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The Candy Valentino Show
Entrepreneur Encore: Unpacking the Success of Spanx Founder Sara Blakely
00:19:49
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Candy Valentino
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Foreign.
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Welcome to the Candy Valentino show.
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The podcast for founders, investors and entrepreneurs where we have honest conversations about what it takes to grow your business, build more wealth and create financial freedom.
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Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Kandi Valentino Show. Thanks for tuning in. So today we are talking about a powerhouse in business and the fashion industry, Sarah Blakely, the self made billionaire and founder of Spanx. This story is incredible. How she founded it, how she started, how she built it, and now is one of Forbes 100 richest women in America. So let's first start with a little bit on Sarah's story so that you can unpack who she is and how she started this. You might, I'm sure so many people listening. If you don't wear Spanx, you probably have a spouse that does or a girlfriend. Regardless, let's talk about how such a simple idea turned into a billion dollar business. So picture this. Sarah is trying to get ready for a party. Trying to figure out how to smooth out everything that's underneath her white pants. Cause they are not the most forgiving things that we women we. And she realizes that none of the undergarments that she has works. So she grabs a pair of control top pantyhose and in a moment of genius just cuts off the feet and sticks them under her white pants. And just like that, the idea of Spanx was born. Now what's truly remarkable to me is that Sarah did not have any formal business training in fashion or in business. She didn't have a PhD or an MBA. She never took a business class. She never worked in retail or fashion. And she only had about five grand to her name when she started. And at 27 years old, she had just moved out of her mom's house and was dating a guy who wasn't exactly supportive. Really nobody believed in her idea except for her. And I wanna pause on this for a hot minute because this is so important. If you have a dream right now, if you wanna go to some new level, if you wanna pursue something that no one else in your family in your circle has ever accom. You do not need anyone else to believe in your dream. That's your job. Like, you are the one to protect it, to champion it, to cheerlead it. Like, you need belief in yourself, and you can leverage proof all around you of other people that have done it until you develop the confidence to know that you can accomplish it too. But first, you have to have belief. It is truly one of the fundamental foundational principles to being successful in anything. And Sarah didn't have anyone that believed in her, but that didn't stop her from pursuing what she wanted to achieve. And there are really three things that I feel that she did exceptionally well that made Spanx a billion dollar name. Number one, grit. She was willing to get dirty. She didn't have financial backing. She had five grand to her name. And yet she understood that in order to succeed, in order to make this successful, she had to do some groundwork. She had to get her hands dirty. And this wasn't delegating or outsourcing in the beginning. It was really working hard, rolling up her sleeves, making it happen. It's almost like what everybody demonizes today. Oh, don't work hard, have work. Life balance. Hustle's a bad word. But we have story after story where in the beginning you've got to roll up your sleeves and do the work. You have to be willing to work hard on your dream. Otherwise your shoulds are never met. And this is a great example. So let's look at some of the hard work that Sarah had to do in the beginning. She's from Georgia, but yet all the manufacturers and everybody that she kind of knew of that she needed to pitch her product to were in North Carolina. So she drove hours and literally drove around the state pitching this product to manufacturers. And for two years, she spent her weekends, her time off from her day job, traveling back and forth, working to perfect this prototype. And as easy as this may sound, she got rejected a lot, to the point where she almost quit on the idea completely. Now, is this only Sarah? Does this apply to you too? Ever been in the midst of something where you are just like, you know what? Forget it. This is too hard. Everyone is telling me, no, I don't think I'm going to do this anymore. I'll tell you what, I've been doing this 26 years, and anytime I go to do, whether it's a new vertical or a new company or something different, there are always moments where I am like, oh, my gosh, I don't know about this I think. I think I'm going to quit. I think I'm just going to go hang out at the beach. I think I'm just going to go have fun with the rest of my life. It happens to all of us. So if that is you, if you are ever trying to accomplish something big and you want to quit, guess what? Welcome to entrepreneurship. What matters is what you do next.
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Unknown
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Candy Valentino
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
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One of the most impressive things about Sarah is that she patented this first product herself when she was pitching this prototype. No one took her seriously enough to patent this design, so she had to find out how to patent the idea. With no legal background, no formal training and I know personally that that is hard, hard work because I've done it myself and I know that it is a lot to search patents to find an attorney that can do it and not pay tens and tens of thousands of dollars to get a patent. I know this was so difficult so I have so much respect for her hustle that she was working a full time job while pursuing this. Which brings us to number two. This theory of the all in approach versus the safe route. Now let's break these two things down. We have all heard the story of the person who quit their job, went all in, burned the boats in order go in on their business or their idea or to be an investor but the reality is, because 50% of businesses fail in their first two years and almost two thirds of businesses fail in the first five years. And we know over 91.3% of businesses fail in the first 10 years. Rushing to quit your job over some idea may not be the best idea for, for you, right, for you and your family. Depending on what you've got going on, if your day job is paying your bills and your car and your mortgage and your food, it may not be the smartest decision to go all in. You may want to take the safe route, which is exactly what Sarah did, which was keeping her job, her full time job that paid all of her bills and then worked weekends and evenings to develop her dream. Being financially smart when it comes to this decision is critically important. And you can hear people on the Internet or on social media that says, go all in. Burn the boats. It's the only way. If they say it's the only way and they're telling you that run because they don't know your personal finances, they don't know your situation and it will put a lot of stress and pressure on you to perform. Now, pressure makes diamonds. And yes, when you have a lot of leverage, it gives you the ability to really show up. But there are also ways that you can do it intelligently. Now, I went all in. I was 19 years old. I had a six week run rate with an SBA loan. I had to make it work. I didn't have a safety net. I was still working another job. However, I needed to make it work or otherwise I was going to run out of money. I had to go all in. I was working 16, 17, 18 hour days, six, seven days a week, nonstop. That is one path, but it is not the only path. And we look at what Sarah did. She was driving around Georgia, North Carolina every weekend, utilizing that time to build her dream. The day she quit her job was actually because she was in stores and she received a life changing phone call from Oprah. So if you do not have Oprah knocking on your door, I would advise you to think about what makes most sense sense before doubling down and going all in and burning the boats. This is literally one of the critical lessons that all entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs can learn. Sarah keeping her day job minimized her risk and really allowed her to build Spanx without that pressure of immediate financial success. Which is the number one reason businesses fail. We know from all of my work and research that we did for the 9% edge that the number one reason businesses fail is lack of Sales, lack of funding, and lack of profit. Sarah's dad encouraged her to fail. Rather than sitting around the dinner table every day and say, what happened great at school today, her dad would ask, what did you fail at today? And this simple question helped redefine her mindset around what failure really is. Because failure isn't about getting something wrong, it's about not trying. And this mindset was a huge shift in shaping Sarah's approach to business and life. She was raised to expect failure, to appreciate the learning experience. And this gave her the courage and the confidence to move with speed and to take risks without fearing embarrassment or what someone down the street was going to say about her. She openly talks about situations where she may have felt embarrassed or may have been concerned of what other people's opinions of her. But she knew that growth only happens outside of her comfort zone. This mindset was literally a driving force behind her success. And it has helped her overcome so many obstacles of building a billion dollar brand. And I believe that's why she was able to build Spanx in one of the most bizarre ways and categories, right? Getting a completely new product, innovating something new that didn't exist. It is always easier to take a product or a service that already exists and either market it or reimagine it than it is to innovate something that doesn't. And getting it in Neiman Marcus for her was really only half the battle. When she was first placed in stores, her product was stuck like back in the corner. And so this created a huge issue because even though she was in Neiman Marcus, people were not seeing where her product was. So with that, instead of thinking about the problem, she took that lesson she learned from her dad. And she did something that most people would not do for two years. She flew across the country and visited Neiman Marcus stores personally to sell Spanx to customers. So she wasn't just a founder or the entrepreneur. She was now acting as the top salesperson for the company. She understood the importance of visibility and being willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. Obviously, Spanx being tucked away in a corner wasn't going to sell. So she took it upon herself to showcase the product in the front of the store without even asking for permission. And this bold move caught the attention of the Neiman Marcus CEO at the time and allowed her to continue because he saw the sales numbers didn't lie. And of course, she didn't stop there. She also met with all of the salespeople within Neiman Marcus during their morning meetings to educate them about Spanx, talk about grit, talk about resilience, talk about saying, I am not going to allow this to fail. And I bet if you think back in the beginning of your own business, if you have one, that you probably had moments where you might have done the same. And maybe you can take a piece out of Sarah's playbook. And if you haven't been bold like this, to go in and do whatever it took for you to be successful, to knock on doors, to show up to meetings, to take out a picture of your butt. Can you believe it? She actually did that. She took out a picture of her own butts showing a before and after comparison of how Spanx improved the look and literally showed this to customers shopping in the store. I mean, just think about how ballsy this was, how bold, like this hands on personal approach really resonated not just with the customers, but with the employees and is obviously a clear example of her willingness to take risks, to even embarrass herself, if that's what it takes, but be willing to do the work. There are not many people that I know that are gonna be willing to show a picture of their own butt to complete strangers to market and sell their products. So what's Sarah's edge? Well, I believe there are a few things that really helped her transform this simple idea into a billion dollar enterprise. And these are all things that you can implement in your business right now. Number one, she was willing to do the work. She did not shy away from the hard work of building her business from the ground up. Whether it was driving to North Carolina, finding a manufacturer, researching how to figure out how to do a patent, or standing in the Neiman Marcus store to sell her product without permission. She was always hands on and willing to do the work. Number two was her approach to a plan. She didn't just burn the boats and go all in. She waited until Spanx was generating reliable income before quitting her job. She minimized her risk. She really set the foundation of her business up and ultimately set herself up to be a massive success. And number three, her mindset, the way that she reframed failure and her redefinition of failure, just being, not trying really gave her the resilience to push past obstacles, to continue innovating and to keep going even when she faced endless rejections. These elements all together really gave Sarah and ultimately Spanx, the edge and why they are a huge part in such an incredible success today. Now, Sarah didn't stop there. Although for the last 20 plus years she has grown this company into a billion dollar brand. For the last nine years she has been developing her next venture. And if you noticed, I said nine years. What she does really well, which I find that the most ultra successful people do, is they start, but they don't start recklessly. This whole philosophy that's shared on social media about just start, just go. That's why so often businesses fail. When you plan first and start before you're ready because you always never feel 100% ready but you plan to be successful. That is what's going to set you up to not become part of the 91% who fail and instead give yourself the edge to be part of the 9% who succeed. Here's another example of what Sarah did. She took nine years to develop Sneaks. Now Sneaks is a hybrid of sneakers and high heels. This is her latest innovation and her goal was just to solve the problem of uncomfortable shoes. And I can speak from experience that I know how uncomfortable high heels can be. And you would think that because of her insane success with Spanx that this would be super easy for her to just come out with another product and everybody would want it. But nope, that's not the case. She has already been rejected nine times, but this hasn't deterred her. She has, even in this stage in life, had persistence and belief and vision to remain as strong as ever. And after nine long years of making sure that she found the manufacturer, she finally launched this new product this week. So you can go to sneaks.com for your pair. And Sarah, if you're watching this, you can send me one size seven seven and a half. I would love to try them, but I wish her nothing but the absolute best on this new venture. Okay guys, I hope you found Sara Blakely's story as inspiring and awesome as I do. And if you want to dive deeper into the edge, the 9% edge, and figure out how you can apply it in your business, don't forget we have our newsletter, also called the Edge. You can go to cand Valentino.com to sign up and please send us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and support everyone on this show. Thanks again for tuning in to today's episode. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode and if there was something that you loved or you had a specific takeaway, share it and tag me at Candy Valentino. And if you haven't yet, grab your copy of Wealth Habits Everywhere books are sold and for upcoming events or ways to stay connected. Head over to candyvalentino.com that's all for today. Thanks so much for tuning into the show. We'll see you next time.
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Unknown
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