10 Powerful Lessons to learn from Billionaire Sarah Blakely

from fax machine saleswoman to
entrepreneurial Billionaire superstar:

1) Fail Big – Sara’s father taught his children the power of failing big.
Each day, her father would ask – “So, what did you fail at today.” And if there were no failures, Dad would be disappointed. Focusing on failing big allowed Sara to understand that
failure is not an outcome, but involves a lack of trying — not stretching yourself far enough out of
your comfort zone and attempting to be morevthan you were the day
before. Failing big was a
good thing.

2) Visualize it – Sara is a big fan of
“visualizing” your big goal, in specific, concrete ways. She saw herself clearly on the Oprah TV
show 15 years before it happened. She simply knew it would happen.
She’d see in her mind’s eye sitting on the couch with Oprah having an
exciting conversation, and wondered, “What are
we talking about?” The rest was just “filling in the blanks” to get there.

3) Don’t share your fragile idea with the world too soon: Sara
kept her idea of making a fabulous new undergarment for women under wraps for an entire year while working on developing the prototype. Only after she was 100%
committed to it and ready to launch, did she sit her friends down and explain her new direction. Sara
explains that ideas are
vulnerable, fragile things. Wait until you’re completely ready to move
forward before you share it with people. Meaning well, they’ll shoot it
down, offering all the reasons why it won’t work. But when they do,
you’ll be ready to deal with it.

4) Don’t take no for an answer. Sara reached out to slews of manufacturers and lawyers to help her patent her idea and create a
successful prototype. In every conversation she had with potential
manufacturers, she was asked three questions: 1) Who are you? 2) Who are you with? 3) and Who is backing you? When the answers to these three questions remained, “Sara
Blakely,” no one wanted
to take a chance on her, until one manufacturer called her back and said “OK.” Why? Because he had gone home and told his daughters about the idea, and they said, “It’s
brilliant!”

5) Hire people you like and trust (even if they don’t know a great
deal about what you need them to do). Sara hired a head of Product
Development and a PR director who had been friends and supporters
from the beginning. Neither knew anything about the functional areas
they were hired to oversee, but Sara trusted they’d be fabulous at
their new roles, and they were.

6) You don’t have to go in order. Sara’s passionate commitment to
her new Spanx product was so fierce, she just tackled each task in the development and marketing journey as they came up, not necessarily in the best order for a
smooth launch. She landed a Neiman Marcus deal involving placement of the product in seven
stores, before figuring out
how to mass produce
“crotches” for the product.

7) You CAN figure it out – you have the ability. Sara knew absolutely nothing about women’s undergarments, patenting a new product, manufacturing,
marketing, product development, website development, online
commerce, and more. But that didn’t stop her. She researched what she
needed to, hired out what she couldn’t do, and marched forward with undying commitment and
energy. Don’t stop yourself from pursuing an idea because you don’t
think you have what it takes.

8) You can build a billion dollar business starting with $5,000.
Sara had only $5,000 in savings on that fateful day when she cut the feet off of her stockings in
order to wear them under her white pants for a more flattering look (and
thus, realized the world needed a new undergarment product
that would be comfortable yet flattering to the female form). From that $5,000 she embarked on
designing a prototype, securing a manufacturer, naming the product,
legally protecting her product, and getting the word out to potential
buyers. You don’t have to be rich to move forward with your fabulous new idea.

9) Don’t worry about the outer “stuff” until the time is right. Sara worked tirelessly from her apartment creating her product, avoiding investing in outside office space or other marketing and business tools until the product had taken
off. She didn’t have a formal website until she made it on the Oprah show and needed one. Anything that wasn’t essential to building the
product and getting the name out there simply wasn’t a priority.

10) Breaking the mold is a good thing. When Sara began to research
undergarments for women and how they’d been made for the last 50
years, she was astonished. From the
absurd sizing protocols (only one average waist measure was used on all the products, regardless
of the size of the garment), to how
products were tested (on manikins not real people), Sara saw that the
undergarment industry needed a female perspective – insights from a real woman wearing these items to
shape the product development direction so the products were useful, effective, and as comfortable as possible. She broke the mold, and
developed a completely new approach to developing women’s
undergarments.

“Believe in your idea,
trust your instincts, and
don’t be afraid to fail"