Top 40 Sara Blakely Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.”

— Sara Blakely

Featured in: Startup Quotes

2. “Failure is not the outcome – failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.”

— Sara Blakely

3. “You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years.”

— Sara Blakely

4. “It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.”

— Sara Blakely

5. “My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?”

— Sara Blakely

6. “The smartest thing I ever did was to hire my weakness.”

— Sara Blakely

7. “Perseverance is the key to starting a successful business.”

— Sara Blakely

8. “Courage is doing something despite the fear, and I’ve worked hard on being a courageous person.”

— Sara Blakely

9. “There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?’”

— Sara Blakely

10. “Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.”

— Sara Blakely

Featured in: Fun Quotes

11. “Shapewear is the canvas and the clothes are the art.”

— Sara Blakely

12. “Having a mental snapshot of where you are, where you are going, and what you are moving toward is incredibly powerful.”

— Sara Blakely

13. “Instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying. And it forced me at a young age to want to push myself so much further out of my comfort zone.”

— Sara Blakely

14. “Failure to me became not trying versus not succeeding.”

— Sara Blakely

15. “We don’t have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it’s important to be with our family and friends.”

— Sara Blakely

16. “When something I can’t control happens, I ask myself : where is the hidden gift, where is the positive in this?”

— Sara Blakely

17. “Ideas, even million-dollar ones, are most vulnerable in their infancy; don’t share them with too many people. However, don’t hide your plan from people who can help you move it forward.”

— Sara Blakely

18. “Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not not going to do things in my life because of fear.”

— Sara Blakely

19. “Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.”

— Sara Blakely

20. “I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.”

— Sara Blakely

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

21. “If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.”

— Sara Blakely

22. “I knew that I wanted to start my own business. I knew that I wanted to work for myself. I was no stranger to the word no. You just have to keep going.”

— Sara Blakely

23. “I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let’s bring joy back to the experience.”

— Sara Blakely

24. “I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course.”

— Sara Blakely

25. “I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.”

— Sara Blakely

26. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”

— Sara Blakely

27. “You’ve got to embrace what you don’t know.”

— Sara Blakely

28. “Ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”

— Sara Blakely

29. “With every obstacle that has happened to me in my life, my brain immediately says, ‘Where is the hidden blessing?’ In starting a business and growing a business, every day is learning how to manage obstacles.”

— Sara Blakely

30. “When I’m bored or tired of being blonde, I’ll throw on a wig. It’s a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.”

— Sara Blakely

31. “The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.”

— Sara Blakely

32. “It’s really a full-time job to manage our lives.”

— Sara Blakely

33. “What you don’t know can be your greatest asset.”

— Sara Blakely

34. “The thought of my mortality – I think about it a lot. I find it motivating. It can be any time that your number’s up.”

— Sara Blakely

35. “I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it’s a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.”

— Sara Blakely

36. “If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.”

— Sara Blakely

37. “I’d get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It’s a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.”

— Sara Blakely

38. “I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.”

— Sara Blakely

39. “I didn’t like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn’t find anything to work underneath them.”

— Sara Blakely

40. “I didn’t want women to walk out of the dressing rooms feeling depressed and wanting a cocktail.”

— Sara Blakely

41. “My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.”

— Sara Blakely

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

42. “Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s here in the United States.”

— Sara Blakely

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

43. “My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.”

— Sara Blakely

44. “I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.”

— Sara Blakely

45. “I’ve always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.”

— Sara Blakely

46. “When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.”

— Sara Blakely

47. “I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick – it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.”

— Sara Blakely

48. “I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.”

— Sara Blakely