URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1063 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 17, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Two Paths for the Aspiring Alpha Female
BYLINE: By HARRY HURT III
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; OFF THE SHELF; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 960 words
IN the 1964 film ''My Fair Lady,'' Prof. Henry Higgins, played by Rex Harrison, famously asked, ''Why can't a woman be more like a man?'' The subtexts of two new books that aim to guide women through the worlds of commerce and finance pose a strikingly similar question -- Why can't a businesswoman be more like a businessman? -- and come up with strikingly different answers.

''Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top'' (Ballantine Books, $25), by Nina DiSesa, is unabashedly hard-charging though with a feminine twist. Ms. DiSesa, the chairwoman of McCann Erickson New York, the ad agency, urges women to make up their own rules and to use tactics like flirting to woo colleagues and conquer rivals.

In ''What Men Don't Tell Women About Business'' (Wiley, $22.95), Christopher V. Flett, a Canadian-born entrepreneur, urges women to forgo flirting and take a much more straightforward approach. By ''Opening Up the Heavily Guarded Alpha Male Playbook,'' as his subtitle puts it, he sets women on the path he thinks they ought to take.

''Seducing the Boys Club'' is equal parts autobiography and how-to manual. Ms. DiSesa bases her recommendations on her 35-year career in advertising. (In 1999, Fortune magazine named her one of the ''50 Most Powerful Women in American Business.'') She recounts her fight to climb the corporate ladder while coping with divorce, breast cancer, remarriage and sexist male colleagues she calls ''hooligans.''

She lists seven deadly sins -- humility, timidity, cowardice, submissiveness, blind obedience, visible fear and hypersensitivity -- as common female traits to be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, she also warns women to avoid male tendencies like getting ''drunk with power.''

The two principal tactics advocated by Ms. DiSesa are seduction and manipulation. After bundling them together in a glib Madison Avenue abbreviation, she declares that, ''All the men in our lives -- the ones we work with or live with, admire or desire, and love or hate -- are easier to control if we master the Art of S.& M.'' Why would men fall for such tactics? ''First of all, they love seduction,'' she writes. ''And second, they are oblivious to manipulation.''

Ms. DiSesa points out that sex and seduction are not one and the same. The first implies sleeping one's way into the executive suite, an approach she deplores. The second, as she illustrates in rambling anecdotes, is more about using sophisticated charm and sugar-coated words to win the support of male business associates.

''One of the greatest tools, or weapons, we have as women is flirting,'' she says, later adding, ''Men like women who like them.''

Ms. DiSesa's specific advice is often contradictory. ''First be honest and then be shrewd,'' she urges. But she also concedes that her ''personal code of ethics'' permits ''not telling the whole truth,'' and gives several examples of how she used half-truths and deliberate ambiguities to achieve her objectives.

In a chapter titled ''How to Outmaneuver Men Who Outrank You,'' Ms. DiSesa thanks a former male colleague she ousted in a corporate power struggle ''for making a man out of me.'' A half-dozen pages later, she says: ''A female culture -- one that embraces compassion, nurturing, collaboration and sensitivity -- by nature creates a more productive, pleasant place to work than an atmosphere of fear, danger and macho competition. Maybe a combination of the two cultures is the perfect workplace; it would be exciting but still fun.''

There are no maybes in ''What Men Don't Tell Women About Business.'' Mr. Flett describes himself as a ''reformed alpha male'' who is now dedicated to helping women outwit alpha males.

Mr. Flett says the foundation of the 21st-century business model is ''authenticity.'' But instead of recognizing the new paradigm, he says, many women keep hiding behind personality masks to play roles like Mother and Geisha or try to pass themselves off as ''one of the boys'' by feigning interest in macho sports like ice hockey. At the same time, he accuses other women of committing a laundry list of typical female mistakes he details in chapters with subheadings such as ''Taking Things Personally,'' ''Making Excuses'' and, in a description of perhaps the most egregious mistake, ''Not Keeping Secrets.''

But Mr. Flett also seems to contradict himself. ''Women don't have to become men in order to be successful,'' he says. ''In fact, they should appreciate that they hold a lot of the skills men attempt to learn.'' That said, he proceeds to advise women to act more ruthlessly. Among the dictums he says he has learned from his own male colleagues are ''Success is yours for the taking,'' ''Leadership is given to those who take complete responsibility'' and ''The world drives over weakness.''

Frankly, I found the ways in which Mr. Flett and Ms. DiSesa invoked persistent sexual stereotypes to be rather depressing. To my mind, the most illuminating comments in either book come from James Patterson, a former advertising mogul who now writes best-selling mystery fiction. Ms. DiSesa reports that Mr. Patterson urged her to think of life as a game in which we juggle five balls labeled Work, Family, Health, Friends and Integrity.

''One day you understand Work is a rubber ball. You drop it and it bounces back,'' Mr. Patterson is quoted as saying. ''The other four balls are made of glass. Drop one of those, and it will be irrevocably marked, scuffed, nicked and maybe even shattered.''

Both men and women might do well to remember those universal challenges, whether they are trying to seduce their way into so-called boys clubs or use tactics borrowed from the alpha-male playbook to gain advantage in the workplace.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MEN (89%); WOMEN (77%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (75%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (74%); NON FICTION LITERATURE (72%); BIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE (72%); PROFILES & BIOGRAPHIES (65%); DIVORCE & DISSOLUTION (63%); BREAST CANCER (51%)
LOAD-DATE: February 17, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1064 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 17, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

It's Lonely At the Top, The Middle ...
BYLINE: By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1721 words
KATHY RULAND decorated her family's new two-bedroom condo at the Plaza Hotel with care. The windows, overlooking Central Park, are draped with gold silk, and the living room showcases her beloved Indonesian painting of the Hindu goddess Sita, which was bought at a gallery near her main residence in Laguna Beach, Calif. When she wakes up to front-row views of Central Park, she says she feels like a princess.

But she's a lonely princess.

In the time she has been living, on and off, at the newly converted Plaza Hotel, she has met five residents of the 181-unit building. In fact, she has no idea who lives on either side of her; of the 10 apartments on her floor, she knows not a soul, not a face, not a name.

She wouldn't mind meeting someone other than the decorators, real estate brokers and other service workers fussing over the apartments. But even the building's security guards can't offer much information.

''I keep asking, 'Has anybody else moved in?' and they shake their heads,'' she said. ''The place has been deserted.''

The Plaza Hotel, which has spent much of its 100-year history packed with guests like the Vanderbilts and the Beatles, not to mention debutantes and Frank Lloyd Wright, closed in 2005 to reopen as part hotel and part condominium. The hotel is scheduled to reopen March 1, and the condominiums have been finished for months. Buyers have closed on nearly 100 apartments.

Yet for the most part, no one is home. Only a half-dozen residents live there full time and another three dozen residents live there on weekends, according to Lloyd Kaplan, spokesman for the Plaza's owner, Elad Properties.

On any night, the Plaza has rows and rows of darkened windows. The hallways on upper floors are silent except for the occasional shudder of wind. When young girls ask Ed the doorman whether Eloise is home, they are told she is on vacation in Paris.

So the buyers actually residing at the Plaza are finding life a little strange. Not that they regret their decision to move in. It's hard to complain, after all, about living in multimillion-dollar apartments in one of Manhattan's most legendary buildings, or to grouse about too much privacy. In New York, with its doubled-up roommates, clotted sidewalks and elbow-to-elbow dining, privacy is one of the ultimate luxuries.

But the Plaza does provide a window into the transient lives of the latest wave of the ultrarich in New York. Most of the buyers of luxury condos like those at the Plaza -- including current and former top executives of Staples, JetBlue, Viacom and Esprit, as well as a few Russian billionaires -- are rarely there. The city is just one more place they spend time around the country or the world. When they are living at the Plaza, some say they find themselves longing for a nod from a neighbor by the elevator, a hello in the lobby, a friendly wine and cheese gathering. Like anyone else, they long for a community, albeit a community of the megawealthy.

Kathy Ruland's family owns two apartments in the Plaza. Her parents, Betty and Fred Farago, bought a one-bedroom $5.8-million apartment in July on the 15th floor, and a two-bedroom in October for themselves, the children and the grandchildren.

When they first bought the one-bedroom, the Faragos encouraged Ms. Ruland's 17-year-old son, Stan, to spend the night by himself in the Plaza, one of the first people to overnight there.

The family knew the building was nearly empty, but thought Stan could be like the character Macaulay Culkin played in the movie ''Home Alone.'' That night, Stan ordered pizza, Cokes and cheese bread for the security guards and hung out with them downstairs. When it was time for bed, he reluctantly went upstairs to the family apartment. ''It was a little bit spooky because it was totally dead,'' he said. ''It was this huge hotel, and I was the only one up there.''

In the fall, his 21-year-old sister, Kelley, moved into the apartment.

She had just transferred to Columbia University and didn't want to stay in her dorm room, because she was lonely. Her roommate, it turned out, was always away with her boyfriend.

Kelley thought the Plaza would be busier, she said. But security guards called her Eloise as she headed in and out. Although her mother and grandmother often visited, she felt isolated. Last month, Kelley transferred back to the University of California, Los Angeles, moving into a shoe-box-size room at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. ''It doesn't matter where you are or how nice the place is -- you get lonely,'' she said. ''The only time I wasn't lonely was when my mom and grandma were there.''

Of course, New York can be a lonely place, even for the rich who make Manhattan their primary home and live in the equivalent of private clubs -- 740 Park, for instance. Entry into those co-ops requires not just money, but also the right credentials. That means that they are closed off to the Russian billionaires and wealthy entrepreneurs from other American cities who live here part time.

Contrary to what outsiders think, those residents can also be isolated. Michael Gross, who wrote a book about 740 Park, said the residents he interviewed talked about how they rarely saw one another and often rode elevators alone. The only exception was in the early 1970s when one vertical line of apartments, the D-line, filled with young families. But that closeness quickly disappeared when the D-line became known as the divorce line, because of all the marriages that fell apart.

''They don't do secret deals to rule the world in the elevator,'' he said. ''They rarely see these people.''

The Plaza residents are isolated partly because the building is still filling up. Some buyers are waiting for decorators to customize their apartments for their art collections. Other buyers are staying at their third and fourth -- or in some cases eighth and ninth -- homes until the building's restaurant and gym are open. That may not be until the spring.

In some ways, the Plaza Hotel's residents are like newly wealthy New Yorkers during the Gilded Age in the late 19th century. Back then, newly transplanted New Yorkers lived in luxury hotels rich with dining rooms and men's and women's lounges.

David Nasaw, a biographer of Andrew Carnegie and a history professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, said that Mr. Carnegie lived in amenity-rich hotels like the St. Nicholas when he first moved to New York.

He later upgraded to the Windsor Hotel, and established himself socially by spending time in the hotel's dining, drawing and reading rooms. Back then, Mr. Carnegie's accommodations were looked down upon by older New York families who lived in private residences.

''Nobody who had any kind of money would dare live in an apartment building where there weren't services,'' he said. ''You wouldn't imagine in the 1870s or 1880s getting your services anywhere else. These places prided themselves on the amenities.''

Mr. Nasaw said the superwealthy in the 19th century may have had an easier time figuring out how to meet the neighbors. The social rules on how and when to call on one another were far more explicit, and it was easy to tell whether social overtures were accepted or rejected. Think of the invitations and rejections Countess Olenska receives in Edith Wharton's novel ''The Age of Innocence.''

''These formal structure and rituals allowed people to navigate,'' Mr. Nasaw said.

THERE are, of course, no real rules anymore. That's why when all the decorating is done, brokers say, it may not be easier for the neighbors to be neighborly. For many residents, this will be just fine. ''The ones who bought there are not looking to be part of a community,'' said Kathryn Steinberg, a broker with Edward Lee Cave, who sold two apartments at the Plaza. ''They have their community.''

John Coustas, president of the Greek shipping company Danaos, closed last month on a two-bedroom apartment. He doesn't plan on living there full time, but isn't worried about being lonely. He has three sets of friends who also bought there. ''Of course we hope that we're going to meet more people,'' he said. ''We'll see how it develops.''

Ms. Ruland said meeting people is hard simply because it's hard to tell the residents from the help. One neighbor cast his eyes away from her one day when she walked through the lobby with a mop and bucket. She said she felt like telling him her family owns two apartments in the Plaza.

She hopes, she said, that over time she will meet someone there who shares her love of art and running. Her mother hopes that she will find neighbors who like to play canasta or bridge.

''It's going to be easier when we go to the fitness center,'' she said. ''I would love to meet people. The sooner the better. It's getting. ... It's getting. ... We're ready.''

Bernard and Joan Spain say the fitness center may not be the answer. The couple, whose main home is in Philadelphia, bought their $7 million two-bedroom apartment in June. After renovations, they moved in last month, replacing their space at the nearby Sherry-Netherland Hotel. In their five years at the Sherry-Netherland, they said, they never saw any neighbors at the gym.

They have high hopes for the Plaza. In August, they attended the 100th anniversary party to see if they could meet future neighbors. And when they moved in, the Spains introduced themselves to the single woman who lives on their floor with her mammoth dog, and also to a Swedish family they met in the lobby.

Ms. Spain has held three cocktail parties for friends who live nearby. ''We popped some popcorn and put out some mixed nuts,'' she said.

They invited the neighbor with the dog, but she took a rain check. And last week, Mr. Spain said, he met another neighbor while taking out the trash.

The views help prevent them from getting lonely. They entertain themselves by watching thousands of people mill in and out of the Apple Store below. They also talk on the phone with a friend's friend who bought a third-floor apartment, but has not yet moved in. They hope that they will meet people when the shops and restaurants open.

''We expect that we'll meet very interesting people,'' Ms. Spain said. Her husband added, ''We're optimistic people.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CONDOMINIUMS (90%); RESIDENTIAL CONDOMINIUMS (90%); RESIDENTIAL CO-OWNERSHIP (89%); REAL ESTATE (78%); HINDUS & HINDUISM (72%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (68%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (60%)
COMPANY: VIACOM INC (50%); JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORP (50%)
TICKER: VIA (NYSE) (50%); JBLU (NASDAQ) (50%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS515210 CABLE & OTHER SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMMING (50%); NAICS512110 MOTION PICTURE & VIDEO PRODUCTION (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (92%); CALIFORNIA, USA (91%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: February 17, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: HELLO?: The Plaza isn't really this dark. It only seems this way to the half-dozen or so full-time residents of its new apartments.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

ILLUSTRATION BY THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. ST.1)

2BR, PARK VU: Betty Farago, above at left, and her daughter, Kathy Ruland, hope their new neighbors at the Plaza will share their interests. Bernard and Joan Spain, left, who also live there, have held three cocktail parties for people who live nearby.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. ST7)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1065 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 17, 2008 Sunday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
The Power of Whimsy
BYLINE: By PHYLLIS KORKKI
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1995 words
SANDRA BOYNTON'S studio, in a converted barn next to her Connecticut home, bears the milestones of her singular career: a long rack of greeting cards featuring quirkily drawn animals; a room full of small, sturdy children's books, with names like ''Snuggle Puppy!'' and ''Barnyard Dance!''; and, upstairs, where she does much of her work, old-time radios and jukeboxes representing her more recent foray into music CDs for children.

Ms. Boynton's CDs have garnered three gold records and one Grammy nomination. These accomplishments, on top of the hundreds of millions of cards and tens of millions of books she has sold, are all the happy -- and profitable -- results of an unconventional approach to business.

As an entrepreneur, Ms. Boynton maintains a firm grasp on market realities and her finances, but she says she has succeeded by refusing to make money her main objective. Instead, she says, she has focused on the creative process, her artistic autonomy, her relationships and how she uses her time.

''I don't do things differently to be different; I do what works for me,'' she says. ''To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money, and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time. Though, of course, to the extent that money can save you time or make it easier to accomplish things, it's a wonderful thing.''

While Ms. Boynton may make all of this sound relatively straightforward, she has overcome hurdles in three industries that have routinely tripped up or roundly laid low legions of would-be entrepreneurs.

MS. BOYNTON, 54, describes what she calls an ''absurdly happy childhood'' in Philadelphia. The third of four daughters, she attended Germantown Friends, a K-12 Quaker school famed for its arts education and interdisciplinary teaching. Her father, Robert Boynton, was an English teacher at the school. ''The best English teacher I ever had,'' she says.

She was fascinated by business at an early age and remembers selling pretty yellow flowers door to door for a dime when she was 8. Later, she discovered that they were weeds, but she still had takers. ''I always liked selling things,'' she says. ''It gives you a sense of self-sufficiency.''

When Ms. Boynton was 14, a local newspaper printed drawings from an exhibit of her school artwork. She used the $40 she earned from her first published work to invest in two shares of AT&T -- though she mistakenly thought she was buying shares of I.B.M. She still has the stock but has no clue how much it is worth.

Stocks held a special glamour for her: Her grandfather worked at a silver company, rising from the mailroom to the vice president's perch. ''Family legend has it that the company offered penny-a-share stock to employees, and he bought as much as he could afford,'' she says. ''And he became a wealthy man. That stock eventually put most of his 17 grandchildren through college.''

In addition to her investing activity, she developed a strong interest in art, music, literature and writing -- all of which were central to the Friends curriculum. The school was so stimulating, academically and artistically, she says, that her first year at Yale was a disappointment.

At Yale, she majored in English, became involved in drama courses and productions and met her future husband, Jamie McEwan, in an acting class. She also worked on her drawing. Ever the entrepreneur, she started illustrating gift enclosure cards that were precursors of her animal-populated greeting cards.

In 1974, Ms. Boynton met Phil Friedmann, a partner in Recycled Paper Greetings, a greeting card company based in Chicago, at a stationery trade show. After Mr. Friedmann and his business partner, Mike Keiser, saw Ms. Boynton's work, they asked her to start making cards for their company.

They wanted to pay her a flat rate. Though she was only 21 and unknown, Ms. Boynton, who had learned a lesson or two from her father's other careers as a writer and publisher, demanded royalties.

''We quickly relented,'' Mr. Keiser recalls of the royalty negotiations. It was a shrewd move on his part, too. He says that over about a decade -- from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s -- revenue at Recycled Paper went from $1 million to $100 million, largely because of the popularity of Boynton cards. Ms. Boynton has made 4,000 different cards for Recycled Paper, including the still popular ''Hippo Birdies 2 Ewes'' birthday card.

By Mr. Keiser's rough estimate, Ms. Boynton has sold around a half-billion cards, which, he says, makes her one of the best-selling card creators of all time.

Her cards have become such a part of the mainstream that it is easy to forget how radical they were when they were introduced. Dominated by powerhouses like Hallmark and American Greetings, the card industry in the 1970s relied on flowery, color-saturated art and equally flowery prose, written in flourishes and curlicues.

Ms. Boynton's cards, on the other hand, were populated with cats, cows, hippos, ducks, sheep, dragons and various other beasts, humanized through the placement of a dot for a pupil, or a single, expressive arc for an eyelid or mouth. She was also among the first greeting card artists to use white backgrounds.

Her cards were thoughtful, wry and whimsical. While the sentiments may have been unconventional, they resonated with the public.

''Things are getting worse,'' said one card that featured a bewildered hippo. On the inside it said ''please send chocolate.''

Whimsy, it turns out, had been undervalued. And the big card companies eventually took some of their artistic cues from her.

''It's a lot easier to start in this business today than it was when Sandra Boynton got started,'' Patti Stracher, manager of the National Stationery Show, the country's biggest annual greeting card showcase. ''She fueled a trend in what were then called alternative greeting cards. Alternative cards helped people communicate about topics that were really hard to address or that you could poke fun at.''

AFTER the cards came the books. Continuing with the chocolate theme, in 1982 Ms. Boynton published a general market book titled ''Chocolate: the Consuming Passion'' that became a best seller. Its publisher, the Workman Publishing Company, went on to print some of her children's board books -- small books with thick, boardlike pages, with 5 to 10 rhythmic words per page.

The books feature some of the same furry and feathery characters that her cards do, presenting a world that her editor of 27 years, Suzanne Rafer, calls ''safe, unexpected and pleasurable'' for children.

The most popular board book by Workman, ''Barnyard Dance!'' (''Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Bow to the horse if you know how.'') was published in 1993 and has 2.3 million copies in print.

Wendy Rhein of Atlanta has been reading Ms. Boynton's books to her son, Nathan, 2 1/2, since he was born. ''The drawings are entertaining,'' she said, ''and there's a lyricism and rhyming that goes on that's very singsong, and they're fun for me to read to him.''

Succeeding in the children's book market is hard and becoming more so, said Michael K. Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a market research firm. Technology is luring children away from books, and only a small percentage of children's books wind up on families' shelves.

''The market favors authors who have built up their brands over time,'' Mr. Norris says. He says she also has an edge because ''she knows exactly who her audience is and knows how to reach them.''

FROM books, Ms. Boynton decided to extend her rhythmic sensibility into song. She says she was helped along by ''dumb luck.''

When she was working on the album ''Philadelphia Chickens'' in 2001, for instance, she told Mike Ford, her songwriting partner, that Meryl Streep (a fellow Yale alumna and a friend) was the only person who could do justice to the song ''Nobody Understands Me.''

The very next day, Ms. Streep happened to stop by her studio. She recorded the song and then suggested that the actor Kevin Kline might want to record one, too. He sang ''Busybusybusy.'' Another friend of Ms. Boynton's, Laura Linney, sang for the album, and Ms. Linney helped arrange for Eric Stoltz to put in an appearance.

Buoyed by her Hollywood supporters, Ms. Boynton approached some of the biggest names in the music industry -- including Alison Krauss, Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors -- to contribute to her next album, ''Dog Train.'' From there, she was able to persuade some of her music idols -- including Neil Sedaka, B. B. King, Steve Lawrence and Davy Jones -- to sing on her most recent effort, called ''Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Never.''

It was lucky, Ms. Boynton says, that many managers of the big musical acts were men in their 30s who had young children who loved her books. And there was another stroke of luck: she decided to use her longtime publisher, Workman, to package her CDs inside of books instead of selling them in music stores. In retrospect, that alternative form of distribution was a stroke of genius, because it came just as the music business seemed to be imploding.

Ms. Boynton's studio is not far from the farmhouse that she and her husband, Mr. McEwan -- also a children's book author -- bought 28 years ago. In addition to creating greeting cards and children's books, the couple also raised four children there, now ages 18 to 28.

The studio and her five-bedroom home, built in 1728, sit on 100 acres of rolling northwestern Connecticut countryside -- evidence of a life that is comfortable, but not lavish.

When she is working on her music, Ms. Boynton drives five miles across winding rural roads to Mr. Ford, her songwriting partner, who also works out of a studio next to his house. The two sit side by side in leather chairs in front of an electronic keyboard and a computer loaded with music software, working to find the right sounds for her lyrics.

One three-minute song, from writing to final recording, can take a month to complete. She and Mr. Ford put in 14-hour days when they are in the thick of a project. ''You have to enjoy the process of making it happen,'' she says.

BECAUSE she has made so much money from her cards and books, Ms. Boynton says, she doesn't need to rely on her CD business for income. Although the CDs make money for her publisher, she says they don't make money for her. Essentially, she views them as ''loss leaders'' -- products that are valuable not because they are profitable but because they help her maintain contact with her audience.

That philosophy helped persuade the blues singer B. B. King to record ''One Shoe Blues'' on her most recent CD. The song is a soulful lament that captures a toddler's anguish about not being able to find a missing shoe when Mama is ready to go.

''At the level of detail I think is necessary to make them what they are, they simply can't pay for themselves,'' Ms. Boynton says of the CDs. ''In purely business terms, it's an irrational enterprise. And it's also the best work I do.''

Ms. Boynton doesn't have an agent. She has just one employee: her assistant, Kathleen Sherrill. There is no Inc. or LLC after her name. She prefers to be an unincorporated business with an orbit of ''licensees,'' for lack of a better word, around her.

Whenever she has made products like stuffed animals, mugs, jewelry, sheets or towels, she has maintained control over the finished product so it doesn't stray from her vision -- or saturate the market.

''Theoretically, I could choose to trade artistic autonomy and pride in my work for increased income -- say, by broadly licensing my characters to be used for television,'' she says. But that would be foolish, she says.

''I love what I do, I love the people I work with, I care very much about the value of the work I create, and I don't need more money than I have. This is not revolutionary philosophy. It's just common sense.''

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