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On today’s episode, Meghan sits down with Sara Blakely, the founder of SPANX, who turned $5,000 in savings into a billion-dollar brand that redefined shapewear. In this conversation, the pair get real about betting on yourself, and building bold business strategies. Sara also opens up about starting from scratch again—this time with her latest venture: a shoe line called Sneex.

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Main Theme: “Crabbuckit” words and music by Kevin Deron Brereton (c) Universal Songs of Polygram Int., Inc. on behalf of Universal Music Publishing Canada (BMI) / 100% interest for the Territory.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Sarah Blakely, Megan

Sarah Blakely  01:34

In one particular day, I pulled off the side of the road, and I remember thinking, I’m in the wrong movie. Call the director, call the producer, cut. This is not my life. Let’s change the movie. We’re changing the narrative. I don’t want to be the star of this movie anymore.

 

Megan  01:54

I’m Megan, and this is Confessions of a Female Founder, a show where I chat with female entrepreneurs and friends about the sleepless nights and the lessons learned and the laser focus that got them to where they are today. Listen over the course of our lives, we’re told all sorts of things that we just sort of accept as the way things are. You’ll hear common expressions like, beauty is pain, business is war. I mean, you start to hear them so many times that at a certain point you sadly start to believe them. But what if we could rewrite those narratives? What if there’s another way? What if business isn’t war and it’s a playground, and our guest today, she’s a true testament to that. She has always defied stereotypes and found a much more fun and creative way to go about building her brands.

 

Sarah Blakely  02:59

And I went home that night and sat on the floor of my apartment, and I just said, I’m not going to war like why does it have to be war? I have no why would anyone want to go to war? I have no desire. I’m going to do this so differently.

 

Megan  03:12

And she did. Sarah Blakely went from selling fax machines door to door to revolutionizing the shaper industry with a brand that I’m sure you’ve heard of, Spanx. She turned the $5,000 she saved up into a billion dollar brand, and at the time, she became the youngest self made female billionaire. But you know, she didn’t stop there. She recently sold a majority stake of Spanx and decided to start something brand spanking new, a shoe line called Sneaks. What I love about Sarah is how she doesn’t subscribe to the traditional ways of building a business. She genuinely follows her gut. She’s a lot of fun along the way. She doesn’t take it all too seriously, even though she is so dedicated to what she’s building, she just knows there might be way to flip the script. There’s just so much that all of us can learn from her and how she’s done this. And I’m excited to dive into it. Oh, now I can see your face.

 

Sarah Blakely  04:14

Hi.

 

Megan  04:14

How are you?

 

Sarah Blakely  04:15

I’m great.

 

Megan  04:17

You look amazing.

 

Sarah Blakely  04:18

You have one beam of light coming down across your face. If you’re being, you’re being divinely, I’m being interviewed by an angel. Isn’t that bizarre? That’s so bizarre. What is that you’re literally like, I feel like spirit is coming down well also.  I’m wearing white. I mean, the whole thing,

 

Megan  04:41

The whole thing.

 

Sarah Blakely  04:42

I’m moving. I can’t, okay, too distracting.

 

Megan  04:48

Are you good? Is family good?

 

Sarah Blakely  04:50

Everybody’s really good. Everybody’s really good. We’re in a good chapter. My kids are all good. Husband’s good. I’m settled into the transition of you. Know, selling the majority of Spanx, that was a really intense transition for me. I’m on the other side of it, so I’m having fun with sneaks.

 

Megan  05:07

Oh, my God, there’s so much to talk about.

 

Sarah Blakely  05:09

I know.

 

Megan  05:10

How old are the kids now?

 

Sarah Blakely  05:11

Tepper, my daughter, is nine, Lincoln and Charlie are 10, and lazer is 15.

 

Megan  05:18

I don’t know why. I always forget that they’re that many age. I mean, people forget, no, I always remember you have a lot of kids, got a lot of kids, but the amount of what you have created evolved through the level of what you have done while having this many children, all at that age. I know it’s something that I think people often forget. People forget that Lily is three and Archie’s five. So you look at the past five, six years of my life, it’s yes with being pregnant or with a newborn or with a toddler, and then another one.

 

Sarah Blakely  05:55

You can’t even describe it. You can’t you have to live through it, and that’s it.

 

Megan  05:59

Yes. How are those cute little Munch keys?

 

Sarah Blakely  06:01

Oh my gosh. I’ll send you some pictures. They are so grown.

 

Megan  06:04

I wanna come see you guys.

 

Sarah Blakely  06:05

I’m gonna be at a conference in May, so I gotta get you those dates.

 

Megan  06:10

That’s when, really, we spent the most time together. For the first time you were here for that conference,

 

Sarah Blakely  06:16

Yes, but remember, like, as soon as we hung out, we’re like, oh, this is so easy.

 

Megan  06:22

Oh my gosh. And margaritas and guacamole. Can do that.

 

Sarah Blakely  06:25

They can do that.

 

Megan  06:26

It was just so nice. Because you would think it’s like, oh, great, let’s connect. And then hours and hours later, I think even changed your flight.

 

Sarah Blakely  06:32

I did.

 

Megan  06:33

And we just had so much fun. One thing I do remember is all those years ago when you came and we were hanging out by the pool and chatting. It is an origin story piece that comes up a lot for very successful entrepreneurs. And for you, you were talking about these Wayne Dyer tapes, yes, that you would listen to. And I didn’t know who Wayne Dyer was at the time, but do you want to start back? I mean, that’s such an interesting part of your beginning to get to to where you are. Yeah, and Cassie, Cassandra, Morales, from kitsch. She when I knew her all those years back then, constantly listening to Tony Robbins over and over, why, over and over, why? There’s something to that.

 

Sarah Blakely  07:15

There is something to that, Megan, I’m a believer, and I love her. I mean, I found out so she feels like a kindred spirit to me, for sure, when I first met her and heard her story, we have a very similar sort of spirituality, yes, and a mindset towards business that felt very refreshing to me, you know, because I did Spanx in the year 2000 there were very few women that I could go to like I really didn’t have any, honestly, and so I was on my path, which was very much, you know, asking the universe for signs, and doing all these things that all my male counterparts literally thought I was crazy And we’re counting down how long I would stay in business. So I didn’t really even have other female founders that were in my network that I could kind of balance how I was approaching business, because I was approaching it very differently than the guys that I love and adore that I got put in a business group, which, by the way, I’ve been in the same business group. It was called YEO, now it’s called EO. They put me in a forum with 10 men Megan. So I’ve been in the same forum with 10 men and me for 25 years, and we meet once a month, and we talk about all everything going on in our personal lives and also business. So it’s almost like having an informal board, and I’ve had to go on a vacation once a year with with 10 men in me, which you can imagine the looks I’ve received through the years. But I say I’m like, Jane Goodall, but instead of observing chimpanzees in their natural habitat, I get to observe men in their natural habitat. They totally forget I’m there, no, yeah. And I’m like, wow, this is so different than when I hang out with my girlfriend.

 

Megan  09:05

Oh my gosh.

 

Sarah Blakely  09:06

You know, they say, Sarah, well, how are you gonna handle that? And I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask the universe for a sign, and I’m gonna get quiet, and I’m gonna spend some time thinking this through. And they all thought I was crazy. And then Megan, within the first maybe five years, Spanx was so successful, like it’s undeniable that something was going on. And so the guys started really leaning in and going, what’s happening with this girl? And one by one, they each privately pulled me aside and said, How do you talk to the universe?

 

Megan  09:37

No, oh my gosh, that’s so good. And what did you tell them?

 

Sarah Blakely  09:42

I was like, well, you know, you have to ask, be specific and get quiet, find out where you’re channeled. I know where I’m channeled. I’m channeled in the car while I’m driving. Where are you channeled? And of course, they’re just like, steams coming out of the ears. They’re like, really conservative Georgia businessmen like that could be the governor one day. And they’re like, okay, wait, what do I do? You know, I’m like, it needs to be where you daydream, like, where does your mind wander? And pay really close attention to when your mind wanders, what’s coming. And for me, I do make decisions by very specifically asking for a sign. I’ve been doing that for maybe my whole life and listening to Wayne Dyer, to get to Wayne Dyer, I started listening to him when I was 16 years old. And what happened was, I was in high school Clearwater high grew up on Clearwater Beach, Florida, and I had a very serious sort of tragedy happen to a friend of mine in front of me. So we were riding bikes. She was run over and killed by a car in front of me, which was obviously very jarring and very upsetting and horrific. And then at about the same time, my dad left home, and my parents separated. And when my dad moved out, he handed me the cassette tape series by Wayne Dyer.

 

Megan  11:01

You know, for people who aren’t familiar with Wayne Dyer, just as I wasn’t when you had mentioned it to me, he really is inspirational, affirmational, type of train your brain mindset.

 

Sarah Blakely  11:10

He was a psychologist who.

 

Megan  11:13

Oh, I didn’t know he was a psychologist.

 

Sarah Blakely  11:14

Yeah, he practiced for like, 20 years, listening to everybody’s issues, and he said he just saw a theme and could really understand the human psyche after all those years, and he started writing books about mindset. And in those cassette tapes, he was teaching manifesting what you want, law of attraction, not fearing failure, not caring what other people think about you, to the detriment of you honoring your own authentic self. And I think I always tell everybody, there’s always a hidden blessing in the darkest times, and my hidden blessing was that I was willing to listen to it right? Because if you handed a 16 year old at Clearwater high this middle aged, bald man with a bush mustache that said how to be a no limit person, and you weren’t broken, you probably would have chucked it in the bottom of your closet. But instead, I put it in my boom box. I hit play, and I sat there and I cried because I thought I have just spent 16 years in school being taught what to think, and no one has ever taught me how to think. The light bulbs went off, and I was like, wait, I can train my thoughts. I can train my brain. I can I can curate how I respond to all this stuff coming at me like it was fascinating to me. So then I just became so hungry for it. And there were always these cassette tapes in my car. No one wanted to be stuck in my car after a party, Megan, no one. They were like, just, just you and Wayne Dyer, they were like, everyone else is listening to Bon Jovi Madonna, and you’re in my car after a party, and it’d be like, what do you really want with your life?

 

Megan  12:48

But that’s amazing, I mean, and also it’s amazing for several reasons. A it’s amazing because it speaks volumes to how you’ve ingrained the possibility of more and taking control over your thinking from such a young age, but that you were able to do it at a point where you had such compounded grief. You have the grief of losing your best friend, you have the grief of your father leaving, and then you have grief after that, I know with boyfriends in high school, not with a breakup, but also tragically passing. Yes, is that right? So you think about most other teenagers when you have 123, these larger than life traumas are happening at a young age, and you double down on something that I think actually set the trajectory for your entire life.

 

Sarah Blakely  13:34

You’re 100% right. It 100% changed the trajectory of my life. I remember, you know, I sold fax machines door to door for seven years, and after one day of cold calling all day in the same zip codes, you know, I’d get out of my car and I’d walk up and down small businesses like a pawn shop in this place and that place trying to sell them a fax machine. Right? Two people are kicking me out of their buildings. They’re ripping up my business card at least once a week, and in one particular day, I pulled off the side of the road, and I remember thinking, I’m in the wrong movie, like called a director, called a producer. Cut this is not my life. And I drove home, and I wrote in my journal, what are you good at, Sarah, like, what are you good at? Like, how are we going to curate a new life? Like, let’s change the movie. We’re changing the narrative. I don’t want to be the star of this movie anymore. And I wrote sales. It was like, the only thing really I could think of that I was really good at. And I asked myself a really important question. I think most people you know would have said, okay, what are you good at? What are your strengths sales? Well, if I had left it there Megan, I am sure that I would have gone out and got another sales job. But instead, I asked myself, why I go? Why are you good in sales? Why do you like sales? What is it about sales? And then, because I asked that second layer of questioning, I wrote, I really like giving something to someone that improves their life or that makes their job easier, where I can sell them something that they get excited about. And the minute I had that epiphany, I wrote in my journal that night, I’m going to invent my own product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good, stop.

 

Megan  15:25

Yes, and then it happened.

 

Sarah Blakely  15:27

Well, it happened two years later, but I set the intention like the sound bite in the media for 25 years is Sarah cut the feet out of her pantyhose to solve this undergarment issue, and voila. But I had been doing so much mindset work, and I set the intention for the idea to come to me two years prior, right? It was already in motion, right? And then two years later, I cut the feet out of control top panios to wear under my cream and white pants and to a party. And I was like, Wow, maybe that’s the idea I asked for. I don’t want to squander it. I told the universe I wouldn’t squander any idea it presented to me.

 

Megan  16:02

But I think for anyone who’s listening, that’s gotta that just has to be so inspiring on so many levels. Because I think there’s a misconception that you need to have gotta go to Harvard Business School and have a lot of money and get all the best people behind you and get your, you know, Cap table, and have the best VC or private that you need so much to be able to move the needle. And that’s the piece that feels completely unsurmountable like. How am I going to do that or that? You talk yourself out of it before you even have an opportunity to hear what the vision or the idea could be. You’ve already talked yourself out of it, but you talked yourself into it before you knew what the vision or the actual idea could be. And so to have that kind of turnaround within two years from I think, what was it? You took $5,000 of savings, and that’s what you put into your R and D to try to figure out, okay, there could be something here. And then in that first year, in year one, what was it $4 million in profits in year one.

 

Sarah Blakely  17:03

It was successful. I was profitable for my first month in business at Spanx.

 

Megan  17:07

I mean, that is wild.

 

Sarah Blakely  17:09

Wild, but I also really bootstrapped. And you know, not every business is set up that way. Sometimes you have to put way more money to get your product off the ground. But yeah, I was profitable my first month in business at Spanx. I did take the $5,000 that I had set aside from selling fax machines to see if I could create this idea. I chose to invest in myself and my mindset exactly what you started out asking me about Megan, find anything that helps you become more self aware, to unblock your obstacles. Figure out what are your patterns? What’s holding you back? What’s your mindset on money? What’s your mindset on is success. Like a lot of people don’t even realize they have not great narratives around success or around obtaining a lot of financial freedom and money for themselves for lots of different reasons. There’s all these things that I spent a lot of time excavating and figuring out while I was floundering, right? So the one thing that I knew was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my life, but I know I’m gonna invest in myself, and that’s what I spent my entire 20s doing.

 

Megan  18:16

But that is so hard to understand, because I genuinely believe I would love to be able to adopt that level of a mindset where you know, as you’re talking about, even for a lot of people, not being able to buy into the hope or the promise of something more for themselves. And financial freedom, I think so many women, especially, were taught to not even talk about money, and there’s lots of guilt mentality surrounding there is having a lot, and then at the same time, there’s a scarcity mindset that it’s easy to attach to, of like, I’ll never have enough and and I think if you’re able to in your 20s with all the noise that surrounds, that you were just able to get so quiet and clear, it’s profound.

 

Sarah Blakely  18:59

Thank you. I always tell women in particular, I said, money is really fun to make, really fun to spend and really fun to give away. And I think money just makes you more of who you already were. Like. If you’re a jerk and you get a bunch of money, become a bigger jerk. Yeah, if you were insecure and you get a bunch of money, you become more insecure. If you were generous, you become more generous. It kind of just holds a magnifying glass up to you, but it doesn’t create something terrible that I think is really important to get clear with for each individual person, because I do think that’s a big reason also why I was able to do what I did.

 

Megan  21:21

So random question.

 

Sarah Blakely  21:59

Yes.

 

Megan  21:59

But I’m super curious, as you think, this is not on my papers of things to ask you. I just really want to know. Oh, good. I love those. Because I think, when I think about people who manifest and you’re so spiritually inclined, are you superstitious? Are there certain colors you wear, you’re always in happy colors? Like, maybe that’s part of it very superstitious. You know, maybe I need to wear less white, because you just wear these happy colors. And then it makes people smile immediately when they see you. And then it feels like this joyful energy radiates, and then perhaps that creates a ripple effect, because it just feels playful.

 

Sarah Blakely  22:41

Yes.

 

Megan  22:41

At the same time as being serious as a business woman, but playful. There’s something about how magnetic it is to see how colorful you are when you enter a room, just by dint of, I mean, the book in front of you is the same color as your shirt right now. Really pretty, like pale chartreuse. But what are some of the things that you do that maybe you’re conscious or not conscious? So I feel like everything you do is probably very intentional, to be it from superstitions or colors or habits. What are those practices that are part of your day to day that might be surprising.

 

Sarah Blakely  23:14

I have created an entire system of good luck around me. I have a good luck backpack that I deemed in college was good luck, and it is good luck I have.

 

Megan  23:25

You still have it?

 

Sarah Blakely  23:26

Oh, yeah. Well, I started Spanx with it, and I had it for the first seven years as my purse, this dirty red East pack backpack that I would take on every important meeting Megan. I landed Nina Marcus with this thing and my friends, when I got my 15 minutes to go to fly to Dallas and talk to the Neiman’s buyer, they were like, Please don’t take your red guy a Prada bag return it the next day. Whatever you have to do. Sarah and I was like, No, it’s lucky. Anyway, now it’s framed on the wall at Spanx, but.

 

Megan  23:58

Oh my gosh, I love that so much.

 

Sarah Blakely  24:00

Yeah, it was with me everywhere I went. I have a lucky number, and when I see it, I feel like it’s a wink from the universe telling me that I’m on my path or I’ll just get like, a little, like, it’s almost like a high five.

 

Megan  24:12

Oh, me too. That I’ve created from the universe, I’m with you on that. Laura Lynn, yeah.

 

Sarah Blakely  24:15

I have this whole system. I’ve been doing this since I’m little. When I was little, I decided that the song Sarah smile by Daryl Hall and John Oates, was the universe communicating with me and saying, like, things are gonna be okay, and I will hear it sometimes when I exactly need to hear it, you know, I’ll just be in my car after a really hard moment, hard day, something’s going on, and then it comes on, and I’m like, okay, it just realigns me completely. So I’ve been doing that for a long time. As I mentioned to you, I ask for signs when I make big decisions, and I’ll say it needs to be specific. You know, it can’t be a rainbow, right.

 

Megan  24:54

Exactly.

 

Sarah Blakely  24:55

I’m like, I can’t be like, is was that a sign or not? It needs to hit me over the head like that. Is a sign. And then the other thing that I did that felt different at the time in 2000 was I really used feminine principles, and I wanted to be guided by the Divine Feminine in business, which I felt had been very squashed and left behind.

 

Megan  25:15

Can you expand on that for people who don’t know what that means?

 

Sarah Blakely  25:18

So I feel like, okay, business is a very male construct. It was created by men. It was designed by men. The rules were made by men. What success is even defined as was was created and agreed upon by men. So the feminine was not really in the room at all. She had the feminine energy. The feminine had no say in this. But women the you know, we have had a chance to play in this masculine construct arena, probably in a meaningful way, only in the last, like, what, 30 years?

 

Megan  25:50

I mean, well, it wasn’t until the 70s that women could even have a credit card line, a line of credit on a credit card without her husband saying, yes I mean.

 

Sarah Blakely  25:58

Megan, do you know what year women were allowed to get a business loan on their own without a man co signing or agreeing to it.

 

Megan  26:07

Was it right? Late 70s, early 80s. Now are you going to shock me?

 

Sarah Blakely  26:12

1988 I was a junior in high school when women were allowed to actually go into a bank and say, I’d like to bet on myself I have a business idea.

 

Megan  26:24

Oh my with, oh my lord, really?

 

Sarah Blakely  26:28

I started Spanx only 12 years after women even had the opportunity to do that.

 

Megan  26:33

Isn’t that crazy?

 

Sarah Blakely  26:35

Yeah, mind blowing. Anyway, business is a masculine construct. I was so grateful for the masculine energy in me that was going to help me create Spanx, right? I couldn’t do it without my masculine energy, but it didn’t want my feminine energy to be left behind, because the business community had created a scenario that made that seem like a weakness, right, like when I was using intuition or vulnerability or empathy, or the things that I think are more classically assigned to feminine energy, didn’t feel like it was commended in the corporate world. It didn’t feel like it was rewarded. It felt a little unsafe and a little weird to bring that out, and so when I started Spanx, two guys came up to me at a cocktail party, and they go, Sarah, we just read about you in the newspaper in Atlanta, congratulations. You invented something. And I was so excited. I said, yes, I did. And one guy put his hand on my shoulder and he said, well, you know, business is war. And I said, Okay. And then the other guy started laughing, and they kind of had this little banter with each other. And they go, yep, Sarah, business is war. I hope you’re ready to go to war. And I went home that night and sat on the floor of my apartment, and I just said, I’m not going to war like why does it have to be war? I have no why would anyone want to go to war? I have no desire. I’m going to do this so differently, and I may end up so unsuccessful, or I may not, but I’m going to choose a different path. And everything I did, I mean my marketing back then in 2000 I mean, I laminated a picture of my own butt before and after. That’s pretty vulnerable. Megan, I’m standing in Neiman Marcus with, like, the prettiest woman ever, and I’m like, here’s my butt, like.

 

Megan  28:16

With your red backpack, and a laminated photo of your bottom.

 

Sarah Blakely  28:21

But you know, I always wanted to use that. And then for me, intuition always was how I made my decision. Like I would look at data, I would I half the time I didn’t understand the data, but I would like absorb everything, and then I would say, I’m going to go for a drive, because I knew that’s where I could really connect.

 

Megan  28:39

So you have all this. Obviously the energetic piece is huge for you. And at the same time, you still have to have some sense of how to build a business, or some sense of what to do. And to my understanding, most of that for you was to make your patent a book that you found at Barnes and Nobles. And you figure that out and start to really be scrappy and piece it together. How much of that do you think, if you’re saying there weren’t a lot of people that you could talk to, women, at least in the sector at the time? At the time. You know you have this idea. You think you’re onto something. You’re trying to shop this idea, even to just get it manufactured, and people are saying no, because they can’t buy into the vision of it. Except for was it one manufacturer whose daughter or wife said there could be something here.

 

Sarah Blakely  29:18

He had three daughters. He rejected me like a lot of the factories did. But then he brought it up over dinner, and the daughter said, you know, Dad, this is actually a good idea. I don’t know what to wear under white pants either. You should maybe help this girl out.

 

Megan  29:32

So it goes from this $5,000 investment that you make in yourself and the scrappiness to still be aligned with. I know that there’s some there’s a there, there, but then what moves the needle. You have the Neiman Marcus meeting. How many units are they buying? How do you go from okay, you get one great meeting to you become what Spanx became so quickly, relatively speaking.

 

Sarah Blakely  29:55

I mean, I just whatever I sold. I took the profit from. That and bought my next batch of Spanx, and so I just used the profits from the sales, and it continued to get bigger and bigger and grow in that way. But I was very scrappy, very bootstrappy. You know, I remember standing in rooms back in those days hearing how much money all the people around me had raised and thinking in moments like, Oh my God, I’m such a loser. Like, I haven’t raised anything, but then I look back on it, and it just never felt right to me. I never took a business class, but I was like, why does that feel off to me? Like everybody around you saying I raised 20, I raised 50, I raised 100 and they’re all high fiving each other. And they’re like, but I tell entrepreneurs, when you do that, and there are times where you have to do that, there are certain business models. There are certain things that you do, you are giving up a piece of something for that you’re diluting yourself. You are diluting yourself. So why are we all high fiving you? It became like a badge of honor when I was starting Spanx, how much? How much money did you raise? You know? And I’d say none. And they’d be like, oh, you know, like, but I also felt like I was willing to grow smaller if I needed to, and be very intentional and stay very focused on the consumer, which is my love. I want to make her happy. I want to make her feel better. I want to give her better options. And I’ll let the chips fall where they may around me, but if I had investors, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to honor my intuition. Yes, because intuition is not on a spreadsheet, it’s very hard to explain, and it’s sometimes really counter intuitive to business and the way business works.

 

Megan  31:39

I completely agree with that. I mean, I’ve, you know, I’ve invested in a lot of female founders, and I’m really conscious, I know, as you do too, but also you just mentor so many women, and you want them to succeed to really, I’m not in the business of trying to dilute you. I’m in the business of trying to uplift you, right? You want to be the person that they can call when they’re having a quality control issue, or they’re worried about something, or they just feel uncertain, as we all do, and now I’m on the flip side of that, going, wow, I have a partner. I was going to do it all by myself. Took a complete U turn, because I really believe in what Netflix and their CPG department are doing. But it’s it is a different experience. And if you’re doing it on your own, when you only have yourself to answer to, I think it’s twofold. It can be incredibly liberating. It can be incredibly lonely.

 

Sarah Blakely  32:24

Yeah, it’s both for sure.

 

Megan  32:28

What did that feel like for you at the beginning with Spanx? I mean, you were your own sound board.

 

Sarah Blakely  32:33

Yeah. You know, Spanx never had a board for 16 years. The board was my dad. So my dad would come in to town four times a year and hang out with me and the leadership team and go over the business. Around the 16 year mark of Spanx, I brought in a few additional advisors, beyond my dad, but I never had a formal board at Spanx.

 

Megan  32:56

Can I just ask on that I remember reading, or you maybe had told me that when you were younger, your dad would ask around the dinner table, what did you fail at this week? What did you fail at today? Yeah, meaning, if you failed, you at least try. You tried beautifully, and it doesn’t matter if you failed, right? When he started to advise on the business four times a year, was he asking those same kind of questions?

 

Sarah Blakely  33:18

Yeah. I mean, you know, I would talk to my dad all the time in the business, I was very lucky that I had a parent who is incredibly strategic in his thinking he’s a lawyer, but he was, he’s very smart, and I trusted him, and that was huge for me. So he was always trying to get us to redefine failure growing up, my brother and me and listen, my brother’s four years younger than me. My brother invented a product in a field that he knows nothing about, and sold his business. So something happened in our house, right? My mom, my mom’s a stay at home mother and an artist, and my dad was a litigator. He was a very charismatic trial attorney, and they really fostered something in our house that my brother, my brother was an accountant who invented a machine that allowed businesses to text message their customers, and he was on the first to do that, and I remember running around Del Mar, California, where he lived, trying to sell this little machine for him, with him to sandwich shops so that you in sales, so a customer could text before and his company was called Zingle. But I think that it paid off that my dad was encouraging us to fail, because I think most children really don’t wanna disappoint parents. We want our parents to be proud of us so we start taking less and less risk, because it ensures we’re safer. Pride, not disappointing them. And my dad flipped that narrative on its head and was like, I kind of want to be disappointed. I’m going to be disappointed if you don’t fail at something.

 

Megan  34:49

Well, it’s huge, Yeah, huge. And you had equal parts of that pragmatism as well as the creative from your mom as an artist, so you have both pieces where both sides of your brain are going, okay, what can I. Create. What can I how can I dream in a bigger way? One of the books in front of you dream big. But how do you do that as well as and take risks and don’t be afraid, I love that. I think everyone is so scared, especially as we get older. You’re so scared of making a mistake, you’re so scared of doing it wrong, you’re so scared of not getting everyone’s approval. And I love equally, that at the beginning of Spanx, you held that close because it becomes like Survey Monkey at the beginning of a business. Oh, forget it. You’re like, what do you think? I was thinking. It’s no different. And I will say this to every woman in the world, every person in the world who’s gonna have a child. If you have an idea of what you’re gonna name that baby, you keep it so close to your heart until that baby is born and it’s named. Don’t ask anyone’s opinion. No, not dissimilar to naming your company, which also, I think for you, I hope you know you inspired Cassie, Cassandra, that we talked about with kitsch, yeah, when I talked to her, she said, When Sarah Blakely had said, like, things with a sound like Kodak or Coca Cola, do really well, somebody kitsch.

 

Sarah Blakely  36:01

Yes, the naming of it and everything with Spanx was fun. I took two years to come up with the name, and I wrote it on like gum wrappers and rental car agreements and everything. And then it came to me across my dashboard of my car one day in traffic, I saw the word like in my mind, and I pulled off the side of the road, and I wrote it down. And then, as I was trademarking it on my computer, you know, I trademarked the name Spanx for $250 with my credit card. So good, I know. And at the last minute, I backspace the K and the s and put an X because I did research that made up words do better for products than real birds do, and they’re easier to trademark.

 

Megan  36:40

That’s certainly true.

 

Sarah Blakely  36:42

eah, I loved hearing that story from Cassandra, because she’s doing really cool things and she’s really successful.

 

Megan  39:16

As though you needed to do anything else, you didn’t need to do anything else? And I remember you were sitting here. We were sitting at, this was a couple of years ago. We were sitting here after polo, and you said, I’m working on something else. I can’t talk about it just yet, but I can’t wait to share it with you when I have it. And I said, okay, you don’t need to be working on something again, but I’m excited about it. Q, snakes. Okay, let’s talk about it, how, what, when, where, why.

 

Sarah Blakely  39:43

So I care so deeply about how women feel, and I feel like the beauty industry and the fashion industry in particular has really focused on how we look, but not how we feel. So I have wanted to advocate for women through product, because I think we do. Or both, right? Why does it have to be mutually exclusive? I was fed a tagline that my grandmother told my mother, who then told me, which was, beauty is pain.

 

Megan  40:08

Yes, we’ve all heard that. I know.

 

Sarah Blakely  40:11

I mean, I’m sorry. Bs, they even gave us a tagline for it. I’m like, Why does beauty have to be pain? Oh, I get it. The people making everything for us don’t wear it, right? Fair, right? So there’s been no lens of like. But wait, how am I feeling in this? Yeah, so, you know, high heels I’ve been saying since I started Spanx, every time someone’s like. So what’s next for Sarah Blakely? I’d say, well, someone needs to invent a comfortable high heel. Okay, I would love to do that, and then I’ll retire. And I would just laugh. And after 10 years of putting it out into the universe, it never happened. And one day I very specifically said, okay, universe, I’ve been saying this out loud for a long time. I still am a consumer. I haven’t found any heel I want to wear that doesn’t kill my foot. Am I supposed to do this? Give me a sign. So then the next day, I flipped on the news, and it was Gayle King, and I was running out the door to Spanx, but I caught, like, two minutes of the morning news before I headed out, and she was interviewing Christian Louboutin, which was very odd, right? Like hard news morning. And so I was like, I just asked for a sign, and this is really weird, so I paid extra attention, and in that interview, which Gail holds up her shoe, takes it off her foot and holds it up in the air and goes, I love this shoe. It’s a work of art, but I gotta tell you, by the end of the day, I could be crippled. And as a product person, I’m watching this right? And all I care about is, how does she feel? How does she feel? Are you happy? Do you feel good? You know I’m expecting him to go. I know I’m working on it. And instead, he said, I do not want my shoe to be comfortable. If my shoe is comfortable, I take it as an insult. So I said to the universe, okay, I get it loud and clear. Thank you very much. Like, not only are they not working on it. they don’t care.

 

Megan  42:11

It’s not the aspiration at all.

 

Sarah Blakely  42:13

So then I set out making it. I spent the first four years quietly with two girls that make bras, which is very technical. None of us have one idea how to make a shoe, but I didn’t know how to make shapewear, either. And I always say to people, when you don’t know how something’s supposed to be done, you’re insured, you’re going to do it differently. And that’s where innovation is. So four years into it, flying over to Europe all the time, Spain, Italy. It didn’t matter that I was Sarah from Spanx. Nobody cared. Half the people I cold called said, no, thank you. They told me it couldn’t be done. It would be too hard.

 

Megan  42:48

Wow.

 

Sarah Blakely  42:48

Then I worked with one factory in Italy, six months in, they fired me. They said they don’t want to deal with this anymore. And went to another factory eight months in, they fired me. So I was like, ah, and I wanted it to look exactly like a traditional stiletto. That was the mandate. That was like my goal, but exponentially more comfortable. We got it to where it was going to be four years in, and it was more comfortable, Megan, but it wasn’t exponentially more comfortable. And so I looked at my team of just two girls that I absolutely adore, and I through tears, said, we’re going to pull the plug like we tried, and it’s not there. Because, as someone who invents and creates products, if I, if I’m, especially if I’m going to launch a new company or brand around it, I always say I have a mental check that it needs to be 10x better than anything else out there. So and it was maybe 4x better, but to me, that wasn’t a big enough moat, and it wasn’t a big enough reason for me to spend my time energy. And I, you know, if I’m going to offer something to a woman, I really want it to be radically better, yes. And as I was leaving the factory in Italy, I said, I just why has this been so hard? I just want my high heel to feel like my sneaker. And in that moment, Megan, I said, You know what? Let’s try that. And the girls were like, What are you talking about? I’m like, let’s just see if I can merge a sneaker with the stiletto. I want it to feel like a sneaker. I went home, I cut my sneaker in half, I glued it to the back of my stiletto that I cut in half, and hobbled around my house for a couple days just brainstorming and thinking, could this work? Would this work like I know all the pain is in the ball of the foot, this feels so much more comfortable. Could I get it to look kind of cohesive? And that’s when, when we pivoted, we pivoted, and then I spent the next four or four or five years trying to get that made. And I told the team, this may never get launched, or if it gets launched, it will be when I want to wear it instead of any other heel I have in my closet. And same with the girls. And that happened. That happened for me.

 

Megan  44:51

Well, it’s so key for people who are want to start their own thing to also hear that, that it’s okay to pivot.

 

Sarah Blakely  44:56

Oh yeah, I knew exactly what I want do, and it did not end up that way.

 

Megan  45:03

But also it, it did. It did end up visually as maybe you had sought out, but you were still solving for the same thing. I was, by the way, for me, when I started making my jam, I was all about my jam hat. People were like, what is she going on about? I was like, you know, like a really chic version of the little cloth thing that I tied around everything’s gonna have to have a jam hat. Was like, why is she talking about jam hats? Now, as it evolves, you go, well, we’re not at the farmer’s market, and we’re scaling to something that’s much larger than this, and we’re not gonna have these little monogram pieces of cloth that sit on top, I said, but it could be repurposed as a coaster, and would it be so cute as a hanky? And I just think there’s something so charming and darling about it. Okay, no, the vision for me was so clear.

 

Sarah Blakely  45:47

Right?

 

Megan  45:48

That’s another pivot where you go, Okay, can you let go of that? Because ultimately, what are you solving for? Ultimately, you’re solving for someone having a beautiful, sentimental, elevated experience as they start their day with breakfast. That’s what I was solving for, ultimately, and I could dress that up in different ways. It didn’t include a jam hat for you. What are you solving for? The comfort that you’ve been seeking for 20 plus years? So it doesn’t actually matter how it manifests itself. It manifested itself.

 

Sarah Blakely  46:16

It manifested itself. And I didn’t get in its way how you didn’t get in its way. And you’re right. I was open. I literally never set out to make a sneaker heel. I mean, are you kidding me? That wasn’t even on my radar. But when I was done, I was like, Huh, okay, this is wild. This is where this ended up. I wanted to solve three main things. Megan, I wanted to fix the toe squeeze.

 

Megan  46:39

Oh, yeah.

 

Sarah Blakely  46:40

Oh, I wanted the weight to be redistributed, because since basically the 1700s when heels were, you know, they haven’t changed much. Megan, since the 1700s.

 

Megan  46:50

We’re just leaning forwards and then counter correcting.

 

Sarah Blakely  46:53

Exactly, and then, of course, by adding the tread and the mid sole, you get extra cushioning there. So it’s a very unique experience when you’re in this because you’re in a three inch stiletto but if you close your eyes, you kind of almost feel like you’re flat on the ground. Wow. And I’m able to wear it like I had, literally had to stop wearing heels. That’s how painful they became for my feet. I wore them for so many years. I destroyed my feet. And I’m not the girl who can rock jeans and sneakers. I feel like I look like it did in middle school. I don’t want to go out to dinner in that yes man. So I was, like, staring at my pointy toed shoes, and I’m like, you hurt my feet so bad. And then I’d look at my sneaker, and I’d be like, yeah, I don’t really want to hear you either.

 

Megan  47:35

A friend just said to me the other day when they were looking they said they were like, I just saw this picture I’d forgotten about when you were so pregnant with Archie. I mean, I gained 65 pounds with both pregnancies. Oh, my God, you’re so tight, and you’re in these five inch I always just wear my five inch pointy toed stilettos. They’re like, you have the most enormous bump, and your tiny little ankles are bracing themselves in these high heels. But all of my weight was in the front, right? So you’re just going, how on earth, like people, how on earth, how on earth am I not just tipping, you know, face planting. It’s like clinging very closely to my husband. Please don’t let me fall.Well, you created the antidote.

 

Sarah Blakely  48:13

I went through tons of self doubt. Should I launch? This is it? The weirdest thing ever. You know what’s gonna happen? I had all the same self doubts I had when I started Spanx 25 years ago. Didn’t matter that I already had Spanx under my belt, you know? And I had to work a lot on my own mindset around launching this. And I always like launching something new with something that feels disruptive, right? Yeah, so I knew there’d be a lot of conversation around it, yeah. And I’ve got many more things in the hopper. I can’t wait to.

 

Megan  48:43

You’re not done yet?

 

Sarah Blakely  48:44

No,  I can’t wait to create, I mean, in the shoe category for for now, I’ve got many more things, but I also have a lot of other ideas outside of shoes, but I definitely am excited to kind of really sink into this luxury shoe brand that’s really fun to wear and stylish, but also comfortable.

 

Megan  49:05

Welll, and by the way, it’s a natural evolution. It has to happen that way. It has to evolve that way because women are becoming savvier smarter, we’re taking care of ourselves in a different way. It has to happen, and you’re the person naturally who can do it, because you’ve committed so many decades now of care for how women can show up, feel their best selves and still look a certain way that they want to present. So you feel good and you look good, but you’re not sacrificing your own care, because at the end of the day, I mean, I remember my acupuncturist in the UK said to me, and has always stayed with me, said, if the baby’s crying, treat the mother. Wow, it all starts with us, good Lord, we have to take care of ourselves first. And I think you’ve just really created such a beautiful and celebrated business model, not just because of the fiscal success you’ve found, but because you’ve done it with such a cute, mindful intention that stems from care. You care about women, and that’s so evident in everything that you’ve created, and I guess now that you’ll continue to create, which I can’t even believe you’re gonna keep going.

 

Sarah Blakely  50:12

I’m cheering you on too. I’m like, wait, that took like, three years for my therapist to say that. You just said that in two seconds of hearing me talk about something, it’s really cool.

 

Megan  50:23

Oh, thank you. You’re amazing. I’m I’m gonna go change and put on something colorful for the rest of the day.

 

Sarah Blakely  50:28

Tell Harr  I said hi.

 

Megan  50:30

I sure will. Thanks, honey.

 

Sarah Blakely  50:31

Bye.

 

Megan  50:37

Well, that’s a wrap on Season One of Confessions of a Female Founder. I just want to say thank you guys so much for being so open to hearing all of these women’s stories. I hope you felt as inspired as I have. Thanks for your support as you heard my story, too little bits of it, it’s just the beginning, but my goodness, it’s been really great to be able to share it with you, wishing you all the best and loads of success in whatever you’re building today and every day.

 

CREDITS 51:15

Confessions Of A Female Founder is a production of Lemonada Media.  Created and hosted by Megan. Our producers are Kathryn Barnes and Hoja Lopez.  Kristen Lepore is our senior supervising producer. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Megan. Mix and sound design are by Johnny Vince Evans. Rachel Neel is our VP of new content and production, and Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content and production. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. There’s more Confessions Of A Female Founder with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe in Apple podcasts, you can also listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.