Sara Blakely, an entrepreneur, was listed as a billionaire on a rich list. She took her product Spanx, body shaping undergarments for women, from a start-up to a multi-million-dollar company.
A fire storm of articles and TV shows dug into her background to find her secret of success. This is what the media do best – simplifying a story to one or two things that are easy to communicate. This results in giving the wrong impression to would-be entrepreneurs and start-up founders. It looks so authoritative in print or on TV but actually only sells a half-truth.
One of those “secrets” was a CD program by a well known motivational and spiritual speaker. She said she’d listened to the CD program which told her failure wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s a similar message that her father installed in her from a young age. The publisher of that CD program is sending emails to promote the program based on her phenomenal success. The teaser copy read “Not too long ago, the world’s youngest female billionaire revealed a key secret to her success that surprised a lot of people. What might surprise you is just how close you are to having it yourself.” The click through send you to a sales letter where the CD program is revealed.
Accepting that it’s ok to fail and to fail often is an important attitude for everyone, especially entrepreneurs. But to dumb down her success to this one mindset or attitude isn’t helpful. It’s not the only reason why people like Sarah succeed. In my humble (but accurate) opinion, Sarah success began with the ideas she had for Spanx. She had an idea and $5,000 to develop her product, which she did.
What I love about her story is that she took a year to develop her prototype, she used low-cost, no-cost marketing methods and persevered despite initial difficulties and resistance.
It’s all about the idea that she came up with and her own initial seed capital. She saw an opportunity in the growing woman’s market and had something exciting to offer women who want to look good.
Coming up with start-up or new business ideas is open to anyone. There are no barriers except perhaps not having and opportunity conscious mindset. For example, a couple I came across a few weeks ago developed their idea of making energy bars. Rather than sit around talking about their business idea, they rolled up their sleeves and use their marketing and other skills to develop the prototype. After initial success in the testing phase they have now started expanding distribution.
All because of an idea and some tiny seed capital.
Do you yearn to do something similar but don’t know how to get started?
If so, use your common sense and take a look at this.
