Sara Blakely: Shaping the world with Spanx

Summary

Good Bad Billionaire – Sara Blakely: Shaping the World with Spanx

BBC World Service, January 12, 2026
Hosts: Simon Jack & Zing Tsjeng

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Episode Overview

This episode of Good Bad Billionaire explores the life, rise, and legacy of Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who transformed the shapewear industry and became the youngest self-made female billionaire of her era. Hosts Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng break down Blakely’s innovative path from humble beginnings, discuss the disruptive impact of Spanx, examine controversies, and rate her wealth, philanthropy, legacy, and more—all with wit and a touch of playful skepticism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Childhood, Family, and Early Drive

• Background: Born in Clearwater Beach, Florida, 1971, to a lawyer father and watercolor artist mother—a firmly middle-class upbringing, "upper middle class home." (03:54)
• Entrepreneurial Flare:
  • Sold homemade art door-to-door, charged friends to rollerblade in her driveway, and even set up a haunted house for Halloween.
  • Blakely recalls, "It wasn't about getting rich. It was about cracking the code on how money works." (04:26)
• Attitude Towards Failure:
  • Blakely’s father made her and her brother share their biggest failure each week at dinner; if they had none, he was disappointed.
  • "It taught me at a young age not to fear failure." (Blakely, via Times interview, quoted at 05:02)

Early Adulthood: Lessons from Setbacks

• Loss and Resilience:
  • Parents divorced when she was 16; witnessed tragic deaths of friends, shaping her determination and empathy.
  • Quote: "I'm living lives for people who didn't get a chance to." (Blakely, The Observer, 2008, 05:41)
• Law School Setback:
  • Failed the LSAT twice; ended up in Disney World—"dressed as a chipmunk because she was too short to play Goofy." (06:48)
• Sales Hustle:
  • Sold fax machines—once to a street food stall guy without electricity.
  • Struggled with confidence walking into offices, but stuck it out, was eventually relocated to Atlanta at 25. (07:20)
• Comedy Roots:
  • Tried stand-up, often using physical comedy and self-deprecation as part of her act. (07:59)

The Creation of Spanx: A Problem Solved

• Eureka Moment:
  • Cut feet off tights before a party—"I had no panty lines. I looked thinner and smoother, but they rolled up my legs all night. And I remember thinking, this should exist for women." (Blakely, Inc. Magazine, quoted at 09:10)
• Innovation & Female Perspective:
  • Tried to prototype her design, found hosiery factories (all male-run) initially uninterested until one asked his daughters for feedback and changed his mind.
  • Blakely joked: "Maybe that's why our pantyhose have been so uncomfortable for so long, because the people making them aren't wearing them." (10:24)
• Key Design Changes:
  • Changed waist placement, added cotton gusset, self-tested for comfort and fit, and developed playful red packaging, tagline: "Don't worry, we've got your butt covered." (11:53, 12:34)

Breaking Into Retail and the Oprah Effect

• First Big Break:
  • Landed a meeting with Neiman Marcus, used a bathroom demo—"I get it, she whispers. It's brilliant." (Episode Opening, 01:44)
  • Overcame early production problems (securing gussets via Yellow Pages!). (13:20)
• Celebrity Boost:
  • Sent samples with handwritten notes to Oprah’s hairdresser. Oprah featured Spanx on "Oprah’s Favorite Things," sparking 20,000 orders in a day—"Oprah would call Spanx the [product] that changed my life...a staple in her wardrobe." (14:51, 15:22)
• Explosive Growth:
  • From 10,000 pairs pre-Oprah to $4 million in first-year sales, then $10 million the next year; continued rapid expansion into major department stores. (15:59)

Scaling to a Billion Dollar Brand

• Guerilla & DIY Tactics:
  • Used friends as buyers to simulate demand; moved Spanx from hosiery to cash registers without store approval—caught on CCTV, but it worked. (14:07)
• Homegrown Operations:
  • Ran the business out of her apartment, paying friends in pizza to help pack orders, before hiring a proper COO. (17:56)
• Innovation and Product Expansion:
  • Spanx moved into QVC (selling 8,000 pairs in 5 minutes), and launched new products like "power panties" and even men’s shapewear. (16:40–22:53)

Personal Life & Mindset

• Unconventional Choices:
  • Prioritized family, downtime, sleep—"she actually prioritized nine hours of sleep a night and school events over the endless hustle of running a business."
  • Noted for quirky behavior: prepped her NYC penthouse with a Navy SEAL and escape gear in case of disaster. (24:05, 24:08)
• Marriage & Family:
  • Married Jesse Itzler, entrepreneur and ex-rapper, in 2008; storybook wedding with Olivia Newton-John as the singer. (23:13)

Legacy, Competition, and Continued Innovation

• Cultural Touchstone:
  • Spanx became synonymous with shapewear, “a category definer” like "Hoover" or "Kleenex." (22:55)
• Celebrity and Pop Culture:
  • Madonna ordered full outfits made of Spanx material; Gwyneth Paltrow, among other celebrities, sang Spanx’s praises.
• International Expansion:
  • Spanx available in 40+ countries, $250 million annual revenues by 2012. (24:56)
• Adapting to Competition:
  • Faced new rivals: Kim Kardashian's Skims “eclipsed” Spanx in market value by 2023.
• Partial Exit & Shift:
  • Sold majority stake to Blackstone for $1.2 billion in 2021, keeping a substantial equity share and becoming executive chairwoman—chose Blackstone’s all-female deal team. (31:21)
  • Continues investing in new ventures, e.g., “Healthy Baby” and “Sneaks” (stiletto-heeled sneakers).

Criticism and Controversy

• Legal:
  • Faced a lawsuit from a rival shapewear founder in 2013 over product design; outcome unknown. (28:45)
• Body Image Debate:
  • Lena Dunham and others criticized Spanx as enforcing unrealistic beauty standards—Blakely’s retort: "Then don’t buy them. It’s fine...I’m just so happy that I had the option for Spanx because it opened up my wardrobe." (29:18)
• Environmental Concerns:
  • Spanx lacks clear sustainability goals, noted as a negative in the era of responsible fashion. (34:53)

Philanthropy

• Giving Pledge:
  • First female billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge, a public commitment to give away most of her fortune. (36:52)
• Charitable Efforts:
  • Donated millions via The Red Backpack Foundation, which supports entrepreneurship, education, and arts—$17.5 million given before she became a billionaire. (37:13)
  • $5 million pledged to female entrepreneurs during COVID-19.
  • Known for personal generosity, e.g., lending out her wedding dress. (37:40)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Early Ambition:

  • “For Blakely, she says, it wasn’t about getting rich. It was about cracking the code on how money works.” —Zing Tsjeng (04:26)

• Learning from Failure:

  • “It taught me at a young age not to fear failure.” —Sara Blakely, as quoted by Simon Jack (05:02)

• On the Turning Point:

  • “Would you mind coming with me to the bathroom?... I get it, she whispers. It’s brilliant.” —The original Neiman Marcus pitch (01:44)

• On Motivation:

  • “My only strategy was to exit a room looking good in cream pants.” —Sara Blakely, Financial Times (15:59)

• On Media Impact:

  • “Before the Oprah episode, they’d sold 10,000 pairs... Name drop from Oprah sold 20,000 pairs in just a single day.” —Zing Tsjeng (15:22)

• On Work-Life Balance:

  • “She actually prioritized nine hours of sleep a night and school events over the endless hustle of running a business. I actually think this makes her one of the rarest billionaires on our show.” —Zing Tsjeng (23:58)

• On Participation in Giving Pledge:

  • “In 2013, Blakely became the first female billionaire to sign the pledge.” —Zing Tsjeng (36:52)

• On Spanx's Cultural Critique:

  • “It began to be seen as a kind of... tool of patriarchy... Isn't that kind of unfeminist in a way to not embrace your natural curves?” —Zing Tsjeng (29:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sara’s Boardroom Pitch at Neiman Marcus: 01:22–01:57
• Childhood, attitude to failure, and self-reliance: 03:54–06:13
• Early setbacks and pivot to entrepreneurship: 06:48–08:19
• Spanx’s invention and early prototyping: 09:05–10:24
• Breaking into retail & celebrity endorsement: 12:56–15:22
• Oprah’s impact and first million: 14:51–15:59
• QVC, scaling up, and company growth: 16:40–18:27
• Philanthropy and The Red Backpack Foundation: 36:52–37:40
• Controversy and body-image criticism: 29:18–36:03
• Competition from Kim Kardashian & Blackstone buyout: 31:11–32:49
• Scorecard segment: Wealth, controversy, philanthropy, legacy: 33:09–40:57
• Hosts’ open verdict and discussion of her legacy: 41:08–42:14

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Scorecard & Host Verdict

Scoring Sarah Blakely (informal, unscientific, for entertainment):

• Wealth: $1.2 billion – Not the richest, but notable for zero outside investment at the start. [Simon: 1/10, Zing: 2/10] (33:41)
• Controversy: Score reflects debate around body image and environmental responsibility. [Both: 3/10] (34:46)
• Philanthropy: First female billionaire to sign Giving Pledge. [Simon: 4/10, Zing: 5/10] (38:00)
• Power & Legacy: Created a cultural phenomenon and defined a category, though legacy challenged by newer brands. [Both: 6/10] (40:57)

Hosts’ Take:
While not a traditional “change the world” billionaire, Blakely is lauded for her persistence, humor, and relatability. “There’s something really compelling about that story,” says Tsjeng, pointing to her DIY beginnings and unassuming end goal (“to look good in cream pants”). (41:49)

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Final Thoughts

Is Sara Blakely "good, bad, or just another billionaire"? The hosts emphasize her uniquely relatable journey, hands-on approach, and impact on women’s underwear, but leave the ultimate verdict up to listeners. As they say, “Let us know what you think!” (42:15)

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This summary covers all substantive discussion and critique of Sara Blakely’s business journey, product innovation, cultural and philanthropic impact, including notable quotes and thematic highlights, while following the hosts’ witty and engaging tone.

Transcript

[Simon Jack]

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[Simon Jack]

It's the year 2000. Two women sit in a boardroom, one impeccably dressed, the other clutching a scruffy red backpack.

[Zing Singh]

The woman with the backpack is trying to sell her new product to the buyer of a luxury department store chain. The product is a new undergarment, but the pitch isn't going well.

[Simon Jack]

Suddenly, the woman pitching stops mid sentence and asks, would you mind coming with me to the bathroom?

[Zing Singh]

Excuse me? The buyer replies, shocked, but she agrees. And in the bathroom, the pitcher disappears into a cubicle, slips on a pair of footless tights and steps out. The buyer stares, stunned. I get it, she whispers. It's brilliant.

[Simon Jack]

That moment flipped her world upside down and gave celebrities a whole new look.

[Zing Singh]

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

[Simon Jack]

We take them from zero to their first million, and then from a million onto a billion.

[Zing Singh]

My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

[Simon Jack]

And I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor.

[Zing Singh]

And this week we're talking about Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, a company.

[Simon Jack]

That redefined shapewear as flattering and maybe as comfortable as they are. This is not a comfortable category for me, I have to say. I don't know much about it, but what I understand is that it's underwear that smooths out any lumps and bumps.

[Zing Singh]

Yep, exactly. I am not a Spanx wearer myself because I don't tend to wear clothes.

[Simon Jack]

Me neither.

[Zing Singh]

Necessitate Spanx. Well, that makes the two of us. But from what I hear from friends who have used it, it is an enormously helpful product. And it's also the product that has propelled Blakely's wealth. She has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion.

[Simon Jack]

And yet she launched SP Spanx from her apartment with just $5,000 of her own savings and went nearly two decades without any outside investment. Remarkable.

[Zing Singh]

And since then, her company has become a household name and it's become synonymous with shapewear itself.

[Simon Jack]

Yes, Blakely turned herself into Spanx's best marketing tool. From modeling her underwear herself in the early days to judging on Shark Tank. Think of Dragon's Den for those listening in the uk, to keep her brand in the spotlight, she shattered glass ceilings.

[Zing Singh]

To become the youngest self made female billionaire of her era. And now she champions other female entrepreneurs.

[Simon Jack]

And just to note, Blakely is American. So she says pantyhose. In the UK we say tights or very old fashioned hosiery. So we'll be using both or. Yeah, both. Tights and pantyhose.

[Zing Singh]

So let's squeeze into this story and let's stretch it from zero to her first million Spanx style.

[Simon Jack]

Now then, Sarah Trevelyan Blakely was born on 27 February 1971 in Clearwater Beach City on the west coast of Florida. Her father was successful personal injury lawyer and her mother was a watercolor artist. So firmly middle class from the age of eight, she was set on becoming a lawyer like her father. She'd tag along to court to watch him in action. At school she joined the debate team, often winning local competitions. And alongside the debate team, Blakely was also a cheerleader and popular in school.

[Zing Singh]

I think she's still friends with some of those middle school kids.

[Simon Jack]

Bet they're very friendly with her.

[Zing Singh]

I bet they are. I would be. Well, she grew up in, as you say, a comfortable upper middle class home. She hustled though from a young age like many of our billionaires. So that included making homemade artwork and selling it door to door. She charged her own friends money to rollerblade in her driveway and she set up a haunted house for Halloween and charged local kids the admission fee. For Blakely, she says, it wasn't about getting rich. It was about cracking the code on how money works.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, that's a pretty common trait we've seen in many of our billionaires. Lots of them have done paper rounds or sold baseball cards or chewing gum in the playground.

[Zing Singh]

Yep.

[Simon Jack]

Now, this is interesting. Blakely recalls that during family dinners, her would ask her and her brother to share their biggest failure of the week. If they had none, he was disappointed. If they did, he celebrated it. And Blakely told the Times newspaper, it taught me at a young age not to fear failure. Very tech, bro. In a way, you know, trying and failing before you succeed. It's considered kind of rite of passage, almost a badge of honor.

[Zing Singh]

It reminds me a lot of what they try and teach in schools in the uk, some of them, this idea of a growth mindset. Have you ever heard of this?

[Simon Jack]

Nope.

[Zing Singh]

Where it's not about whether you succeed or you win, it's about the mistakes. So then you can grow from them.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

Well. At 16, Blakely's world shifted. Her parents divorce, and she saw firsthand how vulnerable her mother was as the lower earning homemaker. And she vowed that she would never be in a similar position. Soon after that, another tragedy. She witnessed her friend die in a bike accident. And a few years later, other friends, including her flatmate and her prom date, also died in accidents. She told The observer in 2008, grief has knocked me to my knees. There have been some very dark moments. But now I think that maybe inadvertently, I'm living lives for people who didn't get a chance to.

[Simon Jack]

Interesting. Yeah. After her parents divorce, her father gave her a stack of Wayne Dyer tapes. Now, Dyer is a motivational speaker. He preaches that you can create the life you want by changing your beliefs. She memorized all 10 of his how to be a no Limit Person series during long drives. Apparently friends, I've sympathized with them. Dreaded getting lifts home from parties in her car. As Dyer voice was always on repeat.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, you can imagine a friend saying, oh, please, let's just play chart radio.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, exactly. I. I think I would drive me mad if someone's like, yo, yeah, go for your dreams. Just go for it. Change your beliefs.

[Zing Singh]

Well, in 1989, she started a legal communications degree at Florida State University. She had plans to go to law school afterwards. She graduated with that degree in 1993, but her hopes of going to law school were soon dashed because she failed the LSAT twice. That is the admissions exam you need to sit in order to get into law school, and she ended up in a very weird place. She ended up in Disney World, of all places, dressed as a chipmunk because she was too short to play Goofy, the role that she'd auditioned for.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so that is a setback. Definitely.

[Zing Singh]

It's a setback and a half, I think.

[Simon Jack]

Half. You can congratulate that one over the dinner table, but if you've dreamt about being a lawyer since you were 8 years old and you fail the entry exam twice, that would, you know, knock a lot of people pretty hard, I think. Anyway, she left the Magic Kingdom after a few months for a job selling fax machines to small businesses. Although she was pretty good at sales, she once sold a fax machine to a man running a street food stall who didn't even have an electricity supply, for example. It wasn't her dream job. She said she would sometimes walk into a small office and when everyone turned to look at her, she'd pretend to have the wrong address and leave. But she stuck it out in age 25. The company promoted her and relocated her to Atlanta.

[Zing Singh]

In Atlanta, Sarah tried her hand at stand up comedy. She leaned into this dumb blonde stereotype. She told the Times. She'd put in bra inserts, go on stage in a tight tank top and say, how many of you guys out there would like to get your hands on these? Then she'd say, okay, then, and then pull out the inserts and throw them into the audience.

[Simon Jack]

By 1998, Sarah's 27 with a solid but uninspiring job. She was making about $50,000. And every day she wore tights she didn't love, except for the smoothing control section at the top top. Now, she treated herself to an expensive pair of nearly hundred dollar cream trousers, but they sat unworn in her closet because underwear showed lines, thongs left marks, and girdles were bulky. I've got to confess, I'm not sure what a girdle is.

[Zing Singh]

So I actually looked this up. It's quite an old fashioned piece of underwear. If you know Dita Von Teese, the burlesque performer, you know, she always kind of performs in something that looks a little bit like the top half of a slip. It looks a little bit like a really tight miniskirt. And it's got the dangly bits down the front that she attaches stockings to.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, that's a girdle. Okay. And then came her eureka moment right before party.

[Zing Singh]

She cut the feet off her tights and she told Inc. Magazine, I had no panty lines. I looked thinner and smoother, but they rolled up my legs all night. And I remember thinking, this should exist for women. Now I want to take you back to the 90s, okay? Because in the 90s, minimalist fashion was kind of all the rage. So, you know, you think about silk dresses, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Gwyneth Paltrow wearing nothing but a little slip on the red carpet. So you kind of do need to have underwear that doesn't show up and show a bulky line underneath it.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, this is a vpl, right?

[Zing Singh]

Yes, VPL as invisible panty line. So if you were to come up with a way of solving that VPL problem, that is a real money spinner.

[Simon Jack]

Okay? So Sarah had $5,000 in savings. She used it to fund a prototype of her useless shapewear tights. She first wanted to check. Her idea was new, so she spent nights at Georgia Tech's library checking hosiery patterns to double check no one had thought of a similar design and patented it. Now, she couldn't sew yet, but she tried to cobble together a prototype herself by cutting up panels from tights and clipping them together with paper clips. It didn't work. So she did need a hosiery manufacturer to create a working prototype.

[Zing Singh]

And she soon discovered that most hosiery factories were based in North Carolina. So she took a week off work to drag drive down from Atlanta and knock on the factory doors in the hopes that they would meet her. And they all said, thanks, but no thanks. Also, every owner of those factories that she met was a man. So that prompted her to joke later, maybe that's why our pantyhose have been so uncomfortable for so long, because the people making them aren't wearing them. And if they are, they're not admitting it.

[Simon Jack]

That's funny.

[Zing Singh]

You know, she actually does. She's got stand up bones in her.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, she's got good sense of humor for sure. Anyway, weeks later, one manufacturer did finally call back. He had asked his daughters about Blakely's idea. Good idea. Making Sarah's point there. Then they had told him it was a brilliant idea. And her timing might have helped too. Hosiery sales had actually plunged over 30 in the late 90s as bare legs became the trend.

[Zing Singh]

So let's talk about what made Blake Lee's design so different. So shapewear wasn't a new concept. You know, we had corsets. They date back to the 1500s. In the 20th century, like I was telling you, women wore girdles. But by the 70s, girdles became way less popular. And by the 90s, tights had these things called control panels, which kind of smooth your waist down. Blakely realized that because it was men designing the product and testing it on mannequins, they actually didn't think very much about comfort. So she changed where the waist was so it didn't dig into your skin or roll over. And she added a cotton gusset so that Spanx could be worn without underwear. And then she tested the sizing on herself and her friends. So really, she's just doing this old diy.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. And honing the prototype took a year. So Sarah spent the time thinking about marketing. Now, she'd never taken a business class, but she'd read that brand names like Coca Cola or Kodak worked because they had a hard K sound. And her comedian friends agreed that the K sound often made audiences laugh.

[Zing Singh]

Wonder which word that involves.

[Simon Jack]

So, like many of our billionaires, she went through a long list of bad ideas. She admits the worst one was open toed Delilahs. That is bad.

[Zing Singh]

That is terrible.

[Simon Jack]

Before settling on Spanx, spelt with a king. But she quickly swapped the Ks at the end for an X when she registered the trademark. She'd also read that made up names were more successful.

[Zing Singh]

She also wanted to be playful and a bit suggestive. She got a friend from home who is now a graphic designer to design the red packaging to stand out among the white and beige packets of typical tights and pantyhose. So it had illustrations of three fashionable women rather than the usual shots of disembodied legs that you get on these packages. And the tagline, don't worry, we've got your butt covered.

[Simon Jack]

Okay? By 2000, she had a pretty prototype and packaging design, so started cold calling department stores. After weeks of calling, Sarah managed to get a 15 minute meeting with the head hosiery buyer, Neiman Marcus, if she flew to Dallas. And that is where we found her at the opening of this episode. And after Blakeley's before and after demonstration of Spanx, Neiman Marcus signed off to stock it in seven stores. So foot in the door, yeah.

[Zing Singh]

Now, Blakely, like many billionaires, she didn't always have everything figured out. When Neiman Marcus placed their first order, the factory making Spanx told Blakely they lacked enough machines to make the crotches in time. Kind of an essential part of these tides. So desperate, she scoured the Yellow Pages. Crotch was not listed, but gusset was. And she found a supplier in Norcross, Georgia. He produced these gussets and overnighted them to the factory and basically saved the deal.

[Simon Jack]

The seven department stores began selling the first line of Spanx in August 2000 for $20. And to make Neiman Marcus think they were flying off the shelves, Blakely asked friends and acquaintances to go in and buy Spanx. I've had entrepreneur friends who do that same. I've been recruited in my time to go in and buy stuff or ask for products they don't have so that they can say, you keep asking, then basically, they'll stock the product that they don't have.

[Zing Singh]

Interesting.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. She also took some of the Spanx out of the hosiery department and placed them by the cash register in plastic holders she bought from a supermarket. She told Forbes all the staff assumed someone else had approved it until they caught me on CCTV. Brilliant. They soon sold out in the seven stores. So Neiman Marcus put in an order for 32 of their stores.

[Zing Singh]

But her true big break came from one of our other billionaires, Oprah Winfrey. In 1999, when Blakely was struggling to get her prototype made, she'd seen an Oprah episode where Oprah admitted that she cut off the feet of her pantyhose too. Now, as soon as her product was made, Blakely had sent Oprah's hairdresser a packet of Spanx with a handwritten note in the hope that he would send it to Oprah and it would reach the parlor products sent to the celebrity every year.

[Simon Jack]

Possibly the most important moment in this entire story.

[Zing Singh]

That hairdresser deserves a lot of credit.

[Simon Jack]

Oh, God. Anyway, it worked. Oprah's production team called Sarah to tell her Spanx would be on Oprah's Favorite Things of the year episode in November 2000. They told her to make sure her website, which didn't even exist at this point, was ready for an order bonanza such as the Power of Oprah. So a couple of weeks before the episode aired, Sarah quit her day job in sales and took out a loan to build up Spanx inventory so she had enough stock.

[Zing Singh]

Before the Oprah episode, they'd sold 10,000 pairs of Spanx. But the name drop From Oprah sold 20,000 pairs in just a single day. And later, Oprah would call Spanx the that changed my life. And that from the moment she wore her first pair, they'd been, in her words, a staple in her wardrobe.

[Simon Jack]

Boom.

[Zing Singh]

Within a year, Spanx wasn't just in Neiman Marcus. It was in Nordstrom, Saks, Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, and Bergdorf. Good.

[Simon Jack]

These are all High end kind of department stores in America.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, it is like the roll call of everywhere you want to be stocked if you're a product. And according to Forbes, Spanx had sales of 4 million in its first year. And the next year, 10 million.

[Simon Jack]

Thank you, Oprah. As Sarah had 100% ownership of Spanx by 2001, we can safely say she was a millionaire. Around this time, she bought a house for her mother and herself, a flat screen TV splashing out. She told the Financial Times that months after starting Spanx, friends asked her what her exit strategy was. This is great, she told them. My only strategy was to exit a room looking good in cream pants. Had that line well prepared, tucked up in her back pocket. A very smooth back pocket.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. I mean, she sounds like a character from a Candice Bushel novel, right?

[Simon Jack]

She does.

[Zing Singh]

City.

[Simon Jack]

Oh, totally. Let's take her from a million to a billion.

[Zing Singh]

From 2001 to 2003, Blakely was busy out on the road doing in store demos and local TV spots. Again, she would use herself as the model, in her words, lifting up my pant leg and shaking my backside for any woman who would listen. Her next big break came when she landed a 5 minute QVC slot. Now, this was gold dust at the time because QVC, a TV channel, was reaching 84 million US households. And out of 13,000 vendor inquiries, people who are begging QVC to let them sell their stuff on the channel, only 3% of those people got a deal.

[Simon Jack]

Worth explaining a little bit about QVC is it's kind of. Basically, it's just an elongated advert where lots of people come and trying to hawk their wares on, on tv. And it's kind of run throughout the daytime. It's advertising you can't buy, basically. Anyway, one reason Blakely managed to get her slot was thanks to sending a sample of Spanx that fit the booker for QVC perfectly. I wonder whether she'd actually research because that kind of detail is so important in the company. Once she got on air, she sold 8,000 pairs of Spanx in five minutes. And her success gained her a monthly slot on QVC for the next few years. So she's making good money and she's plowing her earnings back into the business. And quickly did a deal with another hosiery mill to deal with demand and new product designs.

[Zing Singh]

In 2002, Spanx shifted from footless tights to its breakout product, the power panties, which are control shorts rather than tights. And Blakely finally moved into a small, simple office because believe it or not, she'd been running this company out of her apartment for the early years, and she also hired a fulfillment firm to handle the orders. She'd actually been paying her friends in pizza to help her pack the orders previously. Her fifth employee was a woman called Ann Goldman, who was a former Coca Cola exec and was hired to be CEO.

[Simon Jack]

This is a very different approach than you would see in tech world when basically they want to get big quickly, they want to scale up, and because they've got private funding, which basically wants them to grow really quickly, they'll throw money at a fancy office before they've even made any revenue.

[Zing Singh]

They'll have breakfast, lunch, dinner provided. Private chef. Yeah, you know, perks galore.

[Simon Jack]

Exactly. Anyway, now she's had a small team running Spanx. In 2004, she took some time off to compete on Rebel Billionaire. Now this is a reality TV competition for entrepreneurs, which aired in 19 countries. Contestants were competing in physical and business challenges with Richard Branson at the helm. Her father and her lawyers advised her against competing, worried she wouldn't have control over her image. Once you get into one of those reality kind of shows, you kind of lose a lot of control. But Blakely said she wanted to meet and learn from Richard Branson. We did one on him. Check out that episode.

[Zing Singh]

Blakely has a phobia of heights and flying. She said she was cast as a girl who, in her words, would have a meltdown from heights on the first episode and lose her mind. But she kept winning tasks, and they included climbing a ladder up the side of a moving hot air balloon at 8,000ft, the equivalent of a 17 story building, just to have tea with Branson on top. I mean, I don't care.

[Simon Jack]

I feel sick.

[Zing Singh]

I don't care if you're afraid of heights or not. I feel like most people would not be able to do that. But Italy ended up coming second on the show. She walked away with $750,000. She used that money to set up a charity foundation called the Sarah Blakely Foundation.

[Simon Jack]

Now, the point is that, you know, even though her father and her lawyers said, don't go into this because you wouldn't have control over your image, it means you're on telly a lot. So why am I on telly? Because I'm the designer of Spanx. Have you heard of them? Now you have. You know, it's, it's fantastic advertising as well.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. Every single week, new episode airs, you know, and you get your brand out to an even bigger audience.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. I mean, Branson, of course, would understand this tactic very well himself. He was the master of the big grandiose gesture and stunts, whether it's in hot air balloons or trying to get across the Atlantic in record time.

[Zing Singh]

Rich people seem to love hot air balloons. I wonder if they're into rockets because they needed an upgrade from hot air balloons.

[Simon Jack]

I think that's right. The rocket is the new hot air balloon. I think there are some very clear theories why men who want to display their dogs dominance over the rest of humanity choose a large cylindrical pole, a large aerodynamic object. Yeah. By 2005, Spanx had expanded beyond the US to the UK. It was being sold in major department stores like Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Selfridges. Again, these are high end kind of department stores. In 2006, Spanx also started to sell a lower price line in retail chain Target. That would have been a big decision to make because you're diluting the brand, some would say. And some advisors warned her against that, saying if you go through mass market channels, you know, you get rid of the brand's rather premium exclusive image in these high end department stores. But by offering a limited line of products under different branding, very key that it was called Assets by Sarah Blakely. Spanx managed to serve both high end and everyday shoppers.

[Zing Singh]

I mean, it reminds me of what Martha Stewart did because, you know, she kind of put her products in Kmart under a slightly different branding still associated with the Martha Stewart image. And people warned her that the exact same thing would happen. You know, you're diffusing your kind of luxury, luxury premium kind of branding. But it still worked for them.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, because Martha used to wander around her sort of herb patch, didn't she, with a little basket and looking like she owned some sort of massive property. And it was very high end focus. But she managed to parlay that into sort of being a domestic goddess for everyone, didn't she?

[Zing Singh]

Exactly. Well, in 2006, Spanx recorded over $150 million in sales. Now, this was despite Blakely not spending any money on advertising, using just word of mouth and herself as the brand ambassador. Obviously, of course, the biggest help was celebrity endors. Aside from Oprah, one of the first people to sign up for Spanx was Gwyneth Paltrow. She said she wore two pairs of Spanx after the birth of her daughter in 2004. I don't think that's advisable. Gwyneth, also the ultimate trendsetter here. Madonna. Madonna's stylist asked for an entire outfit to be made out of Spanx material, to be FedExed to Madonna. And soon Spanx became a stock answer to the what are you wearing? Question from interviewers on the red carpet. So by now, Spanx did have some competition, but they had achieved what every brand wants to do. People were using the word Spanx to refer to any kind of shapewear.

[Simon Jack]

You've become a category definer, basically.

[Zing Singh]

Exactly. You think of Hoover, Kleenex, you know, Biro, still all companies that have become synonymous products that they're trying to sell.

[Simon Jack]

A few years later, Spanx introduced men's shapewear after Blakely realized Hollywood agents were requesting extra large sizes to help male clients achieve a slimmer look on the red carpet.

[Zing Singh]

In the late 2000s, Sarah Blakely met Jesse Eitzler, a former rapper turned entrepreneur. A poker tournament for his private jet clients. You know, these are the circles that some millionaires do operate in. He describes her as 50% Lucille Ball, 50% Einstein. And they married in 2008 in Boca Grande, Florida, with Olivia Newton John as the surprise wedding singer. Now, unlike many entrepreneurs, Blakely didn't stay chained to her business. She carved out time to think, often in her car, to walk, to scuba dive. And after starting a family in 2009, which is now four kids strong, she actually prioritized nine hours of sleep a night and school events over the endless hustle of running a business. I actually think this makes her one of the rarest billionaires on our show.

[Simon Jack]

A very rare creature indeed. I mean, you know, because she's not a billionaire yet by any means. And yet she's still taking some time out.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I mean, I'm just envious of her getting nine hours of sleep a night.

[Simon Jack]

But there is still a dash of entrepreneurial quirk. Despite her failure of heights. She bought a 37th floor New York apartment. Then she invited a Navy seal to live with her and her husband to devise escape plans. She stocked her kitchen with jet packs and an inflatable motorboat. She obviously expecting some kind of tsunami to flood Manhattan. As she told the New Yorker, we can jump out of the window if we have to.

[Zing Singh]

By 2010, Spanx had increased their product range to 200 products that included clothes that incorporated shaping qualities like trousers, tops, jumpers. And with the rise of photo sharing on Facebook, Twitter and a newly launched platform called Instagram, Spanx started to use social media to amplify that brand and tap into what was becoming an increasingly image conscious population.

[Simon Jack]

By 2012, Spanx was selling in 11 and a half thousand department stores, boutiques and online shops across 40 countries. It had revenue just under quarter of a billion dollars, 250 million profit margins at 20%. Very healthy. And they're also expanding internationally, aiming to double overseas sales by 2015. And it was that year that Forbes reported that four Wall street banks valued Spanx at about a billion dollars. And because Sarah Blakely owned 100% of the debt free company and an outside investment that is remarkable. As I said earlier, Forbes added her to its billionaire list with a net worth of $1 billion, which made her at 41 the youngest self made female billionaire at that time.

[Zing Singh]

When she discussed making the billionaire list with Gayle King On CBS in March 2012, she asked if she'd planned to be rich. And she answered as a woman, it was a goal to be financially independent. I didn't want to depend on anyone else. But it wasn't the end goal. The goal was, was I want to go to this party in my white pants and here I am. Well, those trousers were framed and hung in the Spanx headquarters in Atlanta. So, you know, clearly, clearly a symbol.

[Simon Jack]

For the trousers started it all.

[Zing Singh]

Exactly. Well, the same year she was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world. And she commented that she proved you don't need an MBA to know what women want and how to market it. And MBAs, of course.

[Simon Jack]

Course. That famous degree, Masters of Business Administration.

[Zing Singh]

Do you have an mba?

[Simon Jack]

I'm afraid I do not.

[Zing Singh]

Well, as Sarah Blakely puts it, you don't need one if you want to become a billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

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[Simon Jack]

So let's take Sarah Blakely Beyond a billion in 2013, Real Housewives star Heather Thompson and creator of Yummy Tummy Shapewear sent Sarah Blakely a cease and desist letter claiming Spanx had copied her patented three panel tank top design. Thompson told Women's Wear Daily, I hope Blakely is ready for war because I will not lie down. Spanx responded that had been making shaping camisoles long before Yummy Tummy and declined further comment. The conclusion to all this hasn't, as far as we can tell, been made public, so we don't know exactly the outcome of that.

[Zing Singh]

Spanx has also faced criticism over the years. In 2016, the girls showrunner and filmmaker Lena Dunham took aim at the brand in an open letter saying, it's other women who have been indoctrinated with the same message. Didn't you get the memo? We're all doing this. We're all going to wear the Spanx. Blakely responded on CBS this morning in 2016 saying, you know what I say, then don't buy them. It's fine. As a woman, I'm just so happy that I had the option for Spanx because it opened up my wardrobe. And this is a really interesting comment from Lena Dunham.

[Simon Jack]

Right?

[Zing Singh]

Because. Because I think over time Spanx began to be seen as a kind of, I guess, tool of patriarchy. To put it really bluntly, this idea that women all have to be smooth and Curvy and have no rolls or bumps or lumps. Definitely. I do feel like by the time I was a grown woman, Spanx had become known as a kind of thing where, ooh, you wanna wear Spanx. Like, isn't that comfortable? Isn't that kind of unfeminist in a way to not embrace your natural curves?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Cause there's no doubt that we look at the kind of lud, ludicrous waist sizes of centuries gone by as they were kind of strapped into their corsets of being a kind of rather cruel version of patriarchy and what women were supposed to look like anyway in 2021, remember, she owns 100% of the company. She then sold a majority stake in Spanx to a big investment firm, very famous one called Blackstone, for $1.2 billion. Now, by the time of this deal, the shapewear field had become a bit more crowded. In 2020, for example, another of our billionaires. Check out this episode. Kim Kard had launched her own shapewear brand, Skims, which we dealt with in that episode that's gone on to become the category leader with an eye watering 2023 valuation of $4 billion. So, Battle of the influencers, move over, Oprah. There's a new influencer in town, Kim Kardashian, sweeping all before her.

[Zing Singh]

While Sarah Blakely kept an equity share, she became executive chairwoman of an all female board. Her remaining stake in SPACs hasn't been confirmed publicly, am I right?

[Simon Jack]

That's right. But Forbes reported it could be as high as 49%. So just under. Blakely said she chose Blackstone after meeting its all female deal team. Now that's interesting because I've met Blackstone a number of times and I've never come across an all female deal. So they handpicked this team to go and do this deal with her.

[Zing Singh]

Sort of the Avengers, a zembo of female investors.

[Simon Jack]

But it also brought in some other high profile investors, including Oprah Winfrey, of course, Reese Witherspoon and Whitney Wolfe Herd, who's another of our billionaires who invented Bumble.

[Zing Singh]

She was the former Tinder employee, she says, co founder of Tinder, who went on to create Bumble, the dating app.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, interestingly, because I can understand why Blakely would want to sell out. You know, at some point you want to sort of cash your chips in and make a ton of money. This is not going to be Google. Not every human being on earth is going to use it and start using it as a verb, even though she did coin a noun. For sure. So I can understand why she wanted to cash out Blackstone, probably want to diversify their portfolio, but it's at a point when it's kind of a mature brand and it's got some stiff competition.

[Zing Singh]

Well, lots of competition, given that Skims has now eclipsed Spanx.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

Well, interestingly, Sarah still remains actively involved with Spanx. She's launching new ventures, though. She's invested in a company called Healthy Baby, which produces products that support healthy child development. And she also, in 2024, and I remember this coming out, introduced Sneaks, a trainer with a stiletto heel.

[Simon Jack]

Is it a retractable stiletto heel?

[Zing Singh]

I don't think so.

[Simon Jack]

In what sense is it a trainer, then?

[Zing Singh]

Well, it looks like a trainer, but it's got a heel. And I have to say that after coming up with Spanx, you know, the kind of product that, rightly or wrongly, a lot of women felt like they needed to have. I'm not sure how many women have thought, you know what? I would really love? A trainer with a high heel.

[Simon Jack]

We'll put it this way. I've heard of Spanx. I've never heard of Sneaks.

[Zing Singh]

We'll give it time.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, that's the Sarah Blakely billionaire story. It's time to judge her. And what we do now is we take a bunch of categories. Wealth, controversy, philanthropy, legacy, for example, and we score her, just for fun, from 1 to 10 out of these, or 0 to 10 in some cases for these categories. So what we always start with is wealth, size of wealth, $1.2 billion, barely entry level, just sneaking in. So not one of our richest billionaires by any means. But sometimes we look at how far they've come.

[Zing Singh]

Well, you know, she started Spanx with $5,000, didn't have any outside investment, which I think in this day and age is pretty remarkable.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

But however, she did come from quite a comfortable upper middle class upbringing.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

Which I think, you know, she had the kind of comfort to fall back.

[Simon Jack]

On the safety net to take some risks, which is something we've said before. Sometimes we look at how they spend it because some of our billionaires aren't as rich as us, but they know they really spend it in really flamboyant ways. Hers in 2015, she's a minority stakeholder in the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. She's got a few properties in Atlanta, Connecticut, New York. So. But I say nothing egregious about that. I mean, the jet packs and the inflatable boat on the Navy Seal. On the Navy Seal. I think that's more.

[Zing Singh]

That's quite kooky.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Wealth. It's. It's a one from me.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. Maybe I'll give for a two, because I do love the idea of getting a Navy SEAL into your penthouse apartment in New York and telling him, future proof, this place.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

I want to be able to get out if there's a tsunami, earthquake, or any other kind of natural disaster.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, two for you, one for me. Controversy. A lot of our billionaires have ruffled feathers along the way. What about Sarah?

[Zing Singh]

Well, in terms of the environmental impact of Spanx, and, you know, fashion has a huge impact on the environment. Banks kind of doesn't really have any sustainability goals. It doesn't really try and sign up to those kind of things that most fashion brands, or at least some fashion brands nowadays, try and at least play lip service to.

[Simon Jack]

What about body positivity? We've touched on this already.

[Zing Singh]

The funny thing is, and I will say this as someone who has actually never tried on a pair of Spanx, because you know me, I literally just turn up for recordings in a T shirt and trousers, not cream trousers.

[Simon Jack]

This is true, listeners. Yeah. Baggy clothes, I would say often.

[Zing Singh]

Exactly. So no need for Spanx for me. But I can see both sides of the argument here. I know women who use Spanx, you know, they've used it on their wedding day, for instance, on, you know, important occasions, and they find it enormously helpful confidence boosting. But I can also see Lena Dunham's argument, which is women shouldn't need to rely on a pair of. On a pair of undergarments that essentially kind of smooth out your flaws in order to feel confident.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. There's something constricting also, and by their very nature. Right. And there's something about the constriction which seems to me to be there's some sort of oppression involved in that.

[Zing Singh]

Right, exactly. Well, I mean, a lot of women's fashion does involve some element of control, which doesn't sit well with me, I.

[Simon Jack]

Have to say, as a man. I'm bombarded online with adverts for T shirts that make me look thinner. So I suppose that, you know, it's not just for women, you know, hide your beer belly with this super tea, your girlfriend will love you, or blah, blah, blah.

[Zing Singh]

I think that is the Spanx effect. I don't think those would exist without Spanx.

[Simon Jack]

There we go. I mean, this is a cultural controversy. I would give this a three for controversy.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I would give this a three. And if you're Listening to this, and you have tried Spanx and have strong opinions about this, let us know. Exactly.

[Simon Jack]

Philanthropy, how much are you giving back? The Giving Pledge was launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda Gates along with Warren Buffett. It's a promise to give the majority of your wealth to charitable courses during your lifetime or in your will.

[Zing Singh]

Now, in 2013, Blakely became the first female billionaire to sign the pledge. And at the time she signed, there was were around 138 female billionaires around the world.

[Simon Jack]

According to Forbes, Blakely signing took the total on the Giving Pledge at that time to 114. Today, there are over 250 signatories. She's got a foundation as well, so.

[Zing Singh]

She used that money from Richard Branson's Rebel Billionaire TV show to set up her foundation. It's now called the Red Backpack foundation, after, of course, that pivotal first meeting with the buyer from Neiman Marcus. And it's focused on funding entrepreneurship, education, the arts. We don't know how much the foundation has given, but before she became a billionaire in 2012, she'd already donated 17 and a half million through it. So that's not an insubstantial amount of money.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. She gave $5 million to support female entrepreneurs during COVID 19. And she's been known to loan out her wedding dress to brides over the years, including to strangers struggling with wedding costs during the pandemic. Lending out your wedding dress, presumably with Spanx thrown in.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, extra Spanx. Extra Spanx thrown in as a courtesy.

[Simon Jack]

Still, you know, a billionaire, all we can kind of track down is somewhere in the 20s. So I'm gonna say three.

[Zing Singh]

Well, I think because she's the first female billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge, I'm gonna go slightly higher, so maybe a four or five. Okay.

[Simon Jack]

Actually, the Giving Pledge does give you a bit of a boost, doesn't it? I'm gonna come in at four. What are you gonna.

[Zing Singh]

Five.

[Simon Jack]

Got it. Okay. And power and legacy. Now, this is interesting.

[Zing Singh]

We've already talked about the shaping T shirts for men.

[Simon Jack]

The shaping T. Well, also, Spanx became a, you know, category definer. Right. She managed to define the entire category through her brand name.

[Zing Singh]

And it's interesting because I think you can trace Kim Kardashian's dominance in the industry, because I have heard people now using word skims instead of using the word Spanx in order to describe a pair of shapewear.

[Simon Jack]

Okay. So, I mean, so in a way, legacy, she's sort of the Spanx legacy is fading somewhat in the shadow of skims, would you say?

[Zing Singh]

Yes, definitely. I think also the fact that she used Oprah, or at least she was lucky enough for Oprah to pick up on the brand and supercharge its growth is almost sort of a fluke, really.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

Whereas Kim Kardashian has used that influencer clout to build skims quite deliberately.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, fine. So, I mean, I think that the legacy is also, is that, you know, it's a great story about someone who finds some problem in your life and fixes it themselves and goes on to create a category defining brand which makes a billionaire. I mean, we all want to have that moment in the shower or whatever where we come out and go eureka and do something. So I think in terms of being a, you know, somebody came up. Here's a problem that I'm having that I think a lot of other women will have. I'm going to invent something to fix it. That promotes a kind of everyday entrepreneurial spirit, which I think is probably quite compelling for people.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. I think she also teaches a masterclass called Self made Entrepreneurship, and she tells students every person in their life has had a million dollar idea. Whether or not you take action is what makes a difference.

[Simon Jack]

Some poor person in the car is now having her drone on about these ideas rather than having that Wayne whatever their face was.

[Zing Singh]

Exactly. I wonder if you're listening to this podcast right now. If you have a million dollar idea, don't tell us.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, keep it to yourself and we'll feature you in due course. Okay. Our power and legacy not massive. Well, I suppose the Spanx thing, you know, it percolated Right. Vocabulary in our culture, didn't it?

[Zing Singh]

Yes, but I do think if she didn't invent it, someone else would have. I mean, the very fact that Oprah herself had kind of almost created her own DIY version of Spanx before Spanx existed.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

That tells you something about the fact that that product was bound to have been invented at some point.

[Simon Jack]

I'm willing to bet there are thousands of women who have cut the feet off their tights at some point in history and yet didn't turn into a billion billion dollar brand. Okay, so for Power and Legacy, I'm going to give her a five.

[Zing Singh]

I think I would say, actually I would go a bit higher and give her a 6 out of 10. Because I do think the very fact that your product is attracting this amount of cultural criticism means that it's left an impact.

[Simon Jack]

It's true. In fact, you've talked me up. I'm going to go six as well. So an interesting one. Not a typical billionaire by any means. Not someone who slept at the office and under the desk and sort of crazily burned the midnight oil, you know, worked hard for sure, but wasn't kind of trying to change the world in her own way. But it wasn't a kind of, you know, sort of messianic mission like we've seen with some of our technology billionaires.

[Zing Singh]

No. In some ways quite humble as well. You know, when people asked her, does she always want to make money and be really rich, you know, she had a kind of witty quip about just wanting to look good in cream trousers.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

I actually think that there's something of a kind of screwball heroine to this angle, to this story.

[Simon Jack]

That's a brilliant way of describing it.

[Zing Singh]

You know, this kind of like bright, brassy blonde who kind of chops up her own tights and she has no background in business or marketing or design anything. She's like piecing this stuff together with paper clips. There's something really compelling about that story.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, it's a really lovely tale, actually, and I've enjoyed learning more about it because this exceeded the category of underwear brands and became, like you say, a kind of cultural phenomenon.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, exactly.

[Simon Jack]

Is Sarah Blakely, founder of Sarah Spanx, good, bad, or just another billionaire? What do you think?

[Zing Singh]

Email goodbadbillionairebc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001-917-686-1176 and tell us what you think. Have you worn Spanx? What do you make of Sarah's story?

[Simon Jack]

That's good, bad [e-mail] or 001917686, 1176 and please don't forget to include your name because we may read out your message on a future episode.

[Zing Singh]

Thank you to everyone who shared feedback on the Elon Musk episode so far. Be reviewing your comments and we'll share them soon. But in the meantime, we've also received feedback on the Lakshmi Mittal episode. We've had an email from listener Henry from Indonesia who says, I'm a huge fan of your podcast and have been listening from the very first episode on my drive to and from work. It has made Monday commutes much more bearable. Happy to help, Henry. The episode of Nachmi Mittal hits closest to home. His first factory in East Java is only about 40 minutes away from my place and we often hear his stories here. For me, he's just another billionaire. He's able to spot and seize wonderful opportunities and rises to the top of his industry through grit and intelligence, something we see among many billionaires. Thanks to everyone on the team for the wonderful series. I love the creation of billionaires across the globe from many different industries. I'll be keen to listen to any future eps about billionaires from Indonesia or Southeast Asia. Well Henry, if you can think of any, let us know and you definitely will think about doing them.

[Simon Jack]

And thank you for getting in touch. Paul emailed to say I'm a longtime listener to your show, but this is my first time writing in. I very much enjoyed the episode on Lakshmi Mittal. I've been waiting for this episode for a while. As an almost 16 year old apprentice back in 1995, my very first day at work after leaving school was spent at the Bishops Avenue installing a new air conditioning system at Summer palace, the house you mentioned in your podcast. I was completely blown away by the opulence of the place. I had never seen or felt carpets or wallpaper like it. It really was like walking on clouds. I never did get to meet or even set eyes upon the family, but I will never forget my first day at work. Keep up the good work. I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode of the podcast. Well, thank you Paul and than for that little inside glimpse of the opulence of how one of our billionaires lives walking on clouds.

[Zing Singh]

I would love to feel a carpet that felt like that.

[Simon Jack]

Thanks so much Paul.

[Zing Singh]

So who do we have on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire?

[Simon Jack]

One of the most influential meddlers of all time. He meddled in the music business in Hollywood and was associated with some of the biggest names in in Rock and Roll and some of the biggest movies ever made.

[Zing Singh]

That's right, someone who was involved with Crosby, Steeles and Nash, Guns N Roses, Cher, Shrek, Gladiator, even Cats the Musical.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and formed the first new Hollywood studio with a couple of pals, one of whom was Steven Spielberg. The first new studio in 60 years.

[Zing Singh]

It is David Geffen.

[Simon Jack]

David Geffen, currently worth $9 billion. We'll tell you how he made that money and what he did with it.

[Zing Singh]

Good Bad Billionaire is a b BBC World Service podcast produced by Tamsin Curry. The researcher is Maria Nguyen, the editor.

[Simon Jack]

Is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production for the BBC World Service. The senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning Editor is John Minnell.

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