Sarah Blakely
speaker
93 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Sarah Blakely’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm like, I know it's a little weird, but can you just follow me to the bathroom and I'm going to actually show you what my product can do. I'm going to go in the stall. And she was like, oh, okay. And she walked down the hall and I went in the stall and I put it on under my white pants and I came out.
So I showed her before and then I showed her with the product on and she just sat there and she goes, I get it. It's brilliant. And I'm going to try it in seven stores.
I mean, I would say to add to that, I recognize that the two biggest fears that we all have as human beings are basically the fear of public speaking and the fear of being embarrassed. And so I want that to lose its power over me. So I will intentionally embarrass myself. Or I will intentionally find scenarios where I'm not good at something. And then I go through it.
And it usually ends up making me laugh. Or if something ridiculous happens to me, I immediately want to share it with people. Because then I start to find that it loses its power over me. And then you also find that when these things happen... If you can make somebody else laugh or smile, then it wasn't all in vain.
And that's where real human vulnerability and connection happens, especially even with your customers. So I learned that from selling fax machines. I mean, anytime I tried to act perfect or put on the perfect pitch, I got kicked out time and time again. You know, if I walked in and was like... Look, I'm, you know, I'm nervous. It's hard for me to walk through your door. I'm sorry.
I know there's no soliciting sign. I mean, I would get farther with that. But just calling out the humanness and the real of what we're all dealing with and not not. being afraid of it. So we do that at Spanx too.
We have oops meetings at Spanx where we have the whole company get together and we stand up and we share what we failed at or an oops or a mistake that we made and everybody claps and it's just like diffuses it. That's such a great culture.
Yeah. Oh, great. Okay.
i see him i see him looking at me my husband has been running every day on this island and says a bird attacks him so i'm on the walk with him where his jog got this because i don't believe him well honey where how bad can it be come on how are you gonna get past this walking spot He's fine. I see him, and he's fine. See, the bird's there. He's not going to bother you, Jess. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
every time and she's like it's impossible i said no you gotta come with me and she walked by the bird didn't care i walked by and the bird went bonkers it was very personal obviously for the bird with jesse i don't know i maybe they thought your hair was a nest honey i don't know meet a different guest
I was so petrified. I did it when I was selling fax machines door-to-door. And I have this thing where if something terrifies me or if I think I would never do that and the answer is because I'm scared, it kind of becomes something I really want to try to do. And that was one of those things. And I just did open mic mostly around.
I did it around the country for two years while I was a trainer for the company that I worked for. But it was terrifying. I mean, I was so nervous and I wasn't that good.
It's the hardest. Well, it's I mean, it's taking the number one fear in America, which is public speaking to the next level, because you can be in front of an audience and be bombing and not really know, you know, like. The whole back section could be asleep or on their phone, and you still ramble on.
But if you're doing stand-up comedy, I mean, you get validation or you get crickets every 15 seconds. So it's like the most immediate, like, you're failing, you're not failing, you're failing, you're not failing. And the only way to test it is in front of an audience. So you have to be so willing to bomb in front of a group of people. So please laugh at our jokes.
Yeah, exactly, or to learn what's funny or not funny. So, yeah, it was... But you know what? I didn't know it at the time. This combination, see, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I'm a terrible test taker. I'm not good in, like, I have trouble with reading comprehension. So I'm sure I have some sort of undiagnosed learning disability. But anyway, so I did debate all through high school and college.
And then I get to the LSAT and I bombed it, not once, but twice. So it derailed my whole vision of being a lawyer. And that was really depressing at the time. And then I
i naturally then went to disney world and tried out to be goofy and you have to be you have to be five eight in order to be goofy and i'm only five six so i'm the height of a chipmunk so like this was rock bottom for me i mean my family everyone's like what's happening i said i i'm too short to be goofy and i don't want to be a chipmunk and so i just started selling fax machines door-to-door because it's really i mean you needed a pulse to be hired there and um
So anyway, but the standup comedy I did, but life has a weird way of giving you these experiences because when I started Spanx, the combination of the amount of rejection I had had was perfect to start a company because I was told no every day for two years. The idea is no good. No, thank you. We don't want to help you. We think this is stupid, whatever. And it didn't really faze me.
And then the writing comedy for two years while I was doing that helped me do all the writing for Spanx and the marketing. And Spanx didn't advertise for 16 years. We became a household name and a household brand around the world without ever advertising. And I believe we did so much of that through humor and through the connection that we had with our customer and storytelling.
Jesse mentioned it. Lead with story. Your customers are so much more interested in why than they will ever be interested in what. What you're selling, why you're selling it, why you're doing it, who are you in the world, what matters, what's your why, that is what people really respond to. So if you can do it and make somebody laugh or smile, it's so much better.
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