Sara Blakely: Seven years selling fax machines door to door
She did not get into law school, so she sold office equipment door to door for seven years. Her first product idea was turned down by hosiery mills until one manager said yes.
Plan A fails
Sara Blakely was born in 1971 in Clearwater, Florida, and hoped to become a lawyer, but did badly on the law school entrance test. She worked briefly at Walt Disney World, then took a job selling fax machines door to door.
Cold calling
She did that for seven years, knocking on office doors and being shown out by security. She has said it taught her to handle rejection and to ask for the sale anyway.
Cut off the feet
In 1998 she cut the feet off a pair of tights to wear under trousers, and saw a product. With about $5,000 of savings she researched patents herself and rang hosiery mills in North Carolina, which turned her down until one mill owner agreed after his daughters liked the idea.
What came of it
Her company, Spanx, launched in 2000. She kept her sales job for a while as it got started.
A sales job, done properly, is a training course in rejection. She kept her day job while testing her idea, which is often the sensible way to do it.
Where the facts come from: Company history, spanx.com; Interview, How I Built This, NPR, 2016.
