Live From The HIBT Summit: Sara Blakely Of Spanx

Today, we're releasing the very first interview from the 2019 How I Built This Summit, which happened in October in San Francisco. And I just want to say it was super, super inspiring to have so many How I Built This founders gather together in the same place at the same time for two days. People like Mike Krieger and Kevin. System of Instagram, Jen Rubio of Away, Stuart Butterfield of Slack, and many, many others. And they all sat down with me in front of a live audience and just talked really, honestly and openly, about the excitement and terror and challenges of starting a business, sharing lots of new ideas and stories along the way. And today's episode is with Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx. If you haven't heard the original episode, You may want to go back and give it a listen.

It was our very first and still one of our favorites, because really it is such a crazy success story. With absolutely no experience in fashion or design, Sarah set out to create this new kind of undergarment, one that sort of smooths out the lumps and bumps under your clothes. Today of course Sphinx is an international brand and Sarah is a billionaire. And what you'll discover here is that she's also super open about the strategies she used to stay confident and optimistic when she was just getting started. I want to go back to 1998, when you first were experimenting, when you cut the feet and the legs of pantyhose. Yes. Um and be began to design what would become eventually spanks. And on the podcast you said something to me that I've I've never forgotten. And I'm gonna quote here. You said Ideas are at their most vulnerable when they're brand new.

Yes. Oh it's not gonna work, it sucks, it's stupid, forget it, if it's so great, why didn't other people do it? Um You decided not to pretty much not to tell anybody to keep it A secret.

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