From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Sara Blakely on staying the course

- And I just want to ask you the question about the idea of starting a company right now. When you launched Spanx, it was '98, the economy was humming. You had a job, you were able to put that into to be able to fund Spanx. For people who right now who maybe just lost their jobs are fearful that they're about to lose their jobs. Is this the right time to start a company? Do you recommend it's a good time to be an entrepreneur? or is this the time to go find a job? Any job? How do you think about that? - So I want to just mention I started working on my product in '98. So I worked on it at night and on the weekends while I kept my day job for those two years. So I started Spanx in the year 2000 and not long after I started at 9 11 happened. - Right. So 9 11 happened within me being almost a year older or just over a year old, the way I handled that crisis and, you know, a lot of people would say this is not the time to be starting a business especially in retail. I just moved forward. I moved forward with everything that I could, and I just didn't let that macro environment overwhelm me. And I will say this, if you have a good product, if you're solving a problem. If you are making a product or a service better than anything else out there, it is always a good time to start a business. And there's a lot of benefits to starting a business right now, and staying true to your purpose because you know, this is a time where a lot of businesses are going to retract or, you know maybe you'll have less competition. Maybe people will be more willing to invest in you because, you know ,of what you're offering. And if you're staying true to your purpose. So in 9 11, I'll just tell you briefly this is just something that seemed crazy at the time. And maybe it was but when I look back on it, I'm like, you know what? It worked. No one was in the stores and I had no money to advertise. And I was going from every like Neiman Saks, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's that I had landed those accounts. And Dillard's, I was standing in the store from 8:30 until 7 at night, every day, selling my product for them. Because I was 100% sure that if I left it up to the sales associates in the hosiery corner of those stores, that they would ship my product back to me about 6 months later. And my story would have been over. And everyone's like, Sarah, why are you going to the stores? There's no one in them right now like to go do a "Spanx day" and try to stand there and sell all day long to customers makes no sense. And I was using what little income I had then. I was jumping on a plane and renting cars and staying in really sketchy motels along highways. But, but what ended up happening I stayed the course. I kept doing it. And because there was very few people in the stores I made such deep connections with all the sales associates that were standing in those stores that didn't have as much to do and won all of them over. And I ended up creating a sales force that wasn't on my payroll, because I was able to educate them on what Spanx was, what it could do for you. I gave them some free product. So I looked back on that and I'm like, you know, I just kept going. I kept saying, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing. And I'm not going to freeze or think it's easy in a crisis like this to become the immobilized. And so I just wanted to share that because I didn't know it at the time, but it ended up being hugely beneficial for me to still be selling in an empty store with no one in it. (acoustic music)

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