Real-life resilience - Sara Blakely

Quick PSA before we get into this week’s resilience story. This coming Thursday (Aug 28th), I’ll be hosting a webinar on Resilience in the workplace. It’s free to attend and you can register by clicking here. Please share with anyone who may benefit.

Sara Blakely couldn’t get hired as Goofy at Disney. So she became a billionaire instead.

Blakely is an American entrepreneur best known as the founder of Spanx, a female shapewear company she started back in 2000 with just $5k in savings. She also became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire in 2012. Beyond business, she’s a philanthropist and motivational speaker who champions embracing failure and getting out of our comfort zone.

“What did you fail at today?”

This was a regular dinner-table question in the Blakely household. Sara’s dad would ask it with a grin and look forward to the answers. He wanted to reframe failure as something positive. It meant Sara and her brother were out there pushing boundaries, tackling things that were perhaps a little too difficult. In Blakely’s father’s mind, failure was not the enemy - the real enemy was not even trying.

Sara was no stranger to rejection, even in her early adult life. Well before Spanx, she failed the exam to get into law school (twice!), was rejected from Disney as Goofy, sold fax machines door to door, and did stand-up comedy.

She had so many slammed doors, thousands of “no’s” and even business cards ripped up in her face. With seven years of pushing faxes, rejection became her baseline. But resilience became her edge.

One night, getting dressed for a party, she cut the feet off her pantyhose to smooth the lines under white pants. It worked (sort of) and that scrappy hack became a real idea. She set aside $5,000 of savings and started calling hosiery mills to help produce it properly. No one called back. Eventually she took a week off selling faxes and drove down to the manufacturers to talk to them in person.

All of this was par for the course as Sara was simply fearless when it came to rejection. After so many battles to have her product understood, she tried a new approach. She took the female buyer to the restroom to show her the benefits of the product right there “in the flesh”. Talk about having no fear and getting out of our comfort zone! She landed an immediate order for seven stores.

Momentum surged when Oprah featured Spanx on her “Favourite Things” and boom! Spanx took off!

Years later, after selling a majority stake in Spanx, she gave every Spanx employee two first-class tickets anywhere in the world (plus $10k in spending money) to mark the moment. Amazing story of bouncing forward from every failure to do something that helps millions of people.

That’s what happens when you get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Smash that comfort zone.

Every stretch outside our comfort zone is a rep for the resilience muscle - it’s where confidence is built and bold ideas take flight. Sara was lucky to have a family that didn’t just embrace failure but encouraged it. The celebration of rejection allowed her to build the reps until courage felt familiar.

These days, it appears many of us are losing the courage to embrace rejection. I’ve seen people upset after simple feedback, or shut down when questioned for a status update on KPIs. No one wins when teams operate like this.

Here are some ideas to take away from Sara’s story that we can implement right away.

1. Our own “Fail List”. Sounds wild but let’s do what Sara’s dad did and encourage and analyze our own fail list. Perhaps on a Friday we can take 5-10 mins and make a two-column note: “things we failed at” and “things we learned”. Write down three things we tried that didn’t work and one lesson from each. A blank fail list means we skipped leg day for our resilience. Some ideas to get started could include:

   1. Pitch an idea in a meeting that isn’t fully baked.

   2. Volunteer for a task we’ve never done before.

   3. Send a bold cold email.

2. Ask for 10 mins. Whatever challenge is in our way this week, push for 10 mins. 10 mins to identify one person who could move our project forward. It could be a buyer, stakeholder, or mentor. If they say yes, great. If they say no, we try to find out what advice they would have to get the next person to say “yes”. It’s data either way.

3. Rejection reps. Just like the gym, each rep hurts a little but makes us stronger. If we set a small quota (such as 5 asks this week that are likely to get a “no”) then we can track the no’s like steps on a fitness app. This will boost our desensitization to rejection, and also improve recovery time.

4. Celebrate thoughtful misses. This one for the leaders. Imagine if we publicly rewarded the people who took risks. What would that do to company culture? I imagine it would provide immense confidence to those who had tried something new and would also encourage others to take a leap.

One of my favourite sayings that that failure is just data. It’s a fantastic reframe to the usual embarrassment that comes with any miss. But we have to remember that all of the ways that don’t work make it easier to see the path that will. It worked for Edison, it worked for James Dyson, it worked for Sara Blakely, and it will work for us too.

The only way to shrink fear is to grow exposure….and do it anyway! Sara Blakely built that exposure one awkward ask, one prototype, one pivot at a time. And she kept going when it felt uncertain. That’s the muscle we’re all training.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré @ Resilient Minds

PS - What’s one small risk you’ll take this week to build your resilience? Hit reply and tell me because I want to hear the stretch you’re choosing. And I also want to hear what you'll learn when it doesn’t go perfectly.

PPS - Bonus ideas for anyone wanting to flex their failure muscle further this week!