You may not know here name but ladies you may certainly use her products. Forbes is out with it's new billionaire list and one of the newest entrants is the founder of Spanx Sara Blakely.
What I love about Ms. Blakely's story is that it is the story that makes America great. The opportunity to try and fail, to try again, and to succeed. To literally build something out of nothing and to realize your dreams and full potential. There are actually a few self-made billionaires to reach the Forbes list this year which should give everyone hope that if one person can do it, you can do it as well. Blakely started Spanx with $5,000k which was her complete life's savings.
I believe to be in business for yourself you have to have an extreme level of passion. According to the Intuit survey I posted yesterday [March 10, 2012 How Small Business Operates], 67% of business owners start a business because of their passion.
Via Forbes article here
- At 41 she’s the youngest woman to join this year’s World’s Billionaires list without help from a husband or an inheritance. She is part of a tiny, elite club of American women worth ten figures on their own, including Oprah Winfrey and Meg Whitman.
- Spanx nets an estimated 20% on revenue just south of $250 million. In recent months four Wall Street investment banks separately valued Spanx at an average $1 billion, a sum Forbes corroborated with the help of industry analysts. Blakely owns 100% of the private company, has zero debt, has never taken outside investment and hasn’t spent a nickel on advertising.
- Blakely didn’t set out to invent anything, but she always had a knack for hucksterism. The daughter of a personal injury lawyer and an artist, she grew up in the beach town of Clearwater, Fla.
- After getting a degree in legal communications at Florida State, Blakely twice took the LSAT exam for law school admission and twice scored abysmally. Frustrated, she drove from Clearwater to Orlando to audition for a job at Disney World. Two inches too short to fill the 5-foot-8 Goofy costume, she instead spent eight hours a day on a moving walkway buckling visitors into their seats at Epcot’s now closed World of Motion ride. “I think I wanted to postpone reality, having spent my whole life thinking I’d be a lawyer,” says Blakely, who as a kid loved watching her dad in court.
- Blakely has strong views about her wealth. “I feel like money makes you more of who you already are,” she says from behind a mirrored desk in her plush Atlanta office, stirring a bowl of take-out soup and exhausted from a sleepless, flu-ridden night. “If you’re an asshole, you become a bigger asshole. If you’re nice, you become nicer. Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.” Most fun: anonymously buying dinner for an entire restaurant crowd at her favorite Japanese steak house in Atlanta or bidding on travel “experiences” like VIP trips to Paris Fashion Week and Sundance at the charity auctions she and Itzler attend.
Below is a video courtesy of ABC News who made Blakely their Person of the Week
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