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  • Growing up, my dad used to encourage my brother and me to fail.

  • And he would ask us at the dinner table what we had failed at that week, and if we didn't have something to tell him, he would actually be disappointed.

  • And I didn't realize it at the time, but he was just redefining failure for me.

  • Failure became about not trying, not the outcome.

  • Going through life, the only failure that I ever feel that I've had is if I don't try.

  • So that was a real gift that he gave me.

  • I wanted to be a lawyer, and I'm a terrible test taker.

  • After I basically bombed the LSAT, I tried out at Disney World to be goofy.

  • And you have to be 5'8", and I'm only 5'6", so I'm the height of a chipmunk.

  • Which was like, I guess you could say, sort of felt a little bit like rock bottom.

  • I wasn't going to be a lawyer, and I was too short to be goofy.

  • There was a moment when I was selling fax machines door-to-door, and I was constantly being escorted out of buildings.

  • Or sometimes people would rip up my business card in my face, which was a typical occurrence.

  • And one day I pulled off the side of the road, and I literally thought,

  • I'm in the wrong movie.

  • Like, this is not my life.

  • Cut, called the director, called the producer.

  • How did this happen? This is not supposed to be my life.

  • I went home that day and wrote in my apartment, in my notebook, what my strengths were.

  • And the only thing basically in the strength column that I was sure about was sales.

  • And I said, okay, what can I do with that?

  • And I ended up writing, I want to invent a product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel better.

  • And it was two years later that I cut the feet out of control-top pantyhose to wear white pants to a party.

  • I went online and looked up manufacturers that made undergarments and hosiery-type products.

  • And I called them on the phone and didn't get anywhere.

  • And eventually I took a week off of work and drove around North Carolina begging all of these men, ironically, that were making our undergarments to help try to make this new type of undergarment.

  • I went in unannounced. I had no appointment.

  • So you can imagine how that went.

  • Most of them escorted me out and said, good luck.

  • I got a phone call about two weeks later from one of the manufacturer owners, and he said, Sarah, I have decided to help make your crazy idea.

  • I ran it by my three daughters at the dinner table, and they told me I should give you a shot.

  • I came up with the name Spanx because it was all about the rear.

  • And so it kind of made your mind wander.

  • Nobody ever forgot it.

  • And I changed the KS to an X at the last minute because I knew that made-up words were easier to trademark.

  • The first big account that I got was Neiman Marcus, and I called them on the phone.

  • And I spent about a week calling the buyer and just kept getting her answering machine.

  • But I knew from my fax machine selling days, don't leave a message.

  • And I waited till I got a human on the phone, and I said, this is Sarah Blakely. I've invented a product that's going to change the way your customers wear clothes.

  • I just need 10 minutes of your time.

  • And she said, if you're willing to fly here, I'll give you 10 minutes.

  • I jumped on a plane. I took my lucky red backpack from college.

  • And a few minutes into the pitch, I could tell I was losing her, so I invited her to come to the bathroom with me.

  • My dream is for there to be many more female inventors.

  • I'm hoping more and more women will have the courage to take that risk.

  • It's a risk to invent something.

  • You have to risk being made fun of.

  • You have to risk looking like an idiot.

  • You have to do something that didn't already exist, which is scary.

  • I mean, my brain told me a million times, who do you think you are coming up with this?

  • And then one day you wake up and you go, well, what if it is me?

Growing up, my dad used to encourage my brother and me to fail.

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