“An idea is its most vulnerable in its infancy, and that's also the moment in human nature we want to immediately turn to our right or left and tell our coworker, our friend, our boyfriend, our boss, you know, I have this idea, and out of love and concern, we hear a lot of things that stops us right in our tracks.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Sara Blakely
AssertionPartly supported
Blakely: Spanx ran zero paid advertising for its first 16 years
“You know, Spanx has never advertised until this year, and we're 16 years old, so this has been a word of mouth brand.”
Sara BlakelyJul 19, 2023▶ 27:51OpenAI's Sam Altman: Customer love is all you need | Masters of Scale
Insight
Blakely: Spanx succeeded because she was actively hunting to execute an idea
“I meet women all the time that have been cutting the feet out of their pantyhose for years trying to solve undergarment issues for themselves, and they're always like, why didn't I do Spanx? And I really just think it's because I had been looking for this and …”
Sara BlakelyMay 5, 2023▶ 13:08Spanx's Sara Blakely: How to find your big idea
Insight
Blakely: Listing 15 improvable daily items will probably generate a big idea
“Anybody could do this exercise. Go home and look at 15 things in your life, and write them down on a piece of paper, and then write down how and why they could be better. You'll have probably a big idea right there on that sheet.”
Sara BlakelyMay 5, 2023▶ 19:36Spanx's Sara Blakely: How to find your big idea
Disclosure
Blakely: Taking a daily fake commute sparks her best creative ideas
“You know, I've identified where my best thinking happens, and it's in the car, and I live really close to Spanx, so I've created what my friends call my fake commute, and I get up an hour early before I'm supposed to go to Spanx, and I drive around aimlessly i…”
Sara BlakelyMay 5, 2023▶ 14:37Spanx's Sara Blakely: How to find your big idea
Disclosure
Blakely: Spanx addressed a gap between thick shapewear and visible underwear
“I went to Neiman's and Sachs and asked, you know, what do women wear under these white pants? And the sales ladies would always say, well, we don't really know, or they'd Point me in the direction of the shapewear that did exist, and it was really thick and dr…”
Sara BlakelyMay 5, 2023▶ 22:45Spanx's Sara Blakely: How to find your big idea
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Blakely: The Spanx founder wrote her own patent using library research
“I immediately went and researched patents at the Georgia Tech Library, and I Wrote my own patent. I got a book on patents and trademarks at Barnes & Noble on Peachtree.”
Sara BlakelyMay 5, 2023▶ 30:07Spanx's Sara Blakely: How to find your big idea
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, about 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.