I came across Sara Blakely’s story through @MasterClass two years ago. She instantly became my role model. It was not only the fact her $1 billion business has just one simple product, Spanx – the slimming undergarments, but also the way she grew her business in spite of the setbacks along the way.
Blakely, self-made billionaire, wasn’t an instant success. She wanted to be a lawyer but bombed the LSAT twice. Blakely sold fax machines door to door when she started her own business. With $5000 in savings, she started designing Spanx.
The idea of Spanx hit Blakely when she cut the legs off her control top pantyhose so that her underwear would not show through white pants. She spent two years designing Spanx while still working as a saleswoman. Many people didn’t think it was a good idea. In fact, the attorney who helped her patent the idea later admitted that he thought Blakely’s idea was terrible. He imagined she was sent by “Candid Camera” when she first presented the idea to him.
The sales background, even an unsuccessful one with fax machines, helped her with her business success years later. She said, “[Cold calling] teaches you to be quick on your feet. It also teaches you not to take the word ‘no’ so seriously. Face the rejection, and get back up and do it again.” The quality that brought her success is not her absence of fear, but rather her persistent effort to conquer them. In her own words, “The two things people are most afraid of [are] fear of failure and fear of being embarrassed. I’m constantly working on both of these fears, so I can live the life I want free from the burden of caring what other people think of me.”
In interviews, Blakely said that growing up, her father encouraged her and her brother to fail at something every week. She recalled that her father would be genuinely disappointed if she had not failed at something that week. When she did though, he would congratulate her, give her a high-five, and then ask her to write down what she got out of the experience. By doing this, Blakely believed that it reframed failure to be more about not trying rather than not succeeding. Even when we try and don’t get what we want, there is usually some useful lesson learned.
To conquer your own fear, try our Resilience Experiment and Failure Lab exercises.