Sara Blakely: Founder of Spanx

This conversation between Sara Blakely and Moira Forbes offers a deep look into Sara’s entrepreneurial journey, her philosophy on innovation, and the mindset that has guided her through multiple industry disruptions. Moira opens by reflecting on Forbes’ long relationship with Sara’s story, from Spanx’s early days to her emergence as the youngest self-made female billionaire. Sara recounts a pivotal moment early in her journey when a Forbes article finally opened the door to QVC after more than a year of rejections. This became a defining lesson in persistence and creative problem-solving.

Sara explains her approach to identifying opportunities: she begins with a problem she personally experiences and then studies industries often dismissed as outdated or declining. Both Spanx and Sneaks were born from frustration with products that ignored the real needs of women. She highlights that innovation often comes from rethinking assumptions rather than chasing trends. Her story about confronting a shoe designer who openly dismissed comfort as an “insult” underscores how deeply entrenched norms can be, especially in industries shaped without women’s input.

Sara emphasizes how different her second entrepreneurial journey felt with children, digital commerce, and greater visibility, noting that rejection was more humbling this time. She reflects on the importance of allowing her kids to witness the messy, uncertain parts of building something new.

The discussion moves to leadership and gender. Sara argues that business has long been defined through a male lens, and she intentionally built Spanx through intuition, kindness, and consumer empathy rather than competition and aggression. She explains how leaning into the “divine feminine” helped her create an entirely different type of culture.

Finally, Sara shares how working on her mindset since age sixteen—through visualisation, positive reinforcement, and rejecting fear—has been essential to challenging norms and betting on herself. She closes with the reminder that innovation begins with asking “Why?” and having the inner strength to believe you might be the one to change things.

In this short Business Insider segment, Sara Blakely explains how her father transformed her relationship with failure from a young age. Each night at the dinner table, he would ask Sara and her brother what they had failed at that week. Instead of reacting with disappointment, he celebrated their attempts. When Sara confessed to trying something and doing poorly, he would high-five her—reinforcing the idea that failure was simply the result of effort, not a negative outcome.

This reframing shifted her mindset dramatically. Failure, she explains, became synonymous with not trying rather than with a result that didn’t go as planned. She notes that fear of failure keeps many people from pursuing dreams: launching businesses, creating art, auditioning for roles, or stepping outside comfort zones. Once people redefine failure as the refusal to try, opportunities expand.

Her father also taught her to search for “hidden gifts” in moments that felt embarrassing or disappointing. By writing down what she gained from difficult experiences, she discovered that each setback contained an unexpected benefit or lesson she wouldn’t want to give up.

Today at Spanx, Sara encourages her team to embrace failure in the same way. She openly shares her own missteps, which she calls the “Oops of Spanx”—stories ranging from early miscalculations to recent mistakes. Her philosophy is that if you learn from an “oops,” and can eventually laugh about it, the experience becomes not just acceptable but valuable.