What we learn from Sara Blakely, inventor of Spanx

Here are some thoughts on what we learn from Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx. You can see Sara tell her own story in the video at the bottom of the page, but here are my thoughts on what we can learn from her experience.

Who is Sara Blakely, and what on earth are Spanx?

Sarah invented Spanx, which are underwear for women which smooth out your shape, giving you a flatter tummy, hips or bum. She started with 5000 dollars in savings and is now a billionaire. Not bad going…what can we learn?

Understanding from the customer’s point of view

Part of Sara’s story is a version of the inventor’s story. She needed something for herself, couldn’t find it in the shops, and worked to make it for herself and others. I think the fascinating part of Sara’s story, which you won’t find in your typical inventor journey is that she was able to understand her invention from the customer’s point of view. I like that she tested the garments on herself, on her Mom, her friends, and her potential customers. She pushed for comfort, for real-world testing, for the elements which her customers would appreciate. And she didn’t shy away from talking about the underwear in a way that women would talk to one another about their knickers.

Wanting to stand out

Sara Blakely also talks about how she wanted her product to be different, right from the beginning. She did her research and noticed that all the packaging on all the women’s underwear was pretty much the same. Only the logo and the brand would change. And the packaging was all in neutral colours. So she made her packaging bright red. And cheeky. And instead of those airbrushed photos of ladies in their knickers, she used bold cartoon figures and cheeky straplines. I particularly like

Higher power shorts

and

We put the power in your panties!

Taking the buyer to the toilet for a demo!

Sara needed to sell her new product. Even if you have tons of money behind you for product design, prototyping, marketing and everything else, as a new business, you need distribution. You need someone to buy from you, and in Sara’s case, she needed big distribution. Watch the video for Sara’s hilarious description of this moment, but basically, she got the buyer from a big department store (luckily another woman) to go to the loo with her so Sara could demo her product. It worked, and she got a trial order. As a business coach, every time that I’ve worked with a client on getting this kind of distribution with big shops, it’s taken a lot of chutzpah and persistence to get a serious order. Asking someone with much higher power than you to come to the loo with you, takes a lot of courage. I’m not sure this technique would work for every sales meeting, or if I’d have the nerve to do it, but it’s one to think about. Or you can have a read of the three price point pitching process method I use a lot with clients to help them to make sure that they win the work and maximise their value.

How Sara inspires us to get over our FUD

We all suffer from FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It’s weird how the moment that you’ve dreamt of, the bigger new client, the opportunity to sell a lot more products, or the chance to be on national TV suddenly becomes the last thing that you want to do. You’ve wanted this for ages, but suddenly it’s the thing you want the least. Because the FUD is super uncomfortable. So, what do you do about FUD? You get into action. Sara dealt with having this big order by calling up everyone that she’d ever met, and asking them to go into the seven shops which were doing trial sales of her new knickers and request them by name. She offered to reimburse all of their purchases. Now, that sounds really simple. You just make some calls. But imagine making hundreds of those calls, enough to make a difference. By call number 27, you’re really just calling complete strangers and asking them for help. And then you’re moving on to call 28, and call 29. But taking action is the only answer to Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt…Otherwise, the FUD will eat you alive.

Here’s Sara Blakely in her own words

Let me know what else you think we can learn from Sara Blakely

 

What else can we learn from others?

Observing what other business owners do can give us some great inspiration and learning. And it’s not just the rich and famous we can learn from, I’ve compiled lots of examples of ordinary people running extraordinary businesses to share what I’ve picked up in business. Every week, I send out a quick email with one of my business stories, just like this one about Sara Blakely facing down her Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Most of them are not about superstars like Sara, they’re from real life small business owners just like you and me. Which is probably why people say they love these emails so much and say that they feel I’ve written the emails just for them.     Photo credits – Thanks to Fortune Live Media on Flickr creative commons. FUD video by Julia Chanteray