The Failure Pledge

Consumer products founder

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Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely
Photo: David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 3.0.

What failed

Law school was the plan, and she failed the entrance exam twice — the second time, after a prep course, scoring worse than the first. She auditioned at a theme park and was told she was too short to wear the Goofy suit. So she sold fax machines door to door for seven years, cold-calling out of a phone book, having cards torn up in front of her. When she had the product idea, she rang hosiery mills in North Carolina for months and could not get the right person on the phone, then drove there and was turned away in person by every representative she met.

What happened next

One mill owner changed his mind, he said, because he went home and asked his daughters. The lawyers she approached were too expensive, so she wrote almost all of the patent application herself out of a book bought at Barnes & Noble and paid a patent attorney $700 to write the claims. She got a buyer at Neiman Marcus by demonstrating the product on herself in a changing room, and in November 2000 Oprah Winfrey named it a favourite thing. She quit the fax job.

The point

Seven years of cold-calling is not a detour from building a company, it is the training. Her own line is that it was an amazing training ground for hearing no — which is most of what the first two years of anything consists of.

The sequence

5 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.

  1. 1990s

    She sits the law school entrance exam twice. The second attempt, after a prep course, scores worse than the first.

    failureSelf-made billionaire Sara Blakely sold fax machines before making it big (CNBC Make It)

  2. 1990s

    She auditions at a theme park and is told she is too short for the costume.

    failureSelf-made billionaire Sara Blakely sold fax machines before making it big (CNBC Make It)

  3. 1993-2000

    Seven years selling fax machines door to door, cold-calling out of a phone book.

    failureSelf-made billionaire Sara Blakely sold fax machines before making it big (CNBC Make It)

  4. 1996

    She is good at selling fax machines, and at twenty-five she is promoted to national sales trainer.

    successSara Blakely (Wikipedia)

  5. 1998

    Months of calls to hosiery mills. She cannot even reach the right person.

    failureHow Spanx Got Started (Inc.)

  6. 1998

    She drives to North Carolina and pitches in person. Every representative turns her away.

    failureSara Blakely (Wikipedia)

  7. 2000

    Prototype and largely self-written patent done, she tells family and friends for the first time. They ask why nobody else has done it and warn that the big firms will knock her out within six months. She does not stop.

    successThe 'Aha' Moment That Launched Spanx (Inc.)

  8. 2000

    Oprah Winfrey names it a favourite thing. She resigns from the fax job.

    successSara Blakely (National Inventors Hall of Fame)

Sources

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