Dolly Parton: Knowing your worth – and using it to lift others

The world has lost Dolly Parton – singer, songwriter, actor, philanthropist, entrepreneur and a woman who proved, over a career spanning more than six decades, that you could be very clever, very successful and wear an awful lot of rhinestones at the same time.

There will rightly be plenty written about the music. But Dolly Parton leaves another legacy too, and one that feels particularly relevant to us. She knew her worth, understood the importance of owning what she created, was far more commercially astute than people sometimes gave her credit for and steadfastly refused to turn herself into somebody else’s idea of what a successful woman ought to look or sound like.

And then, having achieved extraordinary success herself, she used a significant part of it to give other people opportunities she and her family had never had.

Long before any of us were talking about ‘personal brands’, Dolly had one of the strongest in the world. The difference was that hers didn’t feel created by a branding agency. It was simply, unmistakably, her.

From poverty to a global career

Born in rural Tennessee in 1946, Parton was one of 12 children and grew up in genuine poverty. Her family lived in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains and money was extremely scarce. Her first guitar was fashioned from an old mandolin and bass guitar strings; by 10 she was appearing on local television and at 13 she performed at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, introduced by Johnny Cash.

Later wealth didn’t make her embarrassed by those beginnings or encourage her to rewrite them. They remained woven through her music, her stories and eventually the causes she chose to support.

The scale of what followed is quite something. Parton amassed 25 number one singles on the US country chart and 47 Top 10 country albums, alongside huge crossover pop success. Her songs and recordings included Jolene, Coat of Many Colors, Here You Come Again, 9 to 5, Islands in the Stream with Kenny Rogers and, of course, I Will Always Love You. She won multiple Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

And then there is the rather extraordinary fact that she reportedly wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same day. Most songwriters would probably have been quite pleased with either one in an entire career!

For all the fame that came with performing, Parton always saw songwriting as central to who she was. She also seems to have grasped early on something that remains useful career advice today: being good at what you do and understanding the business of what you do are not necessarily the same thing. She made sure she understood both.

Perhaps the best example came when Elvis Presley wanted to record I Will Always Love You. Having Elvis sing a song you had written was a very big deal! There was, however, a catch. His manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wanted a share of the publishing rights.

Parton turned the opportunity down. Not because she wasn’t thrilled by the prospect – she later said she cried over the decision – but because she understood what she owned. Recalling it years later, she described the song as “one of my most important copyrights”. However exciting the opportunity, giving away a significant part of something she had created was simply too high a price.

Then, of course, Whitney Houston came along. Her 1992 recording of I Will Always Love You for The Bodyguard became a global phenomenon – and Parton still owned her publishing rights.

There is a pretty good business lesson in there. Knowing your worth sometimes means being prepared to walk away from something you desperately want – even when the person on the other side of the negotiating table is Elvis Presley.

9 to 5, bad bosses and a rather significant year

Then there is 9 to 5, released in 1980 – which, as it happens, was also the year Women in Banking & Finance was founded.

We should probably make clear that WIBF does not advocate the approach taken by Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the film: kidnapping a particularly dreadful boss, imprisoning him in his own home and taking over the office in his absence. There are, generally, better escalation procedures available.

While three women on screen were battling sexism, sexual harassment, unequal treatment, stolen ideas and a truly appalling male boss, women working in banking and finance in the UK were coming together to create an organisation to support and champion women in their own industry.

The methods may have been somewhat different, but many of the frustrations behind them would have been recognisable.

Forty-six years later, we’d like to think we’ve made some progress. But anyone who has ever battled a bad boss, watched somebody else receive credit for their work or wondered why competence doesn’t always seem to be the deciding factor in who gets ahead may still find parts of 9 to 5 rather familiar.

There is something rather fitting about the fact that 9 to 5 and WIBF both began their stories in 1980. Forty-six years on, both have lasted – and, while much has changed for working women since then, some of the conversations that started all those years ago aren’t quite finished yet.

Being underestimated can have its advantages

Parton knew perfectly well that people underestimated her. With the huge blonde hair, spectacular clothes, high heels and very deliberate image, she didn’t fit the conventional picture of the serious businesswoman. She also had absolutely no intention of changing herself to become one.

When the respected country musician and producer Chet Atkins advised her to tone down her appearance because he worried people wouldn’t take her seriously as a singer and songwriter, she later recalled telling him: “I can’t separate the two. This is who I am.”

It would have been easy to follow his advice. Women are still frequently encouraged, explicitly or otherwise, to adjust how they dress, speak or behave to look more ‘senior’, more ‘professional’ or more like whatever leadership happens to look like in their organisation.

Dolly went the other way. She was clever enough to know the difference between laughing at herself and diminishing herself, making endless jokes about the wigs, the clothes and the cosmetic surgery while remaining extremely secure in who she was. “I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, as a writer, as a professional, as a human being,” she said in 2019. People could make assumptions based on the packaging if they wanted to; Dolly knew what was underneath it.

The business behind the rhinestones

It is easy to forget just how good Parton was at business, perhaps because she made the whole thing look rather fun.

She protected her songwriting catalogue, moved into film and television and, in 1986, invested in a Tennessee theme park that became Dollywood. Under her involvement it doubled in size over the following two decades, with the wider Dollywood business expanding into accommodation, a waterpark and other entertainment ventures. Crucially, it also created jobs and investment in the part of Tennessee where she had grown up.

But her business interests went considerably further than Dollywood. With her former manager Sandy Gallin she founded Sandollar Productions, a film and television production company whose credits included the Father of the Bride films and – somewhat unexpectedly – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, if you spent the late 1990s watching Buffy battle vampires, you partly have Dolly Parton to thank for that too.

She also understood brand long before ‘brand authenticity’ became something discussed in marketing meetings. Dolly Parton was unquestionably a commercial brand, but it worked because there was a remarkably consistent person underneath it. The humour, the accent, the stories about her childhood, the clothes, the values and the sense that she wasn’t taking herself too seriously remained recognisable throughout decades of change.

There is perhaps a lesson there too. Authenticity doesn’t mean telling everybody everything about yourself, and it certainly doesn’t mean having no commercial strategy. Dolly was very strategic indeed. It means knowing what is genuinely yours and not throwing it away in pursuit of somebody else’s version of success.

From a child without much to millions of children with books

For all the extraordinary career achievements, though, one of Parton’s greatest legacies may have very little to do with music.

Her father could not read or write, and Parton saw first-hand the impact that had on him. In 1995, inspired by her father, she started the Imagination Library in her home county in Tennessee. The idea was wonderfully straightforward: send an age-appropriate book, free of charge, to children every month until they reached the age of five.

What started locally became enormous, eventually expanding across the United States and internationally, including to the UK and Ireland. Millions of books now reach children through the programme every year.

There is something particularly lovely about that part of her story. A girl who grew up as one of 12 children in a family with very little money, whose father had never had the opportunity to learn to read, became wealthy enough and influential enough to help make sure millions of other children had books of their own.

It is philanthropy, certainly, but it is also social mobility in its most practical form. Literacy affects education, confidence and opportunity long before anybody starts thinking about careers, promotions or leadership. Parton took something that had affected her own family and used what she had built to change it for others.

And the books were by no means the extent of her philanthropy. She funded scholarships, supported her local community following the devastating 2016 Smoky Mountain wildfires and donated $1 million to Covid-19 research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2020, contributing to work that ultimately supported development of the Moderna vaccine.

Knowing your worth

Perhaps that is why Dolly Parton’s story resonates beyond the music.

She could have changed her appearance to be taken more seriously. She didn’t. She could have handed over the rights to her work for the prestige of having Elvis Presley record it. She didn’t do that either. She could have left the poverty of her childhood firmly in the past once she became wealthy. Instead, it helped shape one of the biggest children’s literacy programmes in the world.

None of this means she wasn’t ambitious or interested in making money. Quite the opposite. She understood that her creativity had commercial value and saw no reason to apologise for benefiting from it. What is interesting is what she did with the success once she had it.

There are plenty of lessons for women in business in that: understand the value of what you create, don’t confuse somebody else’s perception of you with your actual ability, and don’t feel obliged to make yourself smaller or more conventional in order to look successful. And when you do have influence, think about what you can do with it for somebody else.

The world will remember Dolly Parton for Jolene, 9 to 5, I Will Always Love You and countless other songs; for the films, the hair, the humour and, of course, the rhinestones. But behind all of them was a woman who knew exactly who she was, knew the value of what she had created and didn’t spend too much time worrying whether everybody else approved.

Rest in peace Dolly.