To understand what makes Oprah Inc. such a powerhouse business, you must first understand the simple message that makes Oprah the new Queen of Soul. (If you don't get this, you're probably a guy, and in that case just sit up and pay attention.) Put simply, says Oprah, "my message is, 'You are responsible for your own life.' " It's as consistent a selling proposition as McDonald's convenience or Wal-Mart's everyday low prices. Here's how it translates into a business model: "We bet on ourselves," says Jeff Jacobs, president of Harpo and Oprah's longtime No. 2. "We are an intellectual property company, and our partners [ABC, Hearst, Oxygen] are distributors. Core content is developed here and has never left our home base."

Controlling the content is an especially interesting challenge for Harpo, since Oprah is not just the chief content creator but the chief content itself. Every single copy of O displays a bold, winning image of Oprah on the cover. The details of her personal life--her triumphs over adversity and abuse, her endless battle against weight gain--have been aired with a just-girls-yacking honesty on her show. "I bring all my stuff with me," she says. And by making herself and her struggles central to her message, she taps deeply into the American psyche and its desire for self-reliance.

Oprah's life is the essence of her brand, and her willingness to open up about it on daytime TV helped win the enduring trust of her audience. Given all that, it's not surprising that Oprah has been very, very reluctant to cede control of her brand. Food marketers, clothing designers, perfume manufacturers, book publishers, and innumerable pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurs have tried to persuade Oprah to license her name for their products. As Oprah's longtime friend Gayle King puts it, "Everybody's thinking, 'I gotta get a piece of that Oprah brand.' " Unlike fellow living brand Martha Stewart, Oprah has steadfastly resisted these entreaties. Early on, Stewart lent her name to Kmart to sell housewares, and that company is now in Chapter 11. Stewart, who looked for fast growth, also gave up control by taking her company public three years ago; the stock once approached $40 but now sells for $19.

For the first 14 years of her company's existence, in contrast, Oprah made just two alliances, and both were absolutely necessary--with TV syndicator King World to distribute her show and with ABC to air her TV movies. In the past few years she has, with trepidation, made deals with Hearst and Oxygen. She has refused to take her company public. Oprah says that selling her name--or any part of her business--is akin to selling herself. "If I lost control of the business," she says, "I'd lose myself--or at least the ability to be myself. Owning myself is a way to be myself."

And being her "authentic self" (in the words of Oprah "life strategist" Dr. Phil) has not always been easy. In her traumatic first major TV job in Baltimore, the station bosses wanted her to change her hair, lips, nose, and just about everything else. Dennis Swanson, who recruited her to Chicago in 1983 and is now president of WNBC-TV in New York, was the first exec who let Oprah be Oprah. He recalls: "I hadn't met her before she came to my office. She desperately wanted to be hired to do the AM Chicago show. She said, 'Do you have any concerns about me?'

"I said, 'No, not that I can think of.'

" 'Well, you know I'm black,' she said.

"I told her, 'Yeah, I figured that out.'

"Then she said, 'You know I'm overweight.' I said, 'So am I. I don't want you to change your appearance. If I wanted a glamorous person, I'd have hired someone else.' " Swanson paid her $230,000 a year and ran her show opposite Phil Donahue's, who had dominated TV talk in Chicago for more than a decade. Within a month Oprah was beating Donahue in the ratings.

Dennis Swanson convinced Oprah that she could succeed by being herself; Jeff Jacobs convinced her she could run an empire. Jacobs, 52, is the little-known power behind the media queen's throne. He was a Chicago entertainment lawyer in 1984 when Oprah arrived at his office in flip-flops and a red AM Chicago T-shirt looking for help with a new contract. He quickly convinced her to bet on herself--that is, to establish her own company rather than be talent for hire, as most TV stars are. When they set up Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards) in 1986, she gave Jacobs 5% of the company. Three years later, Jacobs joined as president, and Oprah handed him 5% more. Today Oprah owns a bit more than 90% of Harpo, as the company has moved into the magazine business in which Jacobs has no stake.

They're an odd couple, but the relationship works. Besides acting as Oprah's strategic advisor, Jacobs is her combative dealmaker. He is "a piranha--and that's a good thing for me to have," says Oprah. Says Disney's Iger, who wrangled with Jacobs over movie deal details: "I remember being put off initially, but Jeff Jacobs has one thing in mind: his client. And he serves her very well." Jacobs declined to be photographed for this story, since he views himself as a "behind-the-scenes guy." In that role he is perfectly happy to take on jobs most corporate presidents wouldn't touch, such as serving as Oprah's personal agent, for no fee, when she takes roles in movies and on TV. Thanks to that arrangement, she doesn't give up 25% of her pay to agents and managers, as other stars do. "One of the reasons Oprah is so financially successful," Jacobs boasts, "is that we understand it's not just how much you make but how much you keep."

Still, the tension between the gut-driven chairman and the wily president is palpable. "In 1998 Jeff said to me, 'Let's figure out how we can come up with the next Oprah,' " she recalls. "I said, 'We didn't figure out how to come up with this one!' If we had sat in a room and planned this, we never would have created what we have." She describes her business decisions as "leaps of faith." Grinning, she says, "If I called a strategic-planning meeting, there would be dead silence, and then people would fall out of their chairs laughing." Even when they agree, Jacobs and Oprah speak different languages. Jacobs told FORTUNE that Harpo's strategy is to "multipurpose our content" in various media. For example, Dr. Phil appears every Tuesday on Oprah, writes a Q&A column in O, and in September will launch his own daily Harpo-backed TV talk show. "Multipurposing the content?" Oprah bristles. "He's never used that term with me."

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