From Selling Fax Machines to Becoming the Youngest Self-Made Female Billionaire: A Conversation with CEO and Spanx Founder Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely: I believe that you don't have to act serious to be taken seriously. And I think that there can be a lot of silliness, and a lot of joy, and a lot of laughing at yourself, and still a lot of amazing results, and earning respect, and delivering and exceeding customer's expectations.

Michael Rivo: That was Sara Blakely, the CEO and founder of Spanx. Welcome back to Blazing Trails, I'm Michael Rivo from Salesforce Studios. Today we'll hear how Sara went from selling fax machines door to door, to creating a billion dollar fashion empire. But before we get to the interview, let me welcome Marie Rosecrans, senior vice president of SMB Marketing at Salesforce, who interviewed Sara as part of our Stories of Resilience program. Welcome to the show Marie.

Marie Rosecrans: Thank you so much Michael. Appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Michael Rivo: Let's talk a little bit about the Stories of Resilience program, because it's such a great program, so many great resources. We've had Brené Brown, as you mentioned, we've had Mark Cuban, and others. Tell me a little bit more about the program.

Marie Rosecrans: Stories of Resilience was created with one goal in mind, to be of service to small business leaders and owners at a time when they have been so adversely hit. I don't think there's a segment out there that has been more adversely hit than small businesses. Our intention around the programming was really focused on not only being of service, but bringing practical, actionable advice from the very best business and thought leaders out there at a time when small businesses need the help and guidance.

Michael Rivo: Well, I am super excited about this episode. I was just wondering what that experience was like for you to get to talk to Sara and have that conversation. Must've been exciting to do that.

Marie Rosecrans: First and foremost, she's such an extraordinary woman, a business leader that I admire so much, but as you can... Well, maybe, I don't know if you can appreciate. I do know that Spanx has a men's line, but Spanx has been part of some of my most important life's milestones and so it was fantastic having the opportunity to meet her.

Michael Rivo: Yeah. I'm not going to say whether I've ever worn any Spanx men's clothes or not to look particularly good in a suit, but we'll leave that for now. So Marie, thank you so much for the conversation today and I'm excited to get started with the episode. So let's let you and Sara take it from here.

Marie Rosecrans: I am so honored to be joined here today with this incredibly creative and talented entrepreneur, the one whose products actually give us a little lift, Sara Blakely.

Sara Blakely: Hi everybody. I'm so happy to be here.

Marie Rosecrans: We are so excited to have you here with us and on behalf of customers everywhere, I just want to pass on my enthusiastic thanks. Today is really about discussing topics, as you know, that are important to small businesses. This program is all about being of service to all of you. We'll have time for live questions. So I hope you're ready.

Sara Blakely: I'm ready.

Marie Rosecrans: As they like to say, let's get our rears in gear. So let's kick it off with this question that I love so much. You famously created Spanx, this prototype, when you cut off the feet of a pair of control top pantyhose, when the undergarments that you were planning on wearing with your white jeans weren't quite working for you. Tell us a little bit about how that creativity and that ingenious spirit has really helped you as an entrepreneur and as a business owner.

Sara Blakely: Sure. Well, to go to the options, Marie, that were available at the moment that I did cut the feet out of my pantyhose to solve my own undergarment issue, they were not great. We had three main options. We had the regular underwear that left a panty line. We had traditional girdles that were thick, and hot, and left lines and bulges everywhere under our clothes. And then they came out with the thong and just put underwear exactly where we had been trying to get it out of. So I got to take matters into my own hands, but I will say that Spanx started way before I cut the feet out of my pantyhose. And I like to bring that up because there were two moments in my life journey that I will mention about that. And one was when I was 16 years old, I went through a really difficult time and I started listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer, who's a motivational and inspirational speaker. I started listening to his, and I'm going to date myself, but his cassette tapes.

Marie Rosecrans: I remember those.

Sara Blakely: And my dad left home. My mom and dad got separated and ultimately divorced. And when my dad left home, he came into my bedroom, handed me this cassette tape series called How to be a No- limit Person by Wayne Dyer. And he said," I wish that I was your age when I discovered this instead of the age of 40." And then he moved out. And I listened to those tapes so many times there were 10 of them and I memorized basically all tapes front and back. And what that did at that moment in my life is it taught me... I realized Marie, I had been in school for 16 years being taught what to think, but no one had ever taught me how to think. And it was this real revelation for me. I was like," Wait, I can control how I think, and how I process adversity, and how I look at the world." And so listening to him, I started practicing at a really early age, manifesting things into my life, visualization, law of attraction, not worrying what other people think about me, not fearing failure, and all of these life skills of how to train your brain to think and move through life, I really credit Spanx to. And so there was another moment where I was selling fax machines door to door after college. I did that for seven years. I got kicked out of buildings all day, every day. People ripped up my business card and sent me out of the building. And one particular day after about seven years, I just pulled off the side of the road, and I started crying, and I thought I'm in the wrong movie. Call the director, call the producer, cut. This is not my life. And I went home that night and I wrote down what I was good at. And pretty much the only thing in the good column was sales. And I started asking myself, what is it about sales? What do I like about it? And I really liked offering something to someone that improved their life or made something aspect of their life better. And that night I wrote in my journal, I will invent something that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good. And so I did cut the feet out of my pantyhose, but there was so much intention set behind that moment in time. The soundbite in the media has been," Sara cut the feet out of her pantyhose and voila." And this sort of happened, but I was so purposeful about it. And I asked the universe very specifically for that idea. So when it came to me, I only cut the feet out of my pantyhose one time, because I had my antenna up for an idea that I could use that might serve a lot of people.

Marie Rosecrans: So many powerful lessons already. You talk about all of the work that you did, but as you know, Spanx is everywhere. It's grown exponentially. And I just need to ask, is it true that women who recognize you, maybe now even men because I know you have a men's line, when they recognize you in public, that they're known to flash you with their Spanx?

Sara Blakely: Yes. This is one of the side effects, Marie, of my business. And if you talk to my husband, he would say it's a perk of being married.

Marie Rosecrans: I bet.

Sara Blakely: He just stands there at events and really dignified women and classy women are like," Wait a minute." And they're ripping out their bra or lifting up their skirt to show me their undergarment issue, concern, or idea. And yeah, it has been something happening from the whole journey. And now I have children and my oldest son, Lazer, when he got to be at about six years old, one day we were in the car and he just goes," Mommy, how come so many people show you their underwear?" But I have to tell one story when you bring that up, because it's just given me free reign, it kind of breaks the barriers down really quickly, because people just go straight to the subject of their undergarments, which is pretty personal. I was at an event maybe a year ago and I was seated between Warren Buffett and secretary Madeleine Albright, and I leaned over in the middle of the lunch and asked Madeline Albright what her bra size was. I was like," I need to know your bra size, because I want to send you a bra." And I thought Warren Buffett was going to choke on his french fry. He like," Sara only you could get away with asking someone that." And she got out the napkin and immediately wrote down her bra size for me, and I sent her a bra.

Marie Rosecrans: I love that. But you've accomplished so much, one of the things that is really important to you is lifting other women up. So you've accomplished all of this, but in the process you have really, I think, paid it forward. And it's all about lifting other women up. You started this Red Backpack Fund, which is all about giving women entrepreneurs$ 5, 000 grants to help alleviate some of the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, this health crisis that we're in. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you created it, why you chose to do this, and I think equally important, what advice do you have for business owners right now who are really fighting to stay in business?

Sara Blakely: Yes. I'm so happy to talk about the Red Backpack Fund. So I will gladly explain a little bit about that, but when the pandemic hit, I immediately went into, how can I help? Everybody has different degrees in which we can afford the help and the time that we can dedicate to help. But I kind of bucketed it really quickly into three categories, which was, how can I help the food insecure? How can I help the people on the frontline that are doing what they're doing to keep all of our society going during this time? And the third was how can I help small businesses? I still think there's such a tremendous need for women in particular to be supported. I love the men out there and the male entrepreneurs. It's nothing against you. I just know that the funding has been really out of balance for a while. And so I was excited to be able to try to help that. And so in the bucket of small business, the team at Spanx and I got together very quickly and we literally came up with the Red Backpack Fund in about five days. And what I did was, we're giving$ 5, 000 to a thousand different female entrepreneurs. And the reason$ 5, 000, Marie, is because that's what I used to start Spanx. And I've never taken any outside investment in 20 years. So Spanx has been solely funded by my original$ 5, 000 that I had saved selling fax machines door to door. So that was symbolic to the number that I gave each woman. And then also I gave them each a lucky red backpack and the fund is called the Red Backpack Fund because I had a lucky red backpack from college that I started Spanx with that I really believe wholeheartedly is lucky. And I carried it with me when I cold called Neiman Marcus, when I cold called Nordstrom, when I did my first QVC, when I was on CNN or the news for the first time. It was always with me and it was my purse for the first seven years, and now it's hanging in a box on the wall at the headquarters of Spanx. But it's a reminder to start small, and dream big, and that everything these entrepreneurs need is really already right there on their back, the red backpack... It's funny because when I first started the company and I got my big chance to go to Neiman Marcus, all my friends were like calling me and going," You cannot bring that old red backpack to the Neiman Marcus headquarters." And I insisted on doing it. I was just like," This is who I am. This is my lucky red backpack." They were joking. They were like," Buy a Prada bag, return it the next day, whatever you need to do, but you cannot show up with that old, dirty, red backpack." But I feel like being really authentic and who you are throughout the journey has really served me well. Which is funny because when I started the business, I got a lot of advice from people, the fake it till you make it kind of advice. And I sort of went the other way.

Marie Rosecrans: Good for you. [crosstalk 00:12:49].

Sara Blakely: I wasn't trying to hide where I was in my journey at all.

Marie Rosecrans: I've got to believe that that red backpack, and showing up with that red backpack, and even seeing it today probably keeps you incredibly grounded. And certainly continuing this life of authenticity and vulnerability, which is clear that you exhibit. So you have this benefit of Spanx being what we call a category creator, which makes it one of those rare products where its brand is almost greater than its industry that it's in, like Kleenex, like FedEx. But this did not happen overnight. You shared your story already a little bit, but since this program that we've created is called the Stories of Resilience, help us understand, how did you overcome some of the roadblocks? Because I've got to believe there were some. And how did you build that resilience to overcome them?

Sara Blakely: Well, resilience is like a muscle and the more you just gut through something and not let it get you down or defeat you, the stronger your resilience muscle will become. So, so much of it is just picking myself back up and moving forward, taking that next step. But yes, there've been so many roadblocks. I think about when you say Spanx has become the whole category, it's mind blowing to me. I have to pinch myself for a second to hear that because I thought of the word Spanx while sitting in my car in traffic, in Atlanta. And it was after a year of really bad names that I'd written on all kinds of scrap pieces of paper, rental car agreements. I was just trying to name my product something memorable. And I ended up trademarking Spanx for$ 150 with my credit card on the website, uspto.gov, which stands for United States Patent and Trademark Office dot government, which was a website I spent a lot of time on. And at the last second I backspaced the K and the S, and put an X, and it's just wild to me that that happened. And then also we didn't advertise. So Spanx did no formal advertising for 17 years. And for us to become a household name in the way that it has just shows you the power of women and customers talking about and supporting your product. So the roadblocks, let's see, where do I begin? When you say roadblocks a lot of it comes to mind in the beginning. It was extremely difficult for me to get the product made. I just kept hitting roadblock after roadblock. Nobody thought it was a good idea. I called a lot on the phone. I tried to make my own prototypes. I went to arts and crafts stores. That didn't really get me anywhere. I wasn't sure if the machine needed to be invented to create the product that I wanted to make. And it was like, how will I ever be able to afford that? I'm not an engineer. So there was a lot of self doubt that was a roadblock for me in the beginning, but I ended up just persevering through those roadblocks by just not giving up. And I used a lot of persistence, balanced with humor, balanced with vulnerability, and I asked people to help. I wasn't afraid to say, look, I just need your help. And I also, wasn't afraid to make jokes and say, look, will you just help me so I never bug you again? Just think if you give me this one 15 minute meeting, then you're done with me. Otherwise I'm just going to keep calling you. So it was a balance of how to approach people, especially that didn't want to give you the time of day. And so eventually I always say, I think it's the passion. People feed off of your passion and your confidence. Even though I would sit in my car and freak out and think, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm saying. I eventually took a week off of work and drove around North Carolina, and went in person, and cold called each one of these manufacturing plants who all still sent me away. But I made sure I used words like I'm positive this is going to be a home run. I know this is going to change and revolutionize the way you guys are doing business. I know that the industry is in a decline and this is an opportunity to turn that around. And then I'd get in the car and go, oh my God, I'm so doubtful and I'm freaking out. But I always tried to catch myself using language when I'm asking people to bet on me that they don't think I'm doubting myself. And then the other roadblock, there's moments in the journey where roadblocks come and then they become opportunities, and that's part of being a really good entrepreneur. And one roadblock we had along the way was there were so many women who wanted Spanx, but couldn't afford it. I kept going to the team and saying, what can we do here? And it ended up being we just can't solve this problem without creating another brand. So we created a sub brand called Assets that is sold at all Targets around the country. And it gave us an opportunity, even though we hit the roadblock with what was right for the brand Spanx and what we could provide, to just create another brand. And so that's an example of just a roadblock turning into an opportunity.

Marie Rosecrans: I love that. Crises create opportunities. Roadblock creates opportunities. Changing gears a little bit. You've talked about the Red Backpack Fund. You're very active philanthropically. A few years ago, you made this giving pledge and giving back is a really, really important part of your, it sounds like, corporate and personal philosophy. And here at Salesforce, since the day we began, we have had this model called the 1- 1- 1 model. Has Spanx always been involved in giving, or was that something that you decided to invest in when you achieved a certain level of success? I think this is something that small business owners and entrepreneurs think about as well.

Sara Blakely: Yeah. It's been there from the very beginning. I had been setting aside savings from the very first year of Spanx to give back and to elevate women. I feel like my greater purpose and passion is to elevate women. I find my own inspiration from actually the lack of choices that my mom and my grandmothers had. People always say, who inspires you? And what woman is it that you're getting all that drive and motivation to conquer your fears and go out there and do it? And it's actually the women in my life that didn't have those opportunities that did that, that kind of made me feel like I need to just hold my breath, and go through the door, and pick up the phone, and make that sales call. So I think when you're doing something and your purpose is greater than yourself, it will give you courage. You never knew you had.

Marie Rosecrans: Oh, so amazing. I completely, completely agree. And to think that you're motivated by those women who didn't have the same opportunities as you, and you're really trailblazing on their behalf. I love that.

Sara Blakely: Marie, I think about it. And it's such a narrow margin of time. My mom had me when she was 22 years old, human beings have been on the planet for a long time. Depending on who you ask, you get a slightly different answer, but at least thousands of years. And to think that by 22 years what was expected of my mother, and what were her options and opportunities, versus what my options and opportunities were. I just have to take this opportunity even though I'm terrified, and even though I didn't do great in school, and even though I don't have a lot of experience, I'm going to just go and face all the fear. I'm never going to let fear be what holds me back.

Marie Rosecrans: I love that. We're going to jump into these live questions. There's a plethora of them, Sara. So let's buckle up here. This is from Jennifer [Matley 00:20: 40 ]. I have my glasses on, but I'm still having difficulty seeing. Hi, Sara, I'm an American ex- pat and single mom in Canada with two small businesses, one nourishing my soul, Wine Acumen, and another providing deep satisfaction, Health Acumen. I sense their growth is limited primarily by my insecurities. How did you learn how to embrace discomfort? You talked a little bit about some of these tools that you use.

Sara Blakely: Well, I would say that one of the most important things is to be willing to hire your weaknesses and being self- aware as an entrepreneur is one of your greatest gifts along with mindset. I always tell people work on your mindset daily because it is really going to be, at the end of the day, what differentiates you between other entrepreneurs or other businesses that you're up against. And so, to me, just that mindset piece is really important.

Marie Rosecrans: I love that. I agree. The power of positivity and the positive mind.

Sara Blakely: I will say too, as far as I said hire your weaknesses, I knew very quickly what I'm good at in the business. I like the sales, the marketing, and I'm an inventor. I like to find white space and invent the products. As soon as I could afford to I hired people to do the other side of the business and I didn't spend too much time beating myself up that I wasn't good at that. I would just accept it. These are my strengths, I'm not good at this. Usually as an entrepreneur we're every department, but we get to learn very quickly I'm really good at this, I'm terrible at this. And usually what you're good at you enjoy and what you're terrible at you don't enjoy. So you pay attention to that. And then through the years of my journey, I try to stay in my lane. I will do some checks and I can tell when I'm spending too much time out of my lane. And if that's the case, it really will feed into my insecurities and my own self doubt. And I'll start to also lose joy and not be as excited about it.

Marie Rosecrans: Such great advice. I always tell people, hire people that are smarter than you, that have skills that you don't have. So you've been doing that and it's clearly working. I love this question from Stephanie in New York City. I have two kids, but she says," How. Do. You." You get it."How do you do it with four kids?"

Sara Blakely: Well, I have a really great husband and we tag team it, and I have some support. So I couldn't do it without the support. And I really spend time prioritizing. I delegate what I can and need to delegate. And then I also let go of beating myself up about things because when I became a mother, and a working mother, I didn't realize how intense the self- doubt and the guilt that came with being a mother would be, and it really started to almost immobilize me. I went through a period where I just felt so defeated when I was working I felt like I should be with my children. When I was with my children I felt like I should be working. And so it's been a work in progress, but my best advice to any working parent is really manage the negative self- talk because we all have it. And once I became aware of how much that was happening to me and I really stop it in its tracks, I kind of created a system for myself to say, hold on a minute, and I really will talk right back to it. It became a lot better for me.

Marie Rosecrans: Excellent. Excellent advice. I know that a lot of working moms in particular feel that struggle, and so thank you so much for sharing that. So this next question comes from Sterling Champion from Southern California. She says, I admire your journey and attitude. I'm the co- founder of a new collection of certification marks that represent gender equality in the workplace. It's at The SHE Mark. Right now we're 100% self- funded, something you know a lot about, and want to stay that way. What advice do you have for surviving without outside investment? Such a fantastic question.

Sara Blakely: Well, look, I did it for 20 years without any outside investment, but I also recognize that there are lots of different journeys and there will be moments that it may make the most sense for your business to do that. I will say that I am a believer in starting small, thinking big, and scaling fast. I also have learned through my journey that there's a lot more that we can do ourselves than needing to outsource. I've never outsourced PR. All PR has been internal at Spanx, there's just a lot of those kinds of... We never advertise. We just figured out ways to get exposure. One way for me was QVC. I literally wrote down on a sheet of paper, how can I get exposure and not spend any money? And number one was Oprah, and number two was QVC. I kind of then radio DJs, and I sent product, and press releases to every radio station in the country, every television station in the country, and really bootstrapped it. And I would just make product that we could afford from the money that we had sold the previous products. But I also feel like I've put product at the center of everything. Consumer for sure, but I almost feel like I'm saying consumer when I say product, because I have cared so deeply about the product that I'm giving to the consumer. And that has been a big part of, I think, the secret sauce, because if your product is exponentially better than everyone else's, it kind of speaks for itself. And so that's where I invested money and time, for sure.

Marie Rosecrans: Such an important point, great pro tips, but also just that focus on the customer, and the product, and really making that exceptional. Thank you so much for your question Sterling. I have this other question coming in from Rachel E. Peters from Portland, Oregon. She says my business is clean age essentials for kids. What is the key to creating a category and continuing to lead that category after copycats come along?

Sara Blakely: The key is innovation, so if you are someone who... I always say as a business owner, how are you different? Spend time being able to answer how you're going to differentiate yourself. And entrepreneurs who are successful, are people who have found white space and created something that didn't already exist, and fill it, or they take something that already exists and makes it exponentially better. And I think that the way that you become the leader category is through invention and innovation typically. It's like you filled white space, you've created something that didn't exist, or you took something and improved upon it so much so that your product just starts to define a category. I also think that it's really important to try to build a moat around your business. I'm in the fashion industry and I never consider myself a designer. I consider myself an inventor. But yet my whole space that I operate in my industry is fashion and retail. And it always bothered me a little bit that there weren't moats around those businesses. The moat for most of those businesses is their brand. And they invest a lot of money in the brand and what the brand stands for, but I'm always trying to figure out how can I build a moat around this business? And when I mean a moat, something that other people can't just knock off easily and/ or just copy you.

Marie Rosecrans: Such great advice. I have this question from Moe Foreman from LA. It says, Hi, Sara. I work for UCLA, and often I'm inspired by John Wooden's quotes in adversity and resilience. What is one of the hardest lessons you have learned from a business failure?

Sara Blakely: Hmm. One of the hardest lessons I would say has to deal with myself and the advice I just gave someone a couple minutes ago, which was stay in your lane. And I hired a leader inside of Spanx that wasn't the right leader, wasn't the right fit. But during that time that that happened, I moved out of my lane and two things happened. The business suffered, but then also I suffered tremendously, and I became really unhappy. I had very high burnout. I'm a creator and an inventor, and I was all of a sudden spending my day only dealing with the highest level issues. Everybody was doing it, and I had sort of let my core strength and what I enjoyed, be moved to other people to lead and be a part of. And that was a lesson that I learned that I need to really stay in my lane, I need to be really protective of it. And as an entrepreneur, one of the things we deal with is as the company grows, you can afford a lot of other people to do things, right? That you couldn't in the beginning, but you were the secret sauce and the magic that made whatever happened even come to life and happen. So try not to remove yourself with too many layers of management or leaders from your core strength and your core uniqueness that created this thing to begin with.

Marie Rosecrans: Fabulous. So I'm going to take one last question from the audience. This is from Kelly Conrad, and I think you're going to enjoy this one. In this remote working world, many people, particularly those of us who are fortunate to work from home, how do you convey your signature sense of humor through digital channels? As a self- proclaimed commit comedian, Kelly's really funny clearly, who works in technology sales I find it hard to know how and when to be funny outside of in- person meetings.

Sara Blakely: Wow. Yeah. The use of humor is a really fascinating one, it's so subjective. And so I always find that when the humor is self- deprecating, it's the safest. I find that when the humor is self- deprecating you put people at ease. I'm very quick to make fun of myself. When I launched Spanx in the UK, I was being interviewed on the BBC, which is like their CNN. And I'm just starting out basically, and I've told my team of two, I'm headed over to Europe and I'm going to launch Spanx in the UK. And in the middle of the interview, the man's like," So Sara, tell us what Spanx can do for women in the UK." And I was like," Well, it's all about the fanny. It's smooths your fanny. It lifts your fanny." And this man have lost all of the color in his face because, I did not know this, but fanny means vagina in England.

Marie Rosecrans: Oh wow. Not good.

Sara Blakely: So you can imagine, right? I've just told all of England, I'm going to smooth out their vaginas. And I had no idea that I was doing that, but that ended up being what got me in the door at Harrods. I was able to tell the story, I always say really embarrassing moments or bizarre roadblocks or incidences. If you're willing to just accept you made the mistake or if something happened, I'm always someone who turns it into a story and shares it. And I told it to the Harrods buyer, they could not stop laughing and they're like," I'll take whatever you're selling." And they gave me a chance to be sold there, and Spanx is still sold at Harrods now. I believe that you don't have to act serious to be taken seriously. And I think that there can be a lot of silliness, and a lot of joy, and a lot of laughing at yourself, and still a lot of amazing results, and earning respect, and delivering and exceeding customer's expectations.

Michael Rivo: That was Sara Blakely, founder and CEO of Spanx speaking with Marie Rosecrans, senior vice president of SMB Marketing at Salesforce as part of our Stories of Resilience series. You can learn more about this series by going to salesforce. com/ smb. I'm Michael Rivo from Salesforce Studios, thanks for joining us today.