Her First Job Was Almost a Disney Chipmunk, Now She’s a Billionaire
Written by
Laura Beck
Edited by
Molly Sullivan
Commitment to Our Readers
GOBankingRates' editorial team is committed to bringing you unbiased reviews and information. We use data-driven methodologies to evaluate financial products and services - our reviews and ratings are not influenced by advertisers. You can read more about our editorial guidelines and our products and services review methodology.
20 Years
Helping You Live Richer
Reviewed
by Experts
Trusted by
Millions of Readers
Sara Blakely almost began her career dressed as a chipmunk at Disney World. The failure that came with job opportunity might’ve helped her to become the youngest woman in America to build a billion-dollar fortune from scratch. The path between those two points involved a lot of missteps, and that’s exactly what made her successful.
The Dinner Table Question That Changed Everything
Growing up, Blakely’s father asked her and her brother the same question at dinner every week: “What have you failed at this week?” she said in a CNBC interview.
It wasn’t meant to shame them. It was meant to reframe what failure actually means. “My dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail,” Blakely explained. “The gift he was giving me is that failure is (when you are) not trying versus the outcome. It’s really allowed me to be much freer in trying things and spreading my wings in life.”
That mindset turned failure from something to avoid into something to embrace. And Blakely had plenty of opportunities to practice.
A String of Failures Led To Spanx
Blakely wanted to become a lawyer, but she “basically bombed the LSAT twice,” she said. Law school was out.
So, she auditioned to work at Disney World. They wanted someone who was 5’8″ to play Goofy. Blakely was 5’6″. They offered her a job as a chipmunk instead. She turned it down.
For the next seven years, she sold fax machines door to door. It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills while she figured out her next move.
The Spanx idea came from personal frustration. Blakely realized “there was a void between the traditional underwear and the heavy-duty girdle,” she said. She cut the feet off control-top pantyhose and started making her own modifications. That hack became the foundation for a billion-dollar company.
Not Knowing Became Her Advantage
Most people would see a lack of business training as a problem. Blakely saw it differently.
“What you don’t know can become your greatest asset if you’ll let it and if you have the confidence to say, ‘I’m going to do it anyway even though I haven’t been taught or somebody hasn’t shown me the way,'” she explained.
“The fact that I had never taken a business class, had no training, didn’t know how retail worked,” she said. “I wasn’t as intimidated as I should have been.”
That ignorance helped her ignore all the reasons why Spanx supposedly couldn’t work. She didn’t know what was impossible, so she tried it anyway.
The Real Secret to Success
Blakely’s story isn’t about avoiding failure. It’s about changing your relationship with it. If you’re not afraid of what happens when you fail, you become willing to take more risks.
Selling fax machines for seven years might look like wasted time, but it taught her how to handle rejection. Bombing the LSAT might have felt devastating, but it pushed her toward entrepreneurship instead of law. Almost becoming a Disney chipmunk sounds ridiculous, but it was just another fork in the road.
At 41, Blakely had built Spanx into a global brand and become a billionaire. She did it without business school, without industry connections and without knowing all the rules about what couldn’t be done.
The thread connecting all of it was her willingness to fail. Not recklessly, but purposefully. She tried things that might not work, learned from what went wrong and kept moving forward.
Her father’s dinner table question planted the seed decades earlier. By making failure normal instead of shameful, he gave his daughter permission to take risks. That permission turned into Spanx, and Spanx turned into a billion-dollar empire.
Not bad for someone who almost spent her career in a chipmunk costume.
More From GOBankingRates
