I always write on a women I find inspiring for International Women’s Day and this year wanted to cover Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx.
One thing I always find cool about business is it’s really one of the only things a person can start where their resume doesn’t matter, but the product or service is going to be everything.
Sara Blakely is an amazing case of that, where she had a good idea, but also a pretty good amount of flops early on.
She tried originally to be a lawyer, but scored so low on the LSAT’s, she bailed on the idea of law school.
She tried working in stand up comedy and didn’t really have it to be an entertainer.
She was working doing door to door sales in Florida for printers in the 90s and would regularly get her cards cut in front of her.
The vision for Spanx was really just her walking in hot Florida weather doing door to door sales and wanting to improve women’s clothing.
After having the idea, didn’t have the $5,000 quoted for a patent, so she bought a book from Barnes & Noble, patented it herself and became a billionaire off the idea.
So right now she’s more successful than 99.9% of lawyers, entertainers and sales people, despite getting rejected to be each one of those.
Really an amazing story and just from seeing her on TV and in social media, she seems like a very down to earth person also. When she posts photos dropping her kids off to school on Instagram, she seems completely normal, until scrolling down and seeing Reese Witherspoon commented.
Really a cool story everyone should look at.