MasterClass Live with Sara Blakely | MasterClass

hi everyone and welcome to master class live this is a weekly series that allows you to connect directly with our instructors for those of you new to our community master class is a place where you can learn from the world's best minds and about things as varied as writing a book or making a michelin-star quality meal or figuring out how to think critically about what's going on in the world right now our online catalog spans more than 80 classes with luminaries like Spike Lee and Natalie Portman and David Sedaris and today I'm delighted to welcome the irrepressible Sara Blakely a master class live Sara is the founder and CEO of Spanx a company she started with just $5,000 in the bank and built into a worldwide phenomenon she's been named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people the world's youngest self-made female billionaire Wow and my personal favorite the Michael Jordan of women's underwear are widely beloved class on self-taught entrepreneurship and she's joined today by her husband and fellow entrepreneur Jesse who's going to be running the show today and asking some of the many amazing questions you submitted Sarah and Jesse thank you guys so much for being here today yeah thank you for having me is this the first for you too is this Sarah is this your first time being interviewed by your husband I think so I mean is this the first time you've ever a nanny it's the first time I've ever interviewed you you interviewed me at dinner all the time yeah that's where I like to roles are reversed I like to play the feelings game at the dinner table and everybody has to go around and talk about how they're feeling and it's my husband's favorite game I love that game I'm not a great communicator like that I mean that's like giving me kryptonite see I have been trying to make it a game I'm like there's this really fun game we're gonna play and it's called the feelings game trying to appeal to my husband's inner child and anyway it's been it's been very funny the other thing for you to reference when you're about to be in the hot seat for the next 45 minutes I want to say before I leave you guys to it your class is so widely beloved but also really beloved by me I think it's just brimming with vulnerability and charm and then so many practical takeaways it's no surprise that we got heaps and heaps of amazing questions I'm gonna leave Jessie to sort of start wading through some of those um and I'll see you guys on the other side all right thank you Karina before we get started I just want to congratulate you on your on your five year anniversary of masterclass I personally been a big fan and you just got Ron Finley the gangster garden is one of my favorite so I can't wait to watch that course I've learned so much and I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight live I'm really excited about this I just want to say before we start that I'm so lucky to be married to Sarah Sarah is just in every bucket of her life from wife to daughter - sister - ceo/founder friend granddaughter she's just she's a ten out of ten in every bucket and I always like to say that Sarah is one 150 percent Einstein and fifty percent Lucille Ball and solve the most complicated problems you know in the business world and create amazing products that people want and sometimes is a hard time pulling out of the garage and figuring out like directions to stuff we do all the time that that's the Lucille Ball part the other part is the Einstein I'd say 60% Einstein so I'm just very opportunity to be here and and spend this time and flip the roles and get to interview my wife so thank you sweetie for joining us yeah so I watched your master class I actually get a front row view into how you you know parent and how you run your business and how you id8 and all that stuff and I was shocked just you provide so many immediate actionable takeaways in this course and it was the first time you've ever done it I'm really I'm curious what it was like to sit down and film this amazing product and session for a masterclass well I mean it's you're right it was the first time I've ever done anything like this and so when master class asked me to do it I obviously wanted to really be thoughtful about it and for me part of the reason why I did it is because people have been asking me for 20 years for 15 minutes of my time as you know and as you know I want to give everybody 15 minutes of my time but I just truly can't maybe for small children running a business so this was sort of a really great way for me to answer that and and then give so much more and so the process of creating this masterclass for me was very personal I spent several months with time allocated on my calendar to kind of excavate all of the little nuances and insights that I had earned and learned over the years and applied in creating Spanx and in growing Spanx and so it was a really cool opportunity for me to kind of really put down on paper my thoughts on what would I teach someone else on how to do what I did and I was really vulnerable in it you know I I was humbled by it because I hadn't done that before and there is like you said there's a moment in the master class where I actually get choked up and I tear up and they said Sarah can we put that in there and I said really and they said I said okay sure but it's at the very end of it and I think it was just the culmination of me really thinking about it because when you all know you're entrepreneurs who are tuning in I'm guessing most of you are you're going going going you're hitting that next milestone you're achieving that next thing we're drivers for doers and it doesn't really hit us very much the what we've accomplished or what we've been able to do and so I definitely experienced one of those moments when I was filming master class yeah you know we have hundreds of questions that came in I'm gonna get to as many as I can and be mindful of everybody that submitted questions but I had a quick question you know there's so many golden nuggets in here I mean it's really I always say this is like a going to Harvard Business School in a very compact way I mean and you cover things from the work that you did before Spanx to things everything from sales and coming up a creative process and what I love about you sweetie is you never took a business class you grew up on Clearwater Beach you know you're surrounded by oceans and parties how did you learn all this stuff like this come from I mean was it is an intuitive I mean clearly it's teachable but I never see you really study how did you learn all this stuff well since the age of 16 I have become a student of how to think as I've meant you know I had a series of tragedies happened to me in high school and it led me to listen to Wayne Dyer and Wayne Dyer was an inspirational motivational speaker and he talked about visualization manifesting what you want in your life law of attraction not fearing failure and I literally had this Epiphany as a 16 year old that I've just spent 16 years of my life in school being taught what to think but no one has ever taught me how to think and I was like wait I am in control of that I can actually teach myself how to think and I could possibly train my brain to think in a way that would make me more productive more successful you know not fall down and not be able to get back up with an obstacle so I've been training my brain for such a long time on when an obstacle happens and it happens to all of us and especially entrepreneurs it happens daily and sometimes multiple times a day my brain just immediately goes to where's the blessing where's the hidden gift and I immediately instead of letting it you know paralyze me I let it fuel me and you know doesn't mean I don't feel things deeply and have my moment of grief or just like oh my gosh but I think that that's such a big part of this and I didn't know how it was supposed to be done and I think if people will honor their own path and listen to that inner gut and have the confidence to just do it in a way that they I think is right without a script you know no I didn't go to business school and I think because I've been doing all of that training on how to sing it gave me the courage to try to do it even though I didn't have experience because most people who don't have experience as you know they have we all hear the self-doubt like you're not an expert what makes you think you're gonna have the answer if no one else has done this why in the world do you think you can do it I mean I hear that talk track like everybody else does but because I've been doing so much inner work on my mindset I think I just went ahead but said anyway and in order to do anything substantial in life you've got to do it different than everyone else did that's the only way to be innovative and it's the only way to break ground if you do it exactly the way anyone else is doing it or even the way someone taught you to do it you're probably not going to end up being someone that changes culture changes history and ultimately could change the world and entrepreneurs are people who invent things or make things better than they already were and I love entrepreneurs they're my favorite people I mean they're the backbone of our community and you're an entrepreneur I married one you're a serial entrepreneur you do it many many different categories I've kind of stayed in one lane but I feel like I'm self-taught and in listening to my intuition and and having the confidence to go the course yeah I think that's something that you've mastered like you're so good at trusting your gut in all buckets business but the translation to all the buckets this question came in from the master class folks and I love this because being having come from the music business I know how hard it is to have a hit and I know it's even harder to have multiple hits but you've had many hits on the product side and you have to keep coming up with new ideas and being creative so in the in your master class you know you talked a lot about the tools that you use to develop big ideas one of them is you let your mind wander for you know an hour to a day in the car you created a fake commute and since a lot of people today have more time than usual to let their minds wander at home how can they use this situation to hell develop their ideas well I mean you mentioned the think time sink time to me is really important and I don't what I'm talking about is not going through your list of things to do at work or your chores in the home it's like where does your mind wander because when it just wanders with no agenda and you're almost in this sort of quasi daydream state that's where really magic happens that's where sparks fly that's where like you're being channeled I feel like there's a connection that's happening between you and the universe and I get flooded with ideas when I am in that state you know since being at home for a significant period of time and with forced small children my creativity and my idea flow has not been what I would love for it to be but my creativity has sort of shifted into full-blown mom mode and I'm coming up with creative things to do with the children and creative you know activities from storytelling and I'm gonna start this story and I want you guys to finish the story to scavenger hunts in the backyard or on a beach so I my mind is kind of working in other ways right now because it's really sort of been all hands on deck at home as you know I mean our children are 10 - that are 5 and a 4 year old yeah well I've watched you switch your creeks you're like I love it cuz I get this front row seat but I watch you channel a lot of the entrepreneurial creativity into our home and our kids are super lucky because there's a scavenger hunt going on or you have an idea to do this and on a rainy day you know you let them you let them be bored which is I know is a big part of your childhood you know having just being creative on your own and not being over scheduled and you know incorporating then now when the kids you know and the kids set our home it's been fun to watch I also I failed to say in the intro when I was talking very quickly about you you know for those that don't know you know Sarah's been incredibly philanthropic from the start of her business and does well behind-the-scenes does a lot in a lot of different areas and just recently made an amazing donation through a charity arm that she set up called the red backpack fund and we got a couple of questions that came in but this would probably be a great time to just take a minute or two sweetie and just tell everybody about sorry the sweetie thing we're married if anyone is just joining tell everyone a little bit about the red backpack fund and how it works and who it's helping yeah sure so the red backpack fund is an opportunity for me to pay it forward and help female entrepreneurs especially during this time and I have donated five million dollars directly to female entrepreneurs there will be five thousand different entrepreneurs that will refuse me one thousand different entrepreneurs that will receive five thousand dollars each and five thousand dollars is the amount of savings I had set aside from selling fax machines door-to-door for seven years that I used to start Spanx so the number is symbolic and the lucky red backpack each woman will receive a lucky red backpack because I started Spanx with my lucky red backpack and it now hangs on the wall at Spanx headquarters in a glass box but it was with me every step of the way for probably the first seven years I didn't carry a purse it was always this dingy red East packed backpack from college and I believed it was lucky so went with me everywhere and it's sort of symbolic of just starting small and dreaming big and the importance of that and it's also symbolic of like everything you need is really right there are already on your back and there's just so so much that I want to do to help entrepreneurs and I am a small business owner I still act like a small business owner I know exactly what it feels like even now that Sphinx is twenty years old and I just wanted to offer a helping hand during this time I just want to say that take this opportunity you mentioned that you started Spanx with thousand dollars in savings which obviously I know but I'm gonna share this with you on this master class exclusive interview you know I just think that's so unbelievable because most entrepreneurs go right to like I need to raise money or I don't have enough money they go to I can't I need you know how do I get you started this with $5,000 and savings I just want to say I think about this all the time there's seven billion humans on this planet if you gave all seven billion I'm sorry five thousand dollars in savings and said start an idea not a lot of people will be able to do what you what you've done and to share those secrets with everybody in the course is really a gift so I just want to thank you for that and now let's get into the question so these are submitted from folks that took the course so congratulations you're a handful of seven billion sweetie the first question comes from Sarina and Sarina says Sarah how do you stay focused and motivated and what promises do you make to yourself how do you stay focused and motivated and what promises do you make to yourself how do I say say it again how do you stay focused and motivated but you're incredibly motivated and what promises do you make to yourself well I stay focused and motivated I stay focused by you know I try I track my my priorities daily and quarterly and annually but I stay motivated because I'm connected to a purpose bigger than myself and I believe that the entrepreneurial journey is hard I mean it is one thing people don't talk about is how hard you work I mean in many cases I tell people it's really who wanted to work the hardest and who had the most staying power and grit to just keep going because there is a huge element of this that is that I mean I was talking to someone the other day I'm like I didn't take a vacation for like ten years I mean I was just working when all my friends were going on vacations and people were going out to parties I just wasn't so it was just a lot of commitment on that end but what why I was willing to do that and why I still stay motivated is because for me I've been doing this for something greater than myself it's I'm very passionate about women and helping women and supporting women I believe I'm very lucky to be a woman born in the right place at the right time and so I feel this deep gratitude and I almost feel that gratitude daily throughout the day and it fuels me to keep going so it reminds me you know that when I'm doing something for Spanx whether it was cold calling Neiman Marcus to get in my foot in the door or you know try to land a big account or go in front of a bunch of customers or give a speech all those things scared me but I stayed motivated because I felt like I was walking through the door on behalf of women and behalf of women that came before me that didn't have this opportunity and on behalf of women still around the world right now who don't have the opportunity that I have just because they're a woman and so I I suggest and I talked about this in my master class like what is your purpose your purpose is gonna get you through this and your purpose needs to be bigger than I just want money and I just want to be successful so I can like buy things that's great that does happen if you are really successful but if that's the main motivation it's a lot harder to have that really deep staying power and motivation so you know the purpose is kind of the intersection between you know what do you like to do what brings you to like what are you good at what brings you joy and how can you best serve the world and a lot of times I talk about if someone's like I don't know what I'm passionate about I talk about well what makes you cry you know what what really affects you and whatever that is pay attention to that because your purpose probably lies within that or around there and for me seeing women not be able to fulfill their own potential is really deeply affects me I would also add just that you only watching you you put a lot of heart and soul into your products into your community and to everything that you do and part of the motivation just comes from as an outsider you know it's just like you have passion for what you're doing and for the products and take a lot of pride in it all right Rosa asks how do I convince a customer they need what I'm selling to improve an aspect of their life they thin usually and they don't usually invest in um well you know for one I would say I'm I'm not really trying to convince someone I think you got to be careful about I'm trying to convince this customer they need the product I like to use myself I created a product that I needed and that I wanted and that really deeply changed the way that I wore clothes and affected my life so that made it easy for me to speak about myself and invite other people into that um you know kind of this is what it's done for me but I like to say that you should be selling the problem that you're solving and not the product so people are far more emotional about their problems start with the whys start with the you know make them feel a little bit of the pain for me it was like do you own white pants or do you have anything in your closet that you just don't wear but you spend a lot of money on because you can't figure out what to wear under it everything shows and immediately you know the woman would lean in because I knew like there's not a woman on the planet that doesn't have that situation I didn't start with here's my product here's my features I wanted to start with like here was the problem here's my why I did this I did this to solve this problem and that made a big difference in how I could get consumers to want to try it because my product was brand new I mean no one in I heard of footless pantyhose no one was searching the planet for footless pantyhose so not only did I invent something new and it was also a new brand Spanx that no one had ever heard of but I was trying to explain and and show people why they would need this and I always say a quick visuals really impactful if you can show a before and after you can show with my product without my product that's always super powerful and always focus on the what's in it for them it's called wif what's in it for me WI I FM and that's in my brain always like whenever I'm talking to somebody I'm thinking what's in it for them like what am i even why am I even talking to them what am I gonna offer them that's gonna help them and I pay attention to the things that they say in need and I focus on what I truly believe I can offer that will help them I'm so glad master class chose you to kick off the entrepreneurial series because he's just like unbelievable gems that you can use in any part of your journey and you cover it all in the course so if you're just joining us this is a live interview between me it's very awkward for me I'm interviewing my wife Sarah we found this thanks we're not in the same house right now so that's weird too but it's exciting so thank you for joining us and we have hundreds of questions that have been submitted and I'm just trying to get to as many as I can with Sarah so Sarah and Etana asks in the last five years what new belief behavior or habit has improved your life well in the last five years one of the things that I implemented in my life that has made the biggest difference was I started bucketing my days prior to bucketing my days I literally was I was so drained at the end of every day because as an entrepreneur you know that you're dealing with you know in one hour I'd be dealing with a legal issue and then ten minutes later I'd be trying on a per on giving feedback and then 30 minutes later I'm having an employee issue coming to me that need to weigh in on and what I realized was I felt like just people were shooting arrows at me all day and I would come home every day and just literally stare at the wall and I stopped enjoying it I was not fulfilled and I wasn't enjoying my journey in the company and I thought okay part of what's bothering me is I don't have enough context and my brain is having to jump so quickly from subject to subject that I literally had like monkey brain like I couldn't focus I was foggy and I'll give you an example of not having context like someone would come in my office and say we have to make a big decision on packaging do you want the blue or the red and I'd stare at them and I go I want the blue the blue looks better and then they leave and then it gets launched and it's right next to our main competitor and their packages blue and I'm like oh my god I never would have picked blue like it shouldn't be blue our competitions blue right next to us but that kept happening because I wasn't asking the right questions and because I wasn't giving an allowing time for context so so I'll tell you what I did like Monday is my free think day I catch up with loose ends Tuesday is creative day brand day and marketing Wednesday is meeting with leadership team day and vision for the company and Thursday's product day and Friday's a swing day for me so now I've trained everybody in the company they like it better because they're like all product issues go to Sarah on Thursdays and it at least it allows my brain to stay in one subject for an extended period of time and it's made I'm happier and makes a bigger difference I also a lot by doing that and taking control of my my buckets in my days I for 19 years of owning Spanx every year I would say to my my team I would say guys I'm gonna start working out and you can attest to this Jesse you are amazing at working out if there's something I really admires how disciplined you are about your self-care in that bucket and every year I would not workout ever and this last year I said to them guys I'm working out this year and I hope you find time for me to work and we started by finding the exact hour every day that was going to be a non-negotiable and once I put that on the calendar everything else just worked around it and it's the first year that I worked and that's another habit I did for myself that has made a huge difference now can you do that at every stage of the business maybe not I mean for the first seven years I was twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and it may have been harder for me to do that but just by prioritizing it and working around it and made it made it happen for me in my life and then working on self-doubt and negative self-talk and listen to motivational stuff and I read positive books on Instagram I don't follow that many people but some of the things that I follow are positive quote message do you know hook pages I like my feed to be filled with stuff that makes me feel good and makes me think glass half-full I would also say as a family I would think you know we're very intentional about the words that we say we try to encourage our kids not to say I can't which means I won't we try to watch what we say keep it super positive my friend Chad Wright always says you know once you speak things you thought you give them power so and that works positive and negative so we really work on that as a family too um I'm really glad that gwenlyn asked this question I'm gonna read it she sent it in because I don't think a lot of people know that you want a show called the rebel billionaire when I first met you I couldn't even watch these tapes you could talk a little bit about that I just feel quick before I even ask this question can you tell everybody about this show that you were on because it was like I never saw it because I couldn't handle the pressure I know you lived I couldn't watch it I know you still have never seen it you watch half of the first episode and that's all you've seen of that whole show because I don't want our kids to get any ideas no this was even before kids you just couldn't handle it like said it was too stressful for you I was on a television show with Sir Richard Branson the entrepreneur from England that started virgin the Virgin Empire and I read his book in college losing my virginity and thought this is a really cool guy I'd like to know him one day so I sort of put it on my manifest list and started manifesting and putting it out into the universe that one day he and I would be friends and then fast-forward all these years he announces he's having a reality show kind of like The Apprentice but instead of each episode taking place in one city each episode would take place in a different part around the world and they were all business challenges and instead of going to the boardroom if you didn't make a challenge and getting fired you had to do basically a world record where I think that's a fine stuff I signed up for that was one of 18 entrepreneurs I ended up spending two months traveling the world with Richard Branson it was the most insane things you can imagine the very first day of filming I was in England the day before I was in Atlanta in the Starbucks line like ordering my chai tea then the very next day I'm awoken at 3 in the morning in the English countryside by this team of people that said wake up wake up they put us in hot-air balloons and we went up 10,000 feet in the air with a balance beam connecting the two hot-air balloons and we had to walk across the hot air balloon without touching anything on the balance beam because that's a perfect Segway I do have a crazy fear of heights so gwenlyn asks besides having to walk the tightrope between two hot-air balloons at 10,000 feet or trying out for the show what scared you the most during your time as an entrepreneur and and would you tell every woman what would you tell every woman are you three greatest habits that have helped you along your trajectory well the okay so the first part is what has scared me the most I would say what has scared me the most throughout the years is when I felt like the company was getting off course and getting a little bit away from its purpose and its values that was originally set and I think that's very normal I think that happens to cultures inside of a company throughout years and I think it happens when you bring in different leaders and leadership it can take on different tones and and so that that has been something that scares me but I can tell you that I've been able to you know really I call it setting the rudder like the founder and CEO that starts the business it needs to be the one that really sets the rudder okay if you're a ship headed to Africa or somewhere and your rudder is off by even a few millimeters over time you're gonna end up in like a whole nother place then you're aiming for and so I've gotten good throughout the years of knowing I kind of it's an intuitive feeling I can sense when the rudder is off so that is something that I pay attention to things that scare me or when products don't come in right you know I care so deeply about the customer if I feel that we disappoint the customer that scares me you know I like to make sure that we can rectify all of those situations when they happen but they still deeply affect me when they do no no companies perfect no person is perfect but what you can do is stay true to your value system of how you're going to handle it and how you're gonna treat people when things don't go where right and then what was the second part of that question and you can add any of this if you want to some of the habits that helped you along the way you covered a lot of it that you would encourage others to you know to have similar habits I think you've touched upon a lot of that yeah um you know my the habits that I have that I would say are really helpful throughout this journey are taking the time to think which I did talk about keeping a good cadence with your leaders and your leadership team inside of the organization staying connected to them in a meaningful way making sure that you're all sharing the same vision and that they feel supported habits like you know trying to take a little bit of time to work out has been a really big shift for me and balancing you know trying to balance it every day is different I mean some days I feel like I'm really balancing it great and then other days as you know I'm crying and saying Jessie I can't do this or I can't handle it you're always like honey you got this but there's ups and downs like that so one of the habits that I've had is I have sort of my own board they don't even really know they're my board but they're my feel-good board so when I know I'm going kind of in that downward like feeling overwhelmed I have two or three people that I are my go-to s that I'll just either call on the phone or make sure I spend time with and they really help me get through it yeah what I love about what watching you in this course the map in the master class course is and I hope people had the same thing they get a real sense of you as a person and you know you're somebody the same courage it takes to walk across a tightrope unhitch on this show is the same courage muscle that you need for starting a business and you know I think you're someone talking about habits and I see this all the time you really flex your grip muscle you know you you're a gritty you're a gritty gal you know you're not scared to try things and experiment and no it's true it's true you really you know you trust your instincts on it but you're not scared to go out of the box and no one's really taught you how to do this you you you picked up these skills and senses along the way it's really fun to watch Grant asks when thinking about scaling a business how do you decide what kiha most important from the early days and would you give equity to attract higher quality talent or try to raise capital so the way that I can just speak to how I did it um I was very interested in hiring people that were covered my weaknesses you know as you're looking when you're really small and you're like who's gonna be my first hire and who's gonna be my second hire it's super smart to kind of say what's my bench strength what can i cover in the business and what are the areas that I'm not as good at and those were my first hire so my first hire was an operator to kind of handle the inventory handle the accounts receivable handle the accounting set up QuickBooks and and then I I didn't have like a sort of sit-down strategic plan how to acquire talent as I was doing every department because that's what entrepreneurs do in the beginning I figured where I needed more bench strength you know like I was calling I was my PR person I was it I was calling every newspaper every magazine I was trying to get the word out about my product and get people to know about it and I was also selling it on the road the face of the brand I was doing all these other things and so as I was spending my time it became clear like well I can't really delegate this one or I can't really hire this one I need to stay in that lane but this one maybe I can and so my second hire was a head of PR and it was a girl that I went for a walk with to get a bagel and I gave her a free product and the entire walk to get the bagel she said this is the most amazing product this is what I work with I tried it on with 15 things in my closet I haven't worn these things in like 10 years I felt like I just got new clothes because of your item I mean she went on and on and at the end of the walk I was like do you want to be my head of PR she's like I don't know anything about PR I'm like I don't either but you just fit this list of magazines and radio stations and now it would be podcasts and influencers and you know it would be Instagram different people you follow on Instagram and and reach out to them and send them product and call them and so I did not hire people in the beginning I did not raise capital to hire what I think the question said you know top talent I didn't put a lot of emphasis on that early on I hired people that didn't have experience in what I was hiring them for but I liked them and I thought that they were passionate and hard workers and it really worked out for me in the early days so there comes a time though where you you know it's really just a lot of intuition along the way you know like I need somebody with really deep experience in this position and I'm willing to invest upfront the way that I ran my business I never I never ran my business to invest in things that were gonna pay out down the road for example you know I was like in the moment I you know how much money do I have to spend right now that's what I'm gonna spend how much money do I have for the next batch of inventory that's what I'm gonna spend and I was very small I have operated that for a very long time and 20 years later it worked I've seen a lot of different business models I've seen a lot of ways people do it you know a lot of people start and then they you know they got exponentially bigger than I was plotting along the way that I was but then you know three years later they were out of business some of them or they raised so much money that it became a very you know different scenario inside of the business with debt and things like that and I've just I've just kept it that way so I never got ahead of myself in that I just want to say I've never seen it in my life I'm fifth almost 52 right now I've never seen anyone do what you've done I mean with no experience to learn to come into an industry dominated by men with $5,000 in savings and build this create the products the brand name the marketing the storyline you're a great storyteller you're you know you engage it's just it's just unbelievable and I gotta take this opportunity to say that alright if you're just joining you're watching an exclusive masterclass interview with Sara Blakely the founder of Spanx happens to be my wife I'm it's law we're fielding questions we're gonna try to get to as many as we can and this one comes in from Michelle it's very timely so I wanted to share a thanks Michelle for asking this says Sara you did such a great job of grass roots roots efforts when you first started with being on-site to sell your product how would you pivot this approach during the current covin 19 era that we're all you know living in for the near future being able to sell in person such an asset so Michelle would like to know your suggestion for new entrepreneurs like herself on how you know these how to operate in these new times or any ideas along that yeah we you just have to go where your customers are right now and your customers are online and on social and so you know sitting down and having very creative ways that you can get yourself in front of the key influencers how can you get how can you stand out to them can you give a product that you can send to them do you have a heartfelt note that you could send to them you know don't be afraid to ask people that help you especially in the beginning I asked people all the time can you please help me I'm just starting out this business it would mean so much to me if I could be on your radio show or it would mean so much like I didn't always act like I had to be so buttoned up sometimes I I would just way way the situation say this might just be better to just appeal to this person's human emotion and I have found that in the core of most people they want to help so don't forget that when you're reaching out and your story and your why and if you happen to have a purpose that's greater than yourself other people will want to help you because they'll feel it and they'll be connected to it so it's like hey I'm doing this because X Y Z I found there was this big need I'm passionate about helping people in this way I give back a portion of my proceeds in this way you know whatever it is that also helps you stand out and open doors and then you know I'll take a cue from you Jesse I mean my husband sent a box with a plate and some silverware in it to somebody that he wanted to have a meeting with and just said I love to have a virtual lunch with you so there are so many different ways that you can get your foot in the door with people I think using humor is important I remember one time along the way that I was trying to get my foot in the door somewhere and I sent a shoe to the person and said I'd love to get my foot in the door with a note from me so sometimes you just have to put yourself out on the limb too but right now you have this social platform so how are you gonna use it in a way that people are gonna want to tune in how are people gonna want to be remember you and and that's what I would be sitting down and writing a list on and then I'd be asking myself what are the top podcast that I could talk about my product and my service on and start cold calling them what are the top you know different platforms that I could be somehow freely advertising on and I would be doing that that's great advice I'm really I really like this next question that came in because I think a lot of people are struggling with money to spend on advertising I know when you started out you had no money to advertise so I think this would be close to home you talking about class as well but Kyle asks he says I'm having trouble acquiring clients and I can't afford marketing right now how can I get clients besides contacting other similar businesses and trying online you went through this yeah so he said what was the last part incredible he said how can I get clients besides contacting other similar businesses and trying online I just remember you didn't have money when you started out to advertise what did you do I mean I well first of all I would I'd started small and I tried to get my foot in the door one place and then I would go sell the product for them and I would ensure that it was a home run success and then I would use that as almost like a case study for the next place that I called Knights day I just sold this at boutique mitzi and Romano and they sold 40 three days or you know whatever and I was the one that stood in their store and sold the 40 in three days but I would just keep using these sort of small micro examples for the next the next account that I wanted to get and I wasn't afraid to do the selling for the people you know when I landed Nieman Saks and Nordstrom I stood in the department stores but you know that we're selling the product but I would therefore I'd go at 8:30 in the morning do an all store rally and then stand there until 6 6 6 or 7 at night just selling the product for them and people would go what are you doing is this don't you have more things to do you're the founder of this company but I knew that getting into those accounts at that moment in time was like the Holy Grail I mean there was no internet there was no social media so I made a list a whiteboard list of what accounts I could get that would get me the most leverage like the most sales and I started there and then I made the list and then once I made the list it was like Neiman's Nordstrom Saks Bloomingdale's you know all the way down to Walmart Target like I just kind of made a whiteboard and then I started asking myself in what order should I call on these and is there a strategic order in which I should call on them and it was very apparent that it was so I mean you know today is a new day how do you get clients without advertising you lose you get out maybe you get out the whiteboard and you start saying how you know how am I going to find clients right now like is it can I be on local television can I send anything to my local TV channels can I write to the newspaper could I be on a home shopping channel network which is a free commercial does my product make sense for that could I write an article and see about my product and other products in the industry and send it to a big magazine or outlet and see if they're willing to publish my article about a belt kind of something you know I would just be brainstorming on lots of creative ways to do that yeah I think one thing that you did was that was so smart early on as you sent product to celebrities and bloggers and influencers with creative notes and you know that was a great tool for you actually it led to you landing Oprah in a sense yeah yeah I mean I feel you I had no money to advertise none so I became the advertisement myself I couldn't pay a spokesperson and I literally just started saying where can I talk about my story where can I talk about my product and you know just every single account or any customer I got I would try to think of a way that I could maybe use the customer's story to help further my story so you know are you willing to give me a testimonial can i film you you know saying anything about my product or what what it means to you and you know building up kind of content that way too is really helpful one of the themes in your masterclass course is you know and I've seen you do this you talk about the importance of being able to talk about your product in an elevator pitch in a cocktail environment so people can share it girlfriend a girlfriend know what's the best way to craft that like for those out there that are starting out is there is there a special formula behind an elevator pitch or telling your story or you know how would you recommend someone you know not be long-winded in that for me it's very simple be great at it for me it's very simple it's what Y which is the field of pain and then why you're the best option very quickly so like what like hey I'm Sarah and I invented this product called Spanx you know and then why you know because I was a frustrated consumer and if you're anything like me you have clothes hanging in your closet that you don't know how to wear and all the other options out there you could see and so I invented this then you offer the solution so you kind of want to say the wide talk about the problem give them your why and then you want to say why you're the best option you don't want to just leave it at that so then you would say and the reason why my product or my solution is the very very best is because mine actually stops below the knee when all the other options stop in the middle of the thigh which leaves a liner bulge that you can see through your pants or your slacks and so it just it was like I closed it out and I do that even now with anything that I'm selling you know I it's like this is what it is briefly but like the Y and then the Y it's your best option what I love about about masterclass and what you've done is you know you bootstrap this you know and so many people are out there right now trying to be entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to get going and you you know you provide all these tools in the course but you had this bootstrap mentality $5,000 you were scrappy you were selling in stores you were sending packages to people you were every hat in every department you know oh and by the way you got a day job for a year and a half while you develop this at night do you still have that like would you say you still have that bootstrap like mentality now that you have all these products and distribution and a big team you still seem to operate so gritty well what do you guess I cannot take the bootstrap and girl out of me it does not matter what stage I am in business I mean I am literally like I'm really focused on ROI return on investment even now I'll say why did we spend that and what exactly did we get in return and no spanks operates off zero based budget every year because instead of there being a rolling budget which I think can end up making companies really sloppy and not prudent and end up losing money on the bottom line unnecessarily we have a zero based budget so every single year everybody's budget starts at zero and they have to build a case for everything each leader has to build a case for everything they want to spend they have to have an attached ROI to it what they think the return on investment will be and and then we make decisions that way so I mean it's a culture it's a way of life I still very much that way and I can't help it - I'll even go isn't this something we can do ourselves they'll be like well Sarah it is but you know maybe at this point you should let that go and not try to do it yourself I just remember when we first started dating I was living in New York Saros you were living in Atlanta and I just sold sold Marquis Jet this private jet company that I had started and you would you know you had Spanx and we would just we just started dating and we went to we were in Vegas and I remember you were like and it was 9:30 we had just gone to dinner and you were there for about 15 minutes we were this small group and you're like I gotta go everybody goodnight I'm going to sleep I'm like it's 9:30 in Vegas I'm like this you're going to bed and you're like yeah I have worked to doing this and I was like whoa I'm like this is a really interesting human and you had like and I remember as we were going through it like you had so much of that bootstrap in you and we first started dating and I was like I had a private jet company so we were kind of like you know throwing big parties and entertaining clients and you never really seen anything like that and it was like peanut but it was just like completely opposite and I was so attracted to like the grit you know that mentality you've never lost it and I think no but I think a lot of as it's important as people grow to keep that where I came from mentality and to never lose it you know you see athletes lose it this one losses you've always stayed that clear water and yours you know it's still in you that's a small town beach girl and it's great to watch let's get to a couple more while we we have a couple more minutes before Serena's gonna jump in here cliffy asks what's the minimal minimum financial accounting information you should know or understand to start a business I want to hear your answer on this one I know first you are in balance sheets and and accounting measures yeah it's it's not my strong suit okay yeah I would say zero i i I just I'm speaking from experience I had zero I had never taken an accounting course in my life I still never have I've never taken a business class in my life i I just never have so I can I can only tell you if I'm sure it doesn't hurt to have some it just wasn't a part of my journey I never took a single class on it and I started Spanx and I've been able to do it without it I I'm very grateful for the people I have hired who do do that and understand it and I know enough to know where my strengths and weaknesses are that was really a quick hire that I wanted to make early on you know I know you've had two very powerful women in your life as influences your mom and your grandma who played a huge role in you know how you were raised and I mean your mom's unbelievable she's so sweet and supportive and I think a lot of Lucille Ball comes from your mom and a lot of the Einstein because she's so creative as well but if you think back to your childhood and now we have four kids are there certain things that you're incorporating from your childhood into your parenting styles just getting off the business track for a second I know your dad used to talk about failure and what did you fail out fail at and you would mention at the top of the interview how do you feel and some of these things are there certain characteristics that you've carried into your parenting style I mean you always tell me and you know one of our things that were aligned it is praising the effort with our kids not the results we really make it you know a strong point to always praise the effort are there any other characteristics that you think you you're carrying over from when you were a little girl well I mean you mentioned you which is I'm definitely wanting to encourage our children to fail my dad did that while I was growing up and that was a really big big plus for us and the other one you know he would he would instead of a sphere in failure he was kind of encouraging us to go try new things and he'd say what did you fail at and if we didn't have something he'd be disappointed and so he just reframed failure for us instead of failure being not you know the outcome it became just about not trying and then praising the effort I grew up in a family that I it wasn't super kid centric like I didn't feel like I was the center of the universe with my parents and I feel like I mean I felt very loved and very supported but they you know they weren't they weren't just like all day long saying you're the best and this is you it's amazing so they were mostly praising my effort and I think that's really important when you are telling your children they're great all day what ends up happening is it's a reverse psychology they end up becoming so nervous and insecure that they're not gonna measure up to what you think and they start to feel like they're gonna be found out like my dad and mom think I'm so great what if I'm not that great what if I and so it's like psychologists have analyzed it now and realized that's actually been detrimental to children and the children that were praised the most all day long in that way ended up being the most fearful to try new things or to go out there so being able to say you know you made a real effort and I'm super proud of the effort that was something that my parents always did and we had dinner we had dinner religiously Monday through Friday and my parents talked to each other almost the whole meal and my brother and I listened me we were allowed to talk but it was more just my parents catching up and that was a really huge part of my learning and my upbringing that I look back in value a lot I loved it well we have time for one more question before I bring Sarina back sweetie so I guess this is kind of a question for both of us but you could take a shot out of it shot at it by Brent and ask based on being a highly successful entrepreneur power couple huh what advice do you have for myself and my wife for keeping the spark alive in our marriage while we're both so preoccupied in building our own business businesses and both predominantly working from home but what we love what we do but we can also get fully committed by it consumed by it so I think that's a common thing people are trying to build their businesses now working at a home they've all consumed what advice you can go first I mean I would say you've got to find a loan time even if it's 15 20 minutes whatever 10 minutes whatever it can be there needs to be a sacred amount of alone time between the two of you and I would recommend at that time not be a time that you can talk about children or your businesses so that's number one that's really helpful we don't always do that but we try and then the second thing is try to find a mutual activity that you guys enjoy whether it's you both like to go for a walk you both like to ride bikes you like to hike I think when you can skip away for even a few minutes and do an actual activity that's really healing for a marriage and keeps the marriage on track it's tough I mean you know Jesse and I it's such a balance sometimes he's I can tell that he's got a much heavier workload and I'll take take more of the responsibility in the house and then he can kind of sense when I might have a board meeting coming up or some really big product deadlines and he'll say you know what I'm gonna lean in a little bit more and then dividing the responsibilities in the home and being really forthcoming about that talking about in communicating there's been times in our marriage where it hasn't felt balanced and I felt like I was taking more of the at-home stuff or Jesse did and we had to articulate it to each other and you have to do it pretty quickly or else it can start to build resentment but we laugh all the time I mean if you can make each other laugh it's such a big part of it I think you really it's so important to communicate when you add a balance if your work especially if you're starting a business you're gonna be out of balance satis starts back to 20-hour days support 21 hour days at Marquee jet I let Sara know look I'm training for a race I'm launching this product the next two weeks are gonna be crazy can you do this because she hit on the most important thing is resentment if you don't communicate that and resentment builds up it can spiral quickly so you really want to communicate those things I'm gonna bring Sarina back in because we're right at nine o'clock this was this is hard this was on compass is challenging but I loved it I love getting your answers you know some of the stuff was new a lot of this stuff is covered in Sara's amazing master class so for those that haven't seen it you could still you know obviously check that out and like I said it's like it's like getting an MBA it's like going to Harvard Business School in a couple of quick sessions so definitely do that and Sarina come on in first of all it's like getting a business degree within a few sessions I love that we ended on a marriage therapy no I was like I need to take some of those notes into my own marriage and Sarah there was something that you said while shooting that has sat with me and I've revisited so many times which is that you don't need to be serious to be taken and I just have to tell you that I have revisited that as a woman and just as a human being so many times so thank you for that thank you both for being here today and thanks to everyone who joined us master class live takes place this time every Wednesday and our next guest I'm very excited to announce is conde nast artistic director vogue editor-in-chief and cultural arbiter Anna Wintour as a reminder while this is normally a member benefit given what we're all going through right now we've opened up access to everyone for the foreseeable future we hope you'll join us until then channel Sarah a my and write down those ideas we'll see you next time bye everybody

Channel: MasterClass

Views: 53,106

Keywords: masterclass, master class

Id: ml35J1s0gCI

Length: 61min 38sec (3698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020