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If you don’t believe in Dolly… you’re good as gone to her.

The country mega star recently celebrated the 40th grand opening of Dollywood in March, and in addition to talking with the crowd at the show and also participating in the Dollywood parade, Dolly Parton did quite a bit of media. It was in the immediate wake of the loss of her husband, Carl Dean.

But possibly the most important advice she gave during all the interviews came from her conversation with Forbes, where she spoke about the pushback she received when she wanted to start Dollywood in 1986, and her accountants and lawyers told her it would be a huge mistake. Well, she fired them all, replaced them with others who saw her vision, and the rest, as they say, is history:

“When I first had the big idea to start Dollywood, my accountants and lawyers all thought I was making a big mistake. But I felt a calling to do this. So I got rid of all of them and brought in people who had faith in me. I told them, ‘You need to listen to what my dreams are. I don’t need to dream your dreams; you need to help me carry out mine.’”

She says it ultimately worked out for her:

“I was found out to be right, and they were found out to be gone.”

While the park now has over 3.5 million visitors a year, it’s not like Dolly has never failed at something, though sometimes it does seem that way…

She recalled her variety show, Dolly, which aired on TV and featured guests like Merle Haggard, Bruce Willis and tons of other big names and celebrities. She became the highest paid variety show host in history, but it ultimately flopped, which is honestly hard for me to imagine, but it is true. She couldn’t make it work, and butted heads with some of the powers that be about how it would be run:

“I wanted to do a variety show, not the old kind, but my version of it, my personality, things that would touch the all-American people. But everyone kept trying to bring back the old format through me. They all pushed and shoved until I got so frustrated I just said, ‘Oh hell, let’s try it your way.’”

She still got paid all of the money, but after the show was canceled in its first season, she still says she would’ve rather had the show be a huge hit than make any money from it:

“Looking back, I still would rather have had the show be a hit than have that money.”

Dolly has learned to trust her gut and go on feeling, which has clearly lent itself to be a great strategy, and she’s still doing great business deals to this day.

“It’s been a long time, but now I know to go by what I feel. I’d rather do without it than do it wrong. I think it’s amazing what’s happened through the years. If you live long enough with a good reputation, you can build your brand, and people know they can trust that. I take a lot of pride in that.”

And if your brand is being Dolly Parton, then it’s as sterling and blemish-free as a human’s can pretty much be.

During that same trip to Dollywood, she thanked fans for all their love and support, saying how much she will love and miss her husband: