Unzipping Success: Sara Blakely's Entrepreneurial Story

Like a name is so important. It's such a part of the equation of the formula. And it came to me while I was sitting in traffic in Atlanta. I had been racking my brain, and literally, I just saw the word Spanx come across the dashboard in my mind.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table, because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch, and today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

I'm really excited to introduce our next guest because we decided a couple of years ago that we really wanted to have her come and share with the traffic and conversion crowd, and we were trying to do that again this year, but it turns out that we carelessly scheduled traffic and Conversion summit on her birthday, so she was unable to make that. But she's an incredibly inspiring person with a wonderful story, and she's graciously decided to come here and share that with you guys today. Sarah, you want to come on up?

Hi, everybody.

Hello. Hello.

So, for anybody who doesn't know, Sarah founded a company called Spanx out of need and absolute need and has built it into a crazy, successful company. And just so everybody kind of understands a little bit about the story, would you share kind of how it started and kind of how it came to be? Where did you go?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I see a lot of men in the room, which is always really fun and interesting. And being interviewed by a man is also really fun.

We were going to distribute space thanks to all of the attendees. And then it was like, that just could be awkward.

Well, I got interviewed by Coach K from the Duke basketball team, and he spent 40 minutes interviewing me trying not to say the word panty. Like, he was so uncomfortable. And finally I just turned to him and I'm like, panty. It's okay, you can say it. He was bright red. It was really funny. So, anyway, yes, thanks. I was a frustrated consumer. I had never taken a business class. I had never worked in fashion or retail. I couldn't figure out what to wear under white pants. So I don't know if this has happened to a lot of the men in the room, but it's actually a really big dilemma or was for women at the time. And I cut the feet out of control top pantyhose to just solve my own undergarment issue, because I didn't want to see a panty line. And just to tell you guys a little bit about what our options were as women, there are some women here in the room, so I know that you'll be able to relate to this. But our options were really bad. If you didn't want to see anything and you wanted to look flawless in your clothes, you had regular underwear that left a panty line. And then you had these heavy duty, thick girdles that were way thicker than we needed and really uncomfortable. And then they invented the thong, which just put underwear exactly where we'd been trying to get it out of. So those were our options. They were not great. So I set out to make this item. I went on the Internet. I looked up hosiery mills. I found out.

When was this exactly?

This was in 1990. 1997. 98. 1998. I cut the feet out of my pantyhose so I could go to a party and wear great white pants and strappy heels with no marks or lines that you could see. And then two years of working at night and on the weekends. I was selling fax machines door to door for a living at the time that I cut the feet out of my pantyhose. So two years before the company launched. So this was in 1998. I had just.

You went to MySpace and looked up where can I find.

No, not much Internet back then. No, no, there wasn't. And I just moved from Clearwater, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, and found out that most of the hosiery manufacturers were in North Carolina. So I started calling them on the phone. Will you please help me make my idea? They all basically hung up on me, had no interest. So I took a week off of work and drove around North Carolina in person and tried to convince the hosiery manufacturers to make this idea. And they all thought it was crazy and a really bad IDE in fact, yeah. So it was interesting because as a girl who grew up on Clearwater beach, who never ever thought about fashion or business, I was standing with all men. They were mostly all men that were making our undergarments. So then it was pretty interesting. I thought to myself, okay, maybe this is why they're so uncomfortable. Because the people who.

You mean the men talking about panties?

Well, the people who were making all of our undergarments weren't spending all day in them. And if they were, they weren't admitting it that you knew of. So I was like. And just trying to get it made was really challenging. And then I finally found a manufacturer in Charlotte, North Carolina that said yes. He had originally turned me away. All of the manufacturers turned me away. And he called me two weeks later and said, I've had a change of heart. And when I asked him why, he said, I have three daughters. So he had run the idea by his daughters over the dinner table and they said, dad, this is actually an interesting idea. We have the same problem. We don't know what to wear under a lot of our clothes either. You should give this girl a chance. And what happened was I actually just took an idea in an industry that was very established, that had been doing things the same way for a really long time. So hosiery had been being made to be seen on the leg. And it was in a double digit decline, this industry. So the industry and what they had been doing for many, many years was no longer really serving women as much as it once was. So for me, showing up and saying, I just want your material and I want to make an undergarment out of your material that nobody can see was so confusing to them. I mean, it's almost like on autopilot. Like, no, we don't understand. I was like, your material will change the game if you can help me figure out how to make it so that it's underneath the clothes and completely invisible. I don't even want to see it on the leg. But I knew as a consumer that hosiery material was so lightweight, it was like second skin. It wasn't going to make me feel like I was wearing workout clothes under my beautiful slacks or dress. And that if we could figure it out, we'd fill a lane for women. And that's exactly what happened. So it was a wild experience. He ended up helping me make it. I spent two years working at night and on the weekends to get this product made. I wrote my own patent because I had $5,000 set aside in Savings from selling fax machines that I had allocated to sort of take this.

And you did that straight from a how to do your patent book, right?

Yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, I went to a few. I went to a few patent lawyers and they all wanted between three and five. Three. And I think it was three and ten grand to help write my patent. So I just decided to write it myself. And I went to Barnes and Noble in Atlanta on Peachtree and bought a book called how to Patent, Patents and Trademark. And once I wrote it, I realized I didn't know how to write the claims portion, the very legal portion. So I went back to one of the lawyers that had quoted me a really high fee and basically begged and said, I have written the whole thing. I've done the abstract, the drawings, the this, the that. Well, you just write the claims. And he did, for a discounted price over the weekend.

Nice.

Yeah. But you know what? He admitted to me later, he thought that my idea was so bad that he thought that I had been sent by Canacamera.

That's awesome.

When I first met with him, that's really. I mean, later he admitted that to me. He said I was either being punked by my friends, I was sure of it, or can a camera. And I was like, that makes sense because he kept looking around the room during my pitch. But he said I wasn't the typical person that walked into his office. You know, I had my lucky red backpack and pantyhose that I had cut the feet out of and I started holding it up and saying, I'm going to change the way women wear clothes. And so he thought he was being punked.

That's funny.

And then the name, you know, I named the product. I had two years of really bad names on every scrap, piece of paper you can imagine.

Can you tell us what some of the.

Okay, so this is how bad my runner up name to Spanx was. I was going to name it Open Toed Delilah's so bad. Right. And I don't think I'd be sitting here being interviewed by you had I named it Open Toed Delilah's. Like a name is so important. It's such a part of the equation of the formula. And it came to me while I was sitting in traffic in Atlanta. I had been racking my brain and literally I just saw the word Spanx come across the dashboard in my mind. I pulled off the side of the road, I wrote it down. I went home that night and I went on uspto.gov which was a website I spent a lot of time on and trademarked it with my credit card for $150.

That's great.

And at the last second that I was hitting send to trademark it, I backspaced the K and the S and I put an X and changed it because I'd done research that made up words do better for products than real words do.

Easier to protect. I mean, better.

Easier to protect.

Yeah. Super cool. So it wasn't an accident. You actually just said, I'm going to do an X there?

Yeah, I stared at it. It was S, P, A, N, K, S. And then I just thought, I'm going to change it in that moment to X. Which is, you know, when I first started the company, my mom, my family, everyone was trying to help me promote it. So my mom told her entire luncheon in Florida that my daughter started this new company and it's Spanx. And she sent them all to the wrong website, which is really dangerous. I was like, mom, it's an X. It's an X. So if any of you decide, she's.

Like, you're right, it is three X's.

So if any of you decide to go to spanx.com, it's an X or you can get a real treat.

That's awesome. So what about like the packaging and all that kind of stuff to get it?

Yeah. So the packaging, I knew that I wanted my packaging to be completely different because I didn't have any money to advertise. And I thought, okay, if I get a moment to have any shelf space, it has to advertise itself. So in the category that I started in hosiery and shape, where everything was white, beige or cream, and, and it was the same half naked woman on every package. It was completely confusing, very boring, and you had to read the small print in the upper right hand corner. So I decided to make my packaging bright red, which was completely disruptive in that space. No one had ever done that before. And instead of photography, I put three animated cartoon looking women that were very different looking on the packaging. And I wanted it to feel like you were buying a present for yourself if you were to go in and buy it. That was my whole goal. I was like, I want it to feel like art or something that you would love to buy yourself, not a dreaded commodity. And it turned out that that was a really great thing because when I did get the shelf space, I mean, my very first account was Neiman Marcus. And when I started Spanx, you know, there was no iPhone. There was no, I mean, like nothing existed at the time. It was 16, almost 17 years ago. Wholesale was king. And being able to get into these wholesalers, especially as someone that was a brand that I just created out of my apartment in Atlanta, was an unbelievable moment for me. And I got in Neiman Marcus because I called them, which was really interesting. I like to say that what you don't know can be your greatest asset if you will let it. So the key is to have the courage to do it. Because most of the time if you don't know what you're technically doing, a lot of people will say, well, I didn't go to school school for that, or I wasn't trained in that. Or we have self doubt and think, well, why would I possibly be the one that could do this when there's professionals that are, you know, all day long, every day thinking about this. But the courage part is the key. And so once I landed Neiman Marcus, all these people kept coming up to me in the industry and saying, how did you get into Neiman's? And I would just look at them and I'd say, I called them and they would go. I go, why? What do you do? And they're like, well, there's trade shows and we set up our booth and we go to trade shows. And I've been setting up the booth for the last seven years, hoping that the Neiman's buyer will come. And I didn't even know there were trade shows. So I had no idea how any of this was supposed to be done. And in many ways it served me and my journey really well.

So now, was Neiman's the first place that you called or had you really?

Yeah, the very first place.

Yeah.

Lucky.

Yeah. So Neiman Marcus was my very first account. And I called the buyer and said, I'm Sarah. I've invented a product that will change the way women wear clothes. If you give me 10 minutes of your time, I will fly there and show you. And she said, if you're willing to fly here, I'll give you 10 minutes. So I jumped on a plane, I went there, I had my lucky red backpack with me, which was my presentation bag. This is my backpack from college. Okay. My friends begged me, they were like, sarah, you cannot go to the Neiman Marcus headquarters with your east pack red nasty backpack. Like that can't happen. And they said, go to the store, buy a Prada bag, return it the next day if you need to. You cannot do this. But it was something that was so Important to me as far as I felt like it brought me luck. So I presented to the Neiman's buyer and I could tell I was losing her in the first three minutes. I mean, this woman is impeccably dressed. Her shoes matched, her pen that matched her belt. I'm like sitting there with my backpack and I had my prototype in a Ziploc bag and the packaging I created on my friend's computer cut out and sort of mocked up. And so five minutes into it, I could read her non verbals. And I was like, okay, I'm losing her. So I just said, you know what? Will you please come to the bathroom with me? And she was like, excuse me? I was like, I know it's a weird request, but will you follow me to the bathroom and I'm going to show you what my product can do on me in person? And she reluctantly agreed. And we walked down the hallway together and went into the bathroom and I went in the stall, I put the Spanx on with my white pants and without. And she just sat back and she goes, I get it, it's brilliant. And I'm going to put it in seven stores and see how it does. And it was like.

And you had how many pairs made ready to go at that point?

Well, not many. Okay. So then what happened was I was beside myself and I had spent the last year making the prototype with the manufacturer in North Carolina. And he had put me together with this guy Ted in the back of the manufacturing plant who was so southern you could almost technically say spoke another language. I mean, I couldn't every other word. I was like, what was that? So I'd been working with Ted in the back of the factory. And in fact, there's a story about Ted with my patent. When I was writing my patent, my lawyer said, sarah, I need to know what technically goes into this product before I can finish the claims. I said, okay, great, we'll call Ted in North Carolina. So I get Ted on the phone, I'm like, ted, Ted, I got my lawyer on the phone. Can you explain to him what we've been doing and what is exactly in this prototype? And he's like, yeah, well, there's 30% nylon and 70% lacquer. And I was like, okay. So, you know, the night before I submitted the patent to the U.S. patent and Trademark Office, I couldn't sleep at night because I kept thinking, how is there lacquer in this product? And so I called him in the morning, I go, ted, can you spell lacquer? He's like, yeah. L, Y, C, R, A. I was like, oh, my God. Lycra. Okay, okay. So I call my lawyer. I'm like, do an all change. It's Lycra. So he laughed. He goes, you know how fast you would have gotten a patent trying to make pantyhose out of paint thinners? So they would have been like, wow, this. This is interesting.

Think of how it would have thrown the competition.

Exactly.

They would have been like, what's happening? So then, fast forward. I land Neiman Marcus. I'm beside myself. I called the manufacturer. It was like the second call I made. I think the first call I made was to my dad and my mom, and my dad is here somewhere. Where are you, dad?

Right back there.

Yep. So my dad's here. I called him. I was like, dad, dad, Dad. I just landed Neiman Marcus. He's like, that's fantastic. Then I called Sam, who was at the manufacturing plant, and he was the owner, and it was dead quiet. I go, sam, it's Sarah. I just landed Neiman Marcus. I'm gonna need more of these right away. Nothing. Sam, are you there? Sarah, don't take this the wrong way, but I thought you were gonna give these away as Christmas gifts for the next four years. Like, I. What do you mean you just landed Neiman Marcus? Like, he had no idea that it was a viable idea. I said, I just landed them. He goes, that's great. I'm gonna patch you through to Ted.

How many did you need to fill her?

The first one, I needed 3,500. Okay. Yeah, so. And then. Yeah. So he patches me through to Ted in the back. I go, ted, it's Sarah. I just landed Neiman Marcus. I need 3500 pair of these immediately. And he's like, well, that's great, but what you gonna do about the crotches? I was like, what? What do you mean, what am I gonna do about the crotches? Like, don't they come with crotches? We've been making it with crotches and you. And he's like, well, yeah, but we only got one crotch machine and it's being used by somebody else. I was like. I was like, ted, wait, so let me get this straight. I just landed Neiman Marcus and I have no crotches? I was like, what am I going to do? I don't know where to go for a crotch. I had no idea. So I ended up, look, this is how far this will date me. But I looked it up in the Yellow Pages under crotch and it wasn't there. And then I found out there's a fancy word for crotch, which is gusset. And that helped my search a little bit. And, you know, I had crotches being FedExed in from all over the world to my apartment. My roommate would come home from work and be like, you got another crotch in the mail. But it's a crazy story. 20 minutes north of where I lived in Atlanta, there was a company there that made crotches and fulfilled the order and shipped them to the mill in time for me to fulfill Neiman Marcus. And the guy who saved the day was actually a guy named Gene Bobo. So Gene Bobo provided me my crotches off and running. And when they shipped to Neiman Marcus, I called every friend that I remotely had in those seven cities. Like, people that, you know, it's kind of like, hey, it's Sarah. We sat next to each other in fourth grade. Yes, that's me, right? Yeah. So I invented this product, and I will pay you to go buy it. And I was mailing checks out to all my friends to go buy the product, and I would give them the whole thing. I'd say, you got to walk in. You got to say, I've been looking for this my whole life. Or, like, I love this, and thanks, and, you know, drum up all this excitement. And so just as the buyer called and was like, sarah, you are not going to believe this, but this is blowing out. I was like, you don't say, wow, amazing. So. And just as I was running out of money and friends, Oprah called and chose Spanx as her favorite product of the year.

That's fantastic. When was that? What year was that?

That was in 2000.

Okay.

Right when I started, and I know.

You'Ve been on the show. Was that related to that or was that after.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well, first. Well, yeah, I got the call from Oprah that she chose it as her favorite product. And the reason why is I sent a gift basket to her. I had no money to advertise, so I was just sending it to local TV channels. I sent it to Oprah. She put it on and has basically worn Spanx almost every day since, which has been amazing. But she decided to make it her favorite product of the year. And they called and said, oprah never has guests on this show. It's always about the product. But she loves that you're taking on a billion dollar industry out of your apartment. And so we're going to send a crew down and they want to film you. And she's going to hold, hold. She's going to show two minutes of B roll when you're on. And that was quite an experience too because they all showed up in Atlanta and they were so professional. They were like clipboards and lighting and all the five to 10 producers. And they're standing at my apartment. They're like, sarah, we discussed it on the plane and we decided we want to film you in your headquarters. You know, I was like, you're here. So I brought them in. They kind of laughed. And then they said, we also decided on the plane that we want to film you having a staff meeting. Well, I said, hold on a minute. And I called Connie that I had met at Mailboxes Etc. And I said, connie, this is Sarah. Can you be at my apartment in five minutes and look like you work for me? And she's like, I'm on my way. And I called several of my friends, they came over too. And we sat in a circle on the floor of my apartment and that was my staff meeting. So the whole journey was like that. For Spanx, I mean, that's basically how it started. And then it was off and running and I stood in every department store. I got into Neiman Sachs, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Bergdorf Barney's, and I went for two years and stood eight to nine hours a day in the department store selling the product for them so that it was a success.

Now did you have other people doing that too or was that just. Were you a one woman show for that?

At that time I was the entire sales department. So that would. That would be me.

Yep. So now the Oprah. The Oprah exposure obviously resulted in a whole lot of orders, I'm guessing, right?

It was.

How did you deal then? Scaling up from. What was the guy in the. In the back?

Sam.

Sam.

From Sam. How did you.

Ted.

Ted.

Ted in the backer.

Yeah.

So. Well, with Spanx, you know, I never had a business plan. I was very interested in creating a product that I knew I could sell. I actually wrote this in my journal when I was selling fax machines door to door. My life was pretty depressing. I was being kicked out of buildings almost once a week. I had people rip up my business card in my face at least once a week. And I was trying to sell $20,000 worth of fax machines in four zip codes and Clearwater, Florida a month. So all I did all day long was cold call. And I pulled over the side of the road one day and I just started crying. And I just remember thinking I'M in the wrong movie. Like, this is not my life. Call the director. Call the producer. Cut. This is not right. And I went home and I started asking myself, what am I good at? What could I possibly be good at? And the only thing really in the good column was sales. And so I started saying, well, why? What do I like about sales? I like providing things for people that they need or that they didn't know they wanted but can change their life. And so I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could sell something that I actually created or really loved? So I wrote in my journal, I want to invent a product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good. That's fantastic. And two years later, I cut the feet out of my pantyhose. And so the minute that that happened, I thought this might be the idea asked for. So I wasn't going to squander any idea but scaling. And after the product happened, I got all of my ideas from customers because I was always standing where they were. So, you know, I'd be standing in the department store and they'd say, sarah, you know, I don't like the Shaper shorts because of this, and they have a leg band. So Spanx holds several patents. The footless pantyhose was the first one that got my foot in the door. But we have many, many patents, and we've created undergarments and products that have never been made before for women. Like, our second product was our best selling. We were the first to ever create a Shaper short that had no leg band on it. And before Spanx, every Shaper short had a leg band to keep it down. And you could see that through a woman's slacks or dress. So it didn't really solve the problem. It got rid of the panty line or the marks in the back, but put it a big bulge here on your thigh. So, you know, I kept saying to the manufacturer, let's create a Shaper short with no leg band. They'd say, it can't be done. I'd say, we put a man on the moon. And they'd say, well, you know, let's get. And it was always like that. So it's been really fun to provide product. I've been very product focused. I'm so interested in how to differentiate myself and what is it about my product that I'm offering that's unique and that's where I like to play.

So one of the things I thought was really cool was that I read that your dad early on gave you a Wayne Dyer product called how to be a no Limit Person. I think it was. And you listened to it so many times that you had basically memorized the whole thing.

Yep.

How did that affect, like, when was that in relation to when you came into the Spanx thing and were hanging out in your car and feeling that way and all that? And how did it help you move along in this journey?

Well, I was 16 when I was. I had a friend who was run over by a car and killed in front of me. And then a few months later my parents split up and got separated. So it was a really hard time for me. And one of the things that happened when my dad was moving out is he handed me this cassette tape series from Wayne Dyer, an inspirational motivational speaker. And it was called how to be a no Limit Person. And it just happened to be the perfect storm for me. I think most 16 year olds may have thrown that in the closet, but I was so hungry and so sad at that time in my life for anything that may have. May turn my life around or help me feel better and get through it. So I listened to it so much that I did memorize all 10 tapes front and back. And it became a joke. In high school, no one ever wanted to be stuck in my car. They were like, she's going to make you listen to this shit. And you know, what happened is so funny. Like 15. I think it might have been 15 years or so later I end up on the COVID of Forbes. And I got so many texts from my friends from high school and they just wrote, damn, should have listened to that shit.

Okay?

But I've been listening to motivational. I mean, I spend so much time as a door to door sales rep. I listen to Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Brian Deiss. Yeah, anything. Yeah, anything I can get my hands on. I'm a believer in that.

So what would you say? Like, is there anything in particular that stood out in there that you think really helped you, or was it just generally the whole mindset listening to it over and over?

Well, it was the first time that I felt that anybody was teaching me how to think instead of what to think. So I'd spend a lot of time sitting in school all day, every day being taught what to think, but all of a sudden have someone talking to me about how to think and how to process the world around me and the power of positive thinking and visualization manifesting things in your life. The law of attraction was really powerful. And I believed it wholeheartedly and still do so. But, you know, at that age in particular, and this is a life journey thing that I work on is not caring what other people think about me. And I believe in order to do something that hasn't been done before, you really have to work on that skill because everyone is going to tell you no and they're gonna laugh at you and you will be ridiculed. Usually that means that you're. You're breaking ground, and if you haven't practiced that, it's difficult. So I still practice that. Working on that. That was a real gift that he gave me, thinking about that and just, you know, I visualize things often before they happen. I'll take a mental almost. I call it like a Polaroid picture of where I want to end up. And then I let life fill in the blanks to get there.

That's great. So that was about 30 years ish ago.

Yeah.

And now you're where you are and have had all these experiences. How would you say, like, what would be different now if you were going to go and create that tape set yourself? Like, what you would. What things might you say differently than you remember hearing back then when you were listening to it?

You mean if I were to do it, talk to someone about it now, or listen to it, it'd be very similar, would it? Oh, yeah.

Kind of the same thing. Still good?

Absolutely.

Yep.

There wouldn't be anything. I mean, you know, my dad, when I was growing up, used to encourage me to fail. So he would ask my brother and me what we had failed at that week at school. And if we didn't have something to tell him, he'd be disappointed. So remember coming home and saying, dad, Dad, I tried out for this and I was horrible. And he'd go, way to go, and high five me. And what he was doing was just reframing our definition of failure. So failure for my brother and me stopped being about the outcome, and it just simply became whether you try or not. So the only failure for me is not trying. And that was such a gift because fear of failure stops a lot of people from trying anything new. So I hope to instill that in my children. I have four children under the age of eight, so I think my oldest, Laser is here. And I have two nieces here, Kelton and Peyton, sitting there. But I've got a little bit of time to figure it out for them because they're still very young. But that was a big gift.

So now, speaking of the Forbes magazine, as I recall, you are in suit and you're sticking your tongue out. How did that come about?

Well, I don't.

It's a great picture.

Thank you. I don't really wear suits and so they requested that I did.

Okay.

So they said I had to wear a blazer and so I stuck my tongue out at them during the photo shoot. It just made me feel better. And then they ended up using one of the suitcases. I was like, wow, I didn't think you'd take that one.

That's a great shot.

Yeah.

Okay, now we have a bunch of questions that folks have submitted. Okay, the first one is what are your top three most effective channels for acquiring new customers? And have those changed over time?

Well, I mean, for me in the beginning it was all wholesale. So wholesale has been an amazing way for us to acquire customers and the boutiques and of course.com and now, you know, acquiring customers. There's so much more to think about with social media and Facebook and Instagram have been the biggest opportunities for us in targeting and acquiring new customers. But, you know, we. I still am a huge believer in pr. My second employee was someone who I had dedicated to calling the media all day, every day. I've always kept PR in house and Spanx has never advertised. So we became a word of mouth brand that became a household name around the world with, you know, I started five with five grand. I own 100% of the company still and I've just been self funded from the start. So I grew very organically in this process, but without, without advertising until just very recently. We did a very first print ad just to see what would happen. And also came with the whole digital package. And we're really interested in obviously doing that now.

Cool.

Yeah.

You're in, is it 30 countries?

60.

60 countries. Okay. Expanding into those countries. How did you go about doing that? That's such a big barrier for us.

Yeah, yeah. Very similar to what I did here. I got on a plane with my red backpack and I flew to England.

You still have it?

Yeah, of course. Framed it. Thanks. But I made sure they made the back so that I could access it and I went to England. I started in countries that spoke my language a little easier and cold, called Harvey Nicks, Harrod, Selfridges, Fenix and got into all of those accounts. And then with the same formula, I wanted to do Press Prince. So I started calling all the local TV channels and radio and I used humor throughout all of my marketing. I mean, the word Spanx, I Mean, my category couldn't be more boring. It's shapewear and undergarments is what I started with. Now we branched out into many other products, but by naming it Spanx and naming the Shaper Short Power panties and all of these things, we got a lot of free press as a result. Because people wanted to laugh about it and talk about it, especially celebrities on the red carpet, you know, they'd flash. I'm wearing Spanx, which is always great for us. But when I first got the press in England, I'll just tell you, this is how my international expansion went. I got a chance to be interviewed by the BBC. And halfway through the interview, the gentleman's like, so, Sarah, tell us what Spanx can do for women in the uk. And I was like, well, it's all about your fanny. It smooths the fanny. It lifts and separates the fanny.

Yeah.

And so I had no idea, but apparently fanny means vagina in England.

That's awesome.

So I was like, okay, this is off to a great start.

How did you discover that?

Well, the man lost all the blood in his face and he looked like he'd seen a ghost. And I knew I had done something terribly wrong. And the fun thing is I don't say fanny. I thought fanny sounded very British. So I was like, all of a sudden this word just came out and I was like, it just smooths your fanny. So, yeah, so you can imagine, you know, my expansion was a little bumpy at first. I just told England, all of England, I'm going to smooth the wrong part of their body.

So I've heard some people say, and my wife disagrees with this, but some people say that it's kind of like a one time purchase. So how. I've seen people. Well, actually the question was, how do you maximize lifetime customer value for something that's kind of a one time purchase?

Well, Spanx, this is the thing about Spanx is we make bras, panties, leggings, activewear, we even make men's. And so it's important for us to target our customers. Customers and let them know that just.

That there's other things.

Yeah, absolutely.

And do you know, like, I'm sure you do.

And our products are good, they last a long time.

Okay.

They, so I, you know, they really do. But, but because it's more of an everyday item, people buy more than one usually.

Okay, let's see. You mentioned in the early days that you had friends and family buying things to kind of drive demand. Are there any other bootstrapping, grassroots kind of Tips that you would give folks that are kind of getting started.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, where do I start? I'm still bootstrapping it. Yeah. It's just, like, in me.

What are you doing bootstrapping today? Is it grabbing the backpack and going to the countries or what?

I mean, the first thing that popped in my mind is I just joined Instagram, like, five or six months ago. I'm the last one probably on the planet to do that, but I joined, and I was asking everybody, okay, how does that this work? And how do you get followers and what do you do? And so the first day that I joined, I happened to be flying somewhere for business.

I saw you in the airport.

Yeah. So I'm in the Atlanta airport, and I ran around the airport and asked everyone to follow me. I was like, hi, I'm Sarah, and I just joined Instagram. People were like, what is going on? But that's just. So that's an example.

How do you.

That was great.

I remember the video, and I videotaped.

It, and that's my first post, and it's hysterical because people are, like, looking at me, and the reactions are hilarious. I literally made an announcement at a gate. I said, hi, everyone. And literally everyone looked up and looked back down and just, like, could have cared less. They're all doing whatever they're doing. It's funny.

So as you get bigger and bigger, how do you compete with other.

This goes back to the not caring what other people think about you.

For sure.

It's great video. I like to do things, too, to embarrass myself often, you know? So I put myself in embarrassing situations because I think it diffuses it and keeps me feeling like I'm in control of the fear of caring what other people think of me.

What is your favorite example of an embarrassing situation you put yourself into intentionally?

Well, that. I mean, that one was pretty embarrassing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Running around the airport, making announcements at gates in front of everyone to follow me on Instagram. But I just. I.

All you had to do is say, I'm with United, and they would have been like, yes, yes.

Yeah, exactly. So I just. I don't shy away from it. I don't know. You know, I'm just. I think when. When you get embarrassed and you live through it, you're like, that wasn't so bad.

Agree 100%.

So it just starts to lose its steam. Yeah, yeah. Or its power over you. I did an improv comedy group for a while, and they would put us in unbelievable, embarrassing situations, like Skit comedy with a girl. We just walk into a restaurant and we'd all have to walk in and stand on chairs and sing the national anthem and then get down and leave. You know, just really random thing.

Now. How long ago was that?

That was right before I started Spanx.

Really?

Yeah.

That's really cool. So as you get bigger and bigger, you have other brands that might kind of encroach on things that you're doing. Victoria's Secret and some other companies like that. How do you address that or deal.

With that through product. Just make better product makes sense. I really focus on the product and I haven't ever worried that much about the competition. In fact, I don't think about them very often. I'm really interested in seeing the white space of what I can provide a customer that doesn't already exist.

How do you decide? And that might be. That might answer this, this question a bit. But how do you decide? Because you're doing several things now beyond what you originally started with, what to go into as you continue to expand.

Based on what I want as a consumer, based on listening to my consumers. I went into men's not because I did any market research on men's, but because I saw my husband and my brother and my dad struggle with their undershirt. And so I thought, okay, I did a little bit of research and the man's undershirt was invented or created in 1918 and basically no one has paid any attention to it since. So I find it fascinating things in society that evolve very quickly and iterate very quickly and then things that don't. It's like, well, you know, so I saw. I went into men's about eight years ago and just added a little bit of lycra to the cotton undershirt so it didn't stretch out and tapered in the waist. So it was. It wasn't this boxy thing under these dress shirts that men were wearing. And I've got different versions of it. I've got the tank version and regular V neck and crew neck. But that's an example. I mean, it's really just based on need and listening to people and hearing where I see opportunity to make something better.

That's cool. How would you define success? Like, when you hear the word success, what does that mean to you?

I mean, for me, defining success is following your own passion, really doing something that you feel very alive in. And if you can help other people at the same time and make other people's journey better, that's success.

To me, when you think of that.

Being true to yourself, if you were.

To think of a person or a couple of people who you think would be you would consider successful, who might some of those people be?

Well, I mean, I'm in a business group called Yeo, which is now EO, with 10 guys, and they put me in a forum with these 10 guys, and I've been meeting with them once a month for 14 years, and they're basically like my brothers now. You know, I mean, we meet once a month, we talk about our businesses, we're very close, and then every year, we go on a trip together. So it's me and 10 guys that go to all these different exotic places. It's quite interesting. And I like to say that I feel a little bit like Jane Goodall, you know, like how she got to observe chimpanzees in the wild. I've really been able to observe men in their natural habitat because they completely forget I'm there. And it's like, wow, this is really interesting.

So.

But I would think of them. They come to my mind, and the reason is they have great marriages. They're fantastic fathers. They've each started their own business, and they're very focused on the community. They give back to their community in some way. So they come to mind, and they're all in great shape. So that kind of hits a lot of the buckets.

Nice.

Yeah. And then there's Warren Buffett and who.

You got to spelly for the.

I did. I did. I got to paint Warren Buffett its belly for my belly art book. He's the only man in my belly art book.

You want to tell him a little bit about the project?

So three days before I delivered my son Laser, who's back here, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I saw my belly, and I thought, oh, my God, my body's amazing. I can't believe it can do this. I don't know if my body will ever be in this state again. And I saw my belly as a canvas. And so. So I wrote down. I wanted to turn my belly into objects. And so I wrote down on a piece of paper, watermelon, beach ball, basketball, and Mr. Potato Head. And then I went back to sleep. I woke up the next morning, I called a friend. I'm like, can you paint these objects on my belly and turn my belly into these? And he said, sure. And we ran around town all day, and he painted a watermelon on my belly. And I went into the grocery store in Atlanta and bellied up to the watermelon display. And you cannot tell the difference between my belly and the rest of the watermelon. And I did that with a basketball. I turned my belly into a basketball. And I went to a local park and these guys were playing basketball. And it turns out none of them spoke English. I didn't know that, but I then just started miming all this stuff. I was like, can you look like you're passing my belly? And I think they thought I was a crazy pregnant lady. So they all stopped their game and posed with me and acted like I was in the middle of the game and my ball was. My belly was the ball. And so Warren, I was sitting next to him at a lunch, and he asked me what I was up to. And I go, well. And I pulled out my phone, and he belly laughed for like five minutes. When he saw the pictures, he goes, this is hysterical. And he goes, I want to be in the book. I was like, okay. You know, I said, well, Warren, you're not pregnant. And he grabbed his belly and he shook it, and he goes, are you telling me you don't have enough here to work with? I was like, no, no, there's a. There's enough. I mean, no, there's not enough there, but yes, you can be the book.

I was like, ha.

So about seven or eight months later, I emailed him just because I thought, was he serious? I mean, I can't close this book out without at least circling up with them. And I emailed him and I said, warren, Sarah, I don't know if you were serious or not, but I'd love to have you in the book. Here are a few objects that we could paint on your belly. That's left. And he emailed me back and said, count me in. So two days later, I got on a plane and flew to Omaha, and we painted a yo yo on his belly because it was one of the last round objects that we hadn't already painted in the book. And he was hysterical. He was such a trooper. But, yeah, Warren. I feel that Warren is a real interesting picture of success in many ways, too. I mean, he's so wise, and the way that he lived his life is fascinating. It is, yeah.

What book do you give other people or books the most as far as just generally gifting?

I mean, I like to give the Wayne Dyer. I've been giving the Wayne Dyer how to Be a no Limit Person series, which is no longer cassette tapes. It's something else now. But I give that as a Present. I've been giving that out for 25 years to people when they go through a breakup, when they get a new job, and for any occasion, really, their birthday. That's what I like to give.

That's great. What is your favorite documentary?

My favorite documentary? Well, the one that pops into my mind is this one called Water, and it's about a women's state in India. What it was like to be a woman in the late 1930s is when it takes place. But I would say so moved by this documentary and how horribly women are treated and their options are so bad that I ended up renting a movie theater in Atlanta and showing it to the whole company. To Spanx. Yeah. So we took an afternoon off and went and saw it. But, you know, part of what fuels me in my journey is gratitude. And I am so grateful that I'm a woman born in this country at the right time. I had nothing to do with either one of those. And so I just think, my gosh, I really feel blessed and lucky about that. So seeing that documentary, I mean, you know, at the time, women, if. So this young girl in the documentary, this young girl is married off. I think she's like 9 or 10. She gets married off to a much older man. He passes away within a few months of their marriage, and she gets sent to a woman widow home. And at the time in the country, if you lost your husband in India, you had three options. You would either go to a widow home with a bunch of other women who had lost their husbands for the rest of your life and pledge celibacy. If you were lucky enough, the husband's younger brother was allowed to marry you. Or you could kill yourself and throw yourself on the fire, the cremation pit, when your husband was being cremated. Those were your three options. And so, you know, I think I'm like, my gosh, I was born on Clearwater beach in America with parents that supported me and a society that gave me options to do more. Yeah.

What obsessions do you explore on weekends and time that you have for yourself?

I do. If I can, I'll do some acupuncture. I like doing acupuncture.

Amateur acupuncture.

I receive acupuncture. I receive acupuncture. I spend a ton of time with my kids. So it's really just about going to their games and swim practice and soccer, and we spend a lot of time doing that as a family. I don't really, other than, you know.

Amateur acupuncture, I think is worth considering.

Trying to do yoga.

Yeah. Okay, good, good. And what would you say is the one investment that you've made, Time, money, whatever that has most impacted your life?

Two come to mind? One is the investment I made in myself. It was a pretty good investment, five grand to start Spanx. And then the investment I said spent in building my family and going through a lot of fertility issues and treatments, but ended up with four children. So I'm going to feel very lucky about that. But those were really worth the investment and time and energy and spent.

So now you mentioned that failure has been a key part of your life, failing to move forward. Is there one big failure that you would say that comes to mind or a couple that really have had an impact on your current success?

Well, failing the LSAT was awesome because I wanted to be a lawyer since I was little. And I debated all through high school, all through college. My major in college was legal communications. And I am a terrible test taker. So I took the LSAT and basically bombed it, and then took a course and bombed it again. And thank goodness, because life had other plans for me.

I sadly passed the lsat. What else have I not asked you that you think would be really valuable to share with everybody here?

That's a good question. I think you did a pretty good job.

Could be. Could be kind of how you. How you start your day, what you do to get to get started, how you organize yourself or your thoughts or.

I start my day with a fake commute because I've identified my best thinking time is in the car. And so I live five minutes from Spanx, but I leave the house an hour early and drive aimlessly around town.

Do you really?

Yeah. That's so cool. And my friends call it my fake commute. And I'm the happiest commuter. I, like, everybody go in front of me. People are flipping everybody off. I'm like, fine, go.

Radio on.

No radio.

Radio's on. And there must be something about the rote activity of driving that accesses a certain part of my brain. You know, it's different for when I'm driving than if I'm just sitting in my house. If I sit in my house and I'm like, okay, now's my time to think. I can't access the part of my brain that, you know, I thought of the word Spanx in the car. I thought of of all the belly art project objects at every traffic light in the car. I think of a lot of my next inventions and ideas in the car. And I'm listening to the bridge.

Bridge.

Sirius radio. The bridge.

All right. Nice.

It's the best channel. And my husband. I laugh because my husband and I often will. We share a car and back and forth and doing things. And he. His favorite channel is backspin.

Okay, nice.

So, you know, there's the battle between backspin and the bridge, and they're quite different. You know, I got in the car and like this, you know, if it's on my husband's channel, it's very loud. I get in, it's like the other day, this just pops into my mind. The song was like, get your mom out my business. I want your mom out my business. I was like. And then I hit my channel and it was like. Like a bridge over troubled water. I was like, this is much more peaceful.

Nice. Well, thank you so much for joining us and doing all this stuff.

Thank you.

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