Sara Blakely Quotes

Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

Don't let what you don't know scare you, because it can become your greatest asset.

Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's here in the United States.

Courage is doing something despite the fear, and I've worked hard on being a courageous person.

Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' is my go-to song to pump myself up if I'm having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.

I'm obsessed with the customer. I am the customer. I really don't think you can go wrong if you don't take your eye off of that. Serving the customer. How does she feel? I feel like the fashion industry has cared a lot about how we look but not about how we feel.

You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years.

I feel that women have been neglected, unnecessarily neglected and mistreated personally by the fashion industry and shapewear in that entire category was a definite place that we were neglected.

I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it's a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.

My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.

I'd never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn't exist.

Ensure that you do things differently from everyone else

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson - from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.

It's important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.

I aim to be pretty - I gave up dressing to be sexy in the eighties.

I've always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.

My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.

Failures are life's way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.

If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you've got to let it go.

I couldn't figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.

Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.

What you don’t know can be your greatest asset.

I would say where I feel like I'm struggling the most in learning and giving myself permission to fail is in finding the balance in life. There are different aspects to women: there's the mother, there's the working woman, there's the wife, the friend, the sister, the daughter and so just figuring that all out. I continue to want to try new things and give myself permission to not be great at it.

I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.

I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.

Don't solicit feedback on your product, idea or your business just for validation purposes. You want to tell the people who can help move your idea forward, but if you're just looking to your friend, co-worker, husband or wife for validation, be careful. It can stop a lot of multimillion-dollar ideas in their tracks in the beginning.

When I was a child, my father used to encourage my brother and me to fail. At the dinner table, instead of asking about the best part of our day, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something to tell him, he would be disappointed. When we shared whatever failure we'd endured, he'd high-five us and say, 'Way to go!' The gift my father gave us by doing this was redefining what failure truly meant.

Shapewear is the canvas and the clothes are the art.

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, 'Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,' and he would high-five me and say, 'Way to go.'

I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let's bring joy back to the experience.

We don't have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it's important to be with our family and friends.

You’ve got to embrace what you don’t know.

It's really a full-time job to manage our lives.

I made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in my life. Now I tell people - don't tell anyone your idea until you have invested enough of yourself in it that you are not going to turn back. When a person has an idea at that conception moment it is the most vulnerable - one negative comment could knock you off course.

The smartest thing I ever did was to hire my weakness.

Perseverance is the key to starting a successful business.

Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.

Most of us want to tell our coworkers or friends, or husbands or wives, our ideas. For what reason? We want validation. But I feel ideas are most vulnerable in their infancy. Out of love and concern, friends and family give all the reasons or objections on why [you] shouldn't do it. I didn't want to risk that.

I didn't want women to walk out of the dressing rooms feeling depressed and wanting a cocktail.

Instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.

Embrace what you don`t know

When something I can't control happens, I ask myself : where is the hidden gift, where is the positive in this?

Failure is not the outcome - failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail.

When I was 7, I came up with the idea of 'charm socks.' My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.

The thing about fashion - it's like ducks going quack, quack quack. It's being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.

My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.

There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, 'Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?'

When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, 'So what did you guys fail at this week?' If we didn't have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he'd high-five me. What I didn't realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn't the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'I didn't try that because I was scared,' that is failure.