11/19/2025
Dallas, Texas. 1950s.
Bette Nesmith Graham was a single mother working as an executive secretary at Texas Bank & Trust, trying to support her young son on a secretary's salary that barely covered rent and groceries.
She was drowning—not just financially, but in something that seemed impossibly small: typing mistakes.
In the era of carbon copies and manual typewriters, one mistake meant disaster. One wrong letter and you'd have to retype the entire page. Hours of work destroyed by a single slip of the finger.
Bette watched the bank's sign painters touch up their work when they made errors. They didn't start over—they just painted over the mistake.
And she thought: Why can't I do that with typing?
The Kitchen Laboratory
Bette didn't have a chemistry degree. She didn't have money for research. She didn't have investors or a lab.
She had a kitchen blender and tempera paint.
Night after night, she mixed paint with chemicals in her blender at home, testing formulas. Too thick and it was obvious. Too thin and it didn't cover. Wrong color and it stood out on the paper.
She experimented for months.
Finally, she created something that worked: a fast-drying, paper-colored fluid that covered typing mistakes seamlessly.
She poured it into small bottles with nail polish brushes and brought it to work.
Her fellow secretaries noticed immediately. Their pages were suddenly cleaner. Their work faster. Their stress lower.
"What is that?" they asked.
"Mistake Out," Bette said. "I made it."
They wanted bottles too.
The Secret Double Life
By day, Bette was a secretary typing letters and answering phones.
By night and weekends, she was manufacturing "Mistake Out" in her kitchen and garage—mixing batches, filling bottles, hand-typing labels.
Her son Michael (who would later become famous as a member of The Monkees) helped her fill bottles after school.
She started selling them: first to coworkers, then to secretaries across Dallas, then to offices throughout Texas.
Demand grew. Orders increased. But she still needed her day job—she needed that steady paycheck.
Then in 1956, Bette made a mistake that changed everything.
She was typing a letter for her boss and accidentally signed it "Bette Nesmith, Mistake Out Company" instead of his name.
She was fired.
Her boss told her she was spending too much time on her "silly little invention" and not enough on her real job.
As a single mother, losing her steady income was terrifying.
But now she had no choice.
She went all-in on Mistake Out.
The Business Nobody Took Seriously
In 1956, Bette incorporated her company (later renamed Liquid Paper Corporation).
She approached IBM, General Electric, and other major corporations with her product.
They dismissed her. A secretary with a kitchen invention? Not interested.
Banks wouldn't loan her money. She was a woman. A single mother. A secretary with no business credentials.
She was told repeatedly that her product wasn't serious, that she should go back to typing.
So she built it anyway—slowly, stubbornly, from her garage.
She hired other women. She refined the formula. She improved packaging. And most importantly, she marketed directly to secretaries—the people who actually used typewriters—bypassing the corporate gatekeepers who'd rejected her.
By 1968, she was selling one million bottles a year.
By 1975, it was 25 million bottles a year.
The Revolutionary Employer
As Liquid Paper grew, Bette did something radical for the 1960s and 70s:
She provided on-site childcare for her employees.
This was decades before it became standard practice. At a time when working mothers were stigmatized, when most companies expected women to choose between career and family, Bette built a company that supported both.
She also offered:
Profit-sharing plans
Flexible schedules
Employee libraries and recreation facilities
Education programs
She ran her company the way she wished the world had treated her when she was a struggling single mother.
She created the workplace she'd needed but never had.
The $47.5 Million Sale
By 1979, Liquid Paper was a household name—in offices, schools, and homes across America and internationally.
That year, the Gillette Corporation made an offer.
The price? $47.5 million, plus royalties.
The total value: approximately $50 million.
The secretary who'd been fired twenty-three years earlier for wasting time on a "silly invention" had just sold that invention for $50 million.
She was one of the wealthiest self-made businesswomen in America.
The Legacy
Bette Nesmith Graham died in May 1980—just six months after selling her company.
But she left behind far more than a business.
She founded two charitable foundations focused on supporting women in business and the arts. She left half her estate to charity.
She proved that:
You don't need permission to innovate
You don't need credentials to solve problems
You don't need investors to believe in you if you believe in yourself
You just need a problem worth solving and the stubbornness to keep going when everyone tells you to stop
The Beautiful Irony
Here's what makes Bette's story even more remarkable:
Liquid Paper became obsolete.
Word processors and computers made typewriters irrelevant. Correction fluid became unnecessary. By the 2000s, Liquid Paper sales had plummeted.
Her invention didn't last forever.
But her impact did.
She proved women could invent, build companies, and succeed despite being dismissed by banks, corporations, and society.
She showed that a woman working from her kitchen could compete with major corporations—and win.
She demonstrated that businesses could support working mothers without sacrificing profitability.
And she left a fortune to foundations helping other women follow the path she'd carved.
The product is gone. The example remains.
From Secretary to CEO
Bette Nesmith Graham started as a secretary who couldn't afford to make mistakes.
She ended as a multimillionaire entrepreneur who proved that mistakes can lead to extraordinary opportunities—if you have the courage to solve the problem instead of accepting it.
She was fired for spending too much time on a "silly invention."
That invention changed her life.
And it changed what women believed they could achieve.
Every female entrepreneur who builds a business from her kitchen today walks in Bette Nesmith Graham's footsteps.
Every company that provides childcare honors her vision.
Every woman who refuses to accept "no" from gatekeepers follows her example.
She mixed paint in a blender in her kitchen.
And she built an empire.
Bette Nesmith Graham.
Secretary. Single mother. Inventor. Millionaire. Trailblazer.
The woman who proved that even the smallest frustration—if you're stubborn enough to solve it—can change the world.
~Old Photo Club
