3 Key Secrets to Mastering Negotiation

23:38I stood outside the Coliseum Mall in 1989, so I was 20 years old. Wow, okay. Yeah. Cool, 20 years old. 20 years old. When did you have, how old were you when you said you had the passion for? I had the passion at 10, 11, 12. I had a passion for fashion earlier on in my life prior to that as well, but it was really my mother was dressing me because we didn't, you know, not really when I was 4, 5, or 6 because we didn't have money, enough money to go buy clothes, so she would sell them. Interesting. Sometimes the pocket would be hanging up in the back somewhere, but it was okay. So what gave you – when did you decide that you had the permission to go create your own things or sew them in the basement and then go sell them?

24:14What gave you that belief in yourself that you could create this? You know what? Again, like most of us start, there was no belief that I could do it. But I remember walking into a store, and I started to see cross colors everywhere. and I walked in the store and I saw this picture of this guy who looked like a young Mike Tyson hanging off a pair of jeans and it was Carl Canai. And then it just hit me. I thought prior to that, we always thought that you had to be from Italy and France to design. You had to be older and like the guys with the tape around their neck, the tailors, right? Or whatever the fashion designers had looked like in those days.

24:57And I thought I'm just supposed to buy from them. When I saw that, I was like, wow, that's amazing. Okay, no problem. Then I'm watching a De La Soul video, I remember, and seeing them wearing these hats. It almost looked like a ski cap, but it has like a tie on the top, and I couldn't find that hat anywhere in Queens. I finally found one uptown Manhattan. I paid for the hat. I come home. I show my mother. I said, look, Ma, I paid, you know, I always say a joke. I paid$6 in gas,$900 in tolls, and$20 for the hat. Check this out. and she goes, that's a piece of crap. But I can show you how to sew hats like that so you can sew as many as you want so you can wear them.

25:35You don't have to do that. So go get$40 worth of fabric. I go to the store, get$40 worth of fabric. I come home. I give my mother the stuff to sew the hats and she says, I'm not sewing this. You're sewing this. I sew. Crap, now I got to work at this? I sew the hats and then all of a sudden I have all these hats and only one head because it's not like I was too stupid or I wasn't thinking, thank God, I didn't buy$40 worth of different fabric. I bought$40 worth of the same fabric. You only did one maybe every three years. Yeah. So anyway, so that's when it happened. That's when I went out and sold those hats outside on that Good Friday, and I sold$800 worth of hats in one hour.

26:13And that's when it just snapped. I just said to myself, wait a minute. I made this with my own hands. I went and sold this to individuals, and nobody was in my way. I didn't have to get a check from a boss. Nobody told me when to come to work or go to work. I can't get fired from this because of my color creed or whatever the case is. I'm responsible for what's happening here, and I will either fail because of every decision I make or I'll succeed because of every decision I make. Was that the first time that you made money on your own as an entrepreneur, or were you? No, no, no, no. I made money on my own and lost money on my own as an entrepreneur.

26:46I started my first business. It took me a long time to really decide what I want to do and what was my first business. It took me forever to decide my first business. My first business, I finally decided what I wanted to do when I was six years old. Wow. Took me forever. Right? I was selling pencils in school. Wow. And then I would go ahead and sell candy. And then when it snowed, I would shovel snow in the winter, rake leaves in the fall. And then I remember when I used to shovel snow, I used to go and kids would want to help me because I started getting everybody in the blocks that I wanted to.

27:23I would travel about three miles and take care of it. Kids would want to help me, so I would tell them, okay, no problem. Here's what you're going to do. If you're going to help me, I'm going to let you work. I'm going to give you a couple. Let's split the money with you. But you've got to do a spring cleanup for free so we can go back into spring. And then I would go to the owners of the house and say, well, everybody else in the block, if they shovel your snow, they're showing you$3. If I shovel your snow three times during the winter, I'm going to give you a free spring cleanup. So I was leveraging all those little guys in the neighborhood.

27:56I love it. Oh, man, that was a great business. Now, when did you realize that you kind of, you know, the$800 first day, it might have been a great first day, but when did you realize, like, okay, I have something actually that is consistently getting results? I mean, was it just easy for you after that? For the next year you were just making$800 every day and then it just kept growing? Or was there like, oh, there's some dry spells here or I need to change where I'm promoting it? Like anything in business, it was always a dry spell here, a dry spell there. But in all reality, you know, my friends and I, we love selling the hats.

28:28Why? Because there was a reason to talk to girls on the street. There you go. Right? That's why we do a lot of these. Of course we do it. That's why we do a lot of these. Everything, right? If we didn't have women in the world, we'd all be walking around barefoot and just, you know, no teeth, right? Exactly. Then I would start going to the black expos where there was like a basically market on the road. And I would try to sell shirts there. Why? Because girls were there. Right, right. But also, we were really passionate about what we were doing, and we started getting that high when we sold stuff at a black expo, and then we'd go to another one, and we'd see somebody wearing it.

29:03I'd go, wow. That's pretty cool. And that's when they came back and started saying, man, you know, I tell everybody about this shirt, and they asked me for it, so I need to buy three now because I've got to buy it for everybody. And we started saying, wow. And it just became so exciting. I would have normally paid to go to the Black Expo to go around and buy stuff or see stuff. And then, you know, we happen to live in Hollis, Queens. There's a lot of music artists in Hollis, Queens. You know, obviously Salt-N-Pepa, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, Tribal Quest. A lot of them come from there. We didn't really know them, but we knew all their friends.

29:35But then all of a sudden we heard, we were saying, well, can we get something in a video? And they would go, yeah, come on down. We go down to the video, and there's craft services. It's free to eat as much food as you want. You get to see somebody like LL Cool J performing a song. There's video vixens running around. It was everywhere. I would have paid to go there. Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and put on a shirt. Then you put on a shirt. Then I'd say, man, I don't have any money. I have a small company, so I really can't afford to lose that shirt. Can I have it back? Really? Sounds like what you did.

30:06When was this? What year was yours? Well, honestly, I opened Food 189. I closed it three times because I ran out of capital from 89 to 92. So the story really goes from 89 to around 96. Okay, cool. So 20 years ago, you were essentially the true branding expert who was leveraging the Instagram influencers of today. You were leveraging the music stars, the MTV stars. Yes. And getting that social media out there on MTV as opposed to on Instagram, which is what brands are doing today. They're trying to find the top influencers and get their clothing on them. Yeah, we always call FooWoo the first hashtag of clothing.

30:48There you go. I like it. I like it. What would you say was the biggest challenge once you started to really take off and grow? Obviously, as a small business owner, when a trend hits and everyone wants your product, how did you handle that and what was the biggest challenge? But scalability was very hard because it was how do I go and finance and underwrite these things? Where will I get the capital? What's the turnaround time? And I didn't have any financial intelligence at the time. Right. So my journey. You could sell and you could hustle and promote. I could sell, I could hustle. But my journey, I almost failed and lost everything several times throughout that journey because I just didn't know how to use the tool of money.

31:34and it's so hard to try to acquire all that knowledge within the same time. How do I acquire the knowledge of branding, marketing, distribution, manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, financial intelligence, customer support, return on goods, consumption? You know what I mean? It's so hard. So, of course, I had to start leveraging as well and creating a bunch of strategic relationships because I knew I needed that. I knew I needed that because, you know, listen, When you tell somebody to stop smoking a couple of times and after the 10th time, they know they already have a problem with smoking. They don't want to listen to you.

32:11Listen. Forget it. I'm not even going to address it. I'm going to start smoking. When you have a business, you have to answer the call or you're closed. Right. Right? So you have to plug the dam. And I knew I had to plug the dam. So I started just creating a lot of strategic relationship. And that's actually the power of broke because it is the fact that, you know, if I would have had money when I went to those video sets, I would have paid the director. I would have paid the producer. I would have paid the rapper, everybody else. Right. If you gave me twenty thousand dollars at a time and I heard that LL Cool J will wear my stuff for five thousand dollars and the director wants five thousand dollars to wear it.

32:51They're getting the money. Of course. Right. And they're going to wear it. But I got into 30, 40 videos with$0, right, because I had no way to do it. I had nothing to lose. You couldn't take anything from me. I didn't have anything. Yeah. Right? Exactly. You couldn't even give me your shirt. Right. You took it back. I took it back. You know, when you're working with the power of broke, it does a couple of things. Number one, it makes sure that you learn the process yourself. You can't afford to hire anybody else. so all those people out there who pay$40 ,000 for a website when it really costs five, right?

33:27Or you can leverage it by bartering or something. Whatever the case is, right? So you have to learn the process. And what happens during that period of time of learning the process is that when and if and hopefully you get to the point that you are successful, nobody can tell you lies. You can't have somebody say, well, I'm not going to tell you about shipping because you're firing me and I got to go work it out yourself. You get and you learn the process, number one. Number two is because you don't have a lot of capital, you focus on the only thing that you can do. You don't drown in opportunity.

34:03You don't take a bunch of money and go, we should try a bunch of stuff. Here you go. Here's$10 ,000 here,$10 ,000 here,$10 ,000 here,$10 ,000 here. Go. Yeah, you go, all right, what are we going to do with this hat right now? You know, so that's the process. And that process is very, very important. Also, you learn and it brings out the character of who you have around you when you operate the power of broke. What do you mean by that? Well, if you're busy, let's open a business today. Let's go take a$100 ,000 loan. Well, what happens when the money goes away? Because when I didn't have anything, people worked with me for free.

34:45And I saw who rose to the challenge. I saw who jumped ship. I saw who were problem solvers and problem creators. And that's the process of activating the power broke. Because to tell you the truth, the people who activate the power broke more than anybody else, are the people who are successful because that's how they stay successful.

35:08Can you share how it all started so we have an understanding of what it is and how you got into it? Absolutely. It actually started with my own butt because I couldn't figure out what to wear under white pants. And I'm sure you've had this problem when you're getting dressed. All the time. So what ended up happening was there was, you know, our undergarment options were no good. There was underwear that left a panty line, and then there was the girdle that was way too thick and heavy. And so then they came out with the thong, which just put underwear exactly where we've been trying to get it out of.

35:38So that did not help at all. And so Spanx was born out of just being a frustrated consumer. I wanted to wear my clothes. I wanted a smooth canvas. I didn't want to see lines or any kind of things going on underneath. So by taking the hosiery material, which was meant to be seen on the leg until Spanx sort of looked at it with a different lens and said, no, no, no, I want the hosiery material to actually be what I create the undergarment out of. And it was wild trying to convince the hosiery manufacturers to help me make this product with that in mind. Because for so many years, they'd been using the material to be seen on the leg.

36:15Right. I said, no, it's just it's the perfect material to create the perfect canvas for women under our clothes. And it opened up my wardrobe. It opened up so many other women's wardrobe. We could start wearing colors we didn't feel comfortable wearing. And the models get airbrushed. We get spanks. There you go. There you go. I love it. And when was this? What year was this? This was in, well, I cut the feet out of my pantyhose in 1998. Wow. Yes. I was 27. Is it 18 years ago? Am I doing my math right? Yes. I was 27. And then I spent the next two years getting it made. I worked at night. and on the weekends on the idea while I was selling fax machines door-to-door.

36:54And then the company was launched in 2000 when I was 29. Wow. Yeah. Selling fax machines door-to-door. Where were you living? In Clearwater, Florida. Okay. Where I grew up. Fax machines. On Clearwater Beach, yes. Are there even fax machines anymore around? No. I mean, thank God I'm not still doing that. I don't know what would have happened. There are no more fax machines. Just like no one watches the movie Airplane anymore? I'm just kidding. I cannot believe. I need to know. Is he the only one on the planet who's not seen the movie Airplane? I was quoting Airplane as soon as they put the headset on.

37:25I'm like, Striker, you're too low. You're too low. And you just stared at me like, what is she talking about? That's okay. So how long were you selling the fax machines? I sold the fax machines door to door for seven years. Seven years? Yes, I know. And before that, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I failed the LSAT not once, but twice. You wanted to be a lawyer. That was your dream? I wanted to be a lawyer. I was like, I'm going to be a lawyer. So you wanted to be a lawyer, but it didn't work out. I wanted to be a lawyer. I failed the LSAT not once, twice. So then instead of going to law school, I drove to Disney World and tried out to be goofy.

37:57But you have to be 5 '8". And you're 5 '6". And I'm 5 '6". So you didn't wear heels? No, I didn't wear heels. Come on, Sarah. I didn't wear heels. And so I was the height of a chipmunk. Oh. So you got the chipmunk? I got the chipmunk part, but I didn't end up doing it. I put people on rides in a brown polyester spacesuit at the World of Motion and Horizons at Epcot. Epcot Center. And I would see people that I hadn't seen in a while. Come through. Yeah, I'm walking on the moving sidewalk, putting people on rides. No way. And they'd go, hey, Blakely, is that you? Didn't you graduate from college?

38:29And my big Mickey Mouse here said Sarah Blakely. And I'd be like, yes, get on the ride. Oh, my gosh. But that's what I did. And then I sold fax machines door to door for seven years. Seven years. Did you wake up every morning and say, this is my dream to sell fax machines door to door? Were you thinking, what am I doing with my life? Exactly. So what happened was, a lot of people think that Spanx started when I cut the feet out of my pantyhose. But actually, it started long before that. It started when I was selling fax machines door to door and getting my business card ripped up in my face, being escorted out of buildings all day, every day.

39:01That I woke up one day and just thought, I'm in the wrong movie. Like, how did this happen? This is not my life. cut scene director, like call the producer. And I got out a piece of paper and I wrote down, what am I good at? And the only thing in the good column was sales. And I thought, okay, what am I going to do with that? And I ended up writing in my journal, I'm going to invent a product and sell it to millions of people that will make them feel good. And then I asked the universe for an idea and I was very specific and it took two years and I only cut the feet out of my pantyhose one time and I was not going to squander any idea the universe gave me because I had really asked for it.

39:40And then the minute I cut the feet out, I started trying to make it. I started looking up manufacturers on the internet. This was before Alibaba, wasn't it? Yes. Because I did this about eight years ago and I used Alibaba for something and it was easy to find like a manufacturer in China and test different things. But how did you find a manufactured at that time a website called thomas registry.com and it lists all the manufacturers in the country based on category and that's when i found out that a lot of hosiery and undergarments were being made in north carolina oh really yeah so you got a local yeah so yes yeah so i called and called and no one would take my call and they'd either hang up on me or say they weren't interested so i took a week off of work and drove around in person and just showed up and I just showed up.

40:26Hey, I want to create a sample. Yeah. Because if they weren't going to get a big order for something, they're probably like, what's, you're not going to do a little sample for you. Right. Right. Yeah. I showed up with my lucky red backpack from college. It's always with me. You still have it? Yeah, of course. And. You didn't bring it here. Come on. It's with me. It's with me in LA. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So anyway, I went into the manufacturing plants and they asked me the same three questions. And you are, let's say Sarah Blakely. and you're with like myself and you're financially backed by and i was like sarah blakeley so you can imagine how those went it's like well have a nice day honey and good luck and um about you know a few weeks after i made all those rounds i got a call from a guy in north carolina who had took pity on me and said sarah i've decided to make your crazy idea wow i'm gonna I asked him why he had the change of heart.

41:23He said, I have three daughters. Wow. Yeah, so he ran the idea by them, and they're like, Dad, that sounds interesting. You've got to give that girl a chance. Amazing. So he called you back. You didn't follow up with these people. Oh, yeah, I was following up, but to no avail. But he followed up and said, we'll give it a shot. Yes. We'll make this. So what was the next step? Was he just making a sample for you or testing different models or sizes? Yeah, so it just set up to make the garment. While I was making it with his manufacturing plant, I was also wanting to patent the idea. And I was also trying to come up with the name for the invention.

41:59So I was doing those three things simultaneously, driving up on the weekends and working with Ted in the back of the manufacturing plant that I'd become very close with. Driving to North Carolina from Florida. No, from Atlanta. I was living in Atlanta at the time. What's that about? Eight-hour drive, six-hour drive? About four and a half. Oh, it's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. and so anyway um ted ted became my buddy and i went to get it patented but all the patent lawyers wanted between three and five thousand dollars and i had five thousand dollars set aside to do this that's it yeah so i wrote my own patent i went to barnes and noble no way and i bought a book called patents and trademarks and i wrote the patent and then i called one of the patent lawyers that was the nicest to me and said please please please will you write the claims over the weekend for a discounted price.

42:46I've done all the other rest of the patent. The legwork you'd done. Yeah. He just kind of needed to button it up and sign it off. Yeah, he needed to do the legal part. And so he did. He actually admitted to me that when I came to visit him, he thought I'd been sent by Candid Camera, which let me put it in your words. I know Candid Camera. I know. He thought he was being punked. Of course. Of course. Wow. Yeah, he thought he was being punked, okay? Where's Ashton? Where's Ashton? Yeah, exactly. He thought that his friends were playing a joke on him. No way. Yeah. He goes, Who's this girl? He goes, Sarah.

43:18I mean, like, you're not the typical person who walks in the door saying, I've got a product and I want to patent it. So anyway, he did that. Then at the same time, I'm trying to think of the name. I had horrible names written on scrap pieces of paper all over the place in my apartment, in my car, in rental cars, on the back of like Avis agreements. And you want to hear how bad the runner up name to Spanx was? Yeah. Open Toed Delilahs. No way. yes i cannot believe that was even an option it was it was the runner i was like how bad is that open toed delilah i so wouldn't be sitting here with you right now if i named it that that is the horrible it's so bad wow yes so anyway okay so what's spank stand for well it's all about the butt and it makes your mind wander a little bit nobody ever forgets it i had no money to advertise it was risky it was fun at the time listen now it's become a household name but when i first invented it i would call people and say hi i'm sarah from spanks and they would hang up right because they thought it was probably like a porn yeah they thought i was pranking them i'm called i'm like no really i'm sarah and my company really is called spanks and i had a department stores across the country that wouldn't sell it they thought it was too risque of a name yeah and um my mom sent her whole lunch into the wrong website when i first started i was like mom it's with an x oh my god it's super important it's with an x so yeah anyway i ended up buying the word Spanx from a man who said he was holding out from the porn industry.

44:42Funny enough that you say that. I bet. Yeah. I paid Spanx with an X. I paid some money for that. But anyway, yes. So amazing. Named it Spanx. It came to me because I narrowed down my thinking. I knew that Kodak and Coca-Cola were the two most recognized names in the world at the time. And I thought, what do they have in common? I like to think about words and phrases a lot. They both had a strong K sound in them. And the man that created Kodak liked the K sound so much he took a K and put it in the beginning and the end of the word and played with letters in the alphabet. So, and I also had a bunch of friends who did stand-up comedy and it's this weird trade secret among comedians that the K sound will make your audience laugh.

45:21So I put all that together and I'm like, okay, I want my product name to have the K sound in it for good luck. And literally Spanx came across my dashboard in my car in my mind and I pulled off the side of the road. I wrote it down. I went home that night. I typed it in my computer for$150 with my credit card. And at the last second, I backspaced the K and the S and put in an X and hit set. So it was accident kind of with the X. No, I – You backspaced. Gotcha. I backspaced because I stared at it for a while and I had done research that made up words do better for product than real words and they're easier to trademark.

45:52Yeah. So then I had the name and I had the patent in the works, got my prototype. and my patent lawyer said, Sarah, I need to know what's in this garment in order to write the patent. I said, okay, no problem. We'll call Ted. So I get Ted on the phone. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to manufacturer? Yeah. Like in the back, in the back. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to my patent lawyer? He's like, yeah. So we're all talking and he goes, I go, can you tell him what's in it? He's like, yeah, well, it's 70 % nylon and 30 % lacquer. And I'm like, all right. And so I'm taking notes. My patent lawyer is taking notes.

46:30And that night I could not sleep. I'm up all night. And the next morning I wake up. I'm like, how is there lacquer in this product? What is lacquer? Just so I become aware of. I think it's like paint thinner or something. Okay. So I called. 30 % paint thinner? So I called Ted. I go, Ted, can you spell lacquer? He's like, yeah. L-Y-C-R-A. I'm like, oh my God, lycra. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was like. Got it. Doing all change on lacquer immediately. All change. My patent lawyer was laughing. He said, you know how fast you would have gotten a patent if you tried to make this out of paint thinner? He's like, they would have been like, sure.

47:07So was it challenging to get it? Did you get it the first try, the patent? I did. Wow. It usually takes a few turns, doesn't it? I got the patent the first try, and I got the trademark name Spanx. Amazing. Yeah. So it didn't seem like there was that many challenges once you submitted it or whatever. You kind of got the things you needed in place. You got the orders in. Was there a lot of challenges after that? Once you got the patent, the trademark? That was a really hard part. I heard the word no for two years. All the manufacturers, nobody thought it was a good idea. And also when you're just yourself trying to break into an industry, like you mentioned, the manufacturers, it's not really in their best interest to slow down machines or try to give a girl with a couple grand a chance.

47:51Unless you're going to give them a bunch of money for a big order or something. It's like, what's the point? Right. So that was the hard part. And then once I had it, I cold called Neiman Marcus. And that was the first account I called on. Did you get it? Yes. Well, you were great at sales. So you could sell it. I was so excited. It was my moment. I flew to Dallas. I called them and said, if you give me 10 minutes of your time, I'll come and meet with you. And she said, all right. And this is a buyer? Yep, the buyer. I first called the Atlanta store. They're like, girl, we can't help you. We have a buying office.

48:21I'm like, well, where is that? Give me their number. and um i went in and halfway through my pitch i could tell i was losing her so i said you know what will you please come to the bathroom with me and she was like so buttoned up i mean neiman mark is like her pen matched her belt that matched her shoes and she was like what like what am i doing in the bathroom i was like just follow me to the bathroom and show you my own panty line and i went in the stall with spanks in my pants and without it in my pants and she was like oh i totally get it it's awesome and i'm gonna put it in seven stores wow yeah i mean just like that just like that it was so unbelievable i was so nervous and then of course i had to call sam like in the rental car on the way back to to um to the um airport i called the owner of the manufacturer i'm like sam sam it's sarah i need more i just landed neiman marcus and he's like what he was in shock he goes sarah i thought you're gonna give his way his birthday presents for like years.

49:16And I said, no, Neiman Marcus just bought it. And I need more. And he patched me through to Ted. He goes, okay, you need to talk to Ted. Okay. So Ted comes back in. He's on the phone. And I go, Ted, I need more. And he goes, I go, I just landed Neiman Marcus. He goes, well, that's great. But what you can do about the crotches? The crotches? Yeah, exactly. That's what I said. I go, what? Don't they come with crotches? We've been making them with crotches. He goes, well, yeah, but we only got one crotch machine. It's being used by somebody else. No way. Yeah. So what do you do then? So I just landed Neiman Marcus and I have no crotches.

49:47Oh my gosh. You got a hole in your crotches? I don't know where to go for a crotch. I don't know. Where do you go? I actually looked in the yellow pages. Crotch making machines? Yeah, I just, I looked up crotch. Crotch machine. I looked up crotch. I don't even know how you spell crotch. Okay, listen. This is what I learned. I'm going to teach you something. Okay, so I didn't know this. What's yellow pages again? Yeah, oh my God. I'm just kidding. It's a big book. It's yellow. It's what we used to look things up. Hilarious. And what's Instagram? Oh, yeah. You just got on it. Okay. I just joined it seven days ago.

50:19All right. So where was it? Oh, crotch. Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. Crotch machine. Lift it up. Yeah. So anyway, in the yellow pages, it's not under crotch. So I learned there's a fancy word for crotch named gusset. Gusset? Yes. What? Gusset. I've never heard that word. So I started calling gusset companies. They were like FedExing me crotches from all over. My roommate would come home and be like, you got another crotch in the mail. and then I ended up finding a man by the name of Gene Bobo that worked for a crotch company just 20 minutes north of where I lived in Atlanta and he saved the day and they made the crotches and then I could deliver an even Marcus.

50:54So you had the leggings they made the crotches and then you sewed them together is that's how it works? Yes apparently yes. Gotcha. Okay. So then you had another how many did you print the first time? 3 ,000. 3 ,000? 3 ,000 pair of the first Spanx. One SKU, right? Yes, one SKU. $20, one SKU. Three sizes or? Like four. Four sizes. Four sizes, yep. 3 ,000 of them. Yes, and that's what Neiman's ordered. And then I sent them to the seven stores. I had no packing and shipping department, so the semi trucks were pulling up to my apartment in Atlanta, and I was shipping them myself to Neiman's. This is amazing.

51:33And then I called every friend I had in those seven cities, like people I hadn't talked to in 20 years. Hey, go buy a few of these. Go make, yeah. Take your girlfriends there. Hi, Christina. Remember me? I used to sit next to you all the time in grade school. Will you please go buy this product called Spanx? I literally called them and I said, and I'll mail you a check. So I paid all my friends and friends of friends to go buy the product. That is brilliant, actually, to get some movement. Yeah, I said, go in. I gave them a whole script. I'm like, go in and say, I've been looking for this all my life.

52:01I can't believe it's here. And create all this excitement. This is amazing. And then, of course, a week later, I talked to the Neiman's buyer. and she's like, Sarah, we are blowing out. I'm like, you don't say. No way. Meanwhile, I was buying them all. That's brilliant. You have to. Wow. You have to. You create incredible momentum. You have to ensure your own success. Absolutely. So then once I started running out of money, Oprah called and put it on as her favorite product of the year. How long was that for? Until the time was in Neiman Marcus to Oprah calling? Like a month. It just happened that quick?

52:33A month or a month and a half. How did she even hear about it in a month and a half? I sent it to her in a gift basket. And Andre, who dresses her, put it in her dressing room and she put them on and has basically worn them every day since. Shut up. I'm not kidding. It was so unbelievable. I had no money to advertise. In the back of my apartment, I was selling fax machines like a month before that. But I have to say I was working every night and on the weekends for two years quietly trying to get this made. Building this thing, yeah. Building it. I had no option in my mind. I was like, I am scripting a new life for myself.

53:04and was this movie about you that came out a year ago joy yeah is that about you my dad called me goes sarah i just saw a movie it's basically your life except for the dysfunctional family part yeah right i was like yeah right dad okay sure yeah but i could really relate to her i'm sure all the hustle and yeah that's crazy but when i got neiman marcus i think a lot of people think that's when you've arrived that's when i double timed i mean i i got um on a plane and was gone for two years straight and I went to every department store in the country that sold Spanx, every Neiman Sachs, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale's and I would go before the store opened and do an all-store rally and tell them what my product was, explain it to them, do a demo, give out free product and then stand there in the department for you know eight hours a day and tell customers what it was because I didn't have any many averages.

53:55I was selling it for them but what I didn't realize I was doing was I was building a sales force not on my payroll because all these people started to become so ambassadors. And they were rooting for me and they loved the product. And so that was a really important part of the formula. And then I learned what my next products were going to be because I was standing right there with customers. And they'd say what they need, what their challenge is. I can't do this. They told me what they wanted. Amazing. Yeah. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links.

54:32And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

55:11And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.