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.

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.

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.

I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick - it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.

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

Whatever you can think, you can create; just have a very clear vision... Once you have your snapshot, work on filling in the blanks to get to that place.

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.