from the arts, or from the world of business, yet she has almost certainly trumped them in their own field, and then several other fields to boot.

I've missed so many other things out that there just wasn't time to add, such as her two Guinness Book of World Records, the Living Legend medal from Library of Congress, her numerous business and philanthropic awards (away from the hundreds of nominations from the music and acting worlds), her work with charities that we don't see (we probably see only 10%). The fact that the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, was named after her. This alone means that Dolly Parton will be a name that lives for hundreds of years in the future.

I struggle to think of someone living today that will make as much impact in a 100 years time across so many disciplines. We are so lucky to be living in a time when she is alive. It is a blessing, yet most of what I write won't be absorbed by the masses until her death, and the raft of documentaries, books, and articles that will be produced. So try to enjoy her now, read more about her, as I have barely touched the surface of this great person's legacy.

Do I believe she would be revered and fêted so much more if she was a man. Unfortunately, yes, I do. By some distance. But she don't care. She's Dolly Parton. A true world genius.