Thread by @chrishlad

Sarah Blakely built a billion dollar brand with 0 funding.

The craziest part?

She asked "the universe" to deliver an idea for a product to sell to millions of people.

It delivered Spanx.

Here's the story👇

Sarah Blakely was selling fax machines door-to-door in Clearwater, Florida.

At 25, she got promoted to national sales trainer.

But she woke up one day and thought,

‘I’m in the wrong movie, call the director! What happened? This is not my life.”

So she started asking herself some tough questions:

• What am I good at?
• What do I enjoy?

She wanted to challenge herself.

So she wrote something crazy in her journal:

'I’m going to invent a product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.'

"I asked the universe to deliver the idea to me."

Then she went back to selling fax machines.

Until one day she cut the feet off her pantyhose and realized that she may have the big idea.

And Spanx was born.

With $5K in the bank and some extra time on nights and weekends, she started doing research.

Calling fabric stores.

Testing prototypes.

Calling manufacturers.

For a year, she sold fax machines and worked in secret.

Then she started telling friends and family about the idea.

They said:

"Sweetie, if it’s such a good idea, why hasn’t somebody else done it?”

“You’re gonna spend your savings on it and the big guys will just knock you off six months later and you’ll be done.”

Sarah had her doubts.

"I mean, there are billion-dollar companies where people sit around all day thinking up new products.

There must be a reason they didn’t think of this one.

If it’s such a good idea, why doesn’t it already exist?"

Despite her doubts, she built the product.

And ran into another major problem.

She had nowhere to sell it.

So she cold calls a Neiman Marcus rep in Texas.

"Can I show you my product called Spanx? I think it would fit perfectly in Neiman Marcus stores."

"No."

Lucky for Sarah, she had heard thousands of no's from selling fax machines.

So she flies to Texas and shows up at the woman's office.

The meeting doesn't go well.

Until...

"Look, can I show you a demo in the bathroom?"

Reluctantly the woman agrees to let Sarah demo her Spanx.

Immediately, she understands the product.

And Spanx gets a test run in 7 stores.

Does the story end there?

Of course not.

Sarah stays in Texas to personally go to each store to sell the Spanx.

She's the top Spanx Sales rep is going to guarantee that they sell out.

And it works.

Spanx hits escape velocity when Oprah features the product on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Was this luck?

Nope.

"I had visualized that I was going to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show since I was in college, but I didn’t know what we’d be talking about."

Months before the show aired, Sarah was shipping samples to Oprah Winfrey's longtime stylist Andre Walker.

She created her own luck.

In Year 1, Spanx did $4 million sales.

In Year 2, $10 million in sales.

Today, Spanx owns the shapewear category just like Kleenex does with tissues.

They do $250 million in sales and Sarah owns 100% of the company.

3 lessons from Sarah and Spanx:

• Visualize the outcome you want
• Create your own luck
• Get great at sales

I love how Sarah created her own luck.

If you did too, retweet the 1st tweet below to share with a friend!

https://twitter.com/chrishlad/status/1418988054778458113

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